A Man Escaped


Book Description

A Man Escaped is one of the most extraordinary escape stories to come out of World War II, a record of ingenuity and endurance that rivals the best of the genre.




One Man Escaped


Book Description

Close your eyes and picture September 16, 1914. A family member is murdered. What do you remember about the murder that day? This novel is about Alva C. Tenil Horr, who murdered his wife, Ida on that day in Danville, Illinois. Mr. Horr was arrested in August of the following year and swiftly tried the following month. He was sentence to Southern Illinois Penitentiary in Chester, Illinois for 25 years. He escaped from there in March of 1919. This novel is a time line of events before and after the murder. A great deal of effort has been taken to verify the sequence of events. The conversations that are illustrated in this novel are fictional. Some names have been changed. my family names have not. I do not mean to imply that I have written a novel about fictional characters. I have written a novel about real people who happen to live at a time somewhat removed from the present. Ida was my great aunt. She was born, Ida Meeker, October 10, 1879 in Bismark, Illinois. The pictures and documents illustrated in this novel help tell the story. This is Alvas and Idas story, and also the story of a great many other individuals and families. There are many beginnings to Idas story. Born in one era, maturing in another, watching the century transform into the next, she was unaware of the changes it would bring to her life and the lives of many local residents in Danville, Illinois. Steven F. Meeker




Death March Escape


Book Description

“Blending elements of memoir, history, and biography,” the son of a Holocaust survivor “portrays the horrifying reality of the . . . concentration camps” (Midwest Book Review). In June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruelest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of Mauthausen’s nearby sub-camp, Gusen, he weighed less than 80lbs, nothing but skin and bones. Somehow surviving the relentless horrors of these two brutal camps, as Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped. Quickly recaptured, he managed to avoid being killed by the guards. Put on another death march a few days later, he achieved the impossible: he escaped again. Using only his father’s words for guidance, Jack Hersch takes us along as he flies to Europe to learn the secrets his father never told of his time in the camps. Beginning in the verdant hills of his father’s Hungarian hometown, we accompany Jack’s every step as he describes the unimaginable: what his father must have seen and felt while struggling to survive in the most abominable places on earth. “This deeply personal and extremely informative portrait of a man of indomitable will to live, as Hersch emphasizes, reminds us of why we must never forget nor trivialize the full, shocking truth about the Holocaust.”—Booklist




Escape from Alcatraz


Book Description

What's more exciting than a prison break? Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 and have never been caught. Many authorities are certain they died crossing San Francisco Bay. Relatives claim they made it to Brazil. The theories of what happened to them are endless. Find out the facts from people who dealt with the men and the case first-hand. This is one mystery you'll definitely want to solve.




I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!


Book Description

I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is the amazing true story of one man's search for meaning, fall from grace, and eventual victory over injustice. In 1921, Robert E. Burns was a shell-shocked and penniless veteran who found himself at the mercy of Georgia's barbaric penal system when he fell in with a gang of petty thieves. Sentenced to six to ten years' hard labor for his part in a robbery that netted less than $6.00, Burns was shackled to a county chain gang. After four months of backbreaking work, he made a daring escape, dodging shotgun blasts, racing through swamps, and eluding bloodhounds on his way north. For seven years Burns lived as a free man. He married and became a prosperous Chicago businessman and publisher. When he fell in love with another woman, however, his jealous wife turned him in to the police, who arrested him as a fugitive from justice. Although he was promised lenient treatment and a quick pardon, he was back on a chain gang within a month. Undaunted, Burns did the impossible and escaped a second time, this time to New Jersey. He was still a hunted man living in hiding when this book was first published in 1932. The book and its movie version, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1933, shocked the world by exposing Georgia's brutal treatment of prisoners. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is a daring and heartbreaking book, an odyssey of misfortune, love, betrayal, adventure, and, above all, the unshakable courage and inner strength of the fugitive himself.




As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me


Book Description

Originally published in 1955, this must be one of the most dramatic adventures of our time. Clemens Forell, a German soldier, was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour in a Siberian lead mine after the Second World War. Rebelling against the brutality of the camp, Forell staged a daring escape, enduring an 8000-mile journey across the trackless wastes of Siberia, in some of the most treacherous and inhospitable conditions on earth. Bauer's writing brilliantly evokes Forell's desperation in the prison camp, and his struggle for survival and terror of recapture as he makes his way towards the Persian frontier and freedom.




Frank Morris: The Man Who Escaped Alcatraz


Book Description

The Story of famed robber, Frank Lee Morris (My cousin). In this tale you will hear the story of a man trying to get out of "The Rock", "Hell-Catraz," by some, or just Alcatraz. What started as a short story turned into a few years long research project. A project in which I, myself learned things about my cousin. I hope every body loves the tale of Frank. Any comments can be sent to Frank Morris and Friends of Alcatraz on Facebook.




The Man Who Mailed Himself Out of Jail


Book Description

A one-time murderer and many-time thief, Richard Lee McNair is the only person ever to break out jail, state penitentiary and federal penitentiary. Three escapes. McNair, a former US Air Force Sergeant, was 47 when he shipped himself out a Louisiana prison on the 5th of April, 2006. His escape came to within a whisker of failing when he was confronted on railroad tracks by a policeman, an event recorded by the officer's dashcam. The encounter became a famous crime video clip on YouTube. Month after month, McNair was featured on America's Most Wanted and led newspaper and television newscasts in the United States and Canada.Through more than 350 letters and 3,500 hand-written pages from his solitary-confinement cell at the 'Supermax' in Colorado, Richard McNair provides the never-before-known details on how he pulled off his three escapes, his encounters with police, and what can be best described as a semi-paranoid life on the lam.His Houdini-like escape in 2006 was the first from a federal prison in 13 years, and there hasn't been one since.Is Richard Lee McNair the world's greatest escape artist? The reader can decide.




The Man Who Escaped This Story and Other Stories


Book Description

Containing the stories: PURITY BALL (2015); LIFE COACH (2012); HOWL OF THE SHEEP (2010); BLIND ITEM (2015); NATASHA HATES A VACUUM (2011); THE TELLTALE PARTY (2019, original to this collection); AND THE ANGELS SING (2013); WE WILL REBUILD (2009); BLOOM WHERE YOU'RE PLANTED (2011); THE FREE SCHOOL (2016); DUST MADE OF WORDS (2014); MISERICORDIA (2019 original to this collection); OF A THOUSAND CUTS (2014); NIGREDO (2015); THE MAN WHO ESCAPED THIS STORY (2013).From Author's Introduction: "I hope these stories of bad things happening to worse people will give you thrills and chills, but if they are worth reading and remembering, if they were worth writing, I hope they will give you some sense of empathy for the condemned -some understanding of how people who feel trapped or driven by circumstance are too often the authors of their own undoing, or how even the most venal villains are the heroes of their own stories- and (perhaps it's not too much to hope for) help you figure out how to be the hero of yours ... and maybe even how to escape it."Cover art by Wendy Saber Cor




The Escape Artist


Book Description

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award · New York Times Bestseller "A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . . Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom—among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.