"A journey into the heart of dark passions and the crimes they impel, and their trial by daylight and doctors. When passion is in the picture, what is criminal, what is sane, what is mad or simply bad? Through court and asylum records, letters and newspaper accounts, this book brings to life some sensational trials between 1870 and 1914, a period when the psychiatric professions were consolidating their hold on our understanding of what is human....

"When a young sculptor is found with the back of her bashed in, Eve Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don't add up. Gwen Huffman is comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over finding the body--but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things? As Eve and her team look into Gwen, her past, and the people around her, they find that the lies are about more...

A powerful novel about a crime of passion and its consequences set in 1920s Harlem, with the unmistakable signature of Toni Morrison. When Violet and Joe Trace, an elderly couple, arrive in New York fleeing the intolerance of their native Virginia, they believe they can live in freedom regardless of the color of their skin. But 1920s Harlem, the focus of a vibrant cultural renaissance, has unexpected trouble in store for them. Joe will end up committing...

"In 1895, an Italian seamstress in New York was accused of killing the man who had raped her, promised to marry her, and was about to abandon her. Following a sensational trial conducted in a language she could not understand, Maria Barbella, at the age of twenty-two, became the first woman sentenced to die in the newly invented electric chair. Idanna Pucci tells this story with immediacy, passion and authority that no other author could have mustered,...