Every small town has a moment when the real world abruptly intrudes, shattering the town's notions of itself and its people. For citizens of Marshall, Michigan, that moment came August 18, 1967. Nola Puyear was working downtown at the Tasty Cafe that morning when she received a package. She opened it and was instantly killed in a fiery explosion. In the months that followed, law enforcement and prosecutors wrestled with a crime that to all appearances was senseless. Evidence recovered from the blown-up restaurant, including a bottle of pills that had been tainted with lye, suggested a concerted plot to murder Mrs. Puyear. But why had someone wanted to kill the well-liked woman, by all accounts a pillar of her close-knit community? For that matter, was Marshall really the quaint paradise it seemed to be? Secret Witness brings to light startling new evidence and freshly uncovered facts to address these and other questions that, to this day, surround one of Michigan's most brutal murders. Based on extensive interviews with surviving prosecutors, police, and witnesses, Blaine Pardoe re-creates the investigation that pried into Marshall's dark underbelly and uncovered the seamy private lives led by some of the town's citizenry but led to only tenuous theories about the bombing. The book also examines the pivotal role played by the Secret Witness program, an initiative by the Detroit News that offered rewards for anonymous tips related to violent crimes. What's ultimately revealed is the true depth of evil that occurred in Marshall that day. Every small town has dirty little secrets. This time, they were deadly.

How a vicious bombing murder on Main Street shattered the small town of Marshall, Michigan

Lab technician Stephanie Alberts was terrified. A crazed killer was threatening her. He'd been in her house, he'd taken her daughter. He wanted her to falsify important DNA evidence—or else. Stephanie could comply with his demands…or she could do what she'd vowed never to do again. She could trust a man. Stephanie knew Detective Reid Peters was hell-bent on rescuing her child and keeping them both safe. But the stolen kisses between Stephanie and the sexy cop were a dangerous distraction. Dare she hope that he could offer her and her lonely little girl what they needed most?

Gabriel Thatcher has never forgotten the love of his life, Helen, who traveled around India with him on one memorable vacation and then abandoned him 25 years ago, while pregnant with their child. Maddie Cambay is a successful young actress currently starring in a musical at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre. These two seemingly very different people are brought together by a strange set of circumstances that involve a horrific murder trial and a secret that Gabriel must have the strength to reveal, so that true justice is done.

The story follows a female protagonist Constantia Dudley and her relationship with the mysterious Ormond. The Dudley family lives in New York where they get victimized by a trusted employee who embezzles their money and leave them in huge debt. They are forced to move to Philadelphia where they endure the loss of their mother, a yellow fever epidemic, rigors of winter and the exactions of landlords. Constantia, the daughter of the family, manages to keep the family afloat by her efforts and determination. Her luck changes when she meets Ormond, a wealthy military projector and conscientious atheist, who falls in love with her. Ormond helps the Dudley family to rise from poverty and makes numerous efforts to win Constantia's heart. The Secret Witness thematically focuses on the ways in which individuals change in reaction to their social environments. The novel thoroughly explores the republicanism and republican values common to the early American nation.

As it tells the story of Constantia Dudley, from her family's financial collapse to her encounters with a series of cosmopolitan revolutionaries and reactionaries, Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond; or The Secret Witness (1799) develops a sustained meditation on late-Enlightenment debates concerning political liberty, women's rights, conventions of sex-gender, and their relation to the reshaping of an Atlantic world in the throes of transformation. This edition of Ormond includes Brown's Alcuin (1798), an important dialogue on women's rights and marriage, as well as his key essays on history and literature, along with selections from contemporary writings on women's education and revolution debates that figure in the novel's background and in the charged atmosphere of the late 1790s.