Erika Krouse

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

The Story of a Private Investigation

Part memoir and part literary true crime, the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open. Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too. Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.

Tell Me Everything

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Paul Holes

Robin Gaby Fisher

My Life Solving America's Cold Cases

From the detective who found the Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America's toughest cold cases and the rewards-and toll-of a life solving crime.

I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don't even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I'm drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can't shake.

Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I've had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It's only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.

When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.

But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy--even fatherhood--because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It's something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. "I don't know if I can solve your case," I whisper. "But I promise I will do my best."

It is a promise I know I can keep.

Unmasked

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Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad

A behind-the-scenes look into the careers of New York detectives charged with solving cold cases from the past half century follows their often exhaustive pursuits of leads and use of new technologies in the face of department politics. By the author of Waiting for My Cats to Die. 50,000 first printing.

The Restless Sleep

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#truecrime #nonfiction #paperback #crime 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Rhode Island

The Method and Madness of Monsters

This comprehensive examination into the frightening history of serial homicide documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural aspects of serial murder, from Ancient Rome to notorious contemporary cases.

Serial Killers

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Martha Elliott

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

An astonishing portrait of a murderer and his complex relationship with a crusading journalist Michael Ross was a serial killer who raped and murdered eight young women between 1981 and 1984. In 2005, the state of Connecticut put him to death by lethal injection. His crimes were horrific, and he paid the ultimate price for them. When journalist Martha Elliott first heard of Ross, she learned what the world knew of him—that he had been a master at hiding in plain sight. Elliott, a staunch critic of the death penalty, was drawn to the case when the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Ross’s six death sentences. Rather than fight for his life, Ross requested that he be executed because he didn’t want the families of his victims to suffer through a new trial. Elliott was intrigued and sought an interview. The two began a weekly conversation—and developed an odd form of friendship—that lasted over a decade, until Ross’s last moments of life. Over the course of his twenty years in prison, Ross had come to embrace faith for the first time in his life. He had also undergone extensive medical treatment. The Michael Ross whom Elliott knew seemed to be a different man from the monster who was capable of such heinous crimes. This Michael Ross made it his mission to share his story with Elliott in the hopes that it would save lives. He was her partner in unlocking the mystery of his own evil. In The Man in the Monster, Martha Elliott gives us a groundbreaking look into the life and motivation of a serial killer. Drawing on a decade of conversations and letters between Ross and the author, readers are given an in-depth view of a killer’s innermost thoughts and secrets, revealing the human face of a monster—without ignoring the horrors of his crimes. Elliott takes us deep into a world of court hearings, tomblike prisons, lawyers hell-bent to kill or to save—and families ravaged by love and hate. This is the personal story of a journalist who came to know herself in ways she could never have imagined when she opened the notebook for that first interview. Praise for The Man in the Monster: “Sturdily written and well researched . . . The book will appeal to those curious about why killers kill, and those who can stomach what they learn.” —The Boston Globe “A fascinating, in-depth analysis for true-crime buffs, sociologists, and others grappling with nearly impossible-to-comprehend actions and their consequences.” —Booklist

The Man in the Monster

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Patricia Cornwell

Jack the Ripper - Case Closed

Examines the century-old series of murders that terrorized London in the 1880s, drawing on research, state-of-the-art forensic science, and insights into the criminal mind to reveal the true identity of the infamous Jack the Ripper. Reprint.

Portrait of a Killer

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Paul Pringle

Florida

Peril and Power in the City of Angels

For fans of Spotlight and Catch and Kill comes a nonfiction thriller about corruption and betrayal radiating across Los Angeles from one of the region's most powerful institutions, a riveting tale from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who investigated the shocking events and helped bring justice in the face of formidable odds.

On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul Pringle thought should have taken, at most, a few weeks to check out: a drug overdose at a fancy hotel involving one of the University of Southern California's shiniest stars--Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the head of the prestigious medical school. Pringle, who'd long done battle with USC and its almost impenetrable culture of silence, knew reporting the story wouldn't be a walk in the park. USC is one of the biggest employers in L.A., and it casts a long shadow.

But what he couldn't have foreseen was that this tip would lead to the unveiling of not one major scandal at USC but two, wrapped in a web of crimes and cover-ups. The rot rooted out by Pringle and his colleagues at The Times would creep closer to home than they could have imagined--spilling into their own newsroom.

Packed with details never before disclosed, Pringle goes behind the scenes to reveal how he and his fellow reporters triumphed over the city's debased institutions, in a narrative that reads like L.A. noir. This is L.A. at its darkest and investigative journalism at its brightest.

Bad City

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Philip Carlo

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

North Carolina

The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez

Decades after Richard Ramirez left thirteen dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. From watching his cousin commit murder at age eleven to his nineteen death sentences to the juror who fell in love with him, the story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.

The Night Stalker

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#hardcover #nonfiction #lgbt #fiction #truestory #truecrime #crime #youngadult 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Nevada

A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives

This riveting nonfiction book for teens about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment tells the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California.

The 57 Bus

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Like new condition, with no markings or bends. If you were scarred by Go Ask Alice, this book will take you through the wild origins of that groundbreaking book. 

Minnesota

LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

"Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson goes a long way to showing what investigative journalism could be in the right hands . . . this book is undeniably buzzworthy." --Portland Book Review



"An absorbing and unnerving read . . . this book demands to be finished in one sitting." --Booklist

Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud.



In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
 
But Alice was only the beginning.
 
In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis--adolescent suicide--to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities.
 
In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards.
 
Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire.
 
Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.

Unmask Alice

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Alicia Thompson

Massachusetts

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn't exactly conducive to modern dating--and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she's used to suspecting the worst.
 
PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation--if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years.
 
It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he's clearly up to something). It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier--a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers

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Edwin H. Porter

Georgia

A History of the Borden Murders

Lizzie Borden [1860-1927] was tried and acquitted for the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. Speculation continues today about the sensational case that produced a famous nursery rhyme. Although she was acquitted, no one else was ever charged with the murders, and Borden lived out her life in Fall River. Compiled immediately after Borden's sensational trial, the author aims to provide "a connected story of the whole case, commencing with the day of the tragedy and ending with the day that Miss Borden was set free." He touches on such topics as the discovery of the murders, the adjournment of the preliminary hearing and some the many theories that were advanced before any arrests were made. The book is handsomely illustrated with photos and line illustrations of the deceased, the accused, the jury and others.

The Fall River Tragedy

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#paperback #nonfiction #memoir #survival #truecrime 

Connecticut

A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: a Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings

The #1 New York Times Bestseller and inspirational memoir by Michelle Knight, whose survival story gripped the world and continues to inspire and offer hope. Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.

Finding Me

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Masha Gessen

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 264 others. In the ensuing manhunt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and brought to trial. Yet even after the guilty verdict and the death sentence, what we didn't know was why. Why did the American Dream go so wrong for two immigrants? How did such a nightmare come to pass? 

Acclaimed Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen is uniquely able to tell us. A teenage immigrant herself, she returned to Russia to cover firsthand the transformations that wracked the region from the 1990s on. It is there that she begins her astonishing account of the Tsarnaev brothers, descendants of ethnic Chechens deported to Central Asia in the Stalin era. Following the family in their futile attempts to make a life for themselves in one war-torn locale after another and then, as new émigrés, in an utterly disorienting new world, she reconstructs the brothers' struggle between assimilation and alienation, which incubated a deadly sense of mission. And she traces how such a split in identity can fuel the metamorphosis into a new breed of homegrown terrorist, with feet on American soil but sense of self elsewhere. 

Kansas

The Road to an American Tragedy

Look out for Masha Gessen's new book, THE FUTURE IS HISTORY, coming October 2017

"A gripping narrative and a stunning piece of investigative journalism... [that] gives us the human side to the story of two young men who must be understood as more than monsters" (Christian Science Monitor)

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and wounding more than 264 others. In the ensuing manhunt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and brought to trial. Yet even after the guilty verdict and the death sentence, what we didn't know was why. Why did the American Dream go so wrong for two immigrants? How did such a nightmare come to pass?

Acclaimed Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen is uniquely able to tell us. A teenage immigrant herself, she returned to Russia to cover firsthand the transformations that wracked the region from the 1990s on. It is there that she begins her astonishing account of the Tsarnaev brothers, descendants of ethnic Chechens deported to Central Asia in the Stalin era. Following the family in their futile attempts to make a life for themselves in one war-torn locale after another and then, as new émigrés, in an utterly disorienting new world, she reconstructs the brothers' struggle between assimilation and alienation, which incubated a deadly sense of mission. And she traces how such a split in identity can fuel the metamorphosis into a new breed of homegrown terrorist, with feet on American soil but sense of self elsewhere. 

The Brothers

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This is a vintage book club edition of In Cold Blood, published in 1965. There is no dust jacket, and there is slight wear on the book. Otherwise it’s in great, readable shape, waiting for a good home! 

West Virginia

In Cold Blood (Vintage Book Club Edition)

Gregg Olsen

A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller. #1 New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen's shocking and empowering true-crime story of three sisters determined to survive their mother's house of horrors. After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle's talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother's dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders. Harrowing and heartrending, If You Tell is a survivor's story of absolute evil--and the freedom and justice that Nikki, Sami, and Tori risked their lives to fight for. Sisters forever, victims no more, they found a light in the darkness that made them the resilient women they are today--loving, loved, and moving on.

If You Tell

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Vincent Bugliosi

Curt Gentry

The True Story of the Manson Murder

The inside story behind the Manson killings explains how Charles Manson was able to make his "family" murder for him, chronicles the investigation, and describes in detail the court trial that brought him and his accomplices to justice. Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Reprint.

Helter Skelter

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#paperback #kathryncasey #nonfiction #shattered #truecrime #truestory 

The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder

"Kathryn Casey is one of the best true crime writers today."

--Ann Rule

 

With true crime classics like Descent into Hell and Die My Love, author Kathryn Casey has peered into the darkest corners of the Lone Star State, shedding a fascinating, chilling light on a series of notorious Texas murders. In Shattered, she explores in riveting detail an infamous Houston area crime: the brutal slaying of a young mother and her unborn child by the person closest to them.  Bestselling author Carlton Stowers numbers Kathryn Casey "among the elite of true crime writers," and Shattered--a shocking true story of blood, rage, and betrayal--will only enhance her reputation as one of the best of the best.

Shattered

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David Grann

The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Killers of the Flower Moon

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Ann Rule

"America's best true-crime writer" (Kirkus Reviews) presents an all-new collection of crime stories drawn from her private files and featuring the riveting case of a fraudulent doctor whose lifelong deceptions had deadly consequences.

Dr. Anthony Pignataro was a cosmetic surgeon and a famed medical researcher whose flashy red Lamborghini and flamboyant lifestyle in western New York State suggested a highly successful career. But appearances can be deceiving--and, for the doctor's wife, very nearly deadly. Now, the motivations of the classic sociopath are plumbed with chilling accuracy by Ann Rule.

Along with other shocking true cases, this worldwide headline-making case will have you turning pages in disbelief that a trusted medical professional could sink to the depths of greed, manipulation, and self-aggrandizement where even slow, deliberate murder is not seen for what it truly is: pure evil.

Last Dance, Last Chance

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John Glatt

Oklahoma

The True Story of Lacey Spears, the Seemingly Perfect Mother Who Murdered Her Son in Cold Blood

Mommy blogger Lacey Spears made headlines when she was charged with the murder of her five-year-old son, Garnett. Prosecutors alleged that she had poisoned him with high concentrations of salt through his stomach tube. How could a mother do such a thing to her own son? This is the shocking true story. To the outside world Lacey had seemed like a loving, concerned mother, regularly posting updates on social media about her son’s harrowing medical problems. But in reality, Lacey was a textbook case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. From the time he was an infant, Lacey deliberately made Garnett sick to elicit sympathy from medical professionals as well as her hundreds of followers on Facebook, Twitter, and her own blog. When a Westchester County jury found her guilty of killing Garnett in April 2015, she was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. My Sweet Angel is the definitive account—featuring interviews with Lacey’s family, the investigators who broke the case, even Lacey herself—of an extraordinary case that shocked the world.

My Sweet Angel

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Erik Larson

Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

The Devil in the White City

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Glenn E. Schweitzer

Carol Schweitzer

The Origins of Modern Terrorism

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network is only one of hundreds of terrorist organizations around the world. Others wait for their own cues to follow similar scripts for using modern technologies to terrorize vulnerable populations. In A Faceless Enemy, Glenn Schweitzer provides a sweeping history of the technologies that are at the heart of this new and deadly terrorism and gives us a fuller understanding of the relationships between terrorists and drug traffickers, the potential threat of cyberterrorism, and the now very tangible risks posed by bioterrorism and chemoterrorism. Based on the authors' long careers in science and international politics, and drawing upon interviews with diplomats and intelligence operatives around the globe, A Faceless Enemy is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the complex issues related to terrorism and the future of international security.

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Erika Krouse

Tell Me Everything

Paul Holes; Robin Gaby Fisher

Unmasked

Stacy Horn

The Restless Sleep

Peter Vronsky

Serial Killers

Martha Elliott

The Man in the Monster

Patricia Cornwell

Portrait of a Killer

Paul Pringle

Bad City

Philip Carlo

The Night Stalker

Dashka Slater

The 57 Bus

Rick Emerson

Unmask Alice

Alicia Thompson

Love in the Time of Serial Killers

Edwin H. Porter

The Fall River Tragedy

Michelle Knight; Michelle Burford (As told to)

Finding Me

Masha Gessen

The Brothers

Truman Capote

In Cold Blood (Vintage Book Club Edition)

Gregg Olsen

If You Tell

Vincent Bugliosi; Curt Gentry

Helter Skelter

Kathryn Casey

Shattered

David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon

Ann Rule

Last Dance, Last Chance

John Glatt

My Sweet Angel

Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City

Glenn E. Schweitzer; Carol Schweitzer

A Faceless Enemy

Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City