A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg

A Carnival of Crime is Hub City's 2026 donor book. To have your name included in the book that you will receive in October, please make a contribution at the $150+ level by July 1. 

Through ten interconnected true-crime stories, this historical account captures a South Carolina county’s most violent decade—a time when bullets felled a mayor, a police chief, and a beloved bookseller, each in separate shocking incidents.

Illustrated with dozens of photographs, the book also delves into the exploits of a crooked local attorney who became one of nation’s most slippery con men, the controversial hanging of a teenaged girl, and the bedlam unleashed when a governor tried to crush the moonshine trade. All this chaos and more unfolds amid Spartanburg’s first economic boom, as cotton mills multiply across the county and the community becomes one of the South’s rising industrial powers, generating many great fortunes.