A biography of Marion "Joe" Carstairs, the fastest female speedboat racer of the 'twenties, describes her life as a wealthy and eccentric lesbian and unofficial ruler on a Caribbean island

The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of 'Joe' Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water

Biographies & Memoirs

Summerscale, Kate.

Community & Culture

Penguin??Books

Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book! From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy. At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.

The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London

History

Europe

The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story

Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize * New York Times Book Review&nbsp;Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of the Year by The Sunday Times * The New Statesman * The Times * The Spectator * The Telegraph "Prepare not to see much broad daylight, literal or metaphorical,&nbsp;for days if you read this.... The atmosphere evoked is&nbsp;something I will never forget."--The Times (London) London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding's modest home, china flies off the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewelry appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot call the police, she calls the papers instead. After the sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma's peculiar history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe that Alma's past has bled into her present, her mind into her body. There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious.

Penguin Press

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR •The Sunday Times •The New Statesman •The Times •The Spectator •The Telegraph\nShortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection\n“Prepare not to see much broad daylight, literal or metaphorical, for days if you read this.... The atmosphere evoked is something I will never forget.”—The Times (London)\nLondon, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding’s modest home, china flies off the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewelry appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot call the police, she calls the papers instead.\nAfter the sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems.\nBy unravelling Alma’s peculiar history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe that Alma’s past has bled into her present, her mind into her body. There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed.\nWith characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious.

Historical

From the winner of the Edgar Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize, a cultural history of "everyday madness" The Book of Phobias and Manias is a thrilling compendium of 99 obsessions that have shaped us all, the rare and the familiar, from ablutophobia (a horror of washing) to syllogomania (a compulsion to hoard) to zoophobia (a fear of animals). &nbsp; Phobias and manias are deeply personal experiences, and among the most common anxiety disorders of our time, but they are also clues to our shared past. The award-winning author Kate Summerscale uses rich and riveting case studies to trace the origins of our obsessions, unearthing a history of human strangeness, from the middle ages to the present day, and a wealth of explanations for some of our most powerful aversions and desires.

The Book of Phobias and Manias: A History of Obsession

Reference

'A fascinating insight into the life of a remarkable woman' - BOOKS BY MAIL Joe Carstairs was renowned in the 1920s as an 'invert' who smoked cheroots and dressed as a man, as an heiress to the Standard Oil fortune and as the world's fastest female speedboat racer. In 1934, she bought an island in the West Indies and created her own kingdom. She exercised absolute power over a colony of five hundred black Bahamians, demanding obedience and moral virtue while herself continuing to live as she pleased. She entertained actresses, duchesses and priests, but reserved her greatest love for her boats, her cars and the enigmatic Lord Tod Wadley. When Carstairs died in 1993, aged 93, she was all but forgotten.

The Queen Of Whale Cay (CH)

Leaders & Notable People

Charnwood

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

This is the story of a murder committed in an English country house in 1860. The search for the killer threatened the career of one of the first and greatest detectives.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.
At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. 
Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable―that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. 
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Walker Books

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. 
At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. 
Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable-that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today...from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. 
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

Bloomsbury USA

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Books by Summerscale, Kate.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Summerscale, Kate.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of 'Joe' Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water

The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London

The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story

The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story

The Book of Phobias and Manias: A History of Obsession

The Queen Of Whale Cay (CH)

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective