It is 1817 and Charles Corday, a portrait painter, has only seven days to live. He has been found guilty of murdering a Countess whom he was in the process of painting. He had been sentenced to hang, and political pressures make it expedient for the Home Office to confirm his guilt. The man appointed to investigate is Rider Sandman, whose qualifications for the job are non-existent and who is currently down on his luck. But Sandman's investigations reveal much that does not fit the verdict, and too many people determined to halt his activities.
Beautiful, young Elinor Carlisle stands serenely in the dock accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence is damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity and the means to administer the fatal poison. Yet, inside the hostile courtroom, one man still presumes Elinor is innocent until proven guilty; Hercule Poirot is all that stands between Elinor and the gallows... Narrated by David Suchet.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11526.37 | Fiction literature | 10 January 2012
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Gallows Thief
It is the end of the Napoleonic Wars and England has just fought its last victorious battle against the French. As Rider Sandman and the other heroes of Waterloo begin to make their way back to England, they find a country where corruption, poverty, and social unrest run rampant, and where "justice" is most often delivered at the end of a hangman's noose. Nowhere in London are the streets as busy as in front of Newgate Prison, its largest penitentiary, where mobs gather regularly to watch the terrible spectacle of the doomed men and women on the gallows' stands.
Female Executions
Tales from the gallows, guillotine and gas chamber where the fairer sex
get it in the neck. From the Yorkshire Witch, who was accused of murder
when a potion for good health turned out to be fatal, to the woman who
survived the gallows and took her empty coffin away with her, this book
has true stories of executed women from around the world.