Hangmen

I'm just as good as bloody Pierrepoint. In his small pub in Oldham, Harry is something of a local celebrity. But what's the second-best hangman in England to do on the day they've abolished hanging? Amongst the cub reporters and sycophantic pub regulars, dying to hear Harry's reaction to the news, a peculiar stranger lurks, with a very different motive for his visit. Don't worry. I may have my quirks but I'm not an animal. Or am I? One for the courts to discuss. Martin McDonagh's Hangmen premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2015.

Take a thrill-packed ride with the outlaw bikers of the Hangmen Motorcycle Club during the wild days of the '60s and '70s, and experience what it feels like to live on the edge. When 15-year-old Dale drops out of school, he's not sure if he wants to be a Marine or a biker. Neither of them pays well, but both fulfill his need for adventure and excitement. As soon as he gets his first Harley, the decision comes easily and the young man falls into the dangerous life of a 1% outlaw biker in Southern California. For almost a decade, Hangmen Motorcycle Club becomes his family, and passionate yet kind-hearted Dale experiences true brotherhood with this extraordinary group of men. Caught up in gang brawls, run-ins with the law, partying and some romance, there is never a dull moment in his day. Perennial values such as honor, loyalty, and freedom also become part of his life. For Hangmen Motorcycle Club-a modern version of the gunfighters of the Old West-is all about living life to the fullest as free spirits, preserving one's liberties, and protecting one's kin. With hundreds of raving reviews, Hangmen is a page-turner to be enjoyed from beginning to end whether or not you are a biker. It is packed with unexpected twists and turns and the author's sense of humor brightens up even the bleakest situations. Ultimately, Hangmen is a book about humanity and probably the most authentic and raw immersion in the motorcycle club subculture of the '60s and '70s.

From the eighteenth century, York was one of the places employing its own hangmen, copying London and Newgate, even to the use of the word Tyburn to define it's Knavesmire gallows, also known as the 'three-legged mare'. That was where highwayman Dick Turpin met his fate; but later, in the Victorian period, Armley Gaol in Leeds also became a hanging prison, the site of the death of the notorious killer Charlie Peace. The tales of the villains and the victims are well documented, but Stephen Wade also provides us with the stories of both Yorkshire-born hangmen and others who worked in Leeds, Hull or Wakefield. For the first time, Yorkshire's Hangmen brings together the tales of the lives and professional careers of these men, some famous, others long forgotten, who held a morbid fascination for the public. Their trade was mysterious, revolting and yet justified by many famous figures in history. The book includes accounts of killers, spies and traitors meeting their doom, but also tells something of the personalities of the hangmen, and of their moral dilemmas as they had to hang women and young people as well as hardened villains. Many of the executioners suffered terrible depression; some took their own lives, and others, such as the famous Albert Pierrepoint, even questioned their work in later life.

“Some people won’t believe any of this story. You might be one of them. But every single word is true. Tony DiMarco does catch a murderer, solve a mystery, and find a treasure—all in the first few days after he moves, unexpectedly, to 13 Hangmen’s Court in Boston. The fact that he also turns thirteen at the same time is not a coincidence.” So begins the story of Tony and his friends—five 13-year-old boys, all of whom are living in the same house in the same attic bedroom but at different times in history! None are ghosts, all are flesh and blood, and somehow all have come together in the attic room, visible only to one another. And all are somehow linked to a murder, a mystery, and a treasure. Praise for 13 Hangmen"Fascinating tale. Ghostly fun in old Boston."--Kirkus Reviews "The book’s design nicely differentiates Tony’s story, set in 2009, from the past narratives. Recommend this engaging historical mystery to readers who devoured Dan Gutman’s Baseball Card Adventures series and are ready for a longer, more complex adventure." --Booklist "Corriveau merrily ransacks historical episodes and figures (e.g., the Great Molasses Flood, the Underground Railroad, Boston mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald) and spins, twists, and manipulates their stories to advance the DiMarco family mystery. The result is a novel that agilely balances humor and tension." --The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "This is an exceptionally good story, with a wry, humorous tone that has particular boy appeal. It covers baseball, history, sibling rivalry, girls, and mystery, and folds in the space-time continuum." --School Library Journal

A breathtaking history of Britain’s executioners—from the seventeenth court of King Charles II to the UK’s last official hangman of the twentieth century. In 1663, Jack Ketch delighted in his profession and gained notoriety not only because of those he executed—dukes and lords—but for how often he botched the job. Centuries later, in 1965, after nearly six hundred trips to the gallows, Albert Pierrepoint retired as Britain’s longest-running executioner. Between them are three hundred years in a fascinating history of crime, and the “turn-off men” who handled the penalties—many of them criminals themselves, doing the grim work to save their own necks. Britain’s Most Notorious Hangmen tells the stories of the men who plied their deadly trade at Tyburn tree or at the scaffolds in the prison yards across the country, including such notable “neck-stretchers” as Throttler Smith and the celebrated James Billington. But true-crime historian Stephen Wade explores the lives and crimes of many of the infamous killers that were hanged, as well. He also sheds light on the changing social norms of the country, and the moral dilemmas that arose for hangmen tasked with performing what was once considered the most crowd-pleasing free “entertainment” ever offered to the public.

When a correlation emerges between a prophecy and a police investigation, and a kidnapper maintains his presence at a crime scene, a woman dreads the passage of time. She cannot understand why a man set an innocent teenager on fire and kidnapped her son. The kidnapped boy's father knows when two warring hangmen stand on the same scaffold, one must bow to the other or die. Into the fray comes a game ranger, an ex-decathlete expert at tracking man-eating crocodiles. However, a Senator twice his age counting her fertility days desperately wants him in bed. She isn't aware her sweetheart is in the belly of a world no criminologist can understand. As mayhem takes centre-stage in a community suffering the brunt of a veiled matrix of calamities, is the ranger further bait, a weapon or a sacrificial ram between crouching outlaws?

Stalin, like Hitler and other tyrants, won and held power because he had collaborators - hangmen. Drawing on newly released archival material, Donald Rayfield gives us a fuller and more colourful picture of Stalin's inner circle than ever before. Stalin was not the sole author of Stalinism. What motivated his chiefs of police, Feliks Dzierzynski, Viacheslav Manzhinsky, Genrikh Iagoda, Nikolai Ezhov and Lavrenti Beria? What did they want? What were their relations with the regime and its ruler? How did their upbringing and experience mould them? And how does the terror they create connect with the terror they felt? Stalin and His Hangmen reconstructs the psychological mechanism of a whole regime and what it held together. The extent of the misery caused by Stalin and his Hangmen can be compared in Europe only to that brought about by Hitler and his henchmen. But Stalin's heritage is, if possible, even worse than Hitler's. His rule enslaved three generations, not one, the horror of what he did has not yet been fully understood and his countrymen have not yet found the strenth to disavow him. All the more important, then, that this diabolical tale should be told.

Two easygoing gunslingers take on a gang of vigilantes to save a quiet Texas ranch town Twister Malone and Chuckaluck Thompson have no love for the sun-blasted plains of West Texas. They made their names in the cool mountain air of Colorado, and are headed to a friend’s hacienda in Mexico because, both at the ripe old age of thirty, they’re ready to retire. No more high-noon showdowns for Twister and Chuckaluck. They have years of roping, riding, and dozing to look forward to—but first they must survive the crucible of Sleepy Valley. The two friends are passing through the idyllic patch of ranchland when they come across a quartet of bandits, wearing masks that reveal only one eye, hanging an innocent rancher from the tree. The gang of killers has terrorized Sleepy Valley for months, stringing up anyone brave enough to refuse their greedy demands. But Twister and Chuckaluck have never backed down from a fight, and they aren’t about to start. The sinister plot they uncover, however, will bring them face-to-face with the most dangerous desperadoes north of the Rio Grande. The Hangmen of Sleepy Valley is the 1st book in the Twister and Chuckaluck Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.