On June 25th, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer sat on his horse on a ridge above the Little Bighorn River and made the decision that would end 210 lives, including his own, within the hour. He had already divided his regiment into three separate columns. He had already ignored his scouts. He had already … Read more

The nightingale’s cage was found in the ashes of the conservatory, the one place where Elara Callahan had ever seemed to find peace. Captain Hewitt, the fire marshal who investigated the ruin of the Beacon Hill mansion in 1905, was an honest man, and what he found troubled him for the rest of his life. … Read more

On August 14th, 1987, Edgar Rosenberg checked into a Philadelphia hotel under a name that was not his own. Joan was three thousand miles away in Los Angeles. He left no note explaining what had really been happening between them, no explanation of why their partnership had become something else entirely. Hours passed before anyone … Read more

By the winter of 1922, the name Nellie Bly had come to mean one thing to the American public: nerve. It meant a young woman who could go anywhere, try anything, and file the story before anyone else had finished their coffee. On the morning of January 27th, that name belonged to a 57-year-old woman … Read more

By the deep winter of 1879, the families of a small valley in the Ozark Mountains were closing their doors before the sun had fully vanished. Not out of fear of the cold, nor of the wolves that came down from the ridges when the snow piled high. They barred their doors against a family … Read more

The street was not a street. It was mud, manure, and trash packed by hooves and wheels into a paste that could swallow a boot to the ankle. The man stepping off the stagecoach in a Kansas cattle town in 1880 looked down first, because the boardwalk was the only thing between him and that … Read more

She felt herself trapped. The door was closed behind her. What followed was a pursuit, a seduction, and a terror so complete that she would carry it for the rest of her life. Millions of Star Trek fans remember the day Janice Rand vanished from the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Most assumed the character … Read more

In the middle of October 1994, the Sunday Times began to serialize a book that the Prince of Wales had helped to make. Its author was the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby. Charles had given him interviews and access to his letters and his journals. The book was due in the shops on the 3rd of November. … Read more

The fog lay thick over Ostend airfield, and the shape of the aircraft kept vanishing and reappearing between the low clouds. Nothing broke the morning silence except the faint rumble of engines. On board were Princess Cecilie of Greece, her husband Georg Donatus, the Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, their two young … Read more