Lately Thomas's Books

The Vanishing Evangelist

The Aimee Semple McPherson Kidnapping Affair

By: Lately Thomas

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The Vanishing Evangelist

The Aimee Semple McPherson Kidnapping Affair

By: Lately Thomas

During the afternoon of May 18, 1926, and auburn-haired woman whose name was virtually an American household word went for a swim in the Pacific. She was not seen to come out of the water. Thousands of Californians who had thronged to hear the dynamic Aimee Semple McPherson preach at her floodlit Angelos Temple were stunned at the news of her disappearance. Two people died in the attempt to find her body. Services were held for her at the Temple and a memorial fund was collected. Meanwhile, however, letters had begun to come in, demanding $500,000 ransom for the return of Sister Aimee. And five weeks after the vanished, Aimee turned up in a Mexican border town with a circumstantial story of having been kidnapped and then imprisoned in a desert shack, and of having escaped on foot across miles of sandy wastes. The missing shepherd was welcomed back to life with great rejoicing by the Temple flock. But certain skeptics—among them the Los Angeles district attorney—had doubts about her story. Why was no shack to be found that would fit her description? Why was she neither sunburned nor thirsty when she returned? And who was the mysterious “Miss X,” so remarkably like the evangelist, who had occupied, with a “Mr. McIntyre,” a rented honeymoon cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea while Aimee was gone? These questions led to a grand-jury investigation with sensational surprised of its own, and eventually brought the evangelist and certain others into court, where the disclosures made were as startling—and as hilarious—as anything that had preceded... “The whole story is one of the funniest episodes from the harebrained 1920s....It has been told in great and amusing detail....”—GILBERT HIGHET “It’s more fun than a barrel of—well, Holy Rollers.”—LESLIE HANSCOM, New York Telegram and Sun “It is a story far too fantastic for fiction; nobody would believe it if it appeared between the covers of a novel...”—FREDERIC BABCOCK, Chicago Tribune

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Page Count

573

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789120500

ISBN 13

9781789120509

A Debonair Scoundrel

An Episode in the Moral History of San Francisco

By: Lately Thomas

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A Debonair Scoundrel

An Episode in the Moral History of San Francisco

By: Lately Thomas

Originally published in 1962, this book tells the flamboyant story of Abe Ruef and San Francisco’s infamous era of graft. In the year 1906, San Francisco was rocked by two calamitous earthquakes. Nature herself was responsible for one; a man named Ruef was responsible for the other. Abraham Ruef (1864-1936), known as Abe Ruef, was a rogue of innumerable refinements. A classical scholar, a wit, a bon vivant, he was also a political boss who not only picked the city’s officials—among them, “Handsome Gene” Schmitz, San Francisco’s “bassoon mayor”—but picked the city’s pockets as well. When he was finally arraigned for graft, Ruef attempted to appoint himself District Attorney to prosecute the case! In A Debonair Scoundrel, Lately Thomas reconstructs the little known but fantastic career and its gaudy, dramatic setting: a city thrown into wild disorder; fighting in the courts reeking with corruption; kidnappings, and flying bullets with overtones of slapstick comedy and suspense. The men who saw to Ruef’s undoing were relics of a bygone West: millionaire Rudolph Spreckels, who tried to reform his own class; Fremont Older, the Evening Bulletin crusading editor—and others, such as Teddy Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst. Their encounter with Abe Ruef is wittily described by Lately Thomas, author of The Vanishing Evangelist, who has brought his magnificently creative gifts to a book as brilliant and rambunctious as the fabulous era he describes.

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Page Count

694

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789121272

ISBN 13

9781789121278

The Vanishing Evangelist

The Aimee Semple McPherson Kidnapping Affair

By: Lately Thomas

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The Vanishing Evangelist

The Aimee Semple McPherson Kidnapping Affair

By: Lately Thomas

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

573

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789120500

ISBN 13

9781789120509

A Debonair Scoundrel

An Episode in the Moral History of San Francisco

By: Lately Thomas

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Debonair Scoundrel

An Episode in the Moral History of San Francisco

By: Lately Thomas

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

694

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789121272

ISBN 13

9781789121278

Book's by Lately Thomas

The Vanishing Evangelist

The Vanishing Evangelist

A Debonair Scoundrel

A Debonair Scoundrel

The Vanishing Evangelist

The Vanishing Evangelist

A Debonair Scoundrel

A Debonair Scoundrel

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