"The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird. 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...

Winner of the Gold Dagger Award
A fascinating true crime story that details the rise of modern forensics and the development of modern criminal investigation.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher terrorized the French countryside, eluding authorities for years, and murdering twice as many victims as Jack The Ripper. Here, Douglas Starr revisits Vacher's infamous crime wave, interweaving the story of

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A collection of true stories about people whose fixations propel them into unfathomable and often deadly circumstances. --Back cover.

"Like James Ellroy's, My Dark Places, DOWN CITY is a gripping narrative built of memory and reportage, and Leah Carroll's portrait of Rhode Island is sure to take a place next Mary Karr's portrayal of her childhood in East Texas and David Simon's gritty Baltimore. Leah Carroll's mother, a gifted amateur photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was four years old. Her father, a charming alcoholic who hurtled between...

"New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Daniel Stashower returns with American Demon, a historical true crime starring legendary lawman Eliot Nes."--

"Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders that America Forgot is a chilling, unflinching exploration of American crimes of the twentieth century and how one serial killer managed to slip through the cracks--until now. In fall 1967, friends Linda Tomaszewski and Christine Rothschild are freshmen at the University of Wisconsin. The students in the hippie college town of Madison are letting down their hair--and their guards. But amid the peace...

Chronicles the high-profile murder trial of Jodi Arias, focusing on Arias's history before her relationship with victim Travis Alexander and how their Mormon faith played a role in their breakup and Alexander's murder. "On June 9, 2008, the butchered body of Travis Alexander was found in his Mesa, Arizona home. The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: with twenty-nine knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis...

"Sarah Weinman brings together an exemplary collection of thirteen recent true crime tales by some of the most exciting journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. With an introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe, this collection showcases true crime writing across the broadest possible spectrum and reflects on why crime stories are so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader" -- from publisher.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent...

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2007 brings together the murderers and muscle men, the masterminds, and the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features

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