I am a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has worked for the past 10 years as the senior researcher for the National Registry of Exonerations. In that capacity, I have written nearly 2,500 individual accounts of men and women and teenagers who were wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit. Some of them were sentenced to death. I have seen and written about these tragedies firsthand.
This is the true first person account of Illinois Governor George Ryan’s courageous and unprecedented decision to suspend the death penalty and empty death row in 2003. He oversaw the state’s last execution, an experience that was seared in his brain. In 2000, he became the first governor (and a Republican at that) to impose a moratorium on the death penalty. I was there as a journalist and I helped him write this powerful memoir.
In January 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions-the first such action by any governor in the history of the United States.
Despite a long history as a death penalty proponent, Ryan was emotionally moved after allowing an execution in 1999. He was also profoundly disturbed by the state's history-12 men had been executed and 13 had been exonerated since the return of the death penalty in Illinois in 1977. More had been proven innocent than had been executed.
Three years later, in 2003, Ryan pardoned four death row inmates based on their actual innocence and then…
I’m a professor of psychology at Occidental College, where I direct the Thinking Lab. I hold degrees in psychology from Princeton and Harvard and have published several dozen scholarly articles on conceptual development and conceptual change. I’m interested in how people acquire new concepts and form new beliefs, especially within the domains of science and religion. My research investigates intuitions that guide our everyday understanding of the natural world and strategies for improving that understanding.
Two skills fundamental to scientific reasoning are inquiry and argument. Inquiry is generating new information, and argument is using that information to justify and evaluate knowledge claims. Kuhn presents a framework for understanding these processes, as well as methods for teaching them. Her insights are grounded in science-education research demonstrating not only why inquiry and argument are challenging but also how they can be improved. Kuhn’s book fundamentally changed how I teach science to others. It provided me a way of organizing and motivating the various research methods I cover in my courses, as tools for building a collective body of knowledge.
What do we want schools to accomplish? The only defensible answer, Deanna Kuhn argues, is that they should teach students to use their minds well, in school and beyond.
Bringing insights from research in developmental psychology to pedagogy, Kuhn maintains that inquiry and argument should be at the center of a "thinking curriculum"-a curriculum that makes sense to students as well as to teachers and develops the skills and values needed for lifelong learning. We have only a brief window of opportunity in children's lives to gain (or lose) their trust that the things we ask them to do in…
Writers read with different eyes than non-writers. We pay more attention to the “how” of a book. How does the author structure the plot? Handle dialogue? Describe a scene so beautifully that I see every detail?
Each time I read Shelley Costa, I am left in awe by the way she handles all these elements. Her words are little jewels, each and every one of them used precisely and for full impact. Her plots are taut and interesting. Her dialogue sparkles. No Mistaking Death is no exception, a mystery that examines good and evil, right and wrong, the choices people make and the consequences of their actions.
Reading Costa makes me want to be a better writer. To me, there’s no higher praise from an author to an author.
When I started researching the history of early modern public execution, I read a few eyewitness accounts in which people behaved so strangely that I realised I understood nothing about the realities of this once-common historical practice. By reading the books on this list, I quickly discovered that the ceremony of capital punishment was a performance in which the entire community participated, filled with rituals and behaviours that had enormous emotional and spiritual significance for everyone involved, not just the ‘poor sinner’ on the scaffold. I also discovered that music and singing were crucial parts of the performance, with ballads being sung about the event for years afterwards.
McKenzie looks at the extraordinary phenomenon of the 'last dying speech' that condemned prisoners in Britain got to give from the scaffold. In particular, she explores events at Tyburn, London's most notorious execution site, in the 18th century, exploring how this period saw an explosion of printed literature that featured the criminal as an Everyman from whom everyone could learn a harsh lesson in morality. It's a fantastic exploration of the reality of the gallows versus what one could read in print: from the 'game' highwayman who refused to bow to society's expectations to the fearful, trembling prisoner who begged for mercy. Totally fascinating.
The public execution at Tyburn is one of the most evocative and familiar of all eighteenth-century images. Whether it elicits horror or prurient fascination - or both - the Tyburn hanging day has become synonymous with the brutality of a bygone age and a legal system which valued property over human life.But, as this fascinating cultural and social history of the gallows reveals, the early modern execution was far more than just a debased spectator sport. The period between the Restoration and the American Revolution witnessed the rise and fall of a vast body of execution literature - last dying…
I have been a fan of romantic suspense since I was a teen (many decades ago) and started writing my DAG Team Series in 2016. I adore everything about this genre – the puzzles, the intrigue and how they affect the budding relationship between the main characters. Dating is difficult when you are trying to catch a killer or on the run! Despite the central mystery, the focus is on the romance between the couple. The issues serve to add a layer of non-sexual tension.
Kidnap victim takes a repo agent and her child hostage in order to discover who blew his cover and is trying to kill him.She finds him locked in the trunk of a car she is repossessing. Daniel needs to find his kidnappers and find out how they found him in protective custody. I liked how Samantha worked hard to provide for her family and her courage in this odd situation. Again, features forced proximity!
When she swore off love, he was the last man she imagined would steal her heart.
If driving a tow truck through the seediest part of town with a gun beside her means putting a roof over her son's head, then single mother Samantha is going to be the best repossession woman on the books. But when she hooks her truck up to a flashy BMW, the last thing she expects is to find a beaten, bloody man in the trunk - or to be catapulted into a terrifying fight to survive.
I love time travel stories. And I especially love a good time-loop story, ever since first seeing Groundhog Day on cable as a kid one winter break. As a graphic novelist, I wanted to do something that's not really been done much before in the medium: use the visual language of comics to tell an exciting and compelling story of someone trapped in a repeating day, that really explores what the visual language of a comic book page can do with respect to time, and it's circular nature. With my book RetroActive (colored by Brad Simpson and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou), I feel the team and I did just that.
Reconnect is an off-the-books company that will use time travel to rescue people from the moments before their untimely deaths, or place willing customers in the past—for a fee, of course. But when a rescue mission goes badly, Reconnect agents Mark and Seth find themselves stuck in the past with the FBI in hot pursuit. What's more, their own company is looking to cover up their mistake by taking their lives.
This is a really fun graphic novel in the genre of time travel + crime thriller, by creators that have gone on to much success in the comics industry. They also happen to be friends of mine!
Reconnect agents Mark and Seth go back in time to save people from their
untimely demise - for a fee. But, when a rescue mission goes awry, both
agents find themselves trapped in the past and on the run from both the FBI, who
want to jail them, and their own employers who want to kill them to protect
their own dark and deadly secrets.
I write historical fiction, non-fiction, and biography. My historical fiction is set in the eighteenth century, which is often pictured as a time when people swanned about in fancy clothes, lived on country estates, travelled in gleaming carriages, and dined and danced their nights away in glittering assembly rooms. But most people didn’t live like that at all, although they are the ones who made the clothes, worked on the estates, drove the carriages, cooked the food, and cleaned the rooms. The books on my list focus on history from their point of view. In my own work – fiction and non-fiction – I’m also interested in telling the stories of so-called “ordinary” people.
The Hanging Tree is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read about how the other half (more like seven-eights actually) lived. It describes the experience of the mainly lower-class people who suffered under the Bloody Code, when over 250 offences carried the death penalty. By using diaries, memoirs, broadsides, petitions for mercy, letters, and other contemporary documents, Gatrell gives voice to the executed, their executioners, witnesses, reformers, judges and juries. It’s an unflinching study of a ghastly reality that goes to the heart of what it means to be a civilized society and challenges several cozy myths along the way. I admit it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, and of course, the subject matter is dark, but Gatrell is a compelling writer, vivid, forthright and passionate.
Hanging people for small crimes as well as grave, the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active between 1770 and 1830. In those years some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, watched by thousands. Hanging was confined to murderers thereafter, but these were still killed in public until 1868. Clearly the gallows loomed over much of social life in this period. But how did those who watched, read about, or ordered these strangulations feel about the terror and suffering inflicted in the law's name? What kind of justice was delivered, and how did it change?
I'm an award-winning creative director and have worked in the advertising industry for the past twenty years. I've worked on brands like Pepsi, Citibank, Sheraton, Unilever, Emirates, and DHL in over twenty countries. I've been fascinated with the glitz, glamor, and grit of the advertising world since I was a teenager. My second book, just like the first, is set in this unique world. As a writer, my inspiration has always been John Grisham. I aspire to use advertising as the backdrop for my stories the way Grisham uses the law. I choose revenge because revenge has moved humankind forward. Every story has traces of revenge embedded in it.
Praising John Grisham’s writing is like showing a candle to the sun. Even though none of his books are underrated, The Partner seldom makes the list of his best works. What I love about this book is what I aspire to do as a writer—the book pulls you in from the first sentence. It’s like sitting in a rocket that thrusts into space without picking up speed. The reader is forced to turn the pages one after the other till the book ends. There is an underlying theme of revenge in almost all the characters, including Patrick Lanigan, and this motivation keeps driving the story forward. If I had to pick one writer who is a master at pacing novels, I would choose John Grisham every time.
I’m a law professor at Boston University who has studied and written about constitutional law, democracy, and inequality for over 20 years. I’m troubled by America’s rise to become the world’s leader in imprisoning its own citizens and the continued use of inhumane policing and punishment practices. These trends must be better understood before we can come up with a form of politics that can overcome our slide into a darker version of ourselves.
This
book is based on more than 35 years of experience litigating capital
punishment cases in the Deep South.
Bright, who led the Southern Center for Human Rights, and his co-author
James Kwak, go deep into the belly of the criminal justice system and
assess how poverty and race affect everything from a prosecutor’s
charging decisions to how juries are selected to
sentencing decisions. An important takedown.
A legendary lawyer and a legal scholar reveal the structural failures that undermine justice in our criminal courts
"An urgently needed analysis of our collective failure to confront and overcome racial bias and bigotry, the abuse of power, and the multiple ways in which the death penalty's profound unfairness requires its abolition. You will discover Steve Bright's passion, brilliance, dedication, and tenacity when you read these pages." -from the foreword by Bryan Stevenson
Glenn Ford, a Black man, spent thirty years on Louisiana's death row for a crime he did not commit. He was released in 2014-and given twenty dollars-when…
I am a queer writer who lovers to read and write mystery and crime fiction. The history of these genres is often full of homophobic stereotypes and scapegoating of queer characters. While I think it’s important to show queer characters as flawed, I also want to make sure to celebrate the contributions of queer writers to these messy, wonderful genres.
In this book, barrister-turned-novelist Sarah Caudwell strikes a perfect balance of intricate, cozy mystery and zany British humor.
While I adored all of the books by this author, I particularly loved the Gothic threads that run through this last one, as well as the satisfying queer aspects of the storyline. If I could live inside any mystery series, it would be this one: the characters are so much fun, especially the narrator, Oxford professor Hilary Tamar.
Interestingly, Professor Tamar’s gender is never disclosed—a pretty radical concept for a series that started in the 1980s—which manages to avoid ever feeling gimmicky and which helped me to reflect as I read on my own expectations and assumptions about gender in mystery stories.
Is money really the root of all evil? Julia Larwood's aunt Regina needs help. It seems she and two friends pooled their modest resources and on the advice of another friend, invested in equities - big risk, but big return. And now the tax man is demanding his cut. The only problem is that Aunt Regina and her friends have already spent the money. The real question, however, is how did three amateur investors make a thousand percent profit in record time? That's a question which could be answered by psychic counsellor isabella del Comino, unpopular neighbour to Aunt Regina,…
