Download A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry and the Texas Servant Girl Murders of 1885 AudioBook Free
Most widely known for his acclaimed puzzle fiction occur early Rome, in A Twist at the End Steven Saylor gives a stunning historical book about America's first documented serial murders - the Austin, Tx, servant lady murders of 1885 - artfully mixing real characters and true criminal offense into an engrossing work of fiction. The city of Austin, Tx, "is fearfully dull", wrote young Will Porter to a friend in the springtime of 1885, "except for the consistent raids of the Servant Woman Annihilators, who make things exciting in the deceased of night." Years later Will Porter would become the most famous copy writer in America - O. Henry, the toast of NY. The long-ago Austin servant lady murders would remain unsolved. But behind the O. Henry pen name, Will Porter was a man with secrets. The appearance of a merciless blackmailer and a secret stranger sketch Porter back to days gone by and back again to Tx, to confront the twisted means to fix those murders - and the secrets of his own spirit. When he was a young man in Austin in that springtime of 1885, Porter fell in love. Her name was Eula Phillips. She was beautiful. She was committed to someone else. And she was doomed to be always a victim of the Servant Woman Annihilators. The first patients were young black women who did the trick in the households of Austin's most prominent citizens. The crimes were unspeakable, as the killer or killers used an ax and - in the papers parlance of your day - "outraged" the patients even as these were dying or already deceased. The authorities were baffled. The murders prolonged month after month,until abruptly, shockingly, on the bloody Holiday Eve, the structure improved - and the trial that resulted would find out an explosive scandal of intimacy and power that would tear metropolis of Austin aside. The scene of the crimes was a capital city in uneasy move.
