Here are 72 books that Catch and Kill fans have personally recommended if you like
Catch and Kill.
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I was a broadcast journalist for many years and I’m fascinated by the experiences of others doing that work. I love everything about it in my rearview mirror! From gossip about how famous newspeople behave behind closed doors to the nitty gritty of gathering facts to shaping a story–once it’s in your blood, it’s there for life. I’ve also spent a fair bit of energy defending journalism from people who are only guessing how it happens. Each of these books reveals a different but genuine reality about it. I hope you find them as compelling as I did.
Connie Chung was a trailblazer in network TV news. But she’s sometimes overshadowed by the likes of Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley. Not only did she have to deal with blatant sexism, but racism as well. She was one of the first to experience deception and gaslighting by a powerful male counterpart. (I’m looking at you, Dan Rather.)
I love that she fought back and ultimately turned defeat into a better life for herself and her family. She’s still in the record books for many firsts on network television, and her story about the inner workings of network news is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S PICK A LA TIMES AND PEOPLE BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH
"This delightful memoir is filled with Connie Chung's trademark wit, sharp insights, and deep understanding of people. It's a revealing account of what it's like to be a woman breaking barriers in the world of TV news, filled with colorful tales of rivalry and triumph. But it also has a larger theme: how the line between serious reporting and tabloid journalism became blurred." - Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I was a broadcast journalist for many years and I’m fascinated by the experiences of others doing that work. I love everything about it in my rearview mirror! From gossip about how famous newspeople behave behind closed doors to the nitty gritty of gathering facts to shaping a story–once it’s in your blood, it’s there for life. I’ve also spent a fair bit of energy defending journalism from people who are only guessing how it happens. Each of these books reveals a different but genuine reality about it. I hope you find them as compelling as I did.
I could identify with a lot of what Katie went through in her long career as a television icon. Of course, my experiences were on a much smaller scale, but Katie’s memoir showed me that the same b.s. in corporate media happens at every level. She names names and tells everything we’ve ever wondered about Matt Lauer and her (now defunct) friendship with her longtime costar.
This book is simply another highlight in a career full of them.
This heartbreaking, hilarious, and brutally honest memoir shares the deeply personal life story of a girl next door and her transformation into a household name.
For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious, heartbreaking memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life - a story she’s never shared, until now. Of the medium she loves, the one that made her a household name, she says, “Television can put you in a box; the flat-screen can flatten. On…
I was a broadcast journalist for many years and I’m fascinated by the experiences of others doing that work. I love everything about it in my rearview mirror! From gossip about how famous newspeople behave behind closed doors to the nitty gritty of gathering facts to shaping a story–once it’s in your blood, it’s there for life. I’ve also spent a fair bit of energy defending journalism from people who are only guessing how it happens. Each of these books reveals a different but genuine reality about it. I hope you find them as compelling as I did.
Author Tamara Cherry found the words to articulate what so many journalists like me have felt and experienced while covering stories. She explores the question of whether reporters revictimize victims of tragedies. Not only that, but she also looks at the impact on the reporter, too.
I haven’t read another book that does this as well with so much data to back up her theories. I have also knocked on the door of a bereaved parent because a producer assigned it to me, and felt sick to my stomach, wishing I’d gotten into another line of work instead. We don’t have to do it this way and this book proves it.
A groundbreaking and thorough examination of the trauma caused by the media covering crimes, both to victims and journalists, from a respected journalist and victim advocate
In The Trauma Beat, an eye-opening combination of investigative journalism and memoir, former big-city crime reporter Tamara Cherry calls on her award-winning skills as a journalist to examine the impact of the media on trauma survivors and the impact of trauma on members of the media. As Tamara documents the experiences of those who were forced to suffer on the public stage, she is confronted by everything she got wrong on the crime beat.…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I was a broadcast journalist for many years and I’m fascinated by the experiences of others doing that work. I love everything about it in my rearview mirror! From gossip about how famous newspeople behave behind closed doors to the nitty gritty of gathering facts to shaping a story–once it’s in your blood, it’s there for life. I’ve also spent a fair bit of energy defending journalism from people who are only guessing how it happens. Each of these books reveals a different but genuine reality about it. I hope you find them as compelling as I did.
I think most investigative journalists aim to be as good as Kevin Donovan.
This creepy double murder of a billionaire drug company founder and his wife is still unsolved and the investigation was botched from the start. Donovan’s knowledge of the case and discovery of more potential suspects and witnesses boggle the mind. It’s not surprising that police are now following Donovan’s leads.
A top journalist crosses the yellow tape to investigate a shocking high-society crime.
Billionaires, philanthropists, socialites . . . victims. Barry and Honey Sherman appeared to lead charmed lives. But the world was shocked in late 2017 when their bodies were found in a bizarre tableau in their elegant Toronto home. First described as murder-suicide — belts looped around their necks, they were found seated beside their basement swimming pool — police later ruled it a staged, targeted double murder. Nothing about the case made sense to friends of the founder of…
I am an old movie fan and a novelist who has been writing historical fiction about show business since 2010. As a stickler for detail, I use oodles of old Hollywood biographies and other research sources to learn everything I can about my subjects and weave as accurate a tale as I can. My Forgotten Actresses series is up to four books, with plenty more under construction.
Los Angeles, 1937. Lillian Frost has traded dreams of stardom for security as a department store salesgirl . . . until she discovers she's a suspect in the murder of her former roommate, Ruby Carroll. Party girl Ruby died wearing a gown she stole from the wardrobe department at Paramount Pictures, domain of Edith Head.
Edith has yet to win the first of her eight Academy Awards; right now she's barely hanging on to her job, and a scandal is the last thing she needs. To clear Lillian's name and save Edith's career, the two women join forces.
I love to read about strong, independent, imperfect women who are capable of getting themselves out of their own messes. That's why my female protagonists are strong, independent, imperfect women who don't need a man to save them.
Detective Renée Ballard is a woman I hate to love. She sleeps during the day in a tent on the beach–who needs a solid roof over your head when you’re working graveyard for the L.A.P.D.–and occasionally shags the lifeguard. She is a loner, super smart, super tough, touchy, relentlessly driven, bitchy. What’s not to like?
This book got pretty scary. I like to be scared, and there are three more in the series.
In this first installment of the Renée Ballard series, #1 bestselling author Michael Connelly introduces a "complicated and driven" young detective fighting to prove herself on the LAPD's toughest beat (The New York Times). Renée Ballard works the midnight shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing few, as each morning she turns everything over to the daytime units. It's a frustrating job for a once up-and-coming detective, but it's no accident. She's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night Ballard catches two assignments she doesn't want to part…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
As an investigative journalist, I’ve spent my career interviewing and trying to understand the worst of humanity: murderers, child molesters and rapists. They are all predators, but rape is personal for me. I was a young journalist starting my career when a serial rapist assaulted my neighbor. He entered many things uninvited—homes, bedrooms, and my mind. For twenty years, I was obsessed—learning everything I could about him and sexual assault. I read these books to understand why the justice system and society sometimes fail survivors. Yet these remarkable survivors still manage to heal their trauma–at least, that’s what I found in each of these books.
This is a story about a fight for justice—a fight that even Erika Krouse may not have anticipated when she embarked on this five-year journey.
I was captivated by how Krouse walks a delicate tightrope, blending her narrative of her own sexual violence with her crusade for justice for a remarkable young college woman who was attacked at a party by football players and recruits.
Winner of the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is 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.…
Half a century ago (hard to believe!), as a young newspaper reporter, I began every day at a police station, reading the log and talking to the watch commander. Occasionally, I was able to contact the detectives as well. For me, the way crimes and criminal investigations unfolded, and the personalities of the officers involved, were multi-dimensional and touched with surprising, and often unexpected, moments of humor. In my reading as well as my writing, I seek a balance between authenticity and a sense of the absurd, without which the experience of solving murders—real or fictional—could become emotionally crushing.
A mystery narrated by a dog? It sounded like a gimmick to me, until I started reading. Honestly, this dog thinks and reacts like a dog, and he’s hilarious! The tightly woven storyline—Chet “belongs” to a detective who’s investigating a girl’s disappearance—pulled me along nonstop, but mostly I fell in love with the writing. As a rule, I enjoy experiencing the world from a fresh perspective, along with a storyline that turns and twists and makes perfect sense in an unexpected way, as this one does. Trigger warning: Chet the pooch has some scary and even near-death moments en route to his happy ending.
The first book of the New York Times bestselling Chet and Bernie mystery series, an “enchanting one-of-a-kind novel” (Stephen King) that is “nothing short of masterful” (Los Angeles Times).
Chet, the wise and lovable canine narrator of Dog on It, and Bernie, a down-on-his-luck private investigator, are quick to take a new case involving a frantic mother searching for her teenage daughter. This well-behaved and gifted student may or may not have been kidnapped, but she has definitely gotten mixed up with some very unsavory characters. With Chet’s highly trained nose leading the way, their hunt for clues takes them…
As a longtime Angeleno, I’ve read a lot about the dark underbelly of our dysfunctional metropolis, both in the news and in fiction. I try to incorporate the City of Angels as a strong presence in my writing, and when I read other writers who have put Los Angeles at the center, it gives me a sense of things the way they really are, a glimpse at a deeper reality. I see the detectives in LA noir and crime fiction as inextricably intertwined with the city, their weaknesses, and their emotional quandaries emerging from this place.
I don’t think Connelly’s intention was to write horror, but his visceral description of the corpses and the minutia of murder in this novel made my stomach churn. An unpleasant experience, yes, but it’s vivid and effective writing. Harry Bosch is a detective with weakness for a specific type of woman, and of course he gets mixed up with Julia, a hot tomato who’s new to the force, and of course she messes up his investigation into the bones. You might want to kick Bosch in the caboose for not thinking more lucidly, but eventually he manages to outsmart his villains.
The outstanding eighth Harry Bosch thriller from the award-winning No. 1 bestselling author of The Lincoln Lawyer. City of Bones is featured in Amazon Prime's BOSCH TV series.
When the bones of a boy are found scattered in the Hollywood Hills, Harry Bosch is drawn into a case that brings up dark memories from his past.
Unearthing hidden stories, he finds the child's identity and reconstructs his fractured life, determined that he won't be forgotten. At the same time, a new love affair with a female cop begins to blossom - until a stunningly blown mission leaves him in more…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a child, finding reality both overwhelming and boring, I was drawn to movies. My father, a New York City disc jockey also at odds with reality, had contacts at a sixteen-millimeter movie rental company. He often brought films home, shown in a makeshift screening room he set up in our basement. Singin’ in the Rain, the classic musical, made a great impression there. Its funny first scene at a movie premiere featured a pompous star’s ennobling account of his early days, comically contradicted by the tacky, scrounging, painfully undignified truth. What lay behind Hollywood's glamor, smiles, and success soon became as interesting to me as what was on the screen.
An excellent nonfiction account of an actual Hollywood killing, this is a well-written and researched investigation of the (as yet) unsolved 1922 shooting of director William Desmond Taylor. The murder was committed right when scandals, including Fatty Arbuckle’s, besieged an ascendant Hollywood.
Also of interest: A Murder in Hollywood by Casey Sherman, which recaps the killing of Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner’s gangster boyfriend, supposedly by her teenage daughter, Cheryl. This crime inspired entertainment from Harold Robbin’s potboiler, Where Love Has Gone, to Woody Allen’s self-serious movie, September.
New York Times Bestseller Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry. By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime, and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood's glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies-including the murder of William Desmond…
