From the renowned chronicler of law-and-order in Gilded Age New York City, the sensational grave robbery of A. T. Stewart, “The Merchant Prince of Manhattan,” one of the wealthiest men in American history
Bag of Bones
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for J. North Conway’s
The Big Policeman: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Byrnes, America’s First, Most Ruthless,
and Greatest Detective
“Creating period atmosphere by quoting extensively from newspaper accounts of the sensational crimes Byrnes solved, Conway portrays his subject’s cleverness and excesses with a flawed-hero flavor that should draw in true-crime fans.”
—Booklist
“An essential read for those interested in police work, detective stories, and New York City history.”
—Library Journal
“A fascinating, fast-moving account of one of the most polarizing and influential figures of 19th-century New York. Conway brings ‘the big policeman’ to life.”
—Daniel Stashower, author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar
Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
“A treasure trove of information not only on larger-than-life pioneering detective Thomas Byrnes but also on law-and-order in wide-open nineteenth-century Manhattan.”
—David Pietrusza, author of Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the
Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series
Praise for J. North Conway’s
King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America
“Engrossing . . . Conway skillfully paints a backdrop of fierce and flamboyant personalities who paraded across the Gilded Age, from Brooklyn Bridge engineer John Roebling to Marm Mandelbaum, ‘queen of the criminals.’ . . . [H]e capably recounts his story against a background of glitter and greed.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A page-turning account of one of the most brazen crimes of our time.”
—Reader’s Digest
“Conway, a college prof and ex-newspaper man, covers this ancient tale in a way that makes it feel like a hot news story.”
—New York Post
From the Inside Flap
In 1878, two years after the death of multi-millionaire A. T. Stewart, his body was stolen from St. Mark’s Churchyard. The ghoulish crime, the bumbling chase for the culprits, the years-long ransom negotiations, and the demise of the Stewart retail empire fed a media frenzy. When his widow eventually exchanged $20,000 for a burlap bag of bones on a country road, not everyone was convinced that “The Merchant Prince of Manhattan” was really home.
A. T. Stewart had been a pioneer of the department store business, a man who rose from the flood of Irish immigration to a place alongside names like Astor, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller. Treated as the black sheep of New York’s affluent Gilded Age society, the Stewarts relied heavily on their friend and confidante, the conniving Judge Henry Hilton, for entrée into elite social circles. As author J. North Conway details the futile tactics used by police to identify the grave robbers, he also unveils the villainy of Judge Hilton, who not only interfered in the case repeatedly but also dismantled a once-great business empire piece by piece . . . all the while profiting quite nicely. By the end of this fascinating slice of history, one is left to wonder who displayed the greater evil: the grave robbers or Judge
Henry Hilton.
Completing J. North Conway’s widely acclaimed trilogy of Gilded Age New York City Crime—following King of Heists and The Big Policeman—Bag of Bones combines the era’s affluence, decadence, and corruption with a gruesome deed fit for the tabloids of today.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
By ebookreader
Format:Hardcover
I would like to say this is not my genre I usually read. With saying that, I admit I enjoyed the book. It was very well written and the author really took the time to do the research. I've read some negative reviews about the illustrations not being complete but for me I like the idea when I got to do my own research on the subject. I also liked the inclusion of the newspaper headlines. I didn't feel like it was used to be filler but to add depth to the story. All in all I will be picking up the first 2 books in the trilogy.
Format:Kindle Edition
This is an amazing third book in Conway's incredible well-written,researched trilogy on New York City during the Gilded Age.
I love his John Dos Passos style of writing and his use of headlines,poetry and other material totell this amazing story. It takes an incrediblytalented and sure-of-himself writer to do what Conway does.
Love this guy's style!
I love his John Dos Passos style of writing and his use of headlines,poetry and other material totell this amazing story. It takes an incrediblytalented and sure-of-himself writer to do what Conway does.
Love this guy's style!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Glenn Koch
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've known of this story for some time and was very excited to see a book come out on the subject that I hoped would tell about it in greater detail. I ordered it immediately as soon as it popped up in my Amazon suggestions. I would like to be as positive about this volume as possible to respect the time and effort that went into researching and writing this work. My feeling was that it took a story that should have been in a book maybe two thirds the size and filled it out by inserting quasi-facsimilies of original newspaper articles from the time, and by placing a lengthy chapter synopsis at the beginning of each chapter, that all had already appeared as filler at the beginning of the book under a chapter list. And then to make things worse, the first paragraph of each chapter basically restated the same thing that was in this chapter synopsis, and the newspaper articles were often quoted at length right before and right after where they appeared. It left me feeling like I had read the same book twice in quick succession.
I would applaud the publisher for actually publishing a really great, off-beat story, but at the same time think that they did this author a great disservice be trying to fill out the length of the book by adding all of this extra "stuff". Because in the end it detracted from the work overall and also made Mr. Conway's work look sloppy and very badly edited. My suggestion to anyone purchasing this book (and I would suggest it for the story alone), is to ignore the chapter heads and also the newspaper article reprints as you read it. That way I think you will get a truer representation of what Mr. Conway wrote and it will look a heck of a lot less repetitious and poorly edited. On Mr. Conway's part though, he does turn some great phrases, but then he himself tends to repeat those exact same very distinct phrases within his own writing a paragraph or two later. I found that poor style.
This volume is part creepy story and part biography. And it covers both really well. Because Stewart is such a forgotten figure today, it really required telling his whole story at some length to get people to understand the magnitude of his genius and also the magnitude of the crime. I'm sure there will be some who will think that the story of his department store and the Grand Union Hotel, and the Working Woman's Hotel were not needed. But to that I will say right now, they were, and they were long overdue. And I loved the way in which Mr. Conway filled out the many details of the uncovering of the crime and the grisly factoids about what had transpired. It truly was creepy. So on subject and information alone, I would give the book 4 1/2 stars. But because of the lousy job that this publisher did, I have dropped it to three stars. Give Mr. Conway the benefit of the doubt and read the story. It is worth the read. But this publisher does a really lousy job.
One other thing that kind of bothered me was the choice of illustrations; which I think really were needed. Some were overly repetitious, and then others were non-existent. Why did the publisher not choose to show us an image of the Cathedral in Garden City, or the tomb today, or even the town itself as it played such a large part in the Stewart story? Or some photos of what the inside of the store looked like. They do exist, I've seen them. Or perhaps the Grand Union Hotel. I had to go online to find out what the cathedral looked like. And there I found a video tour of the cathedral and of the tomb itself. And better yet, a story of how it was speculated that the bells of the cathedral were connected to the crypt so that if anyone disturbed the bones again it would set them all off like a burglar alarm. With all the stuff that was repeated in the book, skipping a choice factoid like that, even if it was just speculation, is a real oversight.
I would applaud the publisher for actually publishing a really great, off-beat story, but at the same time think that they did this author a great disservice be trying to fill out the length of the book by adding all of this extra "stuff". Because in the end it detracted from the work overall and also made Mr. Conway's work look sloppy and very badly edited. My suggestion to anyone purchasing this book (and I would suggest it for the story alone), is to ignore the chapter heads and also the newspaper article reprints as you read it. That way I think you will get a truer representation of what Mr. Conway wrote and it will look a heck of a lot less repetitious and poorly edited. On Mr. Conway's part though, he does turn some great phrases, but then he himself tends to repeat those exact same very distinct phrases within his own writing a paragraph or two later. I found that poor style.
This volume is part creepy story and part biography. And it covers both really well. Because Stewart is such a forgotten figure today, it really required telling his whole story at some length to get people to understand the magnitude of his genius and also the magnitude of the crime. I'm sure there will be some who will think that the story of his department store and the Grand Union Hotel, and the Working Woman's Hotel were not needed. But to that I will say right now, they were, and they were long overdue. And I loved the way in which Mr. Conway filled out the many details of the uncovering of the crime and the grisly factoids about what had transpired. It truly was creepy. So on subject and information alone, I would give the book 4 1/2 stars. But because of the lousy job that this publisher did, I have dropped it to three stars. Give Mr. Conway the benefit of the doubt and read the story. It is worth the read. But this publisher does a really lousy job.
One other thing that kind of bothered me was the choice of illustrations; which I think really were needed. Some were overly repetitious, and then others were non-existent. Why did the publisher not choose to show us an image of the Cathedral in Garden City, or the tomb today, or even the town itself as it played such a large part in the Stewart story? Or some photos of what the inside of the store looked like. They do exist, I've seen them. Or perhaps the Grand Union Hotel. I had to go online to find out what the cathedral looked like. And there I found a video tour of the cathedral and of the tomb itself. And better yet, a story of how it was speculated that the bells of the cathedral were connected to the crypt so that if anyone disturbed the bones again it would set them all off like a burglar alarm. With all the stuff that was repeated in the book, skipping a choice factoid like that, even if it was just speculation, is a real oversight.
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
