Halls of the Damned is a gripping tale of horror and suspense that transports readers to the eerie, forsaken grounds of Blackwood Asylum. Once a sprawling institution for the mentally ill, the asylum now stands abandoned, its legacy marred by tales of unspeakable horrors, supernatural occurrences, and the dark history etched into its decaying walls. This novel weaves together the narratives of a diverse group of individuals--each drawn to the asylum for their own personal reasons--who unite to explore its haunted corridors and uncover its deepest secrets. As they venture deeper into the asylum's heart, the group encounters more than just the echoes of its tragic past. They come face to face with a malevolent force that has been lurking in the shadows, a presence that feeds on madness and despair. The explorers find themselves in a fight for their lives, challenging their beliefs, fears, and the very fabric of reality. What starts as a quest for answers quickly spirals into a desperate struggle to escape the malevolent grip of the asylum's true occupants. Halls of the Damned masterfully blends elements of psychological horror, paranormal investigation, and historical mystery, creating an atmospheric and tension-filled narrative. The characters' journey through Blackwood Asylum is as much an internal voyage as it is an external one, confronting their own demons as they battle the darkness within the asylum. Their experiences illuminate the thin line between the supernatural and the psychological, revealing the power of human resilience in the face of unimaginable fear. This novel is a compelling exploration of the darkness that lies at the intersection of history, humanity, and the supernatural. It is a story of courage, unity, and the indomitable human spirit's ability to shine a light in the darkest of places. Halls of the Damned invites readers to step into the shadows of Blackwood Asylum, to face the unknown, and to discover the legacy of the damned that becomes a beacon of hope for the future.

First published in the year 1893, famous American writer, journalist Ambrose Bierce's 'The Damned Thing' is a horror short story. This story is written in four parts with separate subtitles (that are comical) to each. These subtitles adds a synical impact to the gothic imagery created inside the story.

The “extraordinary” true story of the St. Louis, a German ship that, in 1939, carried Jews away from Hamburg—and into an unimaginable ordeal (The New York Times). On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany before World War II erupted. Aboard were 937 Jews—some had already been in concentration camps—who believed they had bought visas to enter Cuba. The voyage of the damned had begun. Before the St. Louis was halfway across the Atlantic, a power struggle ensued between the corrupt Cuban immigration minister who issued the visas and his superior, President Bru. The outcome: The refugees would not be allowed to land in Cuba. In America, the Brown Shirts were holding Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden; anti-Semitic Father Coughlin had an audience of fifteen million. Back in Germany, plans were being laid to implement the final solution. And aboard the St. Louis, 937 refugees awaited the decision that would determine their fate. Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts have re-created history in this meticulous reconstruction of the voyage of the St. Louis. Every word of their account is true: the German High Command’s ulterior motive in granting permission for the “mission of mercy;” the confrontations between the refugees and the German crewmen; the suicide attempts among the passengers; and the attitudes of those who might have averted the catastrophe, but didn’t. In reviewing the work, the New York Times was unequivocal: “An extraordinary human document and a suspense story that is hard to put down. But it is more than that. It is a modern allegory, in which the SS St. Louis becomes a symbol of the SS Planet Earth. In this larger sense the book serves a greater purpose than mere drama.”

Deportation is Freedom! is a searing critique of today's immigration systems, a lively yet thought-provoking read that will captivate anyone who cares about the immigration systems that are shaping our world today. It will be of particular interest to social workers and all people politically engaged in immigration campaigning.

The Beautiful and the Damned looks for the first time at the broad social and cultural context for the development of portrait photography in the nineteenth century, showing how social and celebrity portraiture on the one hand, and scientific photography on the other, were different facets of the nineteenth-century fascination with classification and ordering.Between 1860 and 1900, editions of celebrity portraits, as well as the vogue for the carte de visite, fuelled the fashion for collecting and classifying photographs of the face. In an age of rapid industrialization and the growth of the middle classes, the carte de visite became a means of conferring social status, and family albums - which often incorporated photographs of royalty and public figures - were used to position family members within society at large.Photographic portraiture's rapid rise to popularity encouraged its diffusion to other spheres, and the portrait photograph was adopted by the new sciences and technologies to provide empirical evidence for theories of evolution, phrenology, racial types, insanity and criminality. A system of scrutiny or 'surveillance' of the face emerged represented here by extraordinary images from the files of the Parisian police of the nineteenth century, including some of the earliest scene-of-crime forensic photography.The Beautiful and the Damned is a significant addition to an important new area of photographic history. Illustrated with over 100 black-and-white images, this book also provides a comprehensive visual insight into the genre and features work by key figures such as Oscar Rejlander, Bassano, Eugène Atget and Julia Margaret Cameron.