Eve Lazarus

The poignant and very human drama of a 1914 maritime disaster that claimed the lives of more passengers than the TitanicOn May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,056 passengers and a crew of 423. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves.Over a thousand people died that night, claiming the lives of more passengers than either the Titanic or the Lusitania, and the tragedy stands as the worst maritime disaster during peacetime in Canadian history.Investigative journalist and author Eve Lazarus draws on a trove of historical documents, including small-town newspaper reports, the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, and first-hand accounts passed down through personal letters and family lore, to tell the story of the wreck and its aftermath through the eyes of the survivors. Through these records, as well as interviews with experts and descendants of the passengers, Lazarus recounts the story from both a Canadian and a Norwegian perspective and investigates why many of the accounts regurgitated in newspapers and books for over a hundred years are wrong. The result is an absorbing and utterly stirring narrative that uncovers tales of heroism and sacrifice, human endurance, and modern-day shipwreck hunters.Beneath Dark Waters is an epic chronicle that restores the Empress of Ireland--largely forgotten in the shadow of the Titanic disaster--as well as its survivors and victims to their rightful place in maritime history.With black-and-white photos.

Eve Lazarus (Cold Case Vancouver) investigates murder and missing persons cases that have perplexed and fascinated British Columbians for years.In her book Cold Case Vancouver, crime historian and reporter Eve Lazarus used investigative skills to shine a light on the city's most baffling unsolved murders. In Cold Case BC, Lazarus casts her gaze more widely on long forgotten and unsolved murder cases throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. These include teenager Molly Justice, who was murdered on the outskirts of Victoria after taking the bus home from work, and a follow-up to the tragic 1948 Babes in the Woods story of two children found murdered in Stanley Park, whose names were finally revealed this year in a story broken by Lazarus herself. There's also the tale of four police officers in the 1960s who committed a string of robberies that culminated in the biggest heist in Vancouver's history. Their reign of terror ended with one of the officers murdering his family before killing himself. Or were they all killed by someone else? Lazarus also looks at some of the province's most intriguing missing persons cases, such as three-year-old Casey Bohun, who vanished from her bed in the middle of the night, and the Jack family of four, who left Prince George to work in a logging camp along the infamous Highway of Tears but were never seen again. Interviews with law enforcement, forensic experts, and family and friends of the victims add new life to these historical cases, some of which date back to World War II. The book also includes some cases that have been solved, revealing the painstaking investigative work and new forensic technology that ultimately brought about closure for victims' families. Meticulously researched, Cold Case BC is a fascinating true crime book that reveals startling details about British Columbia's criminal past.

Cold Case Vancouver delves into fifty years of some of Vancouver's most baffling unsolved murders. In 1953, two little boys were found murdered in the city's storied Stanley Park, and who remain unidentified to this day. In 1975, a country singer was murdered just as she was on the verge of an amazing career. And in 1994, Nick Masee, a retired banker with connections to the renegade Vancouver Stock Exchange, disappeared along with his wife Lisa, their bodies never found. Cold Case Vancouver is an intriguing whodunit for true-crime aficionados and armchair detectives. Eve Lazarus's previous books include Sensational Vancouver.

History books typically show Vancouver as a pioneer city built on forestry, fisheries, and tourism, but behind the snow-capped mountains and rain forests, the Vancouver of the first half of the 20th century was a seething mass of corruption. The top job at the Vancouver Police Department was a revolving door with the average tenure for a police chief of just four years. In those early years, Detective Joe Ricci's beat was the opium dens and gambling joints of Chinatown, while LurancyHarris-the first female cop in Canada-patrolled the high-end brothels of Alexander Street. Later, proceeds from rum running produced some of the city's iconic buildings, cops became robbers, and the city reeled from a series of unsolved murders. But Vancouver is more than bookies, brothels, and bootleggers-the city also produced legendary women, world-class entertainers and ground-breaking architecture. Sensational Vancouver is a fully illustrated popular history book about Vancouver's famous and infamous, the ordinary and the extraordinary, filtered through the houses in which they lived. Sensational Vancouver covers legendary women including Elsie MacGill, Phyllis Munday, Nellie Yip Quong and Joy Kogawa; high-end brothels, unsolved murders, and the homes and buildings of artists, architects and entertainers including Frederick Varley, Arthur Erickson, Bryan Adams, and Michael Bublé. Includes a Walking Tour map of historic Strathcona and Chinatown. Praise for At Home with History: "You might call her the Sherlock Holmes of home history. Lazarus's stories bring Vancouver's past back to life." -the Outlook "A mix of old black-and-white street-scene photos, jovial stories, and unique neighbourhood profiles, the book crushes the idea that Vancouver is a city without history." -The Georgia Straight "exceptional incidents in ordinary houses and ordinary people in exceptional houses." -The Vancouver Sun "Lazarus reveals the hidden stories of a number of Vancouver's heritage homes, setting each within the larger context of its neighbourhood bootleggers rub shoulders with financiers, prostitutes with police, murderers with mayors." -The Vancouver Courier

The follow-up to Eve Lazarus's successful 'At Home with History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver's Heritage Homes', 'Sensational Victoria' gives us a glimpse into aspects of Victoria rarely talked about in the tourist brochures or flowery garden guidebooks. 'Sensational Victoria' covers legendary women, including Emily Carr, Nellie McClung, Gwen Cash, Sylvia Holland, and Myfanwy Pavelic; prominent madams and their brothels; murders in the capital-five ranging from 1898 to 1992; and, the homes of limners (painters of ornamental decoration), writers, and entertainers, including Herbert Siebner, Elza Mayhew, Pat Martin Bates, Robin Skelton, Carole Sabiston, Bruce Hutchison, Alice Munro, David Foster, Spoony Sundher, and Nell Shipman. Lavishly illustrated throughout with archival and contemporary photographs, 'Sensational Victoria' is a must-read for both history buffs and regular visitors to The Garden City. "This has already been a stellar year for books about localhistory. If you're still looking for a gift, there are more than a dozen top-quality choices on the shelves, from books on Victoria City Hall and the University of Victoria to ones on the Japanese community and Government Street. This late arrival, 'Sensational Victoria', is one of the year's best." - 'Times Colonist (Victoria)'

'At Home with History' is a collection of real life stories that bring to life the glamorous and not-so-glamorous social histories of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver-stories of brothels and bootleggers, secret rooms, and Shakespearean-style murders. An Italian family survives the depression by selling booze and sandwiches from their eastside home. A Shaughnessy mansion headquarters the Klu Klux Klan and then a children's hospice. A secret radio room is uncovered during renovations. Every home has a social history and a genealogy that tells a tremendous amount about the history of the times and offers up a sense of place. Current home-owners are only temporary custodians, part of the chain in the ongoing narrative of the house. People change, styles change, colours change, cars change, but through it all, the house remains a central fixture and the structure for the stories in 'At Home with History'. "Want to know which Shaughnessy mansion was a former Ku Klux Klan headquarters or which Strathcona house guitarist Jimi Hendrix once lived in? You'll find the answers in 'At Home With History'. - The Vancouver Courier