She was a gifted midwestern beauty, the daughter of Ohio State University's marching band director: to dance on Broadway. Soon after high school graduation, Catherine left Columbus for New York City, determined to be a star. Three years later, she was dead -- murdered in cold blood in her East Side apartment. The shocking revelations that emerged from the police investigation made tabloid headlines: few knew that the struggling artist paid her bills by dancing in a topless club. But there was another hidden facet to Catherine's life -- a shattering love triangle with two men, one of whom would ultimately be convicted of her brutal stabbing death. It's a chilling account of obsession, violence, and the surprising, minute evidence on which the entire case hinged. For a talented young woman reaching for the top, and the heartbroken family she left behind, it is truly the death of a dream.

    Effectively a prison for some of the most violent and insane criminals in our society, it houses men who have committed the most horrific and frightening crimes imaginable. And despite being an expensive, taxpayer-funded facility, the workings of Carstairs remain subject to intense state secrecy.In Carstairs: Hospital for Horrors, author David Leslie examines the history of the institution, the crimes that have led patients to be committed to the State Hospital and highlights the risks of the brave and dedicated staff who work there. This shocking account delves into the nightmarish minds of men who have killed, raped and attacked family members, lovers, children and innocent bystanders.For many patients, there is little hope of ever being released. But for others, including some considered to be amongst the most dangerous in society, release can become a reality. Corsairs features an exclusive, first-hand account of a bloody escape in 1976, when Robert Mone, along with Thomas McCulloch, escaped and went on the run. Three men died and now, for the very first time, Robert Mone gives his own account of an event which shocked the nation. And it is a telling insight into one of the most high-profile yet secretive institutions there is.

    But in "The Unforgiven", three young children are in the back seat of a car driven by Amanda Hamm's boyfriend as it slips into an Illinois lake. Amanda and her boyfriend survive. Her three children do not. The question of whether it was a horrible accident or a murderous plot divided family and friends and traumatized the entire community. The brief but intense police investigation included seven interviews Hamm voluntarily gave police without the benefit of counsel. The outcome remains controversial to this day and comes full circle with state child welfare workers' concern about children born to Hamm since the fateful day at Clinton Lake. "The Unforgiven" co-author and journalist Edith Brady-Lunny covered the case from start-to-finish, beginning the night of the drownings. Her co-author Steve Vogel lives nearby. His "Reasonable Doubt", considered a true crime classic, was a New York Times best-seller. Together they have extensive first-hand knowledge of the case and access to nearly every record related to the court proceedings.

    The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.

    It is an insight into their initiation ceremonies, their methods, their money-raising tactics; a timely portrayal of Britain's worst criminal problem.

    The slaughter of Joan and John Stirland revealed an evil empire of powerful ganglords, contract killings and police corruption. At its dark heart was the East Midlands city of Nottingham. A prosperous centre of business, education and leisure, Nottingham had fallen under the shadow of vicious gangsters. Eventually its police were investigating so many murders that their boss had to appeal to other forces for help, and the influx of drugs and weapons saw the city labelled "Gun Capital UK".HOODS traces the roots of the gangs, revealing how economic dislocation and the clash of cultures between working-class white residents and black immigrants from the 1950s onwards created an alienated underclass. In the 1990s, a more malignant breed of organised criminal emerged. Crime families who had been involved in armed robbery, protection rackets and extortion now sought to control the recreational drugs trade and forged links across Europe to import wholesale quantities of cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines. By 2002, shootings were running at one a week. HOODS uncovers how outlaw Yardies pioneered the sale of crack cocaine and imported the ruthless violence of the Jamaican ghettos; how young black gangs from the so-called NG Triangle of the Meadows, St Ann’s and Radford areas clashed in a series of turf wars; how the shadowy Dawes Cartel built a lucrative international drugs empire; and how the Bestwood Cartel and its terrifying leader, Colin Gunn, corrupted police officers and left dead and maimed in its wake. As local police struggled to cope with the mayhem, MI5 and the National Crime Squad launched a massive undercover investigation into the Nottingham ‘untouchables’. It led ultimately to the dismantling of some of the UK’s most powerful crime networks. HOODS is a stark account of what happens when the rule of the gun supplants the rule of law and fear stalks the streets.

    This book delves into the crimes that police have to deal with day after day. Murderers, hitmen, kidnappers, and drug dealers all feature in this collection of true crime stories. Take the drug dealer who walked out of a restaurant bragging that he's killed a man—unaware that his fellow diner was an undercover policeman. Or the young mother, whose death was written off as suicide, but which subsequent investigation proved to be something much more sinister.

    The boy is kept manacled in a pit, chained to a tree, and locked in a closet. The perps—a career bank robber, a petty thief, and his nineteen-year-old never-been-in-trouble Mormon wife—quickly become the targets of the biggest manhunt in Northwest history. The caper plays out like a Hollywood thriller with countless twists and improbable developments. Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all, though, is how it all ends.

    Katie’s sexual odyssey began before she was even sixteen. She started out stripping on webcam for an audience of strangers and soon she was meeting and having increasingly adventurous sex with numerous men each week, determined to expand her sexual horizons and explore her submissive nature. When Katie discovered the secretive swingers’ scene, her behaviour escalated as she found the perfect outlet for her voracious sexual appetite. After her first nervous encounters with experienced swingers, she threw herself into the anything-goes lifestyle and became the most popular girl on the scene, proudly taking centre stage at fifty-strong sex parties. Katie’s uncontrollable sexual urge eventually led her to experiment with women, explore S&M fetishes and have sex with up to ten men in one night. Katie sought out ever more extreme sexual experiences and she eventually began to wonder if her behaviour was really an expression of her sexual freedom, or if it had grown out of something darker.Can You Keep a Secret? is the brutally honest and sometimes unsettling account of a young girl’s journey into the sexual underworld.Available via Amazon.com and iBooks.

    Sapp, a seemingly normal family man who shattered the peace of an idyllic Midwestern town.

    What really happened to Cheryl and Rob before, during and after Cheryl Pierson, a sixteen-year-old sexually, physically and mentally abused teen, hired a classmate to kill her father for $1,000 in 1986?The case was in the national media for many years. In 1988 a New York Times reporter wrote A Deadly Silence, a successful true crime book about this case using an investigative journalism style. It also became a TV movie. As a traumatized sixteen year old, Cheryl only gave one short interview 30 years ago, so much of what was reported in the media, book and movie was fabrication and speculation. Some accounts implied she lied about the abuse, others that she did it for her father’s insurance, but Cheryl remained silent for years—too young and destroyed to fight back against the speculation and frequent falsehoods or to discuss the true dark nature of the nightmare she lived every day of her young life. After her release from jail, she and her high school boyfriend, Rob Cuccio were married, they had two daughters and led as normal a life as possible. Most friends and neighbors had no idea of her past.Throughout her life, Cheryl has suffered from PTSD and other symptoms as a result of her father’s abuse and his subsequent murder, but the story doesn’t end there. People often wonder what happened next, or where are they now, because this case continues to hold a fascination. Two episodes are scheduled on Discovery ID channel in early 2017.This is not fiction and is not sugar-coated. It is the story of their life to the present, and everything is backed by documentation. Cheryl hopes through finally telling the truth about what drove her to murder in her own words, it will help other abuse victims and encourage them to speak out.On Cheryl’s forty-third birthday, May 14, 2012, after months of misdiagnosed chest pain and other symptoms, Rob Cuccio, her husband of 25 years, suffered a fatal heart attack. Doctors pronounced him dead after thirty minutes, but he’d saved Cheryl’s life for so many years, even when she wanted to commit suicide, that now she knew in her heart she couldn’t live without him. She had to do everything possible to save him. Over the years through Rob’s love, understanding and support she had come a long way from the abused teenage victim. She refused to accept that he was dead, because something inside told her he was clinging to a remnant of life.She begged doctors to keep trying and wouldn’t give up. The doctor finally said, “We’ll try for ten minutes more, but after that you have to let him go.” Then she prayed to everyone she could think of, even to the father she paid to have killed.With only two minutes of the ten left, forty-three minutes after his heart ceased to beat and supply oxygen to his brain, there was a faint pulse and Rob came back to life. It was called a miracle. The doctors never had a case where the patient was dead for so long and did not sustain massive brain damage. Everything Cheryl endured during her life had given her the strength to demand they keep trying to save her husband.Cheryl and Rob brought a malpractice suit against the cardiologist who had treated Rob for chest pain and other classic symptoms. Over at least a six month period, instead of diagnosing that Rob’s arteries were blocked and his heart was dying, the doctor never ordered tests like an angiogram, and instead told him repeatedly nothing was wrong—it was only anxiety. The malpractice case was proven, but a travesty of justice occurred in an astounding jury verdict—the doctor won the case. Some of the doctor’s testimony is included in the book.***In writing their dramatic book, they want to illustrate that damaged lives can be rebuilt. The book has a photo and media reprint section.

    A potpourri of musings assembled with a hint of practical spirituality, to be savoured passably as an oracle of hearts to the many answers, whose questions our minds are yet to comprehend. Ivory Gleam is split into three chapters of learning, longing and loving. Each chapter is a journey traversing a different road to the ultimate destination of self-reflection.

    Daysearlier, while traversing the Straits of Sicily the crew had discovered a crack in one ofthe nuclear reactor pipes, requiring the immediate shutting down of the reactor toprevent a potential reactor accident, an operation never before conducted on a Britishsubmarine at sea.Th e previous six days had been a difficult time for the crew of the submarine. Initialindications of a nuclear reactor defect had quickly escalated into a full scale potential nuclearreactor accident at sea, requiring decisive action by the crew to make the reactor safe, toidentify the defect and attempt to repair the reactor, and then to surface the submarine andto sail her safely back to the nearest safe harbor using emergency propulsion machinerydesigned for very limited use. The resulting lack of electrical power resulted in the crewhaving to sacrifice lighting, air-conditioning, bathing facilities and even hot food until theirreturn to harbor, and to suffer in the excessively hot interior of the boat. Throughout,there remained the fear of exposure to deadly radiation and the uncertainty that the reactormight still be one step away from a major accident.For one man onboard, this episode formed the culmination of a 25 year navalengineering career almost fated for this moment. Charge Chief Stephen Bridgman,the senior nuclear propulsion technician, had needed all of his engineering knowledgeand experience in the identification and eventual repair of the submarine reactor,subsequently being awarded an MBE together with a colleague for his services to navalengineering for his actions.This book provides an insight into a remarkable naval career starting as a 16 year oldStoker on the final proper British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in 1977, throughthe Falklands War, being selected for naval technician training and submarine service,submarine training, submarine patrols in the supposed post cold-war period, theKosovo conflict, progression through the ranks, submarine refi t and refueling throughto the nuclear reactor accident onboard HMS Tireless.While there are countless accounts of naval life during wartime, this book tells theunique story of life as a British naval rating in the modern era, starting from the lowestlevel at a time of decline for the Royal Navy in the late 1970s, and paralleling the majorpolitical and military events of the 1980s and 1990s.

    

    Life was a despairing time in the 1950s, as Veronica sought desperately to keep away from his cruelty. Astonishingly, to her and her mother, she won a scholarship to Ackworth Boarding School where she began to shine above her class-mates. A champion in all sports, Veronica at last found some happiness until her brother-in-law came into her life. It was as if she had stepped from the frying pan into the re: he took over control of her life removing her from the school she adored, two terms before she was due to take her GCEs, so he could put her to work as a cheap option on his market stall. Abused for many years by these two men, Veronica eventually ran away and applied to the Prison Service, knowing it was the only safe place she could trust. This is the astonishing, and true story of Veronica Bird who rose to become a Governor of Armley prison. Given a ‘basket case’ in another prison, contrary to all expectations, she turned it around within a year, to become an example for others to match. During her life inside, her ‘bird’, she met many Home Secretaries, was honoured by the Queen and was asked to help improve conditions in Russian Prisons. A deeply poignant story of eventual triumph against a staggeringly high series of setbacks, her story is filled with humour and compassion for those inside.