Book picks similar to
Cellar Girl by Josefina Rivera


true-crime
non-fiction
memoir
nonfiction

World's Worst Crimes: An A-Z of Evil Deeds


Charlotte Greig - 2012
    From the Woman in the Box and the Online Murderer to the Düsseldorf Vampire and the House of Horror, this book delves into every major category of crime, sifting through the evidence to present a grisly, compelling, and blood-spattered history of the worst crimes ever committed.

Prison Days: True Diary Entries by a Maximum Security Prison Officer, June 2018


Simon King - 2018
    These are the true-life diary entries of a prison officer, working in one of the country’s worst correctional facility. The daily stabbings, rapes and murders are just the beginning of a nightmare ride into the darkness of life behind bars. It’s a raw and ruthless look behind the walls in all its brutal honesty. This is maximum-security.

The Bayou Strangler: Louisiana’s Most Gruesome Serial Killer


Fred Rosen - 2009
    In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New Orleans. The victims—many of them transient street hustlers—had been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the killer’s identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast Louisiana’s gay community rattled and authorities desperate for a break in the case. Then, Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task force partners, indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer.   In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes?   With direct access to the investigation, Dominique’s confession, and all of the killer’s body dump sites in throughout the state, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer), Rosen provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his victims.

Perfect Victim: The True Story of "The Girl in the Box" by the D.A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor


Christine McGuire - 1989
    . . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

Nobody Came: The Appalling True Story of Brothers Cruelly Abused in a Jersey Care Home


Robbie Garner - 2009
    'Nobody Came' is a harrowing account by one of the survivors of the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey.

Who Killed My Daughter?: The True Story of a Mother's Search for Her Daughter's Murderer


Lois Duncan - 1992
    School Library Journal "Best Book of the Year"--1992The Literary Guild, alternate selection--1992Time-Life Digest selection--1992ALA Best Book for Young Adults--1993Library of Congress Selection as a Talking Book for the Blind--1993N.Y. Public Library-- "Books for the Teenage" selection--1993Scholastic Book Club selection -- March, 1994, Feb., 1999 Pacific Northwest Young Readers Award--1994-95Nominated for Nevada Young Readers Award--1993-94Nominated for Tennessee Volunteer State Young Readers Award--94-95Nominated for Iowa Teen Award--1994-95Foreign editions: Germany, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Sweden,

No One Wants You: A True Story of a Child Forced into Prostitution


Celine Roberts - 2006
    Illegitimate and unwanted, Celine was forced by her foster mother into prostitution. Her bones were broken, her nose was crushed and she ate candle wax to stay alive.Celine was finally rescued and sent to an industrial school, where she picked up the pieces of her shattered life. She also began the search for her parents. But what she found gave her battered survival instincts the hardest knock of all...

Invisible Chains: Shawn Hornbeck and the Kidnapping Case that Shook the Nation


Kristina Sauerwein - 2008
    Devlin. Hornbeck had been in captivity for four years, was gradually given more and more freedom, but never tried to escape.

Women Who Kill


R.J. Parker - 2011
    When we hear about a Serial Killer, we never consider the sex, we would immediately assume a man...right? but that's not always the case! Females are for the most part, the loving and caring protectors of our species and the ones that are more susceptible to danger. However, they are in fact the most dangerous because they are the least suspected of the Serial Killers. Like their male counterparts, they show no remorse and have no mercy for their victims. Should we still call them the weaker sex? Women Who Kill explains and defines the various types of Female Serial Killers and contains over twenty criminal dossiers, including:Gertrude BaniszewskiMargie BarfieldMartha BeckLizzie BordenJudias BuenoanoChristine FallingCaril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather (Couple)Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzalez (Sisters)Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo (Wife and Husband)Dorothea PuenteMarybeth TinningRosemary and Fred West (Wife and Husband)

The Burn Farm


Michael Benson - 2009
    . .Sheila LaBarre liked to troll the personal ads and homeless shelters, looking for men whom society had rejected for one reason or another--men she could easily dominate both verbally and sexually. One by one, she invited them to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse, where she engaged them in S&M. But over time, sex gave way to brutal acts of torture as she mercilessly flogged and beat her captives until they confessed to committing unspeakable acts. Once satisfied that they had paid for their sins, Sheila savagely slaughtered them and burned their remains on her farm. . .Then, Humiliated, Tortured, And Killed Them. . . From the disturbing audiotapes Sheila made of her victims' confessions to her own bizarre statements in which she claimed to have returned from the dead to be God's avenger, The Burn Farm takes you behind the scenes of the scandal that rocked a quiet New England town, and into the twisted, depraved mind of a manipulative, cold-blooded murderer. . .Includes 16 Pages of Shocking Photos

Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez


Philip Carlo - 1996
    The shocking true story behind the serial killer case that inspired the hit Netflix series!Painstakingly researched over three years, based on nearly one hundred hours of exclusive interviews with Richard Ramirez on California's Death Row, The Night Stalker is the definitive account of America's most feared serial murderer.From Ramirez's earliest brushes with the law to his deadliest stalking expeditions to the unprecedented police and civilian manhunt that resulted in one of the most sensational trials in California history, The Night Stalker is an eerie and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.It is more than epic nonfiction at its most brutally real - it is true crime masterpiece.

Love Me to Death


Steve Jackson - 2002
    With twisted pleasure, he showed her two dead female bodies on the floor and a third, live one--naked, gagged and bound, and spread-eagled on a mattress. "Anybody Stupid Enough To Believe Me Deserves To Get Screwed!" Neal who called himself "Wild Bill Cody," was seductive and skillful at separating love-struck women from their money, and ultimately, their lives. 43-year-old divorcee Rebecca Holberton let Neal move into her townhouse and "loaned" him $70,000. On June 30, 1998, he repaid her by crushing her skull with an ax and wrapping her in plastic. On Friday, July 3, he brought another girlfriend, Candace Walters, 48, to the townhouse, clubbing her to death and desecrating the body. On Sunday, yet another acquaintance, Suzanne Scott, 21, watched helplessly as Angela Fite was murdered by Neal, who then sodomized and raped his bound captive. "Here's What Happens When You Mess With Me!" Apprehended by police, Neal, who proclaimed himself better than Ted Bundy, insisted on representing himself at the trial. Though the evidence against him was overwhelming, it was the testimony of Suzanne, who had survived Neal's unspeakable torture, that finally put this monster on Colorado's death row. Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos

Out of the Shadows: Fred West's Daughter Tells Her Harrowing Story of Survival


Anne Marie West - 1995
    Anne's mother and two sisters were murdered, but her story unfolds as one of hope and survival.

Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six


Jessica Buchanan - 2013
    By 2009, she had met and married the man of her dreams, a native Swede named Erik Landemalm, who worked to coordinate humanitarian aid with local authorities in Africa. With dreams of starting a family, they moved from Nairobi to Somalia, and their future couldn’t have been brighter… But on October 25, 2011, Jessica and a male colleague were kidnapped at gunpoint and held for ransom by an organized band of Somali land pirates. For the next three months, Jessica was terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters. She was held outdoors in filthy conditions and kept on a starvation diet while her health steadily deteriorated. Negotiations for ransom dragged on, and as the ordeal stretched into its third month, the captors grew increasingly impatient. Every terrifying moment Jessica spent suffering in captivity was matched by that of her adoring husband working behind the scenes to deal with her captors. Finally, on January 25, 2012, President Barack Obama ordered a rescue operation by a team of twenty-four Navy SEALs. The team killed all nine kidnappers, with no harm to the hostages, who were quickly airlifted out on a military rescue helicopter. In riveting detail, Impossible Odds details Jessica and Erik’s mutual journey during those torturous months. Together they relate the events prior to the kidnapping, the drama of Jessica’s fight to stay alive, and Erik’s efforts to bolster and support the hunt for her while he acted as liaison between their two families, the FBI, professional hostage negotiators, and the United States government.

A Stolen Life


Jaycee Dugard - 2011
    It was the last her family and friends saw of her for over eighteen years. On 26 August 2009, Dugard, her daughters, and Phillip Craig Garrido appeared in the office of her kidnapper's parole officer in California. Their unusual behaviour sparked an investigation that led to the positive identification of Jaycee Lee Dugard, living in a tent behind Garrido's home. During her time in captivity, at the age of fourteen and seventeen, she gave birth to two daughters, both fathered by Garrido. Dugard's memoir is written by the 30-year-old herself and covers the period from the time of her abduction in 1991 up until the present. In her stark, utterly honest and unflinching narrative, Jaycee opens up about what she experienced, including how she feels now, a year after being found. Garrido and his wife Nancy have since pleaded guilty to their crimes.