Showing results for "Kate Summerscale" in Europe

In 1953, the bodies of three young women are found by a tenant in the walls of a Notting Hill house. He tells the police that he chanced upon them while trying to put up a shelf for his transistor radio. As a series of further horrors are discovered, the eyes of a nation turn to 10 Rillington Place. In this riveting tale of violence, misogyny and tabloid frenzy, Kate Summerscale lifts the veil on what really happened inside the house - and suggests a new solution to one of the twentieth century's most notorious crimes.

On a summer’s morning in 1860, the Kent family awakes in their elegant Wiltshire home to a terrible discovery; their youngest son has been brutally murdered. When celebrated detective Jack Whicher is summoned from Scotland Yard he faces the unenviable task of identifying the killer – when the grieving family are the suspects.

London, 1938. Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman, begins to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Nandor Fodor - a Jewish Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical research - begins to investigate. In doing so, he discovers a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss - and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears. As the spectre of fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed.

Our fears and compulsions often feel like part of our deepest selves—yet they're bound up in the currents of the world around us. This thrilling compendium of 99 phobias and manias, rare and familiar, delves into the obsessions that shape us all. Award-winning author Kate Summerscale takes us from the Middle Ages to the present day, using rich and riveting case studies to trace the links between the private and the public, the personal and the political.

When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was ‘fascinating’, she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man’s charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake.... In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the 19th century, Isabella Robinson’s scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife’s longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.