This book is about the secret catacombs, more than thirty rooms forty feet below the ground, that exist in the heart of the City of Worcester, Massachusetts. Discovered in the early 1900s, the time of origin and purpose are still in question. Read about the activities that took place in the rooms of the catacombs that were reported through stories told almost a century ago. Take this adventure into the past, where you will find more questions than answers about this secret underground labyrinth. The author presents his research in an effort to explain how the extensive catacombs could have come into existence. The reader is encouraged to continue the quest of bringing this story out of the darkness and into the light. This book may inspire you to join the search of uncovering missing information needed to solve this amazing puzzle.

The Blackstone Valley is alive with the echoes of souls that roam the old mills, homes, social clubs and land they once inhabited. Visit a haunted monument in Cumberland, where nine colonists slain in King Philip's War may linger. Shop at an antique store in Chepachet that harbors more than just treasures from the past. Enjoy drinks with the other kind of spirits in historic establishments like the Granville Pub and the Tavern on Main. Take a hike through Precious Blood Cemetery, where ghosts may wander endlessly searching for their loved ones. Join authors Thomas D'Agostino and Arlene Nicholson on a tour of the most haunted places in the Blackstone Valley.

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space? A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.

As the second-largest city in New England, Worcester is well known for its contributions to manufacturing and transportation. However, many other people and events contributed to the building of this city. Timothy Bigelow led a revolution to take back Worcester from British rule almost two years before the Declaration of Independence. Abby Kelley Foster helped establish the first national women's rights convention in Worcester and was a leading voice against slavery. The city was also home to one of the nation's first professional baseball teams, the Worcester Brown Stockings. Join local author Dave Kovaleski as he reveals the stories behind revolutionaries, reformers and pioneers from the "Heart of the Commonwealth."

Plague was one of the enduring facts of everyday life on the European continent, from earliest antiquity through the first decades of the eighteenth century. It represents one of the most important influences on the development of Europe’s society and culture. In order to understand the changing circumstances of the political, economic, ecclesiastical, artistic, and social history of that continent, it is important to understand epidemic disease and society’s response to it. To date, the largest portion of scholarship about plague has focused on its political, economic, demographic, and medical aspects. This interdisciplinary volume offers greater coverage of the religious and the psychological dimensions of plague and of European society’s response to it through many centuries and over a wide geographical terrain, including Byzantium. This research draws extensively upon a wealth of primary sources, both printed and painted, and includes ample bibliographical reference to the most important secondary sources, providing much new insight into how generations of Europeans responded to this dread disease.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.