-- Breakthroughs in forensic science: A curious cause of death : Dorothy Dandridge -- The visible and invisible murderer : the case of Sal Mineo -- One last laugh : Freddie Prinze -- Murder in Hollywood : Dorothy Stratten -- An "impossible" drowning : Dennis Wilson -- Prescription for death : Elvis Presley. -- The "Detective of death": The missing baby -- All in the same boat -- The "accidental" lover -- The funhouse corpse. -- Forensic puzzles of the past: Custer's last stand -- The death of Napoleon -- Did Hitler escape? -- Who was Jack the Ripper? -- The return of the Ripper. -- The dangling man : the case of Roberto Calvi, "the Vatican banker."

    Stories of monsters, raining frogs or stones, spontaneous human combustion, unexplained miracles, and, of course, aliens from outer space. Opening statement titled The Endless Search For Answers. Chapter titles include: Beyond the Walls of Time, Unearthly Fates, Monsters and More, The Unquiet Sky, and In the Realm of Miracles. A must-read for anyone with a sense for the mysterious.

    There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper." Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about clubs, cooking and clothes, but the intrepid Miss Watkins, a minister's daughter from a small town, zeroed in on murderers instead. Looking for subjects to turn into a play, she would make "Stylish Belva" Gaertner and "Beautiful Beulah" Annan - both of whom had brazenly shot down their lovers - the talk of the town. Love-struck men sent flowers to the jail and newly emancipated women sent impassioned letters to the newspapers. Soon more than a dozen women preened and strutted on "Murderesses' Row" as they awaited trial, desperate for the same attention that was being lavished on Maurine Watkins's favorites. In the tradition of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City and Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, Douglas Perry vividly captures Jazz Age Chicago and the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal. Fueled by rich period detail and enlivened by a cast of characters who seemed destined for the stage, The Girls of Murder City is crackling social history that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the age and its sober repercussions.

    A spellbinding look into the natural world's most fascinating and baffling phenomena, with illustrated explanations of rainbows, meteors, sunsets, hurricanes, the northern lights, and dozens of other curiosities of the sky.

    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 Hatton Garden Heist captured the British public's imagination more than another other crime since The Great Train Robbery. It was supposed to make a fortune for a team of old time professional criminals. Their last hurrah. A final lucrative job that would send the old codgers off on happy retirements to the badlands of Spain and beyond. It seemed to be the stuff of legends. Tens of millions of dollars worth of valuables grabbed from safety deposit boxes in a vault beneath one of the most famous jewelry districts in the world. But where did it all go wrong for this band of old time villains? And how did the gang's bid to pull off the world's biggest burglary turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse featuring the police and London's most dangerous crime lords? Nobody is better placed to reveal the full story of the Hatton Garden Heist than Britain's best-connected true crime writer, Wensley Clarkson. Through his unparalleled contacts inside the criminal underworld, he's finally able to reveal the astonishing details behind Britain's biggest ever burglary.

    Jacobs of Temple University takes us into the private world of those abducted by aliens, letting them describe in their own words what it is like to be abducted. Based on interviews with sixty individuals and more than 300 independently corroborated accounts, Secret Life presents the most complete and accurate picture of alien abductions ever compiled. Dr. Jacobs takes the reader on a minute-by-minute journey through a typical abduction experience and describes in detail the bizarre physical, mental and reproductive procedures that abductees claim have been administered by small alien beings. Jacobs draws from these interviews a profoundly unsettling reason behind the abductions: aliens are conducting a complex reproductive experiment involving the conception, gestation. or incubation of human and alien hybrid beings.

    An investigation of ten famous exploration hoaxes, from Sebastian Cabot's disputed North American voyage of 1508-09 to Donald Crowhurst's desperate, suicidal bid to win the single-handed sailboat circumnavigation race in 1968.

    Not to mention three young children and what a friend described as "the best marriage in the universe." That marriage—to Merrill Lynch and former Goldman Sachs investment banker Robert Kissel—ended abruptly one November night in 2003 in the bedroom of their luxury apartment high above Hong Kong's glittering Victoria Harbour. Why?Hong Kong prosecutors, who charged Nancy with murder, said she wanted to inherit Rob's millions and start a new life with a blue-collar lover who lived in a New Hampshire trailer park.She said she'd killed in self-defense while fighting for her life against an abusive, cocaine-addicted husband who had forced her for years to submit to his brutal sexual demands.Her 2005 trial, lasting for months and rich in lurid detail, captivated Hong Kong's expatriate community and attracted attention worldwide. Less than a year after the jury of seven Chinese citizens returned its unexpected verdict, Rob's brother, Andrew, a Connecticut real estate tycoon facing prison for fraud and embezzlement, was also found dead: stabbed in the back in the basement of his multimillion-dollar Greenwich mansion by person or persons unknown.Never Enough is the harrowing true story of these two brothers, Robert and Andrew Kissel, who grew up wanting to own the world but instead wound up murdered half a world apart; and of Nancy Kissel, a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, a modern American woman for whom having it all might not have been enough.In this singularly compelling narrative, Joe McGinniss—past master at exposing the dark heart of the American family in the bestsellers Fatal Vision, Blind Faith, and Cruel Doubt—explores his darkest and most disturbing subject yet: a smart and beautiful family so corroded by greed that it destroys itself from within.Here is a family saga almost biblical in its tragic proportion but dazzlingly modern in flavor—and utterly unstoppable in its pulsating narrative drive. From the shimmering skyscrapers and greed-drenched bustle of Hong Kong to the moneyed hush and hauteur of backcountry Greenwich, McGinniss lures readers irresistibly forward, as this twisted tale of ambition gone mad and love gone bad rushes to its terrible, inexorable conclusion.

    In "The Art Detective," Philip Mould, one of the world's foremost authorities on British portraiture and an irreverent and delightful expert for the "Roadshow," serves up his secrets and his best stories, blending the technical details of art detection and restoration with juicy tales peopled by a range of eccentric collectors, scholars, forgers, and opportunists. Peppered with practical advice, each chapter focuses on one particular painting and the mystery that surrounds it. Mould is our trusty detective, tracking down clues, uncovering human foibles and following hunches until the truth is revealed. Mould is known for his ability to crack the toughest puzzles and whether he's writing about a fake Norman Rockwell, a hidden Rembrandt, or a lost Gainsborough, he brings both the art and the adventure to life. "The Art Detective" is memoir, mystery, art history, and brilliant yarn all rolled into one.

    Now, with the benefit of twenty years' worth of additional knowledge and insight, Stanton Samenow offers a completely updated edition of his classic work, including fresh perceptions into crimes in the spotlight today, from stalking and domestic violence to white-collar crime and political terrorism. Dr. Samenow's three decades of working with criminals have reaffirmed his argument that factors such as poverty, divorce, and media violence do not cause criminality. Rather, as Samenow documents here, all criminals share a particular mind-set--often evident in childhood--that is disturbingly different from that of a responsible citizen. While new types of crime have grown more prevalent, or at least more visible to the public eye--from spousal abuse to school shootings--little has changed in terms of our approach to dealing with crime. Rehabilitation programs based on the assumption that society is more to blame for crime than the criminal, an assumption for which a causal link has yet to be established, have proved to be grossly inadequate. Crime continues to invade every aspect of our lives, criminal court dockets and prisons are oppressively overcrowded and expensive, and recidivism rates continue to escalate.To embark on a truly corrective program, we must begin with the clear understanding that the criminal chooses crime; he chooses to reject society long before society rejects him. The criminal values people only to the extent that he can use them for his own self-serving ends; he does not justify his actions to himself. Only by "habilitating" the criminal, so that he sees himself realistically and develops responsible patterns of thought, can we change his behavior. It is vital that we know who the criminal is and how and why he acts differently from responsible citizens. From that understanding can come reasonable, compassionate, and effective solutions.

    Hailed as "unsinkable, " the "Kursk" was on maneuvers when mysterious explosions rocked the sub, causing it to sink to the bottom of the sea with its 118-man crew. This in-depth look at the disaster reveals previously unreleased information from family members of the deceased as well as from government officials.

    

    The consequences have shaken the leaders of nations worldwide. This is the inside story of Snowden's deeds and the journalists who faced down pressure from the US and UK governments to break a remarkable scoop.From the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Hawaii, carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of secret-spilling in Hong Kong and his battle for asylum, Snowden's story reads like a globe-trotting thriller.

    It is well-written in that competent British school boy fashion, with impeccable grammar, restrained wit, and conservative style.