Pocket Venus: The Rise, The Fall & The Rise of a Hollywood Starlet


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Pocket Venus is a celebration of life marred by tragedy. Mildred Shay had seen tragedy from a young age: she stood between her mother Lillian and her grandmother over the body of her eight year old brother Arnold, killed on the street in front of his family by a drunken chauffeur. While the outside world suffered during the Great War, until that point the Shay household had remained untouched. But from that moment on, a darkness that fell over the magnificent mansion in West Palm Beach. This tragic accident in 1918 defined the early life of Mildred Shay.




'From Grave to Gay'


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Pegasus Re-saddled


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The Legend of Baby Doe


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In her pulchritudinous prime Baby Doe was called the Silver Queen of Colorado by journalists and "that shameless hussy" by the proper wives of the men who eyed her. Flirtatious, adventurous, ambitious, Elizabeth McCourt Doe gave everyone a lot to talk about when she met Horace Tabor, the Silver King of Leadville, in 1880. Three years later they were free to legalize their passion. Although thirty years separated them, they were well matched in romantic recklessness. If The Legend of Baby Doe is the lowdown on the high jinks of two public lives, it is also the story of a love that survived spectacularly good times and bad. Before bad times came, Baby and Horace went on a spending spree. They built an opulent opera house in Denver and bought an Italian-ate villa. Baby Doe went out bejeweled and ermined, and sat at home alone, snubbed by the social dragons. John Burke has written about the giddy rise of a bonanza king who dreamed of entering the White House with Baby Doe on his arm and about the disastrous fall they took together. Wiped out by unwise investments and the Panic of 1893, Tabor soon died, leaving Baby Doe and their two daughters penniless. Reportedly, his deathbed order was to "hang on to the Matchless," a played-out mine filled with water. She managed to do that for almost four decades, struggling heroically against loneliness, poverty, and heartbreak, and becoming one of the great legends of the American West.










The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture


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The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume: Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum. Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians. Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers. Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms. This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria’s reign of propriety.




Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Lemmy Caution Books, Slim Callaghan Books, Dark Novels, Short Fiction


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Peter Cheyney is perhaps best known for his short stories and novels about agent/detective Lemmy Caution. Caution was first portrayed as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, and in later stories as a private detective. Another popular creation was the private detective Slim Callaghan who also appeared in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. He was constructed as a British response to the more hardboiled detectives of American fiction such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. A meticulous researcher, Cheyney kept a massive set of files on criminal activity in London, but these were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941; he however, soon began to replace his collection of clippings. He dictated his work. Typically he would "act out" his stories for his secretary, Miss Sprauge, who would copy them down in shorthand and type them up later… Lemmy Caution Books This Man Is Dangerous Poison Ivy Dames Don't Care Can Ladies Kill? Don't Get Me Wrong You'd Be Surprised Your Deal, My Lovely Never A Dull Moment You Can Always Duck Slim Callaghan Books The Urgent Hangman Dangerous Curves You Can't Keep The Change It Couldn't Matter Less Sorry You've Been Troubled Calling mr. Callaghan Dark Novels Dark Duet The Stars Are Dark The Dark Street Dark Hero Dark Bahama Lost Novels Death Chair The Gold Kimono The Sign On The Roof The Vengeance Of Hop Fi Other Novels Ladies Won't Wait The Curiosity Of Etienne Macgregor The Deadly Fresco Dressed To Kill Short Fiction The Alonzo Mactavish Omnibus Lemmy Caution Stories Slim Callaghan Stories Other Stories




The Grand Designer


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When the third Marquess of Bute (1847 - 1900) met the renowned Gothic designer William Burges it marked the start of a lifetime's collaboration with architects and artists, producing work ranging from the High Victorian Gothic exuberance of Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch to the ostentation of Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute and the sumptuous restoration of the Renaissance Falkland Palace. This fascinating biography tells the story of a rich eccentric, whose learning, insight and kindness produced extraordinary results in architecture and life, a man who combined being amongst the richest men of the age with artistic patronage of an almost incomprehensible scale.




Tatler & Bystander


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