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I would trace the genesis of Hitler’s Monsters to three distinct influences. The first was my childhood love of Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age comics––Batman, Superman, Captain America, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four––which, as illustrated by the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,are replete with themes of Nazi occultism and border science.The second was a conversation with my thesis advisor early in graduate school, when he noted that he was advising a dissertation on German occultism (Science for the Soul). The third influence was observing the mid-2000s resurgence in rightwing populism across Europe and North America, seemingly fueled by recourse to esoteric and supernatural thinking. The rest, as they say, is history.
Corinna Treitel’s Science for the Souldid for the occult what Goodrick-Clarke’sOccult Roots of Nazismdid for Ariosophy, providing the first comprehensive account of the wide array of occult doctrines and esoteric sciences that flourished in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twentieth century.
While she does include a chapter on occultism in the Third Reich, Treitel is careful not to blame occultism for Nazism, showing how Theosophy and Anthroposophy (the progenitors of Ariosophy), astrology, parapsychology, spiritualism, and other esoteric doctrines provided a socially and politically diverse group of Germans a range of alternative beliefs and practices to help make sense of a modernizing, post-industrial, “disenchanted” world.
One of the two best books, with Anne Harrington’s Reenchanted Science, on the history of German occultism and “border science”.
Germany's painful entry into the modern age elicited many conflicting emotions. Excitement and anxiety about the "disenchantment of the world" predominated, as Germans realized that the triumph of science and reason had made the nation materially powerful while impoverishing it spiritually. Eager to enchant their world anew, many Germans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries responded by turning to a variety of paranormal beliefs and practices-including Theosophy, astrology, psychical research, graphology, dowsing, and spirit healing. No mere fringe phenomenon, the German occult movement had a truly national presence, encompassing hundreds of clubs, businesses, institutes, and publishers providing and…
After living in, while restoring, an old farmhouse built in the late 17th century or very early in the 18th, it was impossible for me not to want to know the history of the house and the people who lived there. Combine that with the stories my grandmother told me about our ancestor, the suspected witch Mary Bliss Parsons of Northampton, and I felt destined to know her story. That led to many years of research and writing. At the moment I am writing another 17th century New England historical fiction. I love this period of history and so few write about it.
Mary Dyer is a forgotten American hero, who suffered unbelievably for her faith. In early Boston Quakers, Baptists, Jews, Catholics—everyone but the Puritans—were banished. She became a Quaker missionary and led what became a hopeless cause: freedom of worship. Her whole story is painful, shocking, and cannot be summed up here without spoilers. The Puritan men who settled the Bay Colony hated and feared women who spoke up. They banished or destroyed them.
This is the story of Mary Dyer whose indomitable efforts to seek and find “freedom to worship” lead eventually to her death. Her quest began when she and her husband sailed from old to new England in 1635. Landing in Boston, they were soon disillusioned by the intolerant practices and beliefs of the Puritans, who considered that all truth could be found in the Old Testament—and only there. Variations, from Puritan interpretations of the Ten Commandments, were punished by cruel torture and/or death. Banished from Boston for protesting such rigidity in belief and in practice, Mary was among the group…
In my own writing, the setting always is an important backdrop to the novel. Sometimes, it is the element that drives the plot forward. The seedy nature of Atlantic City, where most of my first mystery takes place, is essential to the story. I want my readers to be able to feel that they are witnessing a scene first-hand, whether on the Boardwalk, in a pawn shop on Atlantic Avenue, or in Damien’s favourite hangout. I also want them to identify with the characters. To root for the good guy in spite of his flaws–or for the bad guy if that is their preference.
Keyes was a journalist (she died in 1970), and her background informed every novel she wrote.
Joy Street is set primarily in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s. At the time I read this book, I had never been to Boston. When I finally visited that city several years later, her descriptions of the area in and around Beacon Hill still were so vivid in my mind that I felt as though I already knew the neighbourhood intimately.
Keyes had an equally deft hand with character development and plot. Joy Street is a book populated with characters that seem real and a story that moves forward at a satisfying pace.
I grew up in Edinburgh and, from an early age, I heard the tale of Deacon Brodie. However, it was not until I was older—when a city official was charged with corruption—that I realised Brodie might just be the first ‘white collar’ criminal in Edinburgh. The more I found out, the more fascinating he became. Here was a man who everyonein the city saw as a wealthy, respectable, Councillor, yet—at the same time—he was a gambler who became a criminal to feed his habit, and so, when I moved to America, I decided to write my first crime novel based on Brodie’s life.
Lehane, one of my favourite authors, introduces the crime writer’s device of the duo, in his firstKenzie and Gennaro novel. For me, as in my own DCI Steel novels, the duo in writing can work to inform, or mislead, the reader and, if handled well, the reader doesn’t notice, seeing the interaction between characters as normal. Clichés abound in crime fiction, especially in lead characters, but Lehane avoids this with P.I. Patrick Kenzie, and his lifelong friend, Angie Gennaro. Given the area they inhabit, with its racial and gang tensions, added to the clients they have, clichés would seem unavoidable, but—once again—the lesson here is to write multi-faceted characters, which Kenzie and Gennaro emphatically are. They are flawed, but in Lehane’s hands, triumphantly human, and verybelievable.
Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents. But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive. The investigation escalates, uncovering a web of corruption extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.
With slick, hip dialogue and a lyrical narrative pocked…
I’m an economist, now in my fiftieth year as a professor at Harvard. While much of my work has focused on economic policy – questions like the effects of government budget deficits, guidelines for the conduct of U.S. monetary policy, and what actions to take in response to a banking or more general financial crisis – in recent years I’ve also addressed broader issues surrounding the connections between economics and society. Several years ago, in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, I examined the implications of our economy’s growth, or stagnation, for the social, political, and ultimately moral character of our society. My most recent book explores the connections between economic thinking and religious thinking.
Everyone knows that the Puritans settled in Boston and the Quakers settled in Philadelphia. What I found surprising is Baltzell’s argument that the two cities’ founding religions shaped their respective character for hundreds of years afterward. And, he says, the difference between Puritanism and Quakerism explains why Boston and Philadelphia played such different roles in American history.
Based on the biographies of some three hundred people in each city, this book shows how such distinguished Boston families as the Adamses, Cabots, Lowells, and Peabodys have produced many generations of men and women who have made major contributions to the intellectual, educational, and political life of their state and nation. At the same time, comparable Philadelphia families such as the Biddles, Cadwaladers, Ingersolls, and Drexels have contributed far fewer leaders to their state and nation. From the days of Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Girard down to the present, what leadership there has been in Philadelphia has largely been…
I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing.
This is another story that takes me back to my medical training days. A young member of the surgical team makes an impulsive decision that leads to an ethical dilemma and a web of deception.
This story is not only a thriller but addresses important issues related to the ethics of the transplant system. It’s a great read to get a look at the inner workings of the medical system.
'Suspense as sharp as a scalpel's edge. A page-turning, hold-your-breath read' Tami Hoag
HEART-STOPPING TERROR
Dr Abby Di Matteo has made the best - and the worst - decision of her career. Instead of giving a donor heart to the wealthy patient it's been reserved for, she uses it to save a dying boy's life.
Luckily, a new heart appears that's perfectly suited to the original patient, and the furore dies down. But then Abby discovers that the organ has been obtained illegally. Defying the hospital's commands, she starts her own investigation...
And uncovers a murderous conspiracy that will threaten…
I found my first arrowhead at age seven and have been hooked on history ever since. My Bone Rattler series—Freedom’s Ghost is the seventh installment—builds on many years of research and field trips, supplemented by intense investigation of specific aspects leading up to and during the writing of each novel. The volatile 18th century was one of the most important periods in all of history, and I immerse myself in it when writing these books—by, among other things, reading newspapers of the day, which are often stacked on my desk.
I deeply enjoyed Archer’s book for its intimate depiction of Boston’s life under British occupation from 1768 until mid-1770.
It was a city under siege in many respects, with four thousand troops in a community of only sixteen thousand souls. The city’s streets –mostly paved with oyster shell—come to life with details on tavern fare, street life, troop encampment, epidemics, the violent celebrations of the annual Pope’s Day, popular song parodies, and the three hundred women who initiated a boycott of foreign tea.
Here too you can meet early patriot leaders like James Otis, who was rendered “insane” by a blow to the skull by a furious tax collector and wandered, raving, for years, until he was struck down by a lightning bolt. Archer’s book pulls you into the torment and the glory of life in a powder keg destined to explode.
In the dramatic few years when colonial Americans were galvanized to resist British rule, perhaps nothing did more to foment anti-British sentiment than the armed occupation of Boston. As If an Enemy's Country is Richard Archer's gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. Bringing colonial Boston to life, Archer deftly moves between the governor's mansion and cobblestoned back-alleys as he traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. He reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson,…
I am a Canadian writer who has, at one time or another, been a magician, an avid Dungeon & Dragons player, and the creator of fictional worlds where magic is both surprisingly fun and yet hidden in the shadows of our own everyday world. I love it when a writer spins original magic into a familiar world, and I am even more impressed when magic and a new world drag my attention and won’t let me go. These five diverse novels touch on everything I love about magic and storytelling without rehashing the old tropes of wizards, dragons, and fair maidens in distress.
In a pre-revolutionary Boston where magic is outlawed and gets a conjurer sent to prison–or worse–Ethan Kaille makes a living as a thief-taker recovering stolen goods while hiding his skills as a powerful conjurer.
I love the raw honesty of the broken hero and the unique yet familiar setting where a nation is being born while magic spins in the shadows, manipulating, terrifying, and killing. I couldn’t put this book down, and then I powered through the subsequent sequels, always wanting more!
In Thieftaker, D. B. Jackson delivers a thrilling debut tale of magic and intrigue that will leave readers breathless and eager for more Ethan Kaille.
Boston, 1765: In D.B. Jackson's Thieftaker, revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. But for Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker who makes his living by conjuring spells that help him solve crimes, politics is for others…until he is asked to recover a necklace worn by the murdered daughter of a prominent family.
I’m a 54-year-old gay man who has led my own messy life here in New York City, marked as much by sex, romance, friendship, and culture as by drug addiction, relationship drama, mental illness and youthful trauma. I’ve published five novels, all of which contain queer characters who’ve not exactly been poster children for mainstream-world-approved LGBTQ behavior. I’m drawn to novels like the ones I’ve mentioned because they show queer people not as the hetero world often would like them to be—sanitized, asexual, witty and “fabulous”—but as capable of dysfunction, mediocrity, unwise choices and poor conduct as anybody else.
One of the most kinetic books I read a few years back and told in a kind of beautiful, white-hot stream of consciousness, Sketchtasy is the tale of young, genderqueer Alexa and her friends navigating pleasure and survival in mid-90s, AIDS-battered Boston.
This is no “model LGBTQ person” book; Alexa and her friends, scarred by trauma and addled by every recreational drug on the planet, are creatures of the night, showing off outrageous looks in the clubs and turning tricks to pay the rent and put food in their mouths.
It’s a breakneck-paced look at both exuberant and terrified young queer people right before HIV went from being a near death sentence to a chronic manageable disease.
Sketchtasy takes place in that late-night moment when everything comes together, and everything falls apart—it’s an urgent, glittering, devastating novel about the perils of queer world-making in the mid-‘90s.
This is Boston in 1995, a city defined by a rabid fear of difference. Alexa, an incisive twenty-one-year-old queen, faces everyday brutality with determined nonchalance. Rejecting middle-class pretensions, she negotiates past and present traumas with a scathing critique of the world. Drawn to the ecstasy of drugged-out escapades, Alexa searches for nourishment in a gay culture bonded by clubs and conformity, willful apathy, and the specter of AIDS. Is there any…
I am the product of biracial parents, and the idea of passing or not has always fascinated me as well as disgusted me. The reasons one would want to pass in this era are much different than the survival aspect my ancestors who passed had to consider in the 19th century. In writing my YA historical novels, being biracial always enters in, no matter the topic, because it is who I am and, in the end, always rears its head for consideration.
Birdie and Cole are sisters with biracial parents on the brink of danger during the turbulent 1960s.
Despite their attempts to cling to each other, their parent’s involvement with a violent anti-establishment group will eventually separate them: Cole with her dark-skinned father and Birdie with her white mother.
The girls' desperate attempt to remain together and later find each other is heartbreaking and encouraging. This book made me cry.
From the author of New People and Colored Television, the extraordinary national bestseller that launched Danzy Senna’s literary career
“Superbly illustrates the emotional toll that politics and race take … Haunting.” —The New York Times Book Review
Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at…
