Guests at a New Orleans party face a mysterious and deadly host in the widely suspected inspiration for Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. When eight guests arrive for a party at a luxurious New Orleans penthouse, their unknown host is nowhere to be found. Then, speaking to them through radio broadcast, he informs them of the evening’s chilling theme: every hour, one of them will die. As the host’s prophecy comes horribly true, the dwindling band of survivors grows desperate to escape their fate. To discover their tormentor’s identity, they must each reveal their darkest secrets and find the common thread—but confessions may not be enough when they realize that one of them may be the killer. First published in 1930, this classic mystery was adapted into the Hollywood film, The Ninth Guest. It bears a striking resemblance to Agatha Christie’s bestseller And Then There Were None—which appeared nearly a decade later.

A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast

Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating! The Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the hidden economics behind pirates' notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a "pirate code"? Were pirates really ferocious madmen? And what made them so successful? The Invisible Hook uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy. Leeson argues that the pirate customs we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits. The Invisible Hook looks at legendary pirate captains like Blackbeard, Black Bart Roberts, and Calico Jack Rackam, and shows how pirates' search for plunder led them to pioneer remarkable and forward-thinking practices. Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy--a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers' compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases practiced racial tolerance and equality. Leeson contends that pirates exemplified the virtues of vice--their self-seeking interests generated socially desirable effects and their greedy criminality secured social order. Pirates proved that anarchy could be organized. Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates' trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world.

Provides a rhetorical analysis of female spirit mediums’ autobiographies in the historical and social contexts of Victorian-era America. Invisible Hosts explores how the central tenets of Spiritualism influenced ways in which women conceived of their bodies and their civic responsibilities, arguing that Spiritualist ideologies helped to lay the foundation for the social and political advances made by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As public figures, female spirit mediums of the Victorian era were often accused of unfeminine (and therefore transgressive) behavior. A rhetorical analysis of nineteenth-century spirit mediums’ autobiographies reveals how these women convinced readers of their authenticity both as respectable women and as psychics. The author argues that these women’s autobiographies reflect an attempt to emulate feminine virtues even as their interpretation and performance of these virtues helped to transform prevailing gender stereotypes. She demonstrates that the social performance central to the production of women’s autobiography is uniquely complicated by Spiritualist ideology. Such complications reveal new information about how women represented themselves, gained agency, and renegotiated nineteenth-century gender roles.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title, that may also include a folder.

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY. INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER. New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Winner of the 2021 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. One of The Washington Post's Top 50 Nonfiction Books of 2020. From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, and the Creator and Executive Producer of The Book of Queer (coming June 2022 to Discovery+), the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall. In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.

Renee Chambers is a burgeoning germaphobe in search of a new job—something less stressful than her last job, teaching high school students. When her supposedly psychic best friend, Ellen, points her toward an odd little bookstore and a strange, otherworldly woman, Adrianne, Renee is thrown for a loop. One awkward interview and an even stranger psychic encounter later, Renee gets the job. Then Ellen’s psychic dabbling has unintended consequences when Renee meets a pushy new friend, Katherine, a jealous ghost who's convinced they are soul mates. A casino trip, a drunken drag show, an old beater of a car, and a pair of dinosaur panties push Renee to the edge, but the real kicker is when Katherine starts getting more insistent and borrowing bodies. All Renee wants is a peaceful, fledgling hermit existence, but that’s unlikely unless she can figure out her true connection to Katherine, Ellen, and Adrianne. To discover the truth, she must come to terms with her past and learn how to embrace the future.

A willful New York debutante travels the rugged Great Plains for a future in the flourishing American West in this New York Times bestseller. Charting the trail across the Great Plains from New York City to the Mexican territory of California, a headstrong couple embarks on a new life in this classic work of historical fiction as unforgiving, moving, and unpredictable as the frontier. A recent finishing school graduate, eighteen-year-old Garnet Cameron is desperate for direction. Too driven for the restrictive manners of the upper class, Garnet is naturally drawn to Oliver Hale, a frontier trader. Unlike the men Garnet is accustomed to, Oliver treats her as his equal and respects her independence. His tales of adventure on the plains thrill her. And his proposal of marriage is accepted. Garnet eagerly grabs hold of the promise and prospect of an exciting future, only to discover how ill-prepared she is for the punishing landscape of the Jubilee Trail and the even harsher realities of human nature. Adapted into a feature film, Jubilee Trail is a classic novel of a woman in the West, beloved not only for the rebelliousness and resilience of its heroine, but for its authenticity, grand sweep, unsparing intimacy, and honest portrayal of the survivors and victims—as well as the victors and villains—of a defiant American wilderness.

A striking World War I graphic novel that combines historical fiction and an incredible microscopic look at the defenses of the human body.