Book picks similar to
Where There Is Evil by Sandra Brown
non-fiction
true-crime
crime
mystery
I, Mick Gatto
Mick Gatto - 2010
Mick Gatto.Gambler.Underworld veteran.Melbourne gangland survivor.Mick Gatto in his bestselling autobiography finally reveals the man behind the headlines.Gatto's unique position-of knowing all the players in the Gangland Wars but not being involved in drug trafficking-gave him a remarkable perspective to watch the battles unfold.I, Mick Gatto is an extraordinary insight into a colourful and mysterious world that few even know exists.Part of the proceeds of each book sold will be donated to the Royal Children's Hospital.
Alligator Candy: A Memoir
David Kushner - 2016
David Kushner grew up in the suburbs of Florida in the early 1970s, running wild with his friends, exploring, riding bikes, and disappearing into the nearby woods for hours at a time. One morning in 1973, however, everything changed. David's older brother Jon, making a trip to the local convenience store, vanished. This is the story of Jon's murder at the hands of two sadistic drifters and everything that happened after. "Alligator Candy "isn't only the chronicle of Jon's death, it is also the story of how parenting in America changed, casting light on the transition between two generations of children one raised on freedom, the other on fear. Jon's death was one of the first in what turned out to be a rash of child abductions and murders that dominated headlines for much of the 1970s and 80s. It was around this time that milk cartons began to feature the images of missing children, and newscasters began asking, It's 10:00, do you know where you children are? When one of Jon's killers received a parole hearing, David revisited the case that had so haunted him. Marshalling his skills as a journalist, he compiled all the details that he was sheltered from as a child, interviewing neighbors, reporters, cops, and his own family, and combing through yellowed news clippings. Haunting and intimate, "Alligator Candy" is a moving, disturbing, insightful, and inspiring meditation on grief, growth, family, and survival."
Love Letters of Great Men
Ursula Doyle - 2008
However, since all of the letters referenced in the film did exist, we decided to publish this gorgeous keepsake ourselves.Love Letters of Great Men follows hot on the heels of the film and collects together some of history's most romantic letters from the private papers of Beethoven, Mark Twain, Mozart, and Lord Byron. For some of these great men, love is a delicious poison (William Congreve); for others, a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one's heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). Every shade of love is here, from the exquisite eloquence of Oscar Wilde and the simple devotion of Robert Browning, to the wonderfully modern misery of the Roman Pliny the Younger, losing himself in work to forget how much he misses his beloved wife, Calpurnia.Taken together, these letters show that perhaps men haven't changed all that much over the last 2,000 years--passion, jealousy, hope and longing still rule their hearts and minds. In an age of e-mail and texted i luv us, this timeless and unique collection reminds us that nothing can compare to the simple joy of sitting down to read a letter from the one you love.
Murder in Mississippi
John Safran - 2013
A year later, he heard that the man had been murdered – and what was more, the killer was black.At first the murder seemed a twist on the old Deep South race crimes. But then more news rolled in. Maybe it was a dispute over money, or most intriguingly, over sex. Could the infamous racist actually have been secretly gay, with a thing for black men? Did Safran have the last footage of him alive? Could this be the story of a lifetime? Seizing his Truman Capote moment, he jumped on a plane to cover the trial.Over six months, Safran got deeper and deeper into the South, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder – white separatists, black campaigners, lawyers, investigators, neighbours, even the killer himself. And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime, and the world, seemed.Murder in Mississippi is a brilliantly innovative true-crime story. Taking us places only he can, Safran paints an engrossing, revealing portrait of a dead man, his murderer, the place they lived and the process of trying to find out the truth about anything.
Teacher's Pet
Hayley McGregor - 2017
Good looking and charismatic, he was classic schoolgirl-crush material. Hayley was flattered by the attention he gave her, and he soon befriended her parents. Little did they know they were all being groomed. Hayley allowed Mr Willson to do unspeakable things to her, and after the relationship ended it took almost 20 years of guilt and crippling self-esteem issues before a complete breakdown prompted her to tell her parents, and they went with her to the police. This is the shocking true story of a schoolgirl groomed by her teacher, and her courageous journey to heal the wrongs of her past.
A Beautiful Child
Matt Birkbeck - 2004
Serving as a Lt. Colonel in the ROTC, she earned a full scholarship to Georgia Tech University to study aerospace engineering. She was the ultimate girl next door, sweet, generous, and well-adjusted. But Sharon had disturbing secrets so shocking and unique, they took more than a decade to unravel...This is the horrifying true story of a mysterious young woman caught in the violent web of the murderous fugitive she called her father—and a heartrending testament to the profound courage and perseverance of one woman trapped in the grip of extreme evil
Evelyn: A True Story
Evelyn Doyle - 2002
One day he comes home to find his wife has left him. He decides to go to England to find work and is advised to put his children into the state Industrial Schools system for a short time until he returns. When he returns he is told to his horror that the children have been consigned to the state until they are 16. This is the story of how Desmond Doyle fought the Irish legal system to change the law and win back his family. Told through the eyes of Evelyn, Desmond's nine-year-old daughter, this is a heartrending true story.
Son
Jack Olsen - 1983
In March 1981, luck and inspired police work at last produced an arrest, and Spokane shuddered. The suspect was clean cut and conservative…and Gordon Coe’s son.For eighteen months, Jack Olsen researched the cases of Fred and Ruth Coe to try to learn not only what happened within that family, but how and why. He interviewed more than 150 people and built up a portrait not only of that extraordinary family, but of the mind of a psychopath. And searching the memories of the women in Fred Coe’s life, he unearthed a most horrifying question: What is it like to love and live with a man for years—and then discover he is a psychopathic criminal?
And Then She Killed Him
Robert Scott - 2012
After finding the "sugar daddy" she was looking for in Alan Helmick, her new marriage seemed happy. Then, two years later, Alan met a gruesome fate. Returning home from errands, Miriam found him lying in a pool of blood. Miriam showed police a cryptic note warning her to "run, run, run." But Miriam was no distraught housewife. She was a master manipulator always able to stay one step ahead of her unwitting partnerand the lawuntil now.
Case seen on Dateline
Includes dramatic photos.
Praise for Robert Scott and Shattered Innocence
"Compelling and shocking. . .a groundbreaking book." Robert K. Tanenbaum"Fascinating and fresh. . .a fastpaced, informative read." Sue Russell
Please Don't Make Me Go
John Fenton - 2008
When, aged 13, his father brought a charge against him in order to remove him from the family home, John found himself in Juvenile Court – from here he was sent to the notorious St. Vincent’s school, run by a group of Catholic Irish Brothers.Beatings and abuse were a part of daily life – both from John’s fellow pupils, but also from the brothers, all of which was overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Brother De Montfort. Tormented physically and sexually by one boy in particular, and by the Brothers in general, John quickly learnt to survive but at the cost of the loss of his childhood.Please don’t make me go, tells in heart-rending detail the day-to-day lives of John and the other boys – the beatings, the weapons fashioned from toilet chains and stones, the loneliness – but we also see the development of John’s love of reading, his growing friendship with Father Delaney and his best friend, Bernard, and his unstinting love for his mother whom he feared was suffering at the hands of his violent father.A painfully, brutally honest account, Please don’t make me go is also an example of the resilience of the human spirit as it documents how John learnt to survive and come through his ordeal.
Unsolved Child Murders: Eighteen American Cases, 1956-1998
Emily G. Thompson - 2017
Only one in 10,000 are found dead. Yet unsolved child murders are almost a daily occurrence--of nearly 52,000 juvenile homicides between 1980 and 2008, more than 20 percent remain open. Drawing on FBI reports, police and court records, and interviews with victims' families, this book provides details and evidence for 18 unsolved cases from 1956 to 1998.
The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars
Paul Collins - 2011
On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most baffling murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Reenactments of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio — a hard-luck cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor — all raced to solve the crime.What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim whom the police couldn't identify with certainty, and who the defense claimed wasn't even dead. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale — a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.
The Father
Anders Roslund - 2014
All were under 24 years old. All of them would be changed forever as individuals and as a family.This intoxicating, heartbreaking thriller tells the story of how three boys are transformed over the course of their lives from innocent children to the most wanted criminals in Sweden. And of the man who made them that way: their father.
The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz: A True Story of World War II
Denis Avey - 2011
He was put to work every day in a German factory, where he labored alongside Jewish prisoners from a nearby camp called Auschwitz. The stories they told him were horrifying. Eventually Avey's curiosity, kind-heartedness, derring-do, and perhaps foolhardiness drove him to suggest--and remarkably manage--switching places with two of the Jewish prisoners in order to spend a couple of harrowing days and nights inside. Miraculously, he lived to tell about it.Surely deserving of its place alongside the great World War II stories, this is an incredible tale of generosity, courage, and, for one Jewish prisoner whom Denis was able to help, survival. Amazingly, breathtakingly, it is told here for the first time.
Little Prisoners: A Tragic Story of Siblings Trapped in a World of Abuse and Suffering
Casey Watson - 2012
Two frightened little waifs stand before them, hair running wild with head lice, filthy nails and skin covered in scabs. Ashton, aged nine, and Olivia, aged six, are the eldest of five siblings, taken away from their family because they were considered at risk.Originally a temporary, emergency placement, the weeks turn into months. And gradually the children start to feel like they truly belong to a family and to reveal the horror of what happened to them.