Edgar Award Winner: True stories of miscarriages of justice, legal battles, and landmark reversals, by the creator of Perry Mason. In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help—it seemed the fate of the “Red-Headed Killer” hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness. Gardner’s intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses, biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder, kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or death row with only one hope—the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and the Court of Last Resort. Featuring Gardner’s most damning cases of injustice from across the country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC.

Life of Father Hecker by Walter Elliott is the biography of Isaac Hecker, an American Catholic priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, a North American religious society of men. Excerpt: "CHAPTER I.—CHILDHOOD II.—YOUTH III.—THE TURNING-POINT IV.—LED BY THE SPIRIT V.—AT BROOK FARM VI.—INNER LIFE WHILE AT BROOK FARM VII.—STRUGGLES VIII.—FRUITLANDS IX.—SELF-QUESTIONINGS X.—AT HOME AGAIN XI.—STUDYING AND WRITING XII.—THE MYSTIC AND THE PHILOSOPHER XIII.—HIS SEARCH AMONG THE SECTS XIV.—HIS LIFE AT CONCORD XV.—AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH XVI.—AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH."