NEW BOOKS (Lizzieana) FOR 2015

[mbhenty]

Commentary:

As many may already know, I am a stickler about getting it right, especially with authors who write "true accounts" of the Borden murders.

The unfurling and distribution of mis-information is a disservice to the reader or anyone who relishes the truth, at least as it was documented in fact. Not newspapers, not someone like Lincoln, Spearing, Radin, De mille, but in transcripts and authentic deeded, or official records or testimonies.

Anyone can write a book.

It takes dedication, study, and hard work to dig up the truth and pass it on. Not many are successful.


-----------------------------------------------


Still, another new book about Lizzie Borden. Titled "One August Morning" The True Story of Lizzie Borden. By Troy Taylor.

Great title.

But hold onto your purse.

Have not read it yet, but have thumbed through it and have seen enough reckless errors to comfortably condemn it.

The author, who's claim to fame is to have written 110 books, opens by telling you how everyone has lied to you about the Borden murders. Everyone, including the police, defense, Newspapers, prosecution, Lizzie, the maid, etc., etc. etc.... Then he quotes that: Any mistakes found within these pages are mine and mine alone. Most likely, someone lied to me."

Great cover up, Mr. Taylor. Why would you feel the need to acknowledge that you retain ownership to your book's mistakes? Someone lied to you? What's that all about? Are you trying to make up excuses for the countless errors and the lack of research your account may reflect?

Troy Taylor has a great introduction, if not a great name, and after one reads it, sounds like it holds great promise. The only promise is Mr. Taylor lies.

Thumb page #1 Bridget Sullivan was arrested then released.

Thumb page #2 The French immigrated to Fall River shortly followed by the Irish

Thumb page #3 Claims that the day before the murder it was 100 degrees the warmest day of the year.

THREE STRIKES Mr. Taylor. Your out.




(If I discovered this many errors by scanning the book with my thumb for 1 or 2 minutes, I can only imagine what else is wrong. In validation to my "claims" above, while admitting to not having read the book, I can add that I know someone who has and claims that the errors in Troy Tayor's book suppresses even those in Karen Chaney's book.)

[twinsrwe]

Thanks for the heads up on this new book, MB. There are so many published books about Lizzie Borden, which are inaccurate, that it makes ones head swim. If the errors in this book are filled with historical inaccuracies, then I really don't want to add it to my Lizzie Borden collection! Who needs another book filled with more ‘lies’?

[MysteryReader]

Thanks for the heads up, MB! No use in spending good money on a book filled with lies. What I can't understand is why people write something, claim it's the honest truth but decides it's too much work to research?

[mbhenty]

Again, I take no pleasure condemning another author's book.

But if you are going to saddle me with mis-information and have me repeat it to someone who may know the truth, in turn, make me look just as foolish as your book.... well, there is no excuse.

There is no vindication for someone who claims that there are only 4 known copies of Edwin Porter's book, The Fall River Tragedy, when every bunny rabbit on this forum know that that's not true, when in fact the number maybe 50, 60, 100 or more. Who knows. I have handled 7 to 8 copies and have seen 13 to 15 on the net. Heck, I had one and my girlfriend had three original 1893 copies. (Which he claims came out in 1894)

Also he professes that Emma purchased Maplecorft for Lizzie. Huh

And, that Emma hated Nance.

Emma left Mapecroft because of Nance, and that "Lizzie and Nance's relationship had destroyed all hope of Emma and Lizzie ever being reunited"

Oh yes, and by the way Mr. Taylor. Over 80 percent of Fall River's mills were made of Granite not Brick.

[mbhenty]

Still another book about Lizzie Borden to be published in September.

What a Money Tree Lizzie has become.

At least this one is not trying to tell us the 'TRUTH' about the case.

It's fiction. Fiction for young adults.

No idea what its about. But the title may give you an idea.

Sweet Madness.

Information in the link below.

http://midnightsocietytales.com/2015/03 ... t-madness/



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[twinsrwe]

Thanks for the heads up, MB!

I found this description of SWEET MADNESS on Goodreads:

Seventeen-year-old Bridget Sullivan is alone in Fall River, a city that sees Irish immigrants as nothing more than a drunken drain on society. To make matters worse, she's taken employment with the city’s most peculiar and gossip-laden family—the Bordens. But Bridget can’t afford to be picky—the pay surpasses any other job Bridget could ever secure and she desperately needs the money to buy her little sister, Cara, passage to the states. It doesn’t hurt that the job location is also close to her beau, Liam. As she enters the disturbing inner workings of the Borden household, Bridget clings to these advantages.

However, what seemed like a straightforward situation soon turns into one that is untenable. Of course Bridget has heard the gossip around town about the Bordens, but what she encounters is far more unsettling. The erratic, paranoid behavior of Mr. Borden, the fearful silence of his wife, and worse still…the nightly whisperings Bridget hears that seem to come from the walls themselves.

The unexpected bright spot of the position is that Lizzie Borden is so friendly. At first, Bridget is surprised at how Lizzie seems to look out for her, how she takes a strong interest in Bridget’s life. Over time, a friendship grows between them. But when Mr. Borden’s behavior goes from paranoid to cruel, and the eerie occurrences in the house seem to be building momentum, Bridget makes the tough decision that she must leave the house—even if it means leaving behind Lizzie, her closest friend, alone with the madness. Something she swore she would not do.

But when Bridget makes a horrifying discovery in the home, all that she thought she knew about the Bordens is called into question…including if Lizzie is dangerous. And the choice she must make about Lizzie’s character could mean Bridget’s life or death.

SWEET MADNESS is a retelling of the infamous Borden murders from the point of view of Lizzie’s Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan.

http://tinyurl.com/pzcfbnp

Here is an interview by Fangirlish.com with both of the the authors of Sweet Madness: http://tinyurl.com/qg8vn3m

Here is Lindsay Currie’s answer to how many hours of research was done for Sweet Madness (underlining is mine)…

This book took a LONG time to research. I mean, months and months. Reading testimony, studying floor plans, looking at family trees and attempting to reimagine this story from Bridget Sullivan's point of view...it was a long and complicated process, but a fascinating one! The most interesting tidbit in my opinion, is that Andrew and Abigail's murder were not the first murders in the Borden family! Yes, there's a history of darkness in that family, one we found both disturbing and fascinating. As for whether or not I think Lizzie actually did it - I can honestly say I change my mind on that almost daily. Many signs point to her as the perpetrator, despite the lack of physical evidence, however Andrew Borden wasn't without enemies, so there's enough doubt to muddy the waters...that's for sure! Hope you read and enjoy this coming September!

http://tinyurl.com/ndauz9q

Question: Was Abby’s Christian/given name Abigail? I'm cerious since Lindsey Currie used this name in her above answer, and I also found this name indicated in the information on Gebi.com: http://tinyurl.com/obzyy82

In the forum thread titled, Abby Durfee Gray's line, DoGeeseSeeGoD, posted the following question: ‘What line connects Abigail Durfee Gray to the Durfee family?’

Kat didn’t correct him, and she definitely would have if Abigail was not Abby’s given name. Wouldn’t she?

http://tinyurl.com/p4lpqsw

Len Rebello referred to her as Abby, and I haven't found that he ever referred to her as Abigail. With the research he did for his book, I think he would have indicated this somewhere. Wouldn’t he?

Rebello, pgs. 22 and 23:

"Abby Durfee Gray Borden

m.2 Abby Durfee Gray, born January 21, 1828, and died August 4, 1892. She was the daughter of Oliver Gray and Sarah Sawyer Gray. Andrew J. Borden married Abby Durfee Gray, June 6, 1865."
~ ~ ~ ~

"Gray Family

Oliver Gray, father of Abby Durfee Gray, was born in Tiverton, Rhode Island, and died August 8, 1878, at the age of seventy-seven. His first wife was Sarah Sawyer. She died December 22, 1860, at the age of 66. The marriage produced two children.

m. 1 Sarah Sawyer
1. Priscilla B. Gray, born in 1820, and died January 25, 1894.
m. George H. Fish, died in January 4, 1894.

2. Abby Durfee Gray, born January 21, 1828, and died August 4, 1892.
m. Andrew Jackson Borden, born September 13, 1822, and died August 4, 1892.

m. 2 Oliver's second wife was Jane Eldredge D. (Baker), a widow, born in Bakersville, Massachusetts, November 14, 1826, and died November 11, 1916, at the age of eighty-nine. She was the stepmother of Priscilla (Gray) Fish and Abby (Gray) Borden.

1. Sarah Bertha "Bertie" Gray, born in 1864, and died in 1932.
m. George W. Whitehead, born in 1861, and died at the age of 38 in 1898. The marriage produced two children.
1. Abby B. Whitehead, born July, 1884, and died in Warwick, Rhode Island, at the age of 89, May 9, 1974.
m. Charles E. Potter
2. George O. Whitehead, born, March 1887.

Note: Jane Eldredge D. (Baker) Gray's first husband Obed Eldredge was lost at sea in 1857. This marriage produced two children. (1) Henry H. Eldredge. He died at the age of 32 of consumption on April 16, 1882, in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. (2) Lucy J. (Eldredge) Cahoon. (Date of birth, marriage and death unknown)

Priscilla (Gray) Fish died in Hartford, Connecticut, January 25, 1894. (Fall River Evening News, January 27, 1894: 8 and the Hartford Daily Courant, January 24, 1894: 5) Her husband, George Fish, died January 4, 1894. (Hartford Daily Courant, January 4, 1894: 5)

Also: No records could be located to determine if Abby was related to the Durfee family."

Over all, I think this book may be an interesting and fun read.

[MysteryReader]

Thanks, MB & Twins for sharing! It does look like a fun read. Wish I had known about it before I went to the bookstore :-)

[twinsrwe]

You're welcome, Mystery. No need to feel bad about not knowing about this book, since it won't be published until September. You can pre-order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Here is the link to pre-order it from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/phqutzg

Here is the link to pre-order it from Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/qgbyf2q

[MysteryReader]

Thanks, Twins! I plan to order it later, after its release.

[twinsrwe]

You're welcome, Mystery.

[mbhenty]

Here's one that got by me.

There's no listing of it on Amazon. I discovered it on the Barnes and Noble site.

It's only an E book. Came out 3 years ago. Called, 7th Cousin.

In any event, the author claims to be a cousin of Lizzie Borden and makes further claims that:

I have really figured out this who-dunit using little known Borden secrets.

Yep, that's what she thinks.

There's only one "reader review." One star. Ouch!

(Click on photo to make bigger.)

[MysteryReader]

I wonder what "little known Borden secrets" the author is referring to? And with one review and one star? Nah, I'll pass, thanks!

[August Pears]

Hey Twinrwe,
[quote="twinsrwe"]

I found this description of SWEET MADNESS on Goodreads:

Seventeen-year-old Bridget Sullivan is alone in Fall River, a city that sees Irish immigrants as nothing more than a drunken drain on society. To make matters worse, she's taken employment with the city’s most peculiar and gossip-laden family—the Bordens. But Bridget can’t afford to be picky—the pay surpasses any other job Bridget could ever secure and she desperately needs the money to buy her little sister, Cara, passage to the states. It doesn’t hurt that the job location is also close to her beau, Liam. As she enters the disturbing inner workings of the Borden household, Bridget clings to these advantages.

However, what seemed like a straightforward situation soon turns into one that is untenable. Of course Bridget has heard the gossip around town about the Bordens, but what she encounters is far more unsettling. The erratic, paranoid behavior of Mr. Borden, the fearful silence of his wife, and worse still…the nightly whisperings Bridget hears that seem to come from the walls themselves.

Twins, I found this quite intriguing. We will see how wel the facts are treated. However, I can always enjoy a books bash at the story more that something like the Lizzie Borden Chronicle.
I pre-ordered the book. Thanks.

[twinsrwe]

... Twins, I found this quite intriguing. We will see how wel the facts are treated. However, I can always enjoy a books bash at the story more that something like the Lizzie Borden Chronicle.
I pre-ordered the book. Thanks.

You're welcome, August, and I totally agree! The Lizzie Borden Chronicles were awful!

[augusta]

I wonder how many people will buy Troy's book and believe the wrong stuff about Lizzie and the case. Too bad they don't use fact checkers much anymore.

I also agree, Twinsrwe and August, that the LB Chronicles was really bad. The only thing I liked about it was Lizzie's dresses. Someone asked me recently if the 'Chronicles' were true or not. And this was an educated person. I feel like the 'Chronicles' set all of our serious students/scholars works back some years. I keep hoping that someone will finally come out with a simply true historical movie about her. The story is compelling enough without adding made up junk to it. The 1975 Liz Montgomery show is the best so far, but it left out Uncle John and gives perhaps undue stereotyping of Andrew and Abby.

[mspitstop]

MB, please do not include Radin in with the other "quack" books. I have read just about everything published about Lizzie Borden, including the books you mentioned. I started with Radin when I was about 12 and no matter how much I read, I still think he was pretty darned accurate about the facts and his speculations are still, to me, very plausible. Remember he was the first writer to have access to the "hip bath collections INCLUDING Jennings' journals. Reading the trial until very recently was not an easy assignment. In 1991 I went to the Boston Public Library and read it over three days as I was not allowed to make a copy. I stumbled onto a second copy in the Bristol Community College Library in 1992 and they they let me make a copy (they really weren't supposed to!!!). Certainly when you read the trial it is clear why she was acquitted. Robinson was brilliant and the evidence just wasn't there to convict. In terms of the "theory" books the best is David Kent's "Forty Whacks", I think. Rebello and the Martins and Binette have done us Borden geeks a great service by their compilations. But, you're right, now that we have so much source material there is not much excuse for sloppy research.

[mbhenty]

Yes mspitstop:

I stand corrected. I did not mean to include Radin in my little list above. I too think he did an honest and honorable attempt at writing a valid account.

For me also, Radin was the first book I read about the Borden Crime sometime back in the 70s. I have always said here on the forum that Radin did his homework—even visited Fall River, talked to people here, etc. He was a crime buff, and being one, it was easy for him to figure out, by the known facts, that Lizzie could not have killed her parents, and so he tried to find the real killer.....at least the way he saw it. The case he makes is a plausible and one we can hold tenable. No....I don't really pool him in with the sensationalist of the 70s and 80s like Spiering, Lincoln, and de ville. But he was the first to suspect and name a killer, one other than Lizzie Borden, and responsible for starting a whole new interest in the crime.

[mspitstop]

I totally agree, MB!! For years I just assumed he had solved it because for years there were virtually no other books. Then one day I found the Pearson book ("Studies in Murder") that Radin had written about and I was appalled. Then I got Pearson's "More Studies in Murder" which was published after Lizzie had died and he really let loose with his venom. Then I got "The Trial of Lizzie Borden" and understood what Radin meant, though I didn't fully understand until I read the entire trial. Radin was completely validated. When I first got a computer in 1995 and learned about search engines, I did a search on Lizzie Borden and got something like 6 or 7 hits, total!!!! Now try it!!!! I call Lizzie Borden my desert island crime. When I am bored or waiting somewhere I can take out the case and roll it around in my mind and argue either way, guilty or innocent, but my heart is really in her innocence. It wasn't until I think 1990 that one of those books that started to come out then printed her entire inquest testimony. When I read that, I began to think she was innocent. People always say it is proof of her guilt, but on the contrary. To me it indicated her innocence. Surely to God, if she were guilty she would have been able to come up with a better and more consistent story about her movements. If she were guilty she controlled the timeline. Once the cry went up she was never alone, always under observtion. I've played little experiments with people I spend time with. I observe them and then after a while I ask them where they were, when and what were they doing, and usually I get confused answers. On an ordinary day, how much attention do you pay to your movements of a morning and it was an ordinary day for Lizzie, until it wasn't.

And the timeline, it is all about the timeline. It's not just Who did it but How did they do it in the short amount of time there was for Andrew??? Okay I'm babbling now.....................

[MysteryReader]

[quote="mbhenty"]Still another book about Lizzie Borden to be published in September.

What a Money Tree Lizzie has become.

At least this one is not trying to tell us the 'TRUTH' about the case.

It's fiction. Fiction for young adults.

No idea what its about. But the title may give you an idea.

Sweet Madness.

I ordered a copy and it arrived today. So far, the first 2-3 pages have grabbed my attention.

[mbhenty]

Walter Satterthwait could not help himself but to write another book about detective Lizzie Borden.

Many may remember his 1989 famous title "Miss Lizzie". Twenty seven years later he has written another. Just released.

Below is the cover of the book and 'one' review taken from Amazon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

review taken from Amazon

I honestly I didn’t have high hopes for this book – I actually expected it to be bad. But I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by New York Nocturne. It made for an enjoyably entertaining and light read that I found hard to put down. Even if it’s not great literature.

At the start of our story, sixteen year old Amanda is off to visit an uncle in New York for a bit of adventure while her parents travel the world and her brother stays behind to court his college sweetheart. However, the trip doesn’t go at all according to plan. Amanda suddenly finds herself very much alone and under suspicion in a strange city. Her old friend Lizzie Borden is really the only person she can trust to help her navigate the seedy underworld of New York and clear her name.

I’ve read several books where famous historical figures were included in a fictional account (both as major and minor characters) and I can say that it doesn’t always work even if you’re not intimately familiar with the subject. I’ve done a lot of research on Lizzie Borden, reading both fact and fiction: stories about her life before, during and after her famous murder trial; accounts of the trial itself; and many, many theories on what really happened that day in Fall River, MA. Armed with that kind of knowledge about a real person, it’s hard to be accepting when that person is included as a fictional character in a mystery novel. Sometimes you get the feeling that the author didn’t have a story to tell, so they retold someone else’s. I exactly didn’t feel that way about this book. The main character is young Amanda, and she is truly is the focus of the story. Though Lizzie has a lot to do with the plot, the story isn’t about her – it’s about Amanda. It also helps that every other line isn’t a cheap allusion to the famous murder trial (though of course it’s mentioned).

But as enjoyable as this book is, the reader is left wondering “why Lizzie?” This is a cute little story, and it would have been just as cute if the old friend who swooped into to help Amanda wasn’t Lizzie Borden. Any older, wealthy acquaintance or distant relative would do. I feel like the author did it simply because Lizzie Borden is a name people know. She’s interesting. She sells books. And given that another famous name of 1920s New York is also a minor character in the book, yes, it does feel a little like cheap name dropping.

Even so, that didn’t affect my enjoyment of the novel too much. I do recommend it if you’re just looking for something quick and fun to read by the pool this summer.

(As a side note, after I finished New York Nocturne, I discovered that there’s a prior book – Miss Lizzie – which tells the story of how Amanda and Lizzie first meet, which is only hinted at in New York Nocturne.)