Thirteen at Dinner

The Pastons family of Norfolk, England, has long been known to medieval scholars for its large collection of personal correspondence, which has survived five centuries. Revealing a wealth of information about manners, morals, lifestyle, and attitudes of the late Middle Ages, the letters also tell the story of three generations of the fifteenth-century Paston family that treads like a historical novel full of memorable characters: Margaret Paston, the indomitable wife and mother who fought the family's battles; her husband, John Paston I, tough, hardheaded, and thrice confined to Fleet Prison but never yielding to his enemies; daughter Margery, who scandalized family and friends by falling in love with the Paston bailiff, Richard Calle; lighthearted, chivalric Sir John; and cheerful, sensible John III, who against all odds succeeded in marrying for love.

A Medieval Family traces the Pastons history from 1420, through the stormy Wars of the Roses, to the early 1500s. The family's story, extracted from their letters and papers and told largely in their own words, shows a side of history rarely revealed: the lives and fortunes not of kings and queens but of ordinary middle-class people with problems, tragedies, and moments of happiness.

How did police officers do their jobs four decades ago during some of the nation's most turbulent and violent times?

These aren't one-dimensional Hollywood characters. They're society's soldiers, real people cut from whole cloth. They try to help when they can, bristle when they're insulted, retaliate when they're attacked, bleed when they're injured, laugh when they're amused (sometimes inappropriately) and get ready for the next shift.

Without bulletproof vests, portable radios and other equipment considered essential today, often riding alone, they developed a "One riot-one ranger" mentality by necessity. This book will put you beside some of them, sometimes inside their heads-om radio calls, both mundane and life-threatening, in interrogations, in hostage situations, undercover arrests, investigating burglaries, robberies, rapes and murders.

A sourcebook of homicide, suicide, rape and prostitution cases from 18th century France, most from previously untranslated material. Sources include periodicals, Bastille records, police reports and contemporary true crime accounts. Within each subject, material - most of it from the period - is presented in approximate chronological order. These cases introduce people from all walks of life: nobility, clergy, servants, writers, tradespeople, performers. Some were well-known, many were obscure. Some of the cases are bizarre, some sadly familiar in their broad lines. Husbands killing wives, sons killing parents; people killing themselves over money, love or simple despair; children prostituted by their parents, women gleefully prostituting themselves; rape by groups and rape by friends, rapes described by the rapists themselves.

Each of the larger categories is preceded by a look at Old Regime law on the subject. The cases themselves are rich with period detail and close-up views of daily life. Above all, the main subject here, through all these varied personalities and situations, is human nature, often shown in its rawest form.