When I started writing mysteries, beginning with St. Martin’s Malice Award-winning Southern Fried,I wanted to get the medical, investigative, and courtroom details right. What better resource than good first-hand accounts from professionals who do those things every day? I love traditional, play-fair mysteries and the puzzles they present. But I also love writers who get the technical details right while also writing engaging novels I can get lost in. Nothing better than curling up with a good mystery.
Nancy Pickard is one of my favorite authors, starting with her Jenny Cain series. The Whole Truth, featuring true-crime writer Marie Lightfoot, was a shift for her. The novel simultaneously follows Marie as she researches the case of a dangerous serial killer and as she writes about it, which gives an interesting insight into the difficulties of living in a world where crime is real.
"Nancy Pickard pushes at the presumed limits of [crime fiction]" said the Los Angeles Times Book Review, praising the award-winning creator of the Jenny Cain mysteries. Now, Pickard blurs the line between fiction and reality in a novel of gripping intensity, and premieres a superb new heroine: true-crime author Marie Lightfoot. For her next surefire bestseller, Marie is covering the trial of a Florida killer -- a case that penetrates her own life, layer by disturbing layer.
Whether real like Ted Bundy, or imagined like Hannibal Lecter, few killers of our time are in the same league as Raymond Raintree.…
ALONE WITH HER NEW HUSBAND on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman, combing the beach, finds an odd aluminum container washed up out of the lagoon, and beside it on the sand something glitters: a gold tooth in a scorched human skull. The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the bestseller Helter Skelter, was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what really happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise.…
I am a queer writer who lovers to read and write mystery and crime fiction. The history of these genres is often full of homophobic stereotypes and scapegoating of queer characters. While I think it’s important to show queer characters as flawed, I also want to make sure to celebrate the contributions of queer writers to these messy, wonderful genres.
I adore historical mysteries, particularly those that confront the unsavory realities of racism, sexism, and homophobia in our not-so-distant pasts. This book delves into all of these in such a striking, fully inhabited way.
What I loved most about this book was the immediacy and urgency of its voice, which drew me in from the first page and never let me go. It’s a harrowing story, and the narrative frame gives it a pace that always manages to drive forward while still allowing enough space for the setting to come to life.
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“A blistering historical thriller.” — Entertainment Weekly
A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this breathtaking debut that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London—a gripping historical thriller with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests.
All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly…
The author, editor, or ghostwriter of more than 100 book titles, GlennStout loves to mine microfilmed newspaper archives and specializes in deeply reported historical narrative non-fiction that brings the past to life. Many of his titles have intersected with the Roaring Twenties, including Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Changed the World, now in development for Disney+ as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley. A long-time aficionado of noir and true crime, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid was the culmination of more than fifteen years of dogged research, a story The Wall Street Journal called “a hell of a yarn--worthy of an HBO hoodlum epic like Boardwalk Empire.”
The Roaring Twenties wouldn’t have roared quite as loud without Prohibition. And without George Remus, who cornered the bourbon market while enjoying a lifestyle pulled from the pages of The Great Gatsby – and who probably murdered his wife along the way - the era would have been a lot less liquid.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic true crime story of the most successful bootlegger in American history and the murder that shocked the nation, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
“Gatsby-era noir at its best.”—Erik Larson
An ID Book Club Selection • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN
In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a…
As an academic, I have been researching Canadian police and criminal justice history since the 1980s and I teach courses on the history of policing, crime, drugs and homicide, and capital punishment. In 2014 I began to cover a high-profile murder trial in my region of Canada and ended up writing a best-selling book on the case. The Oland case reinforced my interest in true crime, both as a research topic and a cultural phenomenon. True crime, whether set in the distant past or contemporary times, offers writers and readers alike fascinating forays into specific societies and communities as well as human nature.
We all know that Grisham writes best-selling fiction that has been turned into several Hollywood blockbusters. But the most frightening book by this former small-town defence lawyer is his only work of non-fiction, an account of the wrongful conviction of Ronald Keith Williamson of the 1982 sex murder of Debra Sue Carter. Williamson, who was low-hanging fruit for police and prosecutors in Ada, Oklahoma, languished in prison for 11 years before being exonerated by DNA evidence. This book should be mandatory reading for police, prosecutors, and judges and is a useful reminder that public opinion and justice are often mutually exclusive.
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A gripping true-crime story of a shocking miscarriage of justice, from international bestselling thriller author John Grisham.
In the baseball draft of 1971, Ron Williamson was the first player chosen from Oklahoma. Signing with Oakland, he said goodbye to his small home town and left for California to pursue his dreams of glory.
Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits - drinking, drugs and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and…
Working as a prosecutor, trial lawyer for defendants, and as a magistrate, I’m always bothered by the misconception most people have of our criminal justice system. Unfortunately, cops are crooked, judges are corrupt, and witnesses lie on the stand. Not everyone, not every day, but more often than you would ever imagine. I write true crime books about cases where the underlying focus is on officials who are incompetent, derelict in their duties, or simply downright corrupt. The cases are always suspenseful, but justice is rarely served, and both the defendant and the public are the ones who lose.
Everyone loves Harper Lee, but not everyone knows her background as a reporter.
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members, but with the help of a savvy lawyer he escaped justice for years until a relative assassinated him at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend himself.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who spent a year in town reporting on the Maxwell case and many more trying to finish the book she called “The Reverend.” In this well-written true-crime story, Cep brings to life the horrifying murders, the courtroom drama, and the racial politics of the Deep South while offering a deeply moving portrait of Harper Lee.
A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE 2020 CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION A SUNDAY TIMES, ECONOMIST AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
'A triumph on every level. One of the losses to literature is that Harper Lee never found a way to tell a gothic true-crime story she'd spent years researching. Casey Cep has excavated this mesmerizing story and tells it with grace and insight and a fierce fidelity to the truth.' DAVID GRANN, author of Killers of the Flower Moon _____________________________ The stunning…
The one thing you’ll find in common about the books I recommend and the books I write is the attention to detail. As a retired police officer, I know that it was often the smallest of details that helped solve a crime. In my books, you’ll find an inordinate amount of information that was never known to the public, and I think that’s what truly holds a reader’s interest. Killing Women is the true story of serial killer Don Miller, and you’ll be abhorred at what he did to his victims. Are you ready for his release in 2031?
This book is absolutely fascinating to me. When I write, I strive to include painstakingly detailed accounts of the crimes that were never known to the general public, and this book goes into every minute detail regarding the 1913 murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan in Atlanta, Georgia. Mary’s body was discovered in the basement of Atlanta’s National Pencil Factory, and it culminated in the conviction and death sentence of Leo Frank. Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was ultimately kidnapped and lynched two months after the commutation. I considered this a powerful example of investigative journalism with largely unknown details. It’s a gripping account of a time period in this nation’s history that could best be forgotten.
On April 27, 1913, the bludgeoned body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was discovered in the basement of Atlanta’s National Pencil Factory. The girl’s murder would be the catalyst for an epic saga that to this day holds a singular place in America’s collective imagination—a saga that would climax in 1915 with the lynching of Leo Frank, the Cornell-educated Jew who was convicted of the murder. The case has been the subject of novels, plays, movies and even musicals, but only now, with the publication of And the Dead Shall Rise, do we have an account that does full justice to…
I fell in love with Australian history on a school camp to Beechworth, which was also my first introduction to Ned Kelly. As I got older, after having already tried to establish a career trajectory as an English teacher, I realised my passion for writing and history could help me create the books and media that I wished I could access, as well as be a place to store all those decades of research sitting in my head. My fascination with psychology, true crime, and Australian colonial history naturally reached a meeting point with the Australian bushrangers: the bandits that terrorised Australia for over a hundred years, the most infamous of whom was Ned Kelly.
This book was revelatory for me as it was the first book about Ned Kelly I read that was neutral about Ned himself. Every other book I had come across to that point was focused on either lionising Ned or demonising him, while this was more concerned with the legal processes which put him on the gallows. It really highlighted for me the way that, in many ways, Ned was his own worst enemy but the cards were well and truly attacked against him by the end.
Ned Kelly - Australia's beloved national icon - was once just a bushranger who had to be punished for his crimes. In 1880, everyone wanted him dead. There are many stories that form the Kelly myth. But the side of the story rarely told is what really happened in the 137 days between Ned's last stand at Glenrowan and the day the hangman's noose was placed around his neck. Who was with him in his last hours, and why did he have so many powerful enemies? Ned Kelly's Last Days exposes the blatant cover-ups, the corruption and the rampant press…
I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian in the rural South of the United States. Gradually, I began to see the good and the bad in the church community and social community I loved as a child (and still love). My realizations led to tension in my heart, and that led to the creation of stories, both fiction and non-fiction. My list of five books is a kind of cornerstone (or touchstone?) of some of my present notions about our lives on earth before we each join the Majority.
This book, about racism, among other matters, helped open my eyes to the humanity of all people and showed me, in particular, the ways that cruelty and racism exist in our cultures and subcultures. When I read this book, I was fresh out of five years in the Air Force (1971) and had just experienced the caste system of military life.
Prior to that, I'd lived, as a child and teenager, in a community in which racism and fundamentalist religion were taken for granted as givens of the universe. When I read this book, I realized the power of literature to open a person to meanings previously absent in their life.
Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month.
'[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction' Ralph Ellison
Reckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself…
The book had the overall format of "mystery," but the way the various characters interacted and the themes that were involved were much deeper than a "run-of-the-mill" murder.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Alternatingly heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require.”—The Washington Post
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • PEOPLE’S BOOK OF THE WEEK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar
Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up…
