“Eyewitness testimonies to the culture and commerce of slavery . . . coupled with smart commentary” from an acclaimed historian. “Essential.”(Kirkus Reviews) In this important book, Noel Rae integrates firsthand accounts into a narrative history that brings the reader face to face with slavery’s everyday reality. From the travel journals of sixteenth-century Spanish settlers who offered religious instruction and “protection” in exchange for farm labor, to the diaries of Reverend Cotton Mather, to Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s travelogue about the “cotton states,” to an 1880 speech given by Frederick Douglass, Rae provides a comprehensive portrait of the antebellum history of the nation. Most significant are the testimonies from former slaves themselves, ranging from the famous Solomon Northup to the virtually unknown Mary Reynolds, who was sold away from her mother as child. Drawing on thousands of original sources, The Great Stain tells of a society based on the exploitation of labor and fallacies of racial superiority. Meticulously researched, this is a work of history that is profoundly relevant to our world today. “Noel Rae expertly assembles the most consequential accounts from the era of the American slave trade. . . . A vivid and comprehensive picture.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America “Uniquely immediate, multivoiced, specific, arresting, and illuminating.” —Booklist “Many histories have been written of slavery in America, but far too few have let the participants, and particularly the victims, speak so directly for themselves. Rae has helped to fill that historical vacuum in this important work, and the voices are intense, eloquent, and haunting.” —National Book Review

A princess must win back her kingdom, save a prince, and restore peace in this fantasy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Splintered series. After Lyra—a princess incapable of speech or sound—is cast out of her kingdom of daylight by her wicked aunt, a witch saves her life, steals her memories, and raises her in an enchanted forest…disguised as a boy known only as Stain. Meanwhile, in Lyra’s rival kingdom, the prince of thorns and night is dying, and the only way for him to break his curse is to wed the princess of daylight—for she is his true equal. As Lyra finds her way back to her identity, an imposter princess prepares to steal her betrothed prince and her crown. To win back her kingdom, save the prince, and make peace with the land of the night, Lyra must be loud enough to be heard without a voice, and strong enough to pass a series of tests—ultimately proving she’s everything a traditional princess is not. “A decadent fantasy anchored in childhood delights with vibrantly detailed writing and brilliantly theatrical subplots.” —Kirkus Reviews “[A] reimagining of “The Princess and the Pea” . . . An emotionally complex tale of fate, inner beauty, and found family that illustrates the strength of love born from friendship.” —Publishers Weekly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral delivers “a master novelist's haunting parable about our troubled modern moment" (The Wall Street Journal). It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."

The People’s War is the story of one of history’s great events, the American Revolutionary War, told almost entirely in the words of the soldiers who fought it and the civilians who endured it. Drawing on thousands of original sources—diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, pension applications—Noel Rae has culled the most colorful and vivid passages and woven them into a vibrant, eyewitness narrative that takes us from the peaceful days before the Stamp Act, through all the war’s major events, and ends with farewell accounts of what happened in later life to the people we have come to know along the way. Some of these figures, like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and King George III, are familiar figures, but most were ordinary people, little known to history, but here briefly emerging from obscurity: a farm boy who ran away to sea at the age of twelve, a pretty young widow roughed up by Tory ruffians, and a slave who escaped to the British after witnessing his mother being flogged. These are but a few of those whose collective voices, drawn from all sides of the conflict, bring the Revolution truly to life—in a history at its most entertaining and authoritative, for who better qualified to tell what happened than the people who were there?

The true story of Katherine Knight, the mother and abattoir worker who became Australia's worst female killer. A must for true crime fans. 'There are murders and there are murders. There are bodies and there are bodies, and then there's what lies waiting behind the front door of the little brick house with its blinds drawn and air conditioner droning on, working against the oppressive Hunter Valley heat. A glimpse into the dark, cockroach corners of the soul. A lot of the blokes at the scene that day will never be the same.' On 29 February 2000, Katherine Knight committed an unspeakable act. A mother of four and a grandmother, she seduced and then stabbed John Price 37 times. A former abattoir worker, she skinned him. A loving partner, she cooked him with vegetables, making a soup with his head. Made gravy. Left him on plates for his family. Why? Pricey was her de facto and he wanted out. She didn't like that. People said that most of the time Katherine Knight seemed normal, until she got angry. She was judged to be legally sane when she committed a crime so horrible that the media shied away from the detail. Journalist Peter Lalor covered the trial and wanted to know what made Knight go way over the borderline. In this unflinching account he uncovers the layers of her dysfunction, opening the door of 84 St Andrews Street and taking us into the lives of Knight's ex-partners, her family and the locals of Aberdeen, NSW. Katherine Knight is currently the only woman serving a life sentence in Australia. She is never to be released.

In?"The Stain"?Rikki Ducornet tells the story of a young girl named Charlotte, branded with a furry birthmark in the shape of a dancing hare, regarded as the mark of Satan. "Sadistic nuns, scatology, butchered animals, monkish rapists, and Satan" (Kirkus), as well as the village exorcist, inhabit this bawdy tale of perversion, power, possession, and the rape of innocence. Ducornet weaves an intricate design of fantasy and reality, at once surreal, hilarious, and terrifying.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

This volume, edited by and contributed to primarily by African-American voices in the SBC, is one small effort to help remove the stain of racism from the SBC in pursuit of Christian unity in our beloved denomination.

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Meadows longs for "normal." Born with a port wine stain covering half her face, all her life she’s been plagued by stares, giggles, bullying, and disgust. But when she’s abducted on the way home from school, Sarah is forced to uncover the courage she never knew she had, become a hero rather than a victim, and learn to look beyond her face to find the beauty and strength she has inside. It’s that—or succumb to a killer.