Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks (True Crime)


Trudy Scee - 2009
      Jennie Cyr disappeared in 1977. Jerilyn Towers vanished in 1982. Lynn Willette never came home on a night in 1994. Each woman had a relationship with James Hicks, who in 2000 confessed to murdering them, dismembering their bodies and burying the remains alongside rural roads in Aroostook County. This is their story. Trudy Irene Scee follows Hicks from the North Woods to west Texas, detailing three decades of evasion, investigation and prosecution. She interviews police officers and victims’ families—and meets Hicks at the state prison in Thomaston, where he remains remorseless as he lives out his days behind bars. Thoroughly researched and carefully documented, Tragedy in the North Woods is the definitive history of one of Maine's most ruthless killers.   Includes photos!

Pure Evil - How Tracie Andrews murdered my son, decieved the nation and sentenced me to a life of pain and misery


Maureen Harvey - 2007
    His girlfriend, Tracie Andrews, claimed he had been murdered in a road rage attack and, days later, appeared at a press conference making an emotional appeal for witnesses to the crime. During the days following the attack, the horrific truth about what really happened that night became apparent. It was Tracie who had killed Lee and then tried to cover her tracks with a web of lies. In this compelling and harrowing book, Maureen shares the turmoil of a bereaved mother trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her son while at the same time fighting to bring his killer, who she had welcomed into her home, to justice. She also reveals little-known facts about the investigation and speaks of how her shattered family came through their grief and began to rebuild their lives.

The Silent Twins


Marjorie Wallace - 1986
    As they grew up, love, hate, and genius united to push them to the extreme margins of society and, following a five-week spree of vandalism and arson, the silent twins were sentenced to a grueling twelve-year detention in Broadmoor.Award-winning investigative journalist Marjorie Wallace delves into the twins' silent world, revealing their genius, alienation, and the mystic bond by which the extremes of good and evil ended in possession and death.

Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse--A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them


Patti Feuereisen - 2005
    Patti Feuereisen has been working with teenage girls for twenty-five years and has been a pioneer in helping abused girls find their voices. What she discovered in listening to hundreds of girls was not only that sexual abuse of young girls is in fact epidemic, but if the abuse can be processed when girls are still young-in their teens and early twenties-remarkable healing can take place. Girls and young women who are given an opportunity to speak out will most often go on to thrive as adults; without such an opportunity the traumatic effects of their abuse will often continue to cause them difficulty long into adulthood. Invisible Girls weaves together powerful first-person narratives with gentle guidance and seasoned insights to help girls through the maze of feelings that swirl around the abuse experience. This gives every young woman who struggles with the scars of sexual abuse the courage that comes from knowing that she is not alone, while other girls come out from behind the veil of secrecy to become vibrant, healthy, and whole.

Small-town Slayings in South Carolina (True Crime)


Rita Y. Shuler - 2009
    After working with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division as special agent/forensic photographer for twenty-four years, Rita Shuler has a passion for remembering the victims. In Small-town Slayings, Shuler takes us back in time, showing differences and similarities of crime solving in the past and present and some surprising twists of court proceedings, verdicts and sentences. From an unsolved case that has haunted her for thirty years to a cold case that was solved after fifteen years by advanced DNA technology, Shuler blends her own memories with extensive research, resulting in a fast-paced, factual and fascinating look at crime in South Carolina.

When The Bough Breaks: The True Story Of Child Killer Kathleen Folbigg


Matthew Benns - 2003
    She killed her four children over 10 years. Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura Folbigg died one by one over a 10-year period in similar circumstances - suddenly, unexpectedly and while sleeping. Each was discovered by Kathleen, their mother, who raised the alarm to her husband, Craig, that they were not breathing. When the Folbiggs' marriage fell apart six weeks after the death of their fourth child, Laura, Craig was devastated. It only got worse when he discovered Kathleen's diary in her bedside drawer. Horrified at his wife's ramblings about losing control with the children, her 'terrible thoughts' and her fears she was her 'father's daughter', he took the diary to the police. The diary was the crucial evidence Detective Bernie Ryan had been searching for to confirm his suspicions that the babies had been murdered. With his career and credibility on the line, he made the decision to charge Kathleen Folbigg with the murder of her four innocent babies. No one who knew Kathleen could believe she had murdered her own children. Yet few knew of her tragic past - the fact that her own father had stabbed her mother to death four decades earlier. When The Bough Breaks exposes the secret life of Australia's worst convicted female serial killer, a woman jailed for the unthinkable crime of killing her own children. It raises important issues about parents who do not feel emotionally attached to their children and about the diagnosis of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as a cause of death.

The Smart Girl's Guide to Getting What You Want: How to be assertive with wit, style and grace


Mary Hartley - 2014
    Mary reveals the simple steps you can take to help you relate to other people honestly and openly in every area of your life – at work, with your friends and family and in your love life. You will discover that you can be true to yourself and your needs without hurting or diminishing other people.    • What assertiveness is and why it matters   • How to avoid aggression, passivity and manipulation    • Tips for handling tricky situations including put-downs and dealing with bullies    • Mastering assertive body language and communication Packed with practical strategies and exercises, this book will show you how to be confident, assured and proactive – with style.

A Hunt for Justice: The True Story of a Woman Undercover Wildlife Agent


Lucinda Delaney Schroeder - 2006
    Fish and Wildlife Service. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed--and endangered--her life. She posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story--a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.

Dimensions of Human Behavior: The Changing Life Course


Elizabeth D. Hutchison - 2003
    It examines general patterns of human behavior in age-graded periods, sources of diversity in life course trajectories, and unique life stories. It is multidimensional in scope and current in theory and research. This completely revised second edition maintains the use of case studies to help students appreciate the diversity of life course trajectories, and all chapters have been updated to reflect social trends and new developments in theory and research. To reflect the trend toward finer gradations in life phases, this edition addresses nine age-graded periods instead of the six presented in the first edition: Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth; Infancy and Toddlerhood; Early Childhood; Middle Childhood; Adolescence; Young Adulthood; Middle Adulthood; Late Adulthood; and Very Late Adulthood. The Changing Life Course is the companion volume to Person and Environment (ISBN 0-7619-8765-7). The two volumes are also available as a Two-Volume Kit (ISBN 0-7619-8803-3). An Instructor′s Manual containing chapter summaries, suggested classroom activities and discussions, and essay and multiple choice questions is also available (ISBN: 0-7619-8804-1).

Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer


Steven Nickel - 1989
    Ness follows up his Untouchables fame with a search for America's first serial killer in Cleveland, Ohio

Becoming Unbecoming


Una - 2015
    Other kids are into punk or ska, but Una is learning to play "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings on the guitar, and she thinks it’s a really good song. There's another song, chanted on the terraces by Leeds United fans. It might not have made it on to Top of the Pops, but the boys all sing it on the walk home from school: "One Yorkshire Ripper . . . There’s only one Yorkshire Ripper . . . One Yorkshire Ri-pper . . ."  A serial murderer is at large in West Yorkshire and the police—despite spending more than two million man-hours hunting the killer and interviewing the man himself no less than nine times—are struggling to solve the case. As this national news story unfolds around her, Una finds herself on the receiving end of a series of violent acts for which she feels she is to blame. Unbecoming explores gender violence, blame, shame, and social responsibility. Through image and text Una asks what it means to grow up in a culture where male violence goes unpunished and unquestioned. With the benefit of hindsight Una explores her experience, wonders if anything has really changed and challenges a global culture that demands that the victims of violence pay its cost.

Crane: Sex, Celebrity, and My Father's Unsolved Murder


Robert David Crane - 2015
    His eldest son, Robert Crane, was called to the crime scene. In this poignant memoir, Robert Crane discusses that terrible day and how he has lived with the unsolved murder of his father. But this storyline is just one thread in his tale of growing up in Los Angeles, his struggles to reconcile the good and sordid sides of his celebrity father, and hi

Ten Days in a Mad-House


Nellie Bly - 1887
    In 1887, 23-year-old reporter Nellie Bly had herself committed to a New York City asylum for 10 days to expose the horrific conditions for 19th-century century mental patients.

Daddy's Little Secret: A Daughter's Quest to Solve Her Father's Brutal Murder


Denise Wallace - 2016
    In her quest to assist the detectives, the daughter and author discovers deadly secrets that could help her father's killer escape the death penalty, should she come forward.From the Book: "He cruised by slowly, peering intently over his steering wheel at the well-manicured grounds. Though he had been brought up in the Bible Belt of North Carolina, Wes had not attended worship services there. He had gone to the church on this day for another reason: Derek Carney.Carney was a twenty-two-year-old white youth who had been sleeping on the church grounds. Wes wanted to once again offer him a place to stay for the night and was hoping the young man would take him up on the offer this time. The young heroin addict had discovered that he could shoot up in the bathroom of the church despite his filthy, disheveled appearance and not get caught. Most other churches kept their facilities locked at night, but the pastor, Reverend Bill Withers, had a notoriously kind heart. The first time he had come across Carney sleeping on the church lawn, he had awoken him, invited him in for counsel, and taken him to breakfast.As Wes passed in his car the reverend gave him a wave from the open door of the church. Wes waved back at him and grinned, then threw his head back and took a long drag on his Marlboro cigarette."From the author: What surprises me about the book is my love of Florida that comes through. Not only is the book an inside look at the complex and fascinating psyche of my father, it is also a historical look at south Florida and it's colorful past. The reader gets to experience places like E. R. Bradley's Saloon on the island of Palm Beach, where patrons were known to have danced on the bar as it became a rowdy party scene after dark.

L.A. '56


Joel Engel - 2012
    Glamorous. Prosperous. The place to see and be seen. But beneath the shiny exterior beats a dark heart. For when the sun goes down, L.A. becomes the noir city of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential or Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins novels. Segregation is the unwritten law of the land. The growing black population is expected to keep to South Central. The white cops are encouraged to deal out harsh street justice. In L.A. ’56, Joel Engel paints a tense, moody portrait of the city as a devil weaves his way through the shadows.While R&B and hot jazz spill out of record shops and clubs and all-night burger stands, Willie Fields cruises past in his dark green DeSoto, looking for a woman on whom he can bestow the gift of his company. His brilliant idea: Buy a tin badge in the five-and-ten to go along with his big flashlight and Luger and pretend to be an undercover vice cop. The young white girls doing it with their boyfriends in the lovers’ lanes dotting the L.A. hills would never say no to a cop. Into the car they go for a ride downtown on a “morals charge,” before he kicks out the young man in the middle of nowhere and takes the girl for a ride she’ll spend a lifetime trying to forget.There’s a bad guy on the loose in the City of Angels.Enter Detective Danny Galindo—he’d worked the Black Dahlia case back in ’47 as a rookie. The suave Latino—one of the few in the department—is able to move easily among the white detectives.  Maybe it’s all those stories he’s sold to Jack Webb for Dragnet. When Todd Roark, a black ex-cop, is arrested, Galindo knows he’s innocent. But there’s no sympathy for Roark among the white cops on the LAPD; Galindo will have to go it alone.There’s only one problem: The victims aren’t coming forward. The white press ignores the story, too, making Galindo’s job that much more difficult. And now he’s fallen in love with one of the rapist’s first victims. If he’s ever found out, he can kiss his badge good-bye.With his back up against a wall, Galindo realizes that it will take some good old-fashioned Hollywood magic to take down a devil in the City of Angels.