Washoe County Library System

Secretly dispensing poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them, a London apothecary triggers unintended consequences that shape three lives across multiple centuries.

"The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses—village wives, mothers, and daughters—was to come to the shocking realization that this could have happened anywhere, and to...

"Murder by poison alarmed, enthralled, and in many ways encapsulated the Victorian age. Linda Stratmann's dark and splendid social history reveals the nineteenth century as a gruesome battleground where poisoners went head-to-head with authorities who strove to detect poisons, control their availability, and bring the guilty to justice. She corrects many misconceptions about particular poisons and documents how the evolution of issues such as marital...

Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels, the insomniac Chicago cop with a train wreck of a personal life, has trouble on her hands, and it isn't just because her boyfriend Latham wants to get married and she's not sure she's ready. A man in disguise has been visiting restaurants, grocery stores, and fast food places, ingeniously spreading a deadly toxin. Chicago's newest criminal calls himself The Chemist, and he has murder on his mind. When Jack finds...

"Ride shotgun with a "James Bond-of-the-supernatural"* as the Secret Histories Novels take you careering through an alternate London where around every corner a new kind of danger awaits.... My name is Eddie Drood, aka Shaman Bond, the very secret agent. And I am a dead man walking. I've been poisoned by Dr. DOA. There is no cure, no treatment, no chance of a last-minute miracle. So all that is left to me and my love, Molly Metcalf, is to track down...

"France, 1673. A young woman from the country, Charlotte Picot must venture to the fearsome city of Paris in search of her last remaining son, Nicolas. Either fate or mere coincidence places the quick-witted charlatan Adam Lesage in her path. Adam is newly released from the prison galleys and on the hunt for treasure. But Charlotte, believing him to be a spirit she has summoned from the underworld, enlists his help in finding her child. Charlotte...

"In 1856, a baying crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford prison to watch the hanging of Dr. William Palmer, "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey" as Charles Dickens once called him. Palmer was convicted of poisoning and suspected in the murders of dozens of others, including his best friend, his wife, and his mother-in-law--and cashing in on their insurance to fuel his worsening gambling addiction. Highlighting his...