Alan M Clark

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A novel inspired in part by the early gangs of New York, this sprawling adventure is also a western, a coming of age story, and a tale of redemption that carries readers from the streets of infamous Five Points, New York City in the 1840s to Gold Rush era San Francisco. Told from the point of view of two dauntless orphaned children, Alta Mae and Cedric, the narrative provides a fresh and at times innocently humorous perspective on the grim realities for homeless children of the period and the hardships of western migration. Raised on the streets and resorting to petty crime to get by, they are filled with the bigotries their older brother, a nativist Bowery Boy gang member, gave them. He sells them into servitude and joins up to fight in California during the Mexican American War. Since he's the only family the children have ever known, they escape service and head west to find him. With experiences along the way that put the lie to their bigotries, they are no longer the children their brother groomed to hate when they arrive.

In 1884 London, 12-year-old Albert Gladwyck must decide whether to follow his generous heart or learn to harden it in the harsh world in which he lives. As a River Thames scavenger, he has made the find of a lifetime, a wrecked boat full of goods, washed up on the Isle of Dogs and hidden from view. To save himself and his Mum from severe poverty, he must try to make salvage from the wreck before the other mudlarks find it, before the bully, George Hardly, catches up to him, before illness and death from the poisonous river have a say in the matter. This lavishly illustrated novelette gives a glimpse into a time when the pauper child was ubiquitous in London. It is also a fanciful tale about the choices a desperate child might make in such an environment to survive.

We all know about Jack the Ripper, the serial murderer who terrorized Whitechapel and confounded police in 1888, but how much do we really know about his victims? Pursued by one demon into the clutches of another, the ordinary life of Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols is made extraordinary by horrible, inhuman circumstance. Jack the Ripper's first victim comes to life in this sensitive and intimate fictionalized portrait, from humble beginnings, to building a family with an abusive husband, her escape into poverty and the workhouse, alcoholism, and finally abandoned on the streets of London where the Whitechapel Murderer found her. With A Brutal Chill in August, Alan M. Clark gives readers an uncompromising and terrifying look at the nearly forgotten human story behind one of the most sensational crimes in history. This is horror that happened.

A novel that beats back our assumptions about the time of Jack the Ripper. Not the grim story of an unfortunate drunken prostitute killed before her time, but one of a young woman alive with all the emotional complexity of women today. Running from a man wanting her to pay for her crimes against his brother, Mary Jane Kelly must recover a valuable hidden necklace and sell it to gain the funds to leave London and start over elsewhere. Driven by powerful, if at times conflicting emotion, she runs the dystopian labyrinth of the East End, and tries to sneak past the deadly menace that bars her exit.

In Victorian London, the greatest city of the richest country in the world, the industrial revolution has created a world of decadence and prosperity, but also one of unimaginable squalor and suffering. Human degradation, filth, rats, parasites, danger, sorrow, and death are ever-present in its streets. Catherine Eddowes is found murdered gruesomely in the city's East End. The possessions, including clothes--over fifty personal items--carried on her person are listed in the police reports of the crime. Wearing several layers of clothing and having stayed the two night prior to the one of her death in the workhouse casual ward (homeless shelter), the possessions may have been everything she owned in the world. In OF THIMBLE AND THREAT, Alan M. Clark tells the heartbreaking story of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper, explaining the origin and acquisition of the items found with her at the time of her death, chronicling her life from childhood to adulthood, motherhood, her descent into alcoholism, and finally her death. OF THIMBLE AND THREAT is a story of the intense love between a mother and a child, a story of poverty and loss, fierce independence, and unconquerable will. It is the devastating portrayal of a self-perpetuated descent into Hell, a lucid view into the darkest parts of the human heart.

The story in The Door that Faced West is a little known piece of history that takes place in the American South as the 18th century ends and the 19th century begins. At the time, the western frontier still occupied territory east of the Mississippi. The novel is based on actual events involving the early American serial killers, the Harpe brothers, Wiley and Micajah. The Harpes are often considered America's first serial killers. They were land pirates who prowled the wilderness of Tennessee and Kentucky looking for victims. Although a character-driven fiction novel, it is also something of a true crime book. The story is an Early Western, distinguish from traditional westerns by the technology of the period. At the time, firearms were single shot weapons and hand-to-hand combat was much more common. The story unfolding from the point of view of the brothers' third wife, Sadie Rice, the 16 year old daughter of a minister, it provides some education about the limitations of women's rights of the time. As Sadie endures life on the trail in their company, she benefits from the Harpes' ability to defend their own with extreme violence. The deeper into the savage wilderness they travel, the more dependent upon the brothers she becomes. Too late, she realizes that their capacity for violence is, in truth, a ravenous hunger.

Inspired by the true crimes of the Wardlaw sisters. In A Parliament of Crows, the three Mortlow sisters are prominent American educators of the nineteenth century, considered authorities in teaching social graces to young women. They also pursue a career of fraud and murder. Their loyalty to one another and their need to keep their secrets is a bond that tightens with each crime, forcing them closer together and isolating them from the outside world. Their ever tightening triangle suffers from madness, religious zealotry, and a sense of duty warped by trauma they experienced as teenagers in Georgia during Sherman's March to the Sea. As their crimes come back to haunt them and a long history of resentments toward each other boils to the surface, their bond of loyalty begins to fray. Will duty to family hold or will they turn on each other like ravening crows?