Sublime
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On another night of searching, a centuries-old academic journal yielded a reference to a Gaspery J. Roberts. The journal had been devoted to prison reform. The hit sent Olive down a rabbit hole, at the end of which she found prison records from Earth: Gaspery J. Roberts had been sentenced to fifty years for a double homicide in Ohio in the late twe
... See moreEmily St. John Mandel • Sea of Tranquility: A novel
This is really the form that the dilemma takes. It is not solely a question of keeping the body alive; it is rather how not to be killed. Not to be killed becomes the great end, and morality takes its meaning from that center. Until that center is shifted, nothing real can be accomplished. It is the uncanny and perhaps unwitting recognition of this
... See moreHoward Thurman • Jesus and the Disinherited
The great impulse of the courtroom seemed to be to put these people where they could not be seen—and not because they were offended at the crimes, unless, indeed, they were offended that the crimes were so petty, but because they did not wish to know that their society could be counted on to produce, probably in greater and greater numbers, a whole
... See moreJames Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son

Holmes, however, has an idea. “Of course, this blood belongs to a second individual—presumably the murderer, if murder has been committed,” he tells the two policemen. “It reminds me of the circumstances attendant on the death of Van Jansen, in Utrecht, in the year ’34. Do you remember the case, Gregson?” Gregson confesses that he does not. “Read i
... See moreMaria Konnikova • Mastermind
A second body, of a male aged between eighteen and twenty and known only as “Man E,” was found with Ramses III. Wrapped in a ritually impure goatskin and not properly mummified, the body may be that of the guilty prince, according to DNA tests which indicate that he was probably Ramses III’s son. The forensic evidence, including facial contortions
... See moreEric H. Cline • 1177 B.C.
