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February 6, 2024 Special Joint Discussion with the History Reads Book Club!
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Mary Jane's Ghost: The Legacy of a Murder in Small Town America
by Ted Gregory
"Summer 1948. In the scenic, remote river town of Oregon, Illinois, a young couple visiting the local lovers' lane is murdered. The shocking crime garners headlines from Portland, Maine, to Long Beach, California. But after a sweeping manhunt, no one is arrested and the violent deaths of Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla fade into time's indifference. Fast forward fifty years. Eccentric entrepreneur Michael Arians moves to Oregon, opens a roadhouse, gets elected mayor, and becomes obsessed with the crime. He comes up with a scandalous conspiracy theory and starts to believe that Mary Jane's ghost is haunting his establishment. He also reaches out to the Chicago Tribune for help. Arians's letter falls on the desk of general assignment reporter Ted Gregory. For the next thirteen years, while he ricochets from story to story and his newspaper is deconstructed around him, Gregory remains beguiled by the case of the teenaged telephone operator Mary Jane and twenty-eight-year-old Navy vet Stanley--and equally fascinated by Arians's seemingly hopeless pursuit of whoever murdered them. Mary Jane's Ghost is the story of these two odysseys"
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Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland
by James St. James
A shocking exposé of the New York Club scene at its worst follows Michael Alig from South Bend, Indiana, to Manhattan, where this Midwest nerd became a leading club promoter and eventually found trouble after killing a drug dealer. Originally published as Disco Bloodbath. Reprint. 20,000 first printing. (A new film, opening Fall 2003, starring McCauley Culkin & Seth Green) (True Crime)
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Bitter Harvest
by Ann Rule
Journeys inside the twisted mind of a killer, Dr. Debora Green, after the cancer specialist was arrested for the arson murders of two of her three children and the attempted poisoning of her estranged husband
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