 | Death of an Overseer : Reopening a Murder Investigation from the Plantation South by Michael Wayne
Buy new: $75.00 / Used from: $7.04 Great historical detective work. For a contemporary murder trial with some interesting connections, see http://www.courier-journal.com/nabes/2003/02/19/bc_mys.html
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 | Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories by Jack Finney
Buy used from: $1.03 Shipwreck and an enthralling 1857 murder trial with twists and turns.
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 | Murder in Victorian Scotland: The Trial of Madeleine Smith by Douglas MacGowan
Buy new: $72.95 / Used from: $38.80 Yet another 1857 murder trial of a woman. What was it with this year?
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| They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves
Buy new: $12.48 / Used from: $0.01 Robert Graves reopens the case of Dr. William Palmer, using new evidence, transcripts, and interviews. An engaging history of the time.
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| The Bond Street Burlesque: An Historical Novel of Murder by Raymond Paul
Buy used from: $0.01 Good historical fiction of the Burdell murder, but I liked the non-fiction Finney version better.
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 | American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 by Sally Denton
Buy used from: $1.59 1857 murder on a grand scale, and historical detective work on a grand scale.
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 | Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder
Buy used from: $0.01 My favorte shipwreck story of 1857. Truth is stranger than fiction. Great cover!
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 | English Passengers: A Novel by Matthew Kneale
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $0.01 Yet another great 1857 sea saga. Great covers on all editions. A fun read too.
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 | Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin
Buy used from: $5.38 This is a wonderful novel taking place in 1857, about steamboats, vampires, and the way things were then. A favorite book and another great cover.
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 | The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville
Buy new: $10.14 / Used from: $2.00 On April 1 a devil in the guise of a deaf mute goes aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, and begs for charity. He then shapeshifts into various forms. This 1857 novel was Melville's last published.
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 | Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers: The 1857 Expedition and the Battle of Solomon's Fork by William Y. Chalfant
Buy used from: $3.98 Another great 1857 true story with a great cover. Has the 1857 account of the Delaware scouts led by Capt. Fallleaf.
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 | They Fight Like Devils: Raising the Siege at Lucknow during the Great Indian Mutiny, 1857-58 by D. A. Kinsley
Buy used from: $37.00 While some American Indians were fighting for their land, Indian Indians began doing it as well. China had an eruption called the Opium War. There were wars all over the place.
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 | America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink by Kenneth M. Stampp
Buy new: $44.99 / Used from: $5.85 America was on the brink of going crazy that year. Kansas was already bleeding, and the Dredd Scott decision shipwrecked the nation.
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 | The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by the Late Don E. Fehrenbacher
Buy new: $19.34 / Used from: $11.00 Speaking of which, there is no better study of this 1857 shocker than this Pulitzer Prize winning book. Enthralling to this researcher.
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| The year of the wombat: England, 1857 by Francis Watson
Buy used from: $1.78 England on the brink. An amusing history as well.
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 | The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7 by J. B. Peires
Buy new: $17.06 / Used from: $10.09 Parts of Africa were crazy that year too. For a fictional account of this story, read Zakes Mda's HEART OF REDNESS.
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 | Hangman's Point; A Novel by Dean Barrett
Buy new: $24.95 / Used from: $0.19 A novel of Hong Kong in 1857. Struck me as a YA novel, but I'm used to reading Cormac McCarthy.
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 | The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
Buy used from: $0.01 Another great cover. If you liked this one, you should read W. Gillies Ross's THIS DISTANT AND UNSURVEYED COUNTRY: A Woman's Winter at Baffin Island, 1857-1858.
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 | The First American Chess Congress (Classic Chess) by Daniel W. Fiske
Buy used from: $105.35 1857 was a remarkable year. Joseph Conrad was born that year, and so was the official American Chess Congress, an attempt to find order in the chaos..
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| The Nation Thief by Robert Houston
Buy used from: $0.48 The war in Nicaragua cannot be left out. For a good non-fiction account of it, see Robert E. May's MANIFEST DESTINY'S UNDERWORLD.
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 | The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War by James L. Huston
Buy new: $23.95 / Used from: $23.93 The stock exchange panic this year had lessons to teach, and 140 years later we still hadn't learned them. See also THE HISTORY OF THE COMMERCIAL CRISIS 1857-1858 by D. Morier Evans.
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| Jingle Bells by James Pierpont
Buy used from: $0.01 Pierpoint, an interesting man, first published "Jingle Bells" this year, a song that lives with us yet.
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