Lorna Raver

"DeSalvo Is the Strangler!" declared the headlines after handyman Albert DeSalvo confessed to eleven brutal rape-murders that terrorized Boston from 1962 to 1964. The repeat sex offender boasted he had raped an additional two thousand women. His depraved story became the subject of a bestselling book and major Hollywood movie. But, it turns out, DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler. This detailed investigation exposes the true DeSalvo as a pathological...

"How do I give myself to God completely? What happens when I do? I Dared to Call Him Father is a book for everyone who has ever asked these questions. It is the fascinating true story of Bilquis Sheikh, a prominent Muslim woman in South Asia who faced these questions at the crossroads of her life-and found the astonishing answers. Her entire life turned upside down as a series of strange dreams launched her on a quest that would forever consume her...

A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend, a frequent contributor to The New Yorkerfor close to fifty years who has, in the words of The New York Times, "radically reshaped the short story for decade after decade." Michael Ondaatje's new selection of Gallant's work gathers some of the most memorable of her stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived. Mysterious, funny, insightful,...

Madame X, John Singer Sargent's most famous and scandalous portrait, caused an immediate furor when Sargent unveiled it at the 1884 Paris Salon.

The subject's bold pose, provocative dress, and decadent pallor shocked the public, and the critics panned the picture, smashing Sargent's dream of a Paris career.

Even before Sargent painted her portrait, Virginie Gautreau's reputation for promiscuity and showy self-display made her the subject

...

Washington Square (1881), by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the plain, obedient daughter of the widowed, well-to-do Dr. August Sloper of Washington Square. When a handsome, feckless man-about-town proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage because he believes the man to be after Catherine's fortune and future inheritance. The conflict between father, daughter, and suitor provokes consequences in the lives of all three...

Author Elaine Pagels returns the Book of Revelation to its historical origin, written as its author John of Patmos took aim at the Roman Empire after what is now known as 'The Jewish War' in 66 CE. Militant Jews in Jerusalem waged an all-out war against Rome's occupation of Judea and their defeat resulted in the desecration of Jerusalem and its Great Temple. Pagels offers the interpretation that the book of Revelations is an attack on Rome, not a...

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness...

An updated classic history of ancient Egypt draws on archaeological reporting, historical speculation, and other sources, in an account that provides coverage of professional discoveries from the past quarter century.

Collection of highly imaginative short stories, including tales of a fantasy writer guided by the voice of her late husband, a surprise held in an auctioned storage space, a woman mistaken for a vampire, and a long-ago crime avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.