Orem Library

In 1924 the wife of a Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American. Her supernatural...

Mary McGarvie is a beautiful con artist who, with the help of her young daughter, fools audiences into believing she is psychic. The legendary magician Harry Houdini comes to town with a skeptic's challenge. He is going to give $10,000 to anyone who can correctly 'channel' his mother's dying words. Mary accepts the challenge. Houdini enters into a passionate affair with the charming clairvoyant even as he prepares for the most dangerous stunt of his...

The old-fashioned ghost story has never fallen out of style: Charles Dickens is still best remembered for A Christmas Carol, and Peter Straub, despite his many fine novels, found in the ghost story his most potent tale (Ghost Story, of course!). When Shirley Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw, did they know they were creating their most-remembered works in the horror genre?

In 1814, redcoats burned the White House to the ground. In 1889, Harry Houdini discovered a trick that would save his life. In 1955, the U.S. launched the world's first nuclear submarine. And one family pulled the strings behind the scenes at each of these events: the Cahills--the most powerful family the world has ever known. Now the Cahills have opened their vault and dangerous secrets are pouring out. This book contains three of them--three stories...

Anna Van Housen has a secret. A gifted illusionist, Anna assists her mother, the renowned medium Marguerite Van Housen, in her stage show and séances, easily navigating the underground world of magicians, mediums, and mentalists in 1920's New York. As the illegitimate daughter of Harry Houdini -- or so Marguerite claims -- sleight of hand illusions have never been a challenge for Anna. The real trick is keeping her own gifts secret from her opportunistic...

Offers vignettes from the lives of thirteen Jewish Americans whose achievements, from the colonial period through the present, contributed to women's and worker's rights, medicine, science, fashion, photography, sport, and entertainment.