Books with author David Colby

In rich first-person narrative, Dogtown tells the strange, dark story of a wilderness ghost town that has enthralled artists, writers, and eccentrics—and of a brutal murder committed there. Documenting its history and lore, East explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power. The area known as Dogtown—an isolated colonial ruin and the surrounding 3,600-acre woodland in historic seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts—has always exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is woven through with tales of hallucinations, pirates, ghost sightings, witches, drifters, and violence. A 1984 murder there continues to loom large in Gloucester’s collective psyche: a mentally disturbed local man crushed the skull of a schoolteacher as she walked the woods. In alternating chapters, East interlaces the story of this murder with Dogtown’s bizarre history. The colonial settlement was a haven for former slaves, prostitutes, and witches until it was abandoned 180 years ago. Since then, Dogtown has inspired various people, including a millionaire who carved Protestant precepts into its boulders; the Modernist painter Marsden Hartley, whom Dogtown saved from a crippling depression; the drug-addled poet Charles Olson; a coven of witches that still holds ceremonies there today; and the murderer, who spent much of his life in Dogtown’s woods. The murder tapped a vein of thinking that has quietly endured in Gloucester for centuries: some people rallied around Dogtown protectively, but others blamed it for the tragedy. In luminous, insightful prose, Dogtown tells an evocative tale of a community both haunted and bound together by its love of this strange, forgotten place and its denizens.

In the latest biography in the innovative 10 Days series, author David Colbert takes you through the ten most important days in the life of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter. Her colorful canvases introduced the American and European art world to the cultures of her native country. Kahlo survived a serious bus accident and began painting to pass the time during her difficult recovery. Drawing on personal experiences, Kahlo used bright colors and vivid symbolism to reflect classic religious Mexican tradition and indigenous Mexican culture—along with images that reflected her often turbulent life.

This is the story of a shy young man who finds it difficult when it comes to meeting girls. When by chance he meets a girl while visiting a friend, they fall in love and marry and set out on life's journey, enjoying a wonderful life together. His new wife is a career woman who soon rises to the top of her chosen profession; the young man takes a little longer but finally finds his niche and enjoys a career in the world of computing. But as luck would have it, he is made redundant at an early age. Unable to find new employment his wife suggests that her husband takes the opportunity to take up writing; something he had always wanted to do since his school days. Through hard work he is successful in his new career; but fate soon steps in to shatter his world; life was going to be very different for him.