March Releases from Books We Love

Paranormal Liaisons: Rising from the Civil War's Ashes
by Troy Seate 

On a sloping hill overlooking the poetically named little town of Sugar Creek, Tennessee rests an old cemetery where, in the 19th century, people buried their dead. The old timers call the strip of land The Resting Place, but local legend suggests it is anything but restful. To the east in Washington D.C., a family deals with life amidst a nation still recovering and rebuilding from the Civil War’s debacle. Into a mother’s life befalls the tragedy of losing a daughter. It is but one of many unsettling events that occur, but it proves to be the linchpin for paranormal events to follow.
These are tales of fear and confusion; horror and tragedy. It’s also about loss and betrayal, and how life’s fabric can unravel in the most shocking and tragic of ways. Two towns, one north and the other south of the Mason-Dixon Line, deal with supernatural speculation in the American Civil War’s aftermath. 

http://amzn.com/B01CFXNBLE  

Seducing the Chef (At First Sight Book 1)
by Janet Lane-Walters 

Seducing the Chef - Allie Blakefield, editor of Good Eatin' wants to do a feature on Five Cuisines a restaurant across the river from NY City. Her father forbids the feature and won't say why. She's not one to sit back and be ruled by someone. She borrows a friend's apartment. While leaning over the balcony she sees a handsome dark haired man doing a Yoga routine. He looks up and she is struck by the Blakefield curse. Love at first sight.
The pair start a hot and heavy romantic interlude. She visits the restaurant and is recognized by Greg, the chef's mother. The woman goes ballistic and the affair is broken. Can Allie learn what's going on and rescue her love?

http://amzn.com/B01AVHGRBW  

Someone Like Him
by Ann Herrick 

City girl, country guy. Will opposites attract--or clash?

When New-York-City girl Emily visits her cousin Janelle in Oregon, Emily wonders how she'll survive the wilderness. Janelle wonders if the wilderness will survive Emily's visit--and if she can convince her cousin to help save part of an old-growth forest.
Meanwhile, Emily also wonders if a big-city girl can get along with a county guy--named Bret. Under forest canopies and by crystal-clear waters she struggles with her growing attraction to him. But they're so different. Whoever thought she'd fall for someone like him?

http://amzn.com/B01CJXQEFK

 

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...

Books We Love Insider Blog: More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by...: 17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body  My era is 17 th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy...

More Frightful Murders and other Horrible Deeds by Katherine Pym

17th Century Physicians Dissecting a Body 

My era is 17^th century London when medical doctors used hanged convicts to study anatomy. They would cut up the dead to see how men and women’s organs worked. Plague victims were also dissected. Opening the body, physicians who survived the pestilence found evidence of the buboes on lungs and other innards, or so they wrote.

The Royal Society used live animals to experiment on, like transferring blood from one dog to another then documented the results. Generally, one dog lived (the one receiving the gift of blood) and the other (who gave the blood) died. Unfortunate.

Body Snatcher at Work

Into the 18^th century the laws changed. There were fewer hangings and more deportations to penal colonies. This caused slim pickings in the London cadaver field.

Medical men faltered a bit, then someone came up with an idea. Why not snatch bodies from the grave? I mean, no one will know. The dead person won’t care. For the fellas digging up the bodies, they can take rings and gewgaws left on the body as an added incentive. Everyone’s a winner.

Well, not really. Families of the dead and gone got wind of these ‘body snatchers’ and protected their loved ones with a mortsafe (dictionary.com says a mortsafe is a heavy iron cage or grille placed over the grave of a newly deceased person in order to deter body snatchers.). These would be used until everyone felt certain the poor dead person wouldn’t be ‘fresh’ enough for dissection. 

Mortsafe

During the early 19^th century if you were caught digging up a body you could be heavily fined or deported. Not fun, but hey, the reward was worth the danger. Men in the medical field took the bodies no questions asked. Everyone was happy—or so one would think. Unfortunately, greed got in the way of a good thing. 

A man in Edinburgh owned an inn for pensioners. One fellow died owing Mister Hare £4 which annoyed him. Along with another fellow (Burke), Hare removed the pensioner’s body from the coffin, filled the said box with something equivalent in weight; then hid the cadaver in an empty room down the hall. The parish authorities took the coffin away, blissfully unaware there was no body in the box.

Hare and Burke sold the body to a physician for £7, 10s, making a tidy profit. The process was relatively safe. No middle of the night dig in a cemetery. No worries of getting caught, being fined or deported. The men did not suffer driving rain or snow down their collars while at a dig, nor did they have to fret over sharp winds that could easily blow off their caps. Their new boots and carpets remained clean from graveyard dirt. (After all, the men had to spend their newfound wealth somewhere.) Hare and Burke had found a sweet deal at the pensioners’ inn.

Hare loved this new, lucrative end of the business. When another pensioner dropped off the twig, he and his partner repeated the process, but when another pensioner took too long to pop off, they smothered him with a pillow. It was worth the effort, for they received £10.

After a while, the inn ran dry of almost dead persons so Hare and Burke lured vagrants, drunks and prostitutes into their fine abode. They plied them with drink then smothered them after passing out. If they wouldn’t obey by slipping into a drunken sleep, “Burke would pin him down while Hare smothered him, holding his hands over the victim’s nose and mouth.”

As you would expect, Hare and Burke became reckless. “First, they killed Mary Paterson, a voluptuous 18 year old—so free with her body that it was recognized by the physician’s medical students.” When they “murdered ‘Daft Jamie’, a familiar, good natured imbecile who made his living running errands on the streets of Edinburgh”, suspicion raised its dark brow.

The men were eventually arrested. Burke hanged before a large crowd some say that numbered in the 30,000’s. His body was dissected on the physician’s table he and Hare had sold so many bodies to.

But Hare escaped this wicked end by giving state’s evidence, which meant he pointed his finger at the physician and his assistants. While in the school, the physician was stormed by a mob but police intervention saved his life. Even though he protested his innocence, he lost his profession and was hounded out of town.

And so goes a sad, woeful tale of murder and other horrible deeds.

~~~~~~

The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York 1975

All pictures come from Wikicommons, Public Domain

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