True Crime

On the night of October 23/24, 1995 in Prairie Village, Kansas, a fierce, wind-driven fire devastated the luxurious mansion of Dr. Debora Green and her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar. Trapped and burned to death in the flames were twelve-year-old Tim and his six-year-old sister Kelly. Lissa, ten, was barely able to leap to safety from the garage roof into the arms of her mother, who was standing outside the house. When Michael Farrar returned to the...

"A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer-- the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade-- from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding...

Herman W. Mudgett, better known by his alias, H.H. Holmes, is considered America's first-- and most notorious-- serial killer. During the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the basement of his house in Englewood, Illinois contained a torture chamber with crematory. Mudgett confessed to killing 27 people, but legends say the number may be in the hundreds. Selzer reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of...

"In 1874, a young boy named Charley Ross was snatched from his front yard in Philadelphia. The child's father received a letter that read: "Mr. Ross: be not uneasy you son charley bruster be all writ. we is got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand. You wil have two pay us before you git him from us, and pay us a big cent to." Philadelphia had just won the bid to host America's centennial celebration. The country had survived revolution,...

""In this astonishing and powerful work of nonfiction, Green meticulously reports on a series of baffling and brutal crimes targeting gay men. It is an investigation filled with twists and turns, but this is much more than a compelling true crime story. Green has shed light on those whose lives for too long have been forgotten, and rescued an important part of American history" (David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower...

Traces the story of a former police officer who was wrongly accused of rape and kidnapping in 1956 Los Angeles, describing how a Latino detective fell in love with one of the victims and became the defender's only advocate.Los Angeles, 1956. Glamorous. Prosperous. The place to see and be seen. But beneath the shiny exterior beats a dark heart. For when the sun goes down, L.A. becomes the noir city of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential or Walter Mosley's...

The true story of the love triangle murder of Robert Limon-from the New York Times bestselling author of Missing ... and Presumed Dead. In Better off Dead, Michael Fleeman strips away the pleasant veneer of the Silver Lakes neighborhood in California's high desert to tell a shocking story about a headline-grabbing crime. A conversation with handsome young firefighter Jonathan Hearn leads Sabrina Limon, a vivacious blond mother of two, into a steamy...

"In 1964 Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was brutally stabbed to death on her front stoop in plain view of numerous witnesses. Her sensational case provoked an anxious outcry and became the stuff of urban legend. Kevin Cook's "provacative" (Wall Street Journal) investigation upends the simple story we thought we knew. His unprecedented minute-by-minute reconstruction of the crime shatters the fable of the 38 passive witnesses--a myth perpetuated by the...

"The stunning true story of an Alabama serial killer, and the trial that obsessed the author of To Kill a Mockingbird in the years after the publication of her classic novel--a complicated and difficult time in her life that, until now, has been very little examined. Willie Maxwell was a Baptist reverend in Alabama; he also happened to be a serial killer. Between 1970 and 1977, his two wives and brother all died under suspicious circumstances -- each...

Aaron Hernandez was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later reached the Super Bowl. Yet he led a secret life, one that ended in a maximum security prison. All-American Murder is the first book to investigate Aaron Hernandez's first-degree murder conviction and the mystery of his own untimely and shocking death. Drawing on original and in-depth reporting, this is an explosive true story of a life cut short in the...