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James L. Swanson

Biography

James L. Swanson

James L. Swanson is the Edgar Award–winning author of the New York Times bestseller MANHUNT: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer and an executive producer of the 2024 Apple TV+ "Manhunt" series. As a Historic Deerfield Fellow in Early American History, he lived in a pre–Revolutionary War house near the massacre site in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

James L. Swanson

Books by James L. Swanson

by James L. Swanson - History, Nonfiction

In an obscure, 200-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts, there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704. This impregnable barricade, known to early Americans as “The Old Indian Door,” is the sole surviving artifact from one of the most dramatic moments in colonial American history. In the leap year of 1704, on the cold, snowy night of February 29th, hundreds of Indians and their French allies swept down on an isolated frontier outpost to slaughter or capture its inhabitants. The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of survival, sacrifice, family and faith ever told in North America.

by James L. Swanson - History, Young Adult 12+

New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt James L. Swanson creates an adaptation for young people of his adult book Bloody Crimes, a suspense-filled thriller that sheds light on two fallen leaders of the North and South. One man, President Lincoln, assassinated, on his way to the grave. Another man, the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, on the run, soon to be sent to prison. Their actions forever changed the history of a nation.

by James L. Swanson - History, Nonfiction

The assassination of John F. Kennedy has been the subject of enduring debate, speculation and numerous conspiracy theories. But James L. Swanson's account follows the event hour-by-hour, from the moment Lee Harvey Oswald conceived of the crime three days before its execution, to his own murder two days later at a Dallas Police precinct at the hands of Jack Ruby, a two-bit nightclub owner.

by James L. Swanson

The saga that began with MANHUNT continues as James Swanson masterfully weaves together stories of two fallen leaders as they make their final journeys through the bloody landscape of a wounded nation.