The Heart of Monadnock
By Elizabeth Weston Timlow
Out of print for nearly 70 years, this Monadnock classic tells the tale of a visitor to the Halfway House who has a mystical experience whole climbing the mountain. She actually hears the mountain speak to her in Latin.
Timlow was the principal of a school for girls in Washington DC and a children's book author who visited Monadnock every summer from 1900 until her death in 1930. She became so attached to Monadnock that after her retirement she moved to Fitzwilliam and is buried in the village cemetery.
Complete with the original photos and the vintage map that allows readers to follow in Timlow's footsteps around the old trails.
192 pages, 25 vintage photographs 4 1/2 by 5 paperback. ISBN 978-0-9795067-2-7. $17.99
The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette
Edited by Jack Sherman and Craig Brandon
Nearly a century after his death in the electric chair, the diary that Chester Gillette kept in his cell in Auburn Prison has been made public by his surviving relatives. Beginning after he has settled in to prison life and ending just minutes before his execution, the diary reveals Gillette's innermost thoughts about a variety of topics as he slowly begins to realize that his life will soon come to an end.
Published by Richard W. Cowper Press, 193 pages, 5 1/2 X1 8 1/2 paperback, ISBN 9780979644818, $25. Published December, 2007. Available by mail order from Surry Cottage Books.
Edited by Craig Brandon
Every word of the correspondence between Grace Brown and Chester Gillette during 1905 and 1906, the year he was convicted of killing her at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. The author of Murder in the Adirondacks, the best-selling account of the case, guides readers through the hidden references in the letters.
A Surry Cottage Books original. 80 pages, large format 8 1/2 by 11, paperback ISBN: 978-0-0795067-0-3 $15. Published in May 2006. Available from Amazon.
Murder in the Adirondacks
An American Tragedy Revisited
By Craig Brandon
Now in its 12th printing! The definitive book about Upstate New York's most famous murder case. In 1906, Chester Gillette was convicted of murdering Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. The trial attracted national attention and Theodore Dreiser used it as the basis of his most famous novel, An American Tragedy. The story has been re-told in two feature films, including "A Place in the Sun" with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Television programs, popular songs and even an opera have been composed about it. This book tells the real story.
380 pages, hardcover 6 by 9 ISBN: 0-932052-43-6 Published by North Country Books. Over 100 illustrations, indexed $32.95 Available from Amazon.
An Unnatural American History
By Craig Brandon
Invented by a Buffalo dentist as a humane means of disposing of stray animals, the electric chair was adopted by New York State in 1888 as a more humane way of disposing of capital criminals. Along the way the chair became a pawn in a high-stakes marketing competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, who had patents controlling the means of electrical distribution. Before the chair was fist used in 1890 the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether its use was cruel and unusual. A strange story of a strange invention and about how the best of intentions can go astray.
279 pages,. 6 by 9, hardcover, published by McFarland and Co. $45. ISBN: 978-0786406869 Available from Amazon.