Beer, Books and Boos

The Adventures of a Victorian Con Woman by David Lassman and Mick Davis Series: N/A Rating: 3.0 Recommend: Yes Synopsis: The story of Mrs. Gordon Baillie is stranger than anything to be met with in the field of fiction.' Mrs. Gordon Baillie, known throughout her life as Annie, was born in the direst poverty in the small Scottish fishing town of Peterhead in 1848. Illegitimate and illiterate, her beauty and intelligence nevertheless enabled her to overcome her circumstances and become a charming and wealthy socialite living a life of luxury while raising money for worthy causes and charitable works. Behind her supposed perfect and contented life, however, lay one of the most notorious and compulsive swindlers of the Victorian Age. Her fraudulent fundraising and larger-than-life schemes played out across four decades and three continents, and involved land owners, crofters, aristocrats, politicians, bankers, socialist revolutionaries, operatic stars, and the cultural icons of the da...

  Serial Killers at the Movies by Christopher Berry-Dee Series: N/A Rating: 5.0 Recommend: Yes Synopsis: The depraved crimes of both real and imagined serial killers and mass murderers have long transfixed us in newspapers and books, but perhaps nowhere more so than on the big screen. Films such as Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer have not only reached huge audiences, but also allowed us into the minds of society’s most disturbed individuals. Christopher Berry-Dee talks to the serial killers whose wicked stories have most thrilled and fascinated us at the movies and, through far-ranging and disturbing interviews, he tells the stories of the mass murderers who provided the inspiration for some of cinema’s most shocking films. Serial Killers at the Movies takes the reader on an uncomfortable and truly dark journey into a terrifying world of murder and deviancy. Review: This book brought my two loves together true crime and horror/slasher movies,...

  Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by  Tori Telfer Series:  N/A Rating: ★★★★★ Recommend: Yes Goodreads Synopsis: When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that come to mind are likely Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, and Kate Bender? The narrative we're comfortable with is one where women are the victims of violent crime-not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally male that, in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared that There are no female serial killers. Inspired by Telfer's Jezebel column of the same name, Lady Killers disputes that claim and offers fourteen gruesome examples as evidence. Although largely forgotten by history, female serial killers rival their male counterparts in cunning, cruelty, and appetite. Each chapter explores the crimes and history of a different female serial killer and then proceeds to unpack her le...