Within hours, police had a suspect—a vodka-soaked village bumpkin named Anzor Sharmaidze. A tidy explanation quickly followed: It was a tragic accident. US diplomats hailed Georgia’s swift work, and both countries breathed a sigh of relief. Yet the bullet that killed Woodruff was never found and key witnesses have since retracted their testimony, saying they were beaten and forced to identify Sharmaidze. But if he didn’t do it, who did? Those who don’t buy the official explanation think the answer lies in the spy games that played out on Russia’s frontier following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Woodruff was an early actor in a dangerous drama. American spies were moving into newborn nations previously dominated by Soviet intelligence. Russia’s security apparatus, resentful and demoralized, was in turmoil, its nominal loyalty to a pro-Western course set by President Boris Yeltsin, shredded by hardline spooks and generals who viewed the Americans as a menace. At the time when Woodruff was stationed there, Georgia was a den of intrigue. It had a big Russian military base and was awash with former and not-so-former Soviet agents. Shortly before Woodruff was shot, veteran CIA officer Aldrich Ames—who would soon be unmasked as a KGB mole—visited him on agency business. In short order, Woodruff would be dead and Ames, in prison for life. Buckle up, because The Spy Who Was Left Behind reveals the full-throttle, little-known thrilling tale.

    He also left behind mysteries that might never be solved. Sociologist Dr Tanya Bretherton traces the brutal story of Ellie, one of many suicide brides in turn-of-the-century Sydney; of her husband, Alicks, and his family; and their three orphaned sons, adrift in the world.From the author of the acclaimed THE SUITCASE BABY - shortlisted for the 2018 Ned Kelly Award, Danger Prize and Waverley Library 'Nib' Award - comes another riveting true-crime case from Australia's dark past. THE SUICIDE BRIDE is a masterful exploration of criminality, insanity, violence and bloody family ties in bleak, post-Victorian Sydney. **Includes an extract from THE SUITCASE BABY**

    Quickly falling in love with the rush of being a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, he believed his service would honorably help the South Vietnamese protect their country from the ruthless communist North and their Southern allies. But once in the volatile jungles of Vietnam, the merciless hunting and killing of the enemy, constant threat of landmines and booby traps, ambushes that could easily backfire, and deaths of his comrades made Stillman question how any man—if he survived—could ever return to his life as he’d known it. Written with John’s daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths fifty years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details. Interwoven with the author’s own journal entries and including thirty-five photographs, it is a story that will open your eyes to what these brave young men witnessed and endured, and why they returned facing a lifetime of often unspoken unrest, persistent nightmares, and forced normalcy, haunting even the strongest of soldiers.

    A Pennsylvania State Trooper, heading home from work, witnesses a car speeding and crashing into trees. Stopping to help, he finds that the driver, Michael Ballard, is alive—and drenched in blood. When asked what happened, the man answers: “I just killed everybody.” OUT OF HIS MINDNot far from the accident, police make a gruesome discovery in the home of Michael’s ex-girlfriend, Denise Mehri. Four bodies are found, stabbed repeatedly with a knife: Denise on the kitchen floor; her grandfather, in his wheelchair; her neighbor, who tried to help; and her father, in a room with a blood-smeared obscenity painted on the wall. How could anyone do something so sinister? OUT OF TIME…Michael had already been convicted of murder when he was only eighteen. Despite several misconducts during his time in prison, he was found suitable for parole shortly after his minimum sentence lapsed. But this time, his deadly rampage would not be so easily pardoned. From authors Colin McEvoy and Lynn Olanoff, this is the shocking true story about four innocent people who fell prey to one man’s  FATAL JEALOUSY .  Includes 8 pages of dramatic photographs

    She shot a lot of smack, grass and speed; made a lot of love - to men or women - and drank a lot of Southern Comfort and tequila. She had a real funky time ...and of course, she sang. She roared, whined and growled and ripped her way to the top. GOING DOWN WITH JANIS is a different kind of book about a different kind of person. It tells a story as raw and honest as her voice, as gut-shaking as her songs, and as vivid as her memory.

    The cause of the unexplained dive was the subject of one of the longest NTSB investigations at that time. While the crew’s efforts to save TWA 841 were initially hailed as heroic, that all changed when safety inspectors found twenty-one minutes of the thirty-minute cockpit voice recorder tape blank. The captain of the flight, Harvey “Hoot” Gibson, subsequently came under suspicion for deliberately erasing the tape in an effort to hide incriminating evidence. The voice recorder was never evaluated for any deficiencies. From that moment on, the investigation was focused on the crew to the exclusion of all other evidence. It was an investigation based on rumors, innuendos, and speculation. Eventually the NTSB, despite sworn testimony to the contrary, blamed the crew for the incident by having improperly manipulated the controls, leading to the dive. This is the story of an NTSB investigation gone awry and one pilot’s decade-long battle to clear his name.

    A sexual sadist who taunted police with anonymous notes. A madman who was never apprehended. This is the first, complete account of Zodiac's reign of terror. Is he still out there?

     But what did the German people think of the war? And what had they actually thought about the rise of the Nazi party? William Russell, a young US diplomat who worked in the American Embassy in Berlin, explains in detail his experiences of Germany in the early phases of the war from August 1939 through to April 1940. By asking questions to his friends, colleagues and people who he passed on the streets, Russell uncovered the state of minds of normal Germans, what they were thinking, doing and saying through the course of 1939 and 1940. Drawing evidence from a variety of sources, including newspapers, the radio, recently published books, as well as the jokes and gossip that circulated on the streets of the German capital, Russell is able to demonstrate how not all Germans were card-waving Nazis, but how the vast majority were politically apathetic, nervous of the future and often outwardly critical of the Nazi regime. Russell explains how many Germans laughed at figures such as Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering when they were in privacy of their own houses. Although written in only second year of the war it is clear that Russell and many of his friends are aware of the impending horrors that the war will cause and he tries desperately throughout the book to do his best for those who would suffer the most at the hands of the Nazi regime. Berlin Embassy is the classic account of Germany and its people in the first year of the Second World War. “The small things that happen to the small people- as reported by a man in a small job in the American embassy in Berlin, who managed to get the man in the street to talk frankly.” Kirkus Reviews “Exciting reading … A very fine book.” William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany William Russell was an author and journalist who after completing his education had worked in the Berlin Embassy during 1939 and 1940. After he left Germany he joined the U.S. Army and served two years as an Order of Battle Specialist in the Intelligence Branch in England. He passed away in 2000. His book Berlin Embassy was first published in 1941.

    Her story stretches from industrial England to the French Riviera, from Ireland to New York, Shanghai, New Zealand, the Isle of Man and across Australia. Ethel claimed she was a cotton heiress, wartime nurse, casino hostess, stowaway, artist, opera singer, gambler, spy, close friend of the King, air raid warden, charity queen and even wife of Australian test cricketer Jack Fingleton.When her career imploded (with the abandonment of her glittering society marriage in post-war Sydney just two hours before the guests were due to arrive), the story of the Amazing Mrs Livesey was blazoned across newspapers around the world. But what was fact and what was fiction?With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary and constantly surprising story of the woman who was possibly Australia’s greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.Author's Note:Written as narrative or factional history, real people and actual events have been woven together with fictitious character names, and imagined conversations to bridge occasional gaps in the storyline or account for unnamed people.

    The next morning she was found gagged, raped, and tortured—her throat slit with such rage that she was nearly decapitated. Her husband Arthur never gave up hope that the future would bring enough evidence to close the case. But it was the past that held the clue.In 1985, fifty-five-year old Margarette Eby, a music professor, met the same grisly death at her cottage in Flint, Michigan. The case went cold—until six years later when the victim's son Mark came upon the story of Nancy Ludwig's slaying. With nothing to go on but intuition, he called authorities, certain that the same fiend committed both crimes.A cunning sting operation yielded irrefutable DNA evidence, and authorities were led to the home of respected navy veteran Jeffrey Gorton living quietly with his wife and two children. But his cold-blooded secrets were only beginning to come to light leaving fears that there were more victims yet to be found in a killing spree that had finally come to an end.

    A housewife out for a walk with her baby notices a cloud of black flies buzzing ominously in Leimert Park. An "unsightly object" is identified as the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short, an aspiring starlet from Massachusetts who had been lured west by the siren call of Hollywood. Her killer would never be found, but Short’s death would bring her the fame she had always sought. Her murder investigation transformed into a real-life film noir, featuring corrupt cops, femmes fatales, gun-slinging gangsters, and hungry reporters, replete with an irresistible, legendary moniker adapted from a recent film—The Black Dahlia.For over half a century this crime has maintained an almost mythic place in American lore as one of our most inscrutable cold cases. With the recently unredacted FBI file, newly released sections of the LAPD file, and exclusive interviews with the suspect’s family, relentless legal sleuth Piu Eatwell has gained unprecedented access to evidence and persuasively identified the culprit. Black Dahlia, Red Rose layers these findings into a gritty, cinematic retelling of the haunting tale.As Eatwell chronicles, among the first to arrive at the grisly crime scene was Aggie Underwood, the "tough-as-nails" city editor for the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express; meanwhile, the chain-smoking city editor for the Los Angeles Examiner, Jimmy Richardson, sent out his own reporters. Eatwell reveals how, through a cutthroat race to break news and sell papers, the public image of Elizabeth Short was distorted from a violated beauty to a "man crazy delinquent." As rumors of various boyfriends circulated, the true story of the complex young woman ricocheting between jobs, lovers, and homes was lost. Instead, kitschy headlines tapped into a wider social anxiety about the city’s "girl problem," and Short’s black chiffon and smoldering gaze become a warning for "loose" women coming of age in postwar America.Applying her own background as a lawyer to the surprising new evidence, Eatwell ultimately exposes many startling clues to the case that have never surfaced in public. From the discovery of Elizabeth’s notebook, inscribed with the name of the city’s most notorious and corrupt businessman, to a valid suspect plucked from the hundreds of "confessing Sams" by a brilliant, well-meaning doctor, Eatwell compellingly captures every "big break" in the police investigation to reveal a truly viable resolution to the case. In rich, atmospheric prose, Eatwell separates fact from fantasy to expose the truth behind the sinewy networks of a noir-tinged Hollywood. Black Dahlia, Red Rose at long last accords the Elizabeth Short case its due resolution, providing a reliable and enduring account of one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history.

    The Gillette-Brown murder case from which Dreiser drew his An American Tragedy was a sensation in its day. Newsman Craig Brandon has done a remarkable job of researching the case and the family backgrounds of the two principals and, is probably more familiar with the complete story than Dreiser ever was. Yet with all this information, this new treatment reads like a novel. Accompanied with over 100 photos, Murder in the Adirondacks sheds new light on what was a yellow journalist's delight in 1906. A must read for all Dreiser students.

    

    This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.

    The Klein brothers—Kenneth Jr., 8; David, 6; and Danny, 4—never came home. When two caps turned up on the ice of the Mississippi River, investigators concluded that the boys had drowned and closed the case. The boys’ parents were unconvinced, hoping against hope that their sons would still be found. Sixty long years would pass before two sheriff’s deputies, with new information in hand and the FBI on board, could convince the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to reopen the case.This is the story of that decades-long ordeal, one of the oldest known active missing-child investigations, told by a writer whose own research for an article in 1998 sparked new interest in the boys’ disappearance. Beginning in 2012, when deputies Jessica Miller and Lance Salls took up the Kleins’ cause, author Jack El-Hai returns to the mountain of clues amassed through the years, then follows the trail traced over time by the boys’ indefatigable parents, right back to those critical moments in 1951. Told in brisk, longform journalism style, The Lost Brothers captures the Kleins’ initial terror and confusion but also the unstinting effort, with its underlying faith, that carried them from psychics to reporters to private investigators and TV producers—and ultimately produced results that cast doubt on the drowning verdict and even suggested possible suspects in the boys’ abduction. An intimate portrait of a parent’s worst nightmare and its terrible toll on a family, the book is also a genuine mystery, spinning out suspense at every missed turn or potential lead, along with its hope for resolution in the end.