Each week we look at a collection of a few books on a topic. You can explore the books on your own, or use them as a foundation for building a display in your library! Check out our Unsolved Mysteries flyer, or create one for yourself.
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The world is full of strange and fascinating happenings but here are a sampling of some of our own homegrown American mysteries for you to ponder, and maybe solve.
The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold: The Unsolved Mystery of the American Socialite Who Vanished in 1910 by Charles River Editors“In December 1910, a wealthy young woman, thought to be sheltered and above reproach, goes missing shortly after being seen in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The police are called in and begin to question those closest to her, only to have her father, a wealthy manufacturer, insist it must be foul play and that his daughter was on good terms with her entire family. Likewise, he claims that though she was in her mid-20s and in the prime of life, she had no serious romantic attachments. The mother tearfully backs these claims up. Eventually, far different information leaks out, like the fact that the victim was an aspiring writer who kept much about her work a secret, that she had been trying to cut ties with her family for some time, and, most interesting of all, that there certainly was a boyfriend, and that her family had tried to hide their relationship.
Arnold was a young, well-known socialite whose disappearance was front page news on the East Coast in the early 20th century, and over 100 years later, armchair gumshoes continue trying to piece together the puzzle over her fate. In an era before other famous disappearances like that of the Lindbergh baby and Jimmy Hoffa became grist for writers, it was Dorothy Arnold who left people wondering and speculating. To this day, the mystery remains unsolved and, except for periodic stories and lists about enduring mysteries, largely forgotten. The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold: The Unsolved Mystery of the American Socialite Who Vanished in 1910 looks at one of the early 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold like never before.”
Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper by: Geoffrey Gray
“”I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”
That was the note handed to a stewardess by a mild-mannered passenger on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was also the start of one of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of American true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline before parachuting into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again.
Starting with a crack tip from a private investigator, author Geoffrey Gray plunges into the murky depths of the decades-old mystery to chase down new clues and explore the secret lives of the cases’s cast of characters and most promising suspects, including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk hero; Karl Fleming, a respected reporter whose career was destroyed by a D.B. Cooper scoop that was a scam; and Barbara (nee Bobby) Dayton, a transgender pilot who insisted she was Cooper herself.
The case of D.B. Cooper is a modern legend that has obsessed and cursed his pursuers for generations. Now with Skyjack, Gray obtains a first-ever look at the FBI’s confidential Cooper file, uncovering new leads in the infamous case and providing readers with explosive new information.
The Mary Celeste: An Unsolved Mystery from History by:Jane Yolen
“The Mary Celeste was discovered adrift on the open sea by another ship in 1872 — with no sign of captain or crew. What happened? Did the crew mutiny? Were they attacked by pirates? Caught in a storm? No one ever found out.
Inside this book are the clues that were left behind and the theories of what people think happened aboard that ship. Become a detective, study the clues, and see if you can help solve this chilling mystery from history.”
“Did Leif Ericsson beat Columbus to America? What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? Did Pocahontas really save John Smith? Did Davy Crockett die at the Alamo? What really happened to Amelia Earhart, and was she a spy? Who killed JFK?
Unsolved Mysteries of American History re-creates the most mystifying events of our past, following some of our greatest historians as they search for the elusive answers. Spanning more than five centuries—from Leif Ericsson and Columbus through Watergate and Iran-Contra—Aron makes sense of all the latest discoveries and speculations. Here is everything you could ever want from a detective story: dramatic twists and turns, intellectual challenges, frustrating dead-ends, murderous mayhem, and thrilling espionage.”
“Wandering alone with burros and pack horses through California and the Southwest for five years in the early 1930s, on voyages lasting as long as ten months, Ruess became friends with photographers Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange, swapped prints with Ansel Adams, took part in a Hopi ceremony, learned to speak Navajo, and was among the first “outsiders” to venture deeply into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely a little-known wilderness. When he vanished without a trace in November 1934, Ruess left behind thousands of pages of journals, letters, and poems, as well as more than a hundred watercolor paintings and blockprint engravings.
Everett Ruess is hailed as a paragon of solo exploration, while the mystery of his death remains one of the greatest riddles in the annals of American adventure. David Roberts began probing the life and death of Everett Ruess for National Geographic Adventure magazine in 1998. Finding Everett Ruess is the result of his personal journeys into the remote areas explored by Ruess, his interviews with oldtimers who encountered the young vagabond and with Ruess’s closest living relatives, and his deep immersion in Ruess’s writings and artwork. More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess stirs the kinds of passion and speculation accorded such legendary doomed American adventurers as Into the Wild’s Chris McCandless and Amelia Earhart.”
“What if the 1587 Lost Colony of Roanoke was not lost? What if the survivors left Roanoke Island, North Carolina and found their way to Georgia? That is the scenario scholars contemplated when a series of engraved stones were found in the 1930’s. The first, found near the Chowan River in North Carolina, claimed that Eleanor Dare and six other settlers had survived a horrible Indian attack which wiped out the rest of the colony. Among the dead were Eleanor’s daughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, and Eleanor’s husband Ananias. The remaining Dare Stones, more than forty in number, told a fantastic tale of how Eleanor and the survivors made their way overland, first to South Carolina, and then to Georgia. If true, North Carolina stood to lose one of its most cherished historical legends. Author David La Vere weaves the story of the Dare Stones with that of the Lost Colony of Roanoke in a tale that will fire your imagination and give you pause at the same time. In this true story that shook the world during the 1930s and early 1940s, the question on everyone’s mind was: Had the greatest mystery in American history — the Lost Colony — finally been solved?”