The Black Room at Longwood


Book Description

Like his subject, Napoleon, author Jean-Paul Kauffmann has experienced captivity, as a three-year hostage in Beirut. He brings his insider's knowledge to this moving account of the most famous French soldier's last years in seclusion on a tropical island. After his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was exiled and imprisoned by the British on the island of St. Helena. He became increasingly withdrawn, surviving on a diet of memories that he recounted to the few people around him. But the book -- part history, part travelogue -- portrays the leader as a prisoner also of his mind, poisoned by nostalgia for his triumphs and grief over his defeats. "A haunting, unforgettable book....Kauffmann captures the desolate atmosphere of Napoleon's last home with evocative precision." -- Boston Globe




Black Elephants in the Room


Book Description

From many to few -- Beyond Uncle Tom -- Race doesn't matter -- Black power through conservative principles -- Like crabs in a barrel -- Whither the Republican Party.




How to Find a Black Cat in a Dark Room


Book Description

An inquiry into what it is about our experiences and cultures that brings out the differences and reveals the similarities in us as humans beings, in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman. Jacob Burak is on a quest to answer the question “are we as human beings, who are separated by different cultures and experiences, similar or different?” Through the lens of behavioural studies, we see how, while our approaches differ and often conflict, we all strive for similar things: love, acceptance, power and understanding. How to Find a Black Cat in a Dark Room offers the latest scientific studies of human behaviour alongside accessible anecdotes to examine the universal human experiences of comparing ourselves to others, the need to belong, the urge to achieve and the anxiety and uncertainty of life itself. More importantly, Burak shows us how, in understanding these behavioural patterns, we learn that we are actually more alike than we are different; that our rivals often make us stronger; and that being trusting can help us live longer. With his inquisitive nature, logical thinking and engaging style, Burak examines whether it is destiny or personality that controls our lives, through intriguing subjects such as: • What are the ten rules for happiness that are entirely under our control? • Why do smart people make stupid mistakes? • What distinguishes bureaucrats and entrepreneurs? • What are the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives? • In what circumstances is it right to surrender our privacy? • Does it pay to trust people?




The Black Room


Book Description

Robert has come back from a horrible ordeal in a strange parallel world. Now he can’t stop thinking about the people he left behind to face a winter that most won’t survive. When Robert sees a chance to save his friend Lorn, he is desperate to succeed. But is he prepared for the realities of her world? Meanwhile, Lorn struggles to lead the little band of survivors, even as she feels herself drawn to a secret tunnel where an unknown menace lurks. Seamlessly blending fantasy with a hard-hitting survival tale, Gillian Cross has created a completely original psychological thriller.




The American Black Chamber


Book Description

During the 1920s Herbert O. Yardley was chief of the first peacetime cryptanalytic organization in the United States, the ancestor of today's National Security Agency. Funded by the U.S. Army and the Department of State and working out of New York, his small and highly secret unit succeeded in breaking the diplomatic codes of several nations, including Japan. The decrypts played a critical role in U.S. diplomacy. Despite its extraordinary successes, the Black Chamber, as it came to known, was disbanded in 1929. President Hoover's new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson refused to continue its funding with the now-famous comment, "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail." In 1931 a disappointed Yardley caused a sensation when he published this book and revealed to the world exactly what his agency had done with the secret and illegal cooperation of nearly the entire American cable industry. These revelations and Yardley's right to publish them set into motion a conflict that continues to this day: the right to freedom of expression versus national security. In addition to offering an exposé on post-World War I cryptology, the book is filled with exciting stories and personalities.




The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries


Book Description

The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car—nowhere is a crime completely impossible. Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form—a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth—this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. Featuring • Unconventional means of murder • Pilfered jewels • Shocking solutions Includes • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and the first locked-room mystery • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and Stanley Ellin A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL




17 Years in the Black Room


Book Description

Seventeen Years in the Black Room is about the transition from segregation to integration for a small-town Texas Black school teacher, Susie Sansom-Piper, in the late 1960’s. As the last Principal to close the segregated school, this memoir begins with a look at the segregated black community during her childhood (after 1921), and outlines the challenges she faced both in the integrated school and within the black community. This is a story of resilience, tragedy, and triumph over adversity, as she manages to balance the demands of her household, parents, and two small children, while maintaining the decorum and back-bone needed to survive as a Black educator. This book provides an inside look at her teaching post integration, and how integration of schoolteachers and students impacted the African American family units and the community. This is a real-world look at the challenges and obstacles placed on African Americans in the workplace from the soul of a survivor.







From Black Rooms


Book Description

Natalie Lindstrom has finally left the underworld behind for a new career in the art world. But there’s one world she can’t escape: the Other world of the dead. As a former Violet, an elite crime-fighter with the power to channel murder victims, Natalie is now using her paranormal gift to summon the spirits of legendary painters. But she’s about to discover how far some people will go to keep their hold on her–and others like her…. Evan Markham, her ex-lover-turned-Violet-Killer, has escaped from prison. And he’s been made an offer he can’t refuse: Natalie. But first he must help contact a deceased geneticist whose most intriguing experiment was brutally interrupted: an attempt to manufacture Violets. To protect her young daughter and herself, Natalie must search for the scientist’s only living test subject–a handsome but tortured artist to whom she is dangerously attracted. For he is caught in the grip of two opposing forces, one that wants his survival, another that wants him–and anyone connected with him–destroyed….




In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories


Book Description

Creak... Crash... BOO! Shivering skeletons, ghostly pirates, chattering corpses, and haunted graveyards...all to chill your bones! Share these seven spine-tingling stories in a dark, dark room.