Bøger af Susanne Alleyn

Welcome to the weirder (and darker) side of the City of Light. You've probably visited-or plan to visit-the Paris Catacombs. But for history buffs, travelers trying to escape the overcrowded "must-sees," and fans of the bizarre, macabre, or morbid, there's a lot more than the Catacombs to explore in the offbeat, often creepy side of the city that most tourists never see. Forget all the clichés about romance-the most romantic sight you're likely to find in this oddball, grim, or gory Paris will be a tombstone. In these pages you'll discover the city's stranger secrets and grislier history, from the sites where the guillotine did its bloody work, to the graves of its victims; from the Louvre's forgotten medieval basement to a Métro station that celebrates potatoes; to statues of Death, a stroll through the sewers, and an irreverent look at some of the oddest (and ugliest) tombs in the famous cemeteries. With background and practical information for over a hundred bizarre and sometimes gruesome sights, weird artworks, wacky museums, and out-of-the-way historical locations, many free to visit, The Weirder Side Of Paris is an indispensable guide to the city that you never knew existed.

Children's historical fiction, ages 9-12. Save on this all-in-one volume of all five historical children's books about colonial and revolutionary Massachusetts, by acclaimed author Lillie V. Albrecht: Susanna's Candlestick Susanna's strict Puritan father is determined to settle in the New World, where his family can worship God as they please. She has only one keepsake to bring to the remote, untamed New England of 1663: her silver candlestick. But when a gypsy foretells, "The light will show you the way," her candlestick seems very special indeed. Susanna carries it through a hard journey in a strange, wild land, until at last she finds in the gypsy's words an unexpected meaning. The Spinning Wheel Secret Joan's brothers didn't want a baby sister. So they called her Jo and never admitted that she was a girl. A properly-brought-up young Puritan girl in 1705 would never know all the useful skills, like fishing and swimming, that Jo learns from Dan and Sam, though when it comes to doing ordinary household tasks, she's hopeless. But when Indians attack and carry off Jo's mother, Jo will find her own resources and courage sorely tested. Hannah's Hessian Little Hannah has plenty to worry about in the spring of 1775-war, smallpox, storing enough food and firewood to last through the New England winters-and also school. But worst of all are the terrifying Hessians, soldiers hired to fight the American patriot army. And when Hessian prisoners pass through their own village, Hannah's greatest fear seems to be coming true... The Grist Mill Secret In 1775, in a hidden cellar below the lonely mill where Tabby lives, is a gunshop where Father makes muskets for the Minute Men. But when an English family, suspected by all to be loyalist spies, builds a country house nearby, Tabby is trapped between patriotism and friendship with the new neighbors. Can she remain friends with Alice and Jack and still keep the vital secret of the grist mill? Deborah Remembers Deborah, a very special doll, was created 300 years ago in New England: She can remember a terrible Indian massacre, the old Puritan settlements, the Revolutionary War, and the Underground Railroad. Deborah Remembers was based on many real local events and personalities from the history of Westfield, Massachusetts. Her long, rich, often poignant story will captivate you and touch your heart.

Louis XVI is in his grave, and Marie-Antoinette is on her way to trial. Paris is hungry, restless, and fearful in the autumn of 1793, and the guillotine's blade is beginning to fall daily on the necks of enemies of the French Republic. Not even members of the republican government are safe from the threat of the Revolutionary Tribunal, where the only sentence for the guilty is death. In this atmosphere of distrust and anxiety, police agent Aristide Ravel, while coming to terms with personal tragedy, must stop a ruthless killer who is terrorizing the city. Ravel soon learns, however, that hunting a murderer who strikes at random and leaves headless corpses on the streets, paralleling the ever more numerous victims of the guillotine, is a task that will lead him to dark, painful secrets and echoes from an even darker past.

Susanna never wanted to leave the comfort and security of old England, but her strict Puritan father was determined to leave England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he and his family could worship God as they pleased. Susanna had only one keepsake to bring to the wilderness of the New England: her silver candlestick. But when a gypsy foretold, "The light will show you the way," her candlestick seemed very special indeed. Susanna carries her candlestick through a long, hard journey filled with danger and excitement in a strange, wild land. She meets kindness and cruelty, understanding and prejudice, until at last she finds in the gypsy's words an unexpected meaning. Lillie V. Albrecht, the author of many historical books for young readers, has written a story that is both enthralling and authentic in its portrayal of life in the New England of 1663. Her book is an excellent supplement for study of the very early colonial period, but most youngsters will read it for sheer pleasure.

Joan Tower's two big brothers didn't want a baby sister. So they called her Jo and never admitted that she was a girl. Even though the neighbors disapprove, Jo is happier doing boys' jobs. A properly-brought-up young girl in a New England Puritan village of 1705 would never know all the useful skills, like fishing and swimming, that Jo learns from Dan and Sam. When it comes to doing ordinary household tasks, though, she believes she is hopeless. She's not much good at cooking or knitting, and spinning thread is simply beyond her--a fact which her disapproving, fault-finding aunt and cousin never fail to point out. But when Indians attack their little village of Hatfield and carry off many captives, including Jo's mother, Jo and her brothers must make their way alone to Westfield to find shelter with their grandfather. In Westfield, however, more bad news awaits them, and Jo will find her own resources and courage sorely tested. "A plot that remains reasonable as well as exciting. For younger girls in this age group, a treat instead of the usual treatment." --Kirkus Reviews (1965)

Tabby Copley can't understand why, in the fall of 1773, her father would suddenly want to move their whole family from their comfortable house in a Massachusetts village to a lonely corn mill in the country, where the nearest neighbors are a mile away. But on the first night in their new home, Father shows Tabby and her brother, Dan, the secret of the mill: Below the millstones, in a hidden cellar, is a gunshop where Father and Dan will be making muskets for the Minute Men. The secret of the gunshop has to be kept at all costs-especially from Tory spies, loyal to the king, and there are plenty of those around during the years just before the American Revolution. The question is-who are they? Everyone suspects everyone else and sometimes the wrong people are caught and punished by angry patriots. And when a wealthy English family, suspected to be loyalist spies, builds a handsome country house near the mill, Tabby is trapped between patriotism and her friendship with the new neighbors. Can she remain friends with Alice and Jack and still keep the crucial secret of the grist mill? "By making friends with Tories living nearby, Tabitha Copley caused a crisis in her own family and great concern in the town. This mystery of pre-Revolutionary days has a well-developed plot, good characterization, and gives an authentic picture of divided loyalties in a time of crisis." --Library Journal (1962) "More a portrait of the temper of the times and the way of life in rural New England than a mystery as the title may imply, this reveals an unusual spirit of friendship that prevails even in the face of divergent political feelings. Good supplementary reading for fifth and sixth graders studying this era." --Kirkus Reviews (1962)

This is not a book on how to write historical fiction. It is a book on how not to write historical fiction. If you love history and you're hard at work writing your first historical novel, but you're wondering if your medieval Irishmen would live on potatoes, if your 17th-century pirate would use a revolver, or if your hero would be able to offer Marie-Antoinette a box of chocolate bonbons . . . (The answer to all these is "Absolutely not!") . . . then Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders is the book for you. Medieval Underpants will guide you through the factual mistakes that writers of historical fiction-both beginners and seasoned professionals-often make, and show you how to avoid them. From fictional characters crossing streets that wouldn't exist for another sixty (or two thousand) years, to 1990s slang in the mouths of 1940s characters, to South American foods on ancient Roman tables, acclaimed historical novelist Susanne Alleyn exposes the often hilarious, always painful goofs that turn up most frequently in fiction set in the past. Alleyn stresses the hazards to writers of assuming too much about details of life in past centuries, providing numerous examples of mistakes that could easily have been avoided. She also explores commonly-confused topics and provides simple guidelines for getting them right. In a wide assortment of chapters including Food and Plants; Money; Hygiene; Dialogue; Attitudes; Research; and, of course, Ladies' Underpants (there weren't any), she offers tips on how to avoid errors and anachronisms while continually reminding writers of the necessity of meticulous historical research. Third edition, revised and expanded

Charles-Henri Sanson has good looks, a fine education, and plenty of money: everything that a stylish young Parisian could ask for. He also has an infamous family name-and he's trapped in a hideous job that no one wants. The last thing Charles ever wanted to be was a hangman. But he's the eldest son of Paris's most dreaded public official, and in the 1750s, after centuries of superstition, people like him are outcasts. He knows that the executioner's son must become an executioner himself or starve, for society's fears and prejudices will never let him be anything else. And when disaster strikes, in this true story of destiny and conflicting loyalties in decadent, treacherous pre-revolutionary France, family duty demands that Charles take his father's place much sooner than he had ever imagined. "Alleyn's exhaustive research pays off handsomely in well-drawn characters and colorful historical context. In particular, her female characters are refreshing in their range and willingness to defy stereotypes. A sequel would be welcome to this deftly imagined tale of the years before the French Revolution. A well-researched, robust tale featuring an endearing executioner." --Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Charles's personal crisis and clashing loyalties evoke Greek tragedy, and speak to the issues that will resonate with readers." --Publishers Weekly

In April, 1793, the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris condemned a handful of prisoners to death for crimes against the French Republic-and judges, jury, and spectators wept as sentence was passed. In July, 1794, the Tribunal sent thirty to fifty people a day to the guillotine. What, in fifteen months, turned the Tribunal into an instrument of mass murder? What collective madness or terror seized its personnel, some of them callous psychopaths, others decent men trapped in nightmarish circumstances? How could they casually condemn hundreds to death, from peasants to duchesses, from teenagers to senile octogenarians? And how, in the end, could they justify themselves by declaring, in all sincerity, that they had merely done their patriotic duty? In this book, first published in 1909 and now re-published with additional notes for the 21st-century reader, acclaimed historian G. Lenôtre examines the Revolutionary Tribunal, its beginnings, its personnel, its premises, its most famous trials of revolutionaries and royalty, and finally its downfall as the Terror careened to its bloody conclusion. His extensive archival research strips away layers of myth and presents a factual and fascinating history of a dark and often misunderstood era.

In Bygone London Life, antiquary and social historian G.L. Apperson gives us glimpses of a day-to-day London that was already long gone when his book was first published in 1903-the raucous, vibrant city of Elizabethan eating-houses, literary taverns, private museums, mincing Restoration fops, and rowdy Georgian rakes. Here are types and institutions from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries: poets and sedan-chair operators; coffee-house wits and night watchmen; "pretty fellows" and shoeblacks; kickshaws, macaronies, ordinaries, bucks and bloods, and cabinets of curiosities-a kaleidoscope of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century life for the historian, the historical novelist, or anyone who takes delight in the gone-but-not-forgotten past of a great modern city.

Children's historical fiction, ages 9-12. If you should visit the Edwin Smith Historical Museum at the Athenaeum in Westfield, Massachusetts, you might meet Deborah, a very special doll. Her story, which she'll share with the other antique dolls every night at midnight, that magical hour when the dolls wake up, began three hundred years ago. Deborah, together with generations of girls who loved her, saw--and sometimes took part in--many scenes from American history in her small New England town. Deborah can remember the terrible Indian massacre at Deerfield in 1704, and the old Puritan settlement of Westfield where little Mindwell played with her. She remembers Mercy Ann, who was so frightened of the Hessians during the Revolutionary War. She can even tell an exciting story about how Deborah herself, and her little mother Martha, saved some runaway slaves in the Underground Railroad. Deborah Remembers was based on many real local events and personalities from New England history. Deborah's long, rich, often poignant story, which first delighted young readers in the 1950s and 60s, was created by Westfield historian Lillie V. Albrecht. The tale now returns, with annotations by Mrs. Albrecht's granddaughter, author Susanne Alleyn, to enthrall a whole new generation of readers. Deborah will captivate you and touch your heart. "A doll's eye view of American history might be the subtitle of this delightful book. . . . Any little girl who ever loved a doll will love Deborah's remembrances." --The Chicago Tribune (1959) "A painless way of surveying American history, this story, with its sentimental portrayal of a rag doll who longs to be hold in the arms of a little mother, will have an immediate appeal to any but the most callous little girl. Well written, with a rich background of New England America in all its graceful simplicity." --Kirkus Reviews (1959)

Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims are Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her. Information steers Ravel toward a young man with a violent past who was in love with Célie, but further inquiry reveals that-according to an eyewitness-he cannot have been her murderer. And recent, notorious miscarriages of justice lead Ravel, beset with fears of sending an innocent person to the guillotine, to doubt his instincts. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of postrevolutionary France, his investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.

In the icy winter of 1786, in the final years before the French Revolution, hunger, cold, and seething frustration with the iron grip of France's absolute monarchy drive poor and rich alike to outright defiance. Slums, fashionable cafés, and even aristocratic mansions echo with discontent and the first warning signals of the approaching turmoil of 1789. Paris's cemeteries are foul and disease-ridden, but no one, including penniless writer Aristide Ravel, expects to find a man with his throat cut lying dead in a churchyard, surrounded by strange Masonic symbols. Already suspected of subversive activities, Ravel must now clear his name of murder. His search for answers amid the city's literary and intellectual demimonde-with the aid of friends who may not be all that they seem-leads him into a tangle of conspiracy, secret societies, royal scandal, and imminent revolution, which grows only more complex when the corpse disappears...

In fascinating detail, France in the Eighteenth Century focuses on modern history's most extravagant kingdom and century-France before the Revolution, 1700 to 1789. Lavishly illustrated, it re-creates the splendor and squalor of a fateful era, from the court at Versailles to the filthy back streets of Paris, from royal etiquette to the raucous cries of street peddlers. How the French, rich and poor, dressed, what they ate, how they educated their children, wore their hair, traveled, amused themselves, punished their malefactors-all this and much more comes under the probing eye of Paul Lacroix (1806-1884), Parisian library curator, historian, novelist, playwright, and master of historical detail and trivia. Here are chapters on the lives and courts of the three eighteenth-century kings of France: the last years of the opulent and absolutist Louis XIV, the decadent life of Louis XV, and the well-intentioned reign of the enlightened but blundering Louis XVI. Sections on society, charity, education, fashion, dining, and the theater illustrate the lives of the gentry and bourgeoisie, while street life and Parisian amusements give a picture of the working classes. Chapters on the nobility, the clergy, commerce, finance, and justice outline the functioning-and slow but relentless malfunctioning-of a state and system on the eve of a revolution that would change both France and the world forever. Quotations from contemporary memoirs, diaries, and social commentary add vivid immediacy to Lacroix's portrait of a vanished epoch. This massive treasure of details, newly annotated to provide additional information for the twenty-first-century reader, is an invaluable reference for specialists in the period, for historical researchers, and for any lover of history. This paperback book is an unabridged, fully proofread text of a long-out-of print book. It is not an overpriced facsimile of the original printing, or an unedited OCR scan full of strange misspellings and weirdly misplaced typographical characters. It has been edited to add explanatory footnotes for the 21st-century reader and proofed to eliminate misprints and errors so that it is as clear and readable as the original hardcover edition.

Children's historical fiction, ages 9-12. When Hannah Atwater's father goes marching off with the Minute Men in the spring of 1775, his last words to her are, "Remember, little daughter, when I come home, you're going to read the Bible to me." As if poor Hannah doesn't have enough to worry about, including war, the danger of smallpox, and storing enough food and firewood to last the Atwater family through the harsh New England winters, there's also school. She just can't manage to learn to read under the severe gaze of Master Hawkes, who whips naughty pupils at the least provocation. But worst of all are the rumors that soon arise about the terrifying Hessians, soldiers hired by the king of England to fight the American patriot army. The Hessians, the older children tell her, are eight feet tall, have two sets of teeth, eat boys and girls for dinner, and are coming to find her. And when a procession of Hessian prisoners passes through their own village, Hannah's greatest fear seems to be coming true--or does it? "Little Hannah in this story will appeal to modern nine and ten-year-olds as much as a little girl of today, although she was young when the Minute Men were called to fight the Redcoats and George Washington was struggling to hold his own against the British. . . . Well told, pleasantly illustrated and easy to read, this gives a genuine picture of life in the hard years, 1775-1777, a fine approach to history." --The New York Herald-Tribune (1958)

For police investigator Aristide Ravel, the teeming streets of dissolute postrevolutionary Paris are a constant source of activity. And in the unruly climate of 1797, when gold and food are scarce, citizens will stop at little to get what they need. When illiterate servant Jeannette Moineau is accused of poisoning her master, Ravel cannot believe she is guilty. With stubborn witnesses, a mysterious white powder, and stolen goods all stacked against her, however, he knows it will not be easy to clear her of the charges. But he finds an unexpected ally in Laurence, a young widow of the house, whose past surprisingly intersects with his own. In a large household overcome with bickering and resentment, everyone seems to have a motive for poisoning old Martin Dupont. Ravel and Laurence probe the secrets of the city's crafty politicians and confidence artists for clues, but as more family members turn up dead, the list of suspects rapidly dwindles...

You've read A Tale of Two Cities-perhaps more than once. But what are gaols, bumpers, tocsins, farmer-generals, and the Court of King's Bench? Where are Shooter's Hill, Temple Bar, and La Force, and who on earth was Mrs. Southcott? And did all those starving French people have baguettes in mind when they wanted bread? The Annotated A Tale of Two Cities is not a literary analysis of Dickens's novel, but a source of information for the new reader, the longterm fan, and the student, about things, people, places, and events mentioned in the text. In 780 notes to the unabridged novel, historical author and independent scholar Susanne Alleyn explains Dickens's references to things and places familiar to 19th-century Londoners, illustrates his many literary allusions and Victorian expressions, and provides an in-depth, factual background to his gripping but often misleading depiction of the French Revolution-a period that owes much of its distorted image today to the popularity of A Tale of Two Cities itself. *This book was previously released under the title A Tale of Two Cities: A Reader's Companion.*

Features Sydney Carton and other characters from Charles Dickens' A tale of two cities.