Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain


John Bryson - 1985
    While Azaria's mother claimed a dingo had taken her baby, she was widely disbelieved. The Chamberlains were Seventh-Day Adventists, and there were rumours that Azaria meant "Sacrifice in the Desert".

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape


Jenna Miscavige Hill - 2013
    As niece of the Church of Scientology's leader David Miscavige, she grew up at the center of this controversial organization. At 21, she made a break, risking everything she'd ever known and loved to leave Scientology once and for all. Now she speaks out about her life, the Church, her escape, going deep inside a religion that, for decades, has been the subject of fierce debate and speculation worldwide.Piercing the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the world of Scientology, this insider reveals unprecedented firsthand knowledge of the religion, its rituals and its mysterious leader—David Miscavige. From her prolonged separation from her parents as a small child to being indoctrinated to serve the Church, from her lack of personal freedoms to the organization's emphasis on celebrity recruitment, Jenna goes behind the scenes of Scientology's oppressive and alienating culture, detailing an environment rooted in control in which the most devoted followers often face the harshest punishments when out of line. Detailing some of the Church's notorious practices, she also describes a childhood of isolation and neglect—a childhood that, painful as it was, prepared her for a tough life in the Church's most devoted order, the Sea Org. Despite this hardship, it's only when her family approaches dissolution and her world begins to unravel that she's finally able to see the patterns of stifling conformity and psychological control that have ruled her life. Faced with a heartbreaking choice, she mounts a courageous escape, but not before being put thru the ultimate test of family, faith and love. Captivating and disturbing, Beyond Belief is an exploration of the limits of religion and the lengths to which some went to break free.

I Am the Central Park Jogger


Trisha Meili - 2003
    As featured in When They See Us—the Netflix limited series created, written, and directed by Ava DuVernay that retells the story of the Central Park Five, the young men wrongly accused of this crime.Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on April 19, 1989, a young woman jogs alone near 102nd Street in New York City's Central Park. She is attacked, raped, savagely beaten, and left for dead. Hours later she arrives at the emergency room—comatose—she has lost so much blood that her doctors believe it’s a miracle she's still alive. Meet Trisha Meili, the Central Park Jogger. I Am the Central Park Jogger recounts the mesmerizing, inspiring, often wrenching story of human strength and transcendent recovery. Called “Hero of the Month” by Glamour magazine, Meili tells us who she was before the attack—a young Wall Street professional with a promising future—and who she has become: a woman who learned how to read, write, walk, talk, and love again...and turn horrifying violence and certain death into extraordinary healing and victorious life. With “moments of unexpected grace and insights into life’s challenges….Meili’s story—the story the public never knew—is unforgettable” (The Buffalo News).

Thunderstruck


Erik Larson - 2006
    Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect crime. With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of séances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.

Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars


Juan Martínez - 2016
    What emerged was a story wrought with sex, manipulation, and deceit that stunned the public at every turn. Arias, always playing the wronged and innocent woman, changed her story continually as her bizarre behavior surrounding the crime and its aftermath came to light. Unwavering, Arias and her defense team continued to play off the salacious details of the case, until she was finally found guilty and—controversially—sentenced to life behind bars.Now, speaking openly for the first time, prosecutor Juan Martinez will unearth new details from the investigation that were never revealed at trial, exploring key facts from the case and the pieces of evidence he chose to keep close to the vest. Throughout the trials, his bullish and unfaltering prosecution strategy was both commended and criticized, and in his book, Martinez will illuminate the unique tactics he utilized in this case and how they lead to a successful conviction, and-for the first time-discuss how he felt losing the death penalty sentence he’d pursued for years.Going beyond the news reports, Martinez will explore the truth behind the multiple facades of Jodi Arias. Sparring with her from across the stand, Martinez came to know Arias like no one else could, dissecting what it took for a seemingly normal girl to become a deluded, cunning, and unrepentant murderer.With new stories from behind the scenes of the trial and Martinez’s own take on his defendant, the book takes you inside the mind of Jodi Arias like never before. Complete with 16 pages of photos from the case and trial, this book is the definitive account of the case that shocked America.

The Last Stone


Mark Bowden - 2019
      On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages ten and twelve, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, D.C. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured.   Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.   The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind.

Lucky


Alice Sebold - 1999
    What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

The Good Cop


Justine Ford - 2016
    B - Believe nothing. C - Check everything.' Ron IddlesIn an incredible twenty-five year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles' conviction rate was 99%. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as 'The Great Man'.Tough, inventive and incorruptible, stoic in the face of senseless horror yet unafraid to shed tears for a victim, Ron has applied his country cunning and city savvy to over 320 homicide cases - some of them the most infamous, compelling and controversial crimes in the nation's history. To the victims of crime, Ron is both a shoulder to cry on and an avenging angel.Ron Iddles never gave up on a 'lost' cause. He became a regular on the nightly news - the dogged face of Australian justice. Working long hours, dodging bullets, chasing leads and outwitting killers, Ron would tell his teams: 'The answer is just one call away'. And in 2015, that belief saw him crack Victoria's oldest unsolved homicide, yet another remarkable feat in a life devoted to keeping the public safe.This is the extraordinary inside story of a real crime crusader. Ron Iddles. The Good Cop.Now a major Foxtel series, for information about the show visit: https://www.citv.com.au/shows/ron-idd...

Ladykiller


Donna Fielder - 2012
    But the answer wasn't really so simple...

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee


Casey CepCasey Cep - 2019
    With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case.Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil's Deal


Lehr & O'Neill - 2012
    update of first edition

Donnie Brasco


Joseph D. Pistone - 1988
    Pistone carried out the most audacious sting operation ever, working undercover for six years to infiltrate the flamboyant community of mafia soldiers, "connected guys," captains, and godfathers. Now his unforgettable eyewitness account brings to pulsating life the entire world of wiseguys—their code of honor and their treachery, their wives, girlfriends and whores, their lavish spending and dirty dealings.With the drama and suspense of a high-tension thriller, Joseph Pistone reveals every incredible aspect of the jealously guarded world he penetrated...and draws a chilling picture of what the mafia is, does, and means in America today.

Serial Killers Volume 1: 6 Horrific Serial Killers’ True Crime Stories (Six Bloody Fantasies)


Ryan Becker - 2017
     Serial killers are not simple monsters, as many believe. They are human beings just like us; men and women who have made the wrong choices or been turned into ugly creatures by their upbringing. Some seek to cause pain and shock — others just wish to scratch an itch that they have in their mind. All of them bring darkness in their own way. Among them are those that work with accomplices, others prefer to go alone. It doesn’t matter; their victims die all the same. Have you ever wanted to know what lies in a serial killer’s mind? Come with us, reader, and you shall find out. Six Bloody Fantasies is a bloody collection of tales, containing the biographies of six serial killers who terrorized the world at one point in recent history, their actions ripping apart the lives of their victims and their families. We strive to give you every single detail, so do not expect us to be soft on what is about to be described. You must be warned beforehand: You may not sleep again after reading this book…

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice


Bill BrowderBill Browder - 2014
    It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia. In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder's offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund's companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder's attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear. Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei's name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world.

Bad Boy: The True Story of Kenneth Allen McDuff, the Most Notorious Serial Killer in Texas History


Gary M. Lavergne - 1999
    In August 1966, while on parole for burglary, he raped, tortured, and murdered three teenagers in an abandoned field far from his hometown of Rosebud, a peaceful Central Texas hamlet. He was tried, convicted, and condemned to death. Had his sentence not been commuted to life, that would have been the end of Kenneth Allen McDuff. But in 1989, only weeks after the twenty-third anniversary of his crimes, the bad boy from Rosebud walked out of prison a free man.McDuff took pleasure in outwitting the system, and his bloodlust was an impulse he had no intention of controlling. After decomposed corpses of more and more women were discovered, the worst nightmares of the authorities came true. But times were different. It took 32 years to bring his brutal and heartless crime spree to a fitting end. Texas had never seen such incredible brutality--and has never been the same since.