Furious Hours

Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

By: Casey Cep

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY Time, LitHub, Vulture, Glamour, O Magazine, Town and Country, Suspense Magazine, Inside Hook

New York Times Best Seller

“Compelling . . . at once a true-crime thriller, courtroom drama, and miniature biography of Harper Lee. If To Kill a Mockingbird was one of your favorite books growing up, you should add Furious Hours to your reading list today.” —Southern Living

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.

My 1st AUDIBLE book.Due to some health problems it has become more & more difficult to hold a book.

This was my Book Club book. I was pleased with this experience and even mentioned that it was superior to reading it myself. I enjoyed the reader, I wasn't looking for things to criticize but was appreciative that I was able to hear the book thank you. looking forward to hearing our future Book Club selections. I already have books for the rest of 2019

Couldn’t pick just one

I didn’t know Siri/Alexa/the voicemail message voice did audiobooks. It really sounds like the narration actor read each word from the dictionary aloud as an individual audio track, and the publisher just remixed them to create the sentences from the book.
It makes it very easy to zone out, especially at times when the author delivers into the history of insurance. That said, it is a pretty interesting history.

The book is good.

Fabulous

Better than a Harper Lee biography - so well written and put together- a real joy for a non fiction reader.

Interesting era and history

I was not sure what you expect of this book when I bought it. But loved learning about the author, the history of the area and about her relationships.

To Kill A Mockingbird has always been

among my favorite books of all time. I knew very little about Harper Lee before this book. It's hard to say that I have any profound new respect for her after this book, but I did find this book full of interesting stories while laying out the foundation or basis for some of Lee's stories she researched in effort to write about. I was definitely entertained by the author in this Bio on Nell Harper Lee.