Celebrated writer and contrarian Bill James has voraciously read true crime throughout his life and has been interested in writing a book on the topic for decades. Now, with Popular Crime, James takes readers on an epic journey from Lizzie Borden to the Lindbergh baby, from the Black Dahlia to O. J. Simpson, explaining how crimes have been committed, investigated, prosecuted and written about, and how that has profoundly influenced our culture over the last few centuries— even if we haven’t always taken notice. Exploring such phenomena as serial murder, the fluctuation of crime rates, the value of evidence, radicalism and crime, prison reform and the hidden ways in which crimes have shaped, or reflected, our society, James chronicles murder and misdeeds from the 1600s to the present day. James pays particular attention to crimes that were sensations during their time but have faded into obscurity, as well as still-famous cases, some that have never been solved, including the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Boston Strangler and JonBenet Ramsey. Satisfyingly sprawling and tremendously entertaining, Popular Crime is a professed amateur’s powerful examination of the incredible impact crime stories have on our society, culture and history.

    Tamia Challey is horrified when her husband, Scott, is accused of something terrible – but when she discovers who his accuser is, everything goes into freefall. Backed into a corner and unsure what to think, Tamia is forced to choose who she instinctively believes. But this choice has dire consequences for all concerned, especially when matters take a tragic turn. Then a stranger arrives in town to sprinkle rose petals in the sea in memory of her lost loved one. This stranger carries with her shocking truths that will change the lives of everyone she meets, and will once again force Tamia to make some devastating choices...

    "Now, for the first time, reporter George Anastasia offers a re-creation of the Capano-Fahey affair, the murder, and its aftermath. The Summer Wind is a story of the clash of two generations and two cultures, of the arrogance of power in a growing city, and of the decaying moral landscape of late-twentieth-century America.

    His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

    Its architectural treasures crumble—foundations shift, marble ornaments fall—even as efforts to preserve them are underway. The City of Falling Angels opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective—inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city—while gradually revealing the truth about the fire.In the course of his investigations, Berendt introduces us to a rich cast of characters: a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking "suicide" prompts his skeptical friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the first family of American expatriates that loses possession of the family palace after four generations of ownership; an organization of high-society, partygoing Americans who raise money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling in public among themselves, questioning one another's motives and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter and outrageous provocateur; the master glassblower of Venice; and numerous others-stool pigeons, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, believers in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man, and Henry James.Berendt tells a tale full of atmosphere and surprise as the stories build, one after the other, ultimately coming together to reveal a world as finely drawn as a still-life painting. The fire and its aftermath serve as a leitmotif that runs throughout, adding the elements of chaos, corruption, and crime and contributing to the ever-mounting suspense of this brilliant book.

    Within weeks, a second woman was found-her brutalized body dumped in the frozen Texas plains. Over the next seventeen months three more women would fall victim to a faceless evil, fueling the city's fears and baffling authorities whose every lead came to a dead end. For one haunted man the case would never die.A fight for justice as cunning and relentless as the killer himself...Almost fourteen years to the day of the first murder, ambitious investigator John Little reopened the cold-case files determined to deliver closure to the victims' friends and families, and bring a killer to justice. Working on his instincts, following every imaginable clue, Little embarked on an ingeniously clever and exhaustive cat-and-mouse game to trap an elusive serial killer whose sick fantasies would finally be silenced forever.

    It is a law intended to protect the innocent from unfair harassment and persecution.But sometimes it protects the guilty as well.Guilty As SinThe circumstantial evidence against southern businessman Mel Ignatow was solid -- effectively damning him for the savage 1988 sex torture/slaying of his former girlfriend, Brenda Schaefer. There was motive, unimpeachable forensic evidence . . . even testimony from an eyewitness who took photographs of the gruesome, horrific crime. But in a Kentucky courtroom, frustration, ignorance, incompetence and fate pulled a supposedly open-and-shut case in shocking, unexpected directions -- and tied the concept of American justice into knots that might never be undone.

    Behind a facade of Midwestern normalcy, Dennis Rader hid a life of bloodlust, sadism, and murder beyond imagining.The upstanding family man, Scout leader, and church board president was well liked and trusted by his Wichita community.Kansans -- and all of America -- would never recover from the truth: He was BTK, the madman who bound, tortured, and killed ten victims over the course of three decades.Drawing on extensive interviews, including exclusive access to Rader's pastor and congregation, bestselling author Stephen Singular chronicles the horrific crimes, the investigation, the capture, and confession of BTK -- and, more deeply than any other account, reveals how his 2005 arrest shattered and challenged those in a circle of faith who thought they knew him best.

    In 1998, his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli--nicknamed "The Black Widow" by the press--was sentenced to 29 years in prison, for arranging his murder. Did Patrizia murder her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? Or is there a possibility she didn't do it at all?The Gucci story is one of glitz, glamour, intrigue, the rise, near fall and subsequent resurgence of a fashion dynasty. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and widely acclaimed, The House of Gucci will captivate readers with its page-turning account of high fashion, high finance, and heart-rending personal tragedy.

    Jesse James, at the age of 34, is at the height of his fame and powers as a singularly successful outlaw. Robert Ford is the skittish younger brother of one of the James gang: he has made himself an expert on the gang, but his particular interest - his obsession - is Jesse James himself. Both drawn to him and frightened of him, the nineteen-year-old is uncertain whether he wants to serve James or destroy him or, somehow, become him.Never have these two men been portrayed and their saga explored with such poetry, such grim precision and such raw-boned feeling as Ron Hansen has brought to this masterful retelling.'Wonderful. This is great storytelling, not undermined by our knowin how it turns out. The reader is driven - by story and by language and by history... the best blend of fiction and history I've read in a long while!' -- John Irving, author of The World According to Garp

    Beyond the actual crimes, the entire criminal process is covered-from investigation and arrest to trial and verdict. This book reveals in-depth accounts of some of the most monstrous offenses recreated on the hit series, including the gripping story of a teenage love triangle that led to the murder of a young girl and the deadly confrontation between the FBI and David Koresh's cult that made national headlines.Stopping these criminals is only the beginning. Confronting the deep psychological scars left on their victims is the real challenge. This collection offers fans of the show and those interested in crime-solving techniques a glimpse of the real stories and real people behind some of the most notable, notorious, and gut wrenching cases of sexually-based crimes in recent history.

    A terrorist attack on Australian soil. For seventeen hours Islamic State-inspired gunman Man Haron Monis held his captives in a terrifying drama that paralysed Sydney and kept a nation glued to its television screens. Two hostages were killed and three seriously wounded. The others would have their lives changed for ever.Despite the police leadership declaring it was well prepared for a terrorist attack, many shortcomings on the night revealed a response that fell seriously short of that promise. Deborah Snow lays bare what happened behind the scenes in the cafe as the hostages tried to keep themselves alive while waiting for a police response that didn't come. She also takes us into the police command posts as communications, equipment and decision-making structures broke down. Hurtling towards its inevitable and tragic conclusion, Siege draws us into a vortex of police missteps, extraordinary bravery and profound grief to reveal what happened during that awful day. Shocking, compelling and revealing Siege will take its place as the classic account of these events.

    Far from being the outdated practice of obscure tribes in distant jungles, cannibalism is practiced uncomfortably close to home in cities around the world even today. Cannibals have been found in the cities of America and Europe, in the provinces of revolutionary China, on the "Fatal Shore" of colonial Australia and in the open lifeboats of a wrecked ship. The grisly stories in this collection of people eating human flesh come from many different eras and from all over the world.The earliest evidence of cannibalism is believed to date from about 6,000 years ago, found in a shallow refuse pit used by Stone Age cave dwellers in present-day France, though many anthropologists dispute that cannibalism has ever been systematically practiced by human beings. Scientific debate continues about whether the Aztecs ate human flesh and whether to do so was considered ethically and socially acceptable among New Guinea islanders. This book, however, is neither an argument for or against the reality of cannibalism, nor a history of the subject, but a casebook of some of the more notorious flesh-eaters in what are thought of as "civilized" parts of the world.Peter Haining is the author of the definitive biography of Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1993)—the serial killer who dispatched more than a hundred and sixty victims and then had his female accomplice turn their flesh into meat pies. He has also written about a number of other famous crimes and criminals and edited a series of bestselling anthologies including Murder on the Menu (1991) Murder by the Glass (1994), and London After Midnight (1996), all intended for readers with strong stomachs.

    It is a known fact that when separated at birth, they will often end up with very similar lives, without ever having met one another. So it seems to follow that if one twins turns out to be a "bad seed," the other will also go to the dark side. the shocking stories in Evil Twins prove this to be the case time and time again. And even more astounding are stories of twins turning upon each other in furious rivalries that may date back to the womb. Her is just a sampling of the compelling true stories about evil twins:Sins of the mothers: Harvard-educated chemical engineer Jane Hopkins stabbed her two young children to death before killing herself-six years after her twin sister Jean had tried to poison her own two children...My brother's killer: Identical twins Jeff and Greg Henry were close as brothers could be, inventing their own language and often exchanging identities. But they grew up to become violent alcoholics, and on one fateful binge, Jeff turned on his own twin brother and shot him in the heart with a shotgun...Loathsome Lotharios: Handsome, charming twin brothers George and Stefan Spitzer went to Hollywood to become famous actors. But their movie-star good looks never landed them any parts-except in the lurid home movies they shot of themselves raping the unconscious women they doped up on "Roofies"...Evil twins: Double the deadliness...with eight pages of shocking photos!

    A business major with wild black hair, long polished fingernails, and a new Honda her loving father had bought her, Kim took good care of herself and looked forward to a bright future. But on her way home in the early morning darkness of that Ash Wednesday, Kim was abducted-and her mysterious kidnappers would be the last people to see her alive.Scorching BetrayalAs Kim's father, wealthy computer executive Tommy Antonakos, launched a widespread, feverish search for his daughter, he had no idea that her abductors were right under his nose. A cold mastermind had ordered had ordered Kim to be bound, gagged and left in the freezing basement of an abandoned house, hoping to extract ransom from her father. When the plans fell through, he and his henchman panicked, returned to the basement and doused a near-frozen Kim with gasoline, setting her on fire.Burned AliveWhen the fire was extinguished, all that was left of the lovely coed were her charred, lifeless remains. What would drive the kidnappers to commit such a cruel and senseless murder? How did their plans to cover their tracks result in another killing? And how were the murderers finally snared? Read all of the fascinating facts in a startling expose of extortion, murder, and ultimate justice.