On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.In American Lightning, acclaimed author Howard Blum masterfully evokes the incredible circumstances that led to the original “crime of the century”—and an aftermath more dramatic than even the crime itself. With smoke still wafting up from the charred ruins, the city’s mayor reacts with undisguised excitement when he learns of the arrival, only that morning, of America’s greatest detective, William J. Burns, a former Secret Service man who has been likened to Sherlock Holmes. Surely Burns, already world famous for cracking unsolvable crimes and for his elaborate disguises, can run the perpetrators to ground. Through the work of many months, snowbound stakeouts, and brilliant forensic sleuthing, the great investigator finally identifies the men he believes are responsible for so much destruction. Stunningly, Burns accuses the men—labor activists with an apparent grudge against the Los Angeles Times’s fiercely anti-union owner—of not just one heinous deed but of being part of a terror wave involving hundreds of bombings. While preparation is laid for America’s highest profile trial ever—and the forces of labor and capital wage hand-to-hand combat in the streets—two other notable figures are swept into the drama: industry-shaping filmmaker D.W. Griffith, who perceives in these events the possibility of great art and who will go on to alchemize his observations into the landmark film The Birth of a Nation; and crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow, committed to lend his eloquence to the defendants, though he will be driven to thoughts of suicide before events have fully played out.Simultaneously offering the absorbing reading experience of a can’t-put-it-down thriller and the perception-altering resonance of a story whose reverberations continue even today, American Lightning is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

    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.

    The cause of the unexplained dive was the subject of one of the longest NTSB investigations at that time. While the crew’s efforts to save TWA 841 were initially hailed as heroic, that all changed when safety inspectors found twenty-one minutes of the thirty-minute cockpit voice recorder tape blank. The captain of the flight, Harvey “Hoot” Gibson, subsequently came under suspicion for deliberately erasing the tape in an effort to hide incriminating evidence. The voice recorder was never evaluated for any deficiencies. From that moment on, the investigation was focused on the crew to the exclusion of all other evidence. It was an investigation based on rumors, innuendos, and speculation. Eventually the NTSB, despite sworn testimony to the contrary, blamed the crew for the incident by having improperly manipulated the controls, leading to the dive. This is the story of an NTSB investigation gone awry and one pilot’s decade-long battle to clear his name.

    Bundy was an exceptionally evil, well-organized and calculating criminal who used his knowledge of law enforcement techniques to elude capture for years. The crime scenes, where he murdered women, were scattered over such wide geographic areas that it took police a very long time to recognize it was the work of one man. His fingerprints were never found at the scenes of the crimes and he had a strange chameleon-like ability to change his appearance at will. As one person said, 'Ted lured females the way a lifeless silk flower can dupe a honey bee.' All of Bundy's victims were white females, mainly college students aged between 15 and 25. He confessed to 30 killings but the real figure could have been 100 or more.

    Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff.In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired. We meet the men, women, and children of Mt. Carmel. We get inside the day-to-day life of the community. Thibodeau is brutally honest about himself, Koresh, and the other members, and the result is a revelatory look at life inside a cult.But Waco is just as brutally honest when it comes to dissecting the actions of the United States government. Thibodeau marshals an array of evidence, some of it never previously revealed, and proves conclusively that it was our own government that caused the Waco tragedy, including the fires. The result is a memoir that reads like a thriller, with each page taking us closer to the eventual inferno.

    Political scandals, rumrunners and mobs lurked in the shadows of the city’s soaring architecture and industrious population. As the Great Depression began to take hold, tensions grew, spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the boardinghouse of Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Rose and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded—until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case. Author Karen Dybis follows the twists and turns of this shocking story, revealing the truth of Detroit’s own Hex Woman.

    David Kushner grew up in the suburbs of Florida in the early 1970s, running wild with his friends, exploring, riding bikes, and disappearing into the nearby woods for hours at a time. One morning in 1973, however, everything changed. David's older brother Jon, making a trip to the local convenience store, vanished. This is the story of Jon's murder at the hands of two sadistic drifters and everything that happened after. "Alligator Candy "isn't only the chronicle of Jon's death, it is also the story of how parenting in America changed, casting light on the transition between two generations of children one raised on freedom, the other on fear. Jon's death was one of the first in what turned out to be a rash of child abductions and murders that dominated headlines for much of the 1970s and 80s. It was around this time that milk cartons began to feature the images of missing children, and newscasters began asking, It's 10:00, do you know where you children are? When one of Jon's killers received a parole hearing, David revisited the case that had so haunted him. Marshalling his skills as a journalist, he compiled all the details that he was sheltered from as a child, interviewing neighbors, reporters, cops, and his own family, and combing through yellowed news clippings. Haunting and intimate, "Alligator Candy" is a moving, disturbing, insightful, and inspiring meditation on grief, growth, family, and survival."

    New Jersey Superior Court judge Nelson Johnson has been observing the underpinnings of the boardwalk scene for three decades, both as a professional and an amateur history buff. His scintillating new book traces the city's long, eventful path from birth to seaside resort to a scandal-ridden crime center and beyond. The Sopranos with salt-water taffy.

    Little did he know his quest would consume a fortune and take thirty years to reach its dramatic conclusion.Thwarted at first by the fact that his brother’s body could not be located and a new district attorney reluctant to prosecute as a result, Kergen had to keep track of the killers from New Orleans’ notorious French Quarter to Las Vegas and points in between and wait for a break in the case that seemed like it would never come. Then nearly thirty years later, science, detective work and especially a brother's love and tenacity would combine for a resolution that would end in a dramatic trial in which one of the killers' diary would be a star witness.

    A KILLER PLOT Twenty-six-year-old actor Daniel Wozniak was unemployed, facing eviction, and deep in debt for his upcoming wedding. So he devised a diabolical plan: He asked his neighbor Sam Herr, a young war veteran, to help him move some things into the attic of an empty theater. There, Wozniak shot Herr twice in the head before taking his ATM card and cell phone. Hours later,Wozniak performed on stage with his fiancée in a local production of the musical Nine, convinced that he had gotten away with murder… A DRAMATIC LAST ACT Wozniak dismembered his victim’s body and hid the pieces. Then he lured Herr’s college friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi to Herr’s apartment and shot her twice in the head. The police immediately declared Herr a prime suspect—just as Wozniak had planned. But when Herr was declared missing, and his ATM withdrawals led authorities to Wozniak at his bachelor party, the actor was forced to play the role of a lifetime in a shocking murder investigation that would be his greatest—and final—performance… Includes 8 pages of photos

    H.H. Holmes" contains three fully illustrated, unabridged primary source books, plus Holmes' published confession as originally documented shortly before his execution. For the first time in over a century, these materials are again available - and all in one book. HOLMES' OWN STORY by Herman W. Mudgett - 1895 In this autobiography, Holmes recounts his childhood years, and life's trials and tribulations. THE HOLMES-PITEZEL CASE by Detective Frank Geyer - 1896 Included are rare court transcripts, expert witness testimony, and in-depth criminal and legal detection methods utilized in the trial against Holmes. THE HOLMES CASTLE by Robert Corbitt - 1895 Robert Corbitt entered the Holmes "castle" when the investigation into the horrors first began. Learn what made Corbitt believe that Holmes was innocent. THE CONFESSION OF H.H. HOLMES - 1896 Holmes gives the media what they want...a confession. UNABRIDGED - ILLUSTRATED

    On the night of March 1, 1932, celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped from his New Jersey home. The family paid $50,000 to get “Little Lindy” back, but his remains were discovered in a grove of trees four miles from the Lindbergh house. More than two years after the abduction, Bruno Hauptmann, an unemployed carpenter and illegal German immigrant, was caught with $20,000 of the ransom money. He was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime. But did he really do it?  New York Times–bestselling author Noel Behn spent eight years investigating the case, revisiting old evidence, discovering new information, and shining a bright light on the controversial actions of public figures such as New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, New Jersey State Police Superintendent H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Charles Lindbergh himself. The result is a fascinating and convincing new theory of the crime that exonerates Hauptmann and names a killer far closer to the Lindbergh family.   A finalist for the Edgar Award, Lindbergh “not only provides answers to the riddles of the ‘Crime of the Century,’ but hurls us into time past, to a special moment in American history” (Peter Maas, New York Times–bestselling author of Underboss).

    Fascinating!" —Ann Rule, New York Times Bestselling Author"While Ted Bundy might be the greatest evil enigma ever, author Rebecca Morris strips away the layers of the greatest mystery of his life—what was his connection to the disappearance of Ann Marie Burr? This is an astonishing achievement, the missing piece that readers of crime have long sought. Bravo for Morris!" —Gregg Olsen, New York Times Bestselling AuthorAt age three he was using knives to frighten his teenage aunt. By fourteen he was a thief, animal abuser, and peeping tom who liked to pull little girls into the woods to scare them.Ted Bundy killed at least thirty-five girls and women, and possibly hundreds. Was his first victim eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr who disappeared from their Tacoma, Washington, neighborhood in 1961?Her body was never found and there were no clues, just two tenacious detectives who spent the rest of their lives trying to solve the case.Was Bundy telling the truth when he told a hypothetical story about killing Ann and dumping her into a muddy pit?With new information about Ted Bundy's childhood, interviews with those who knew him best, and the memories of the Burr family, Ted and Ann is the story of one the 20th century's most fascinating cold cases.Rebecca Morris is an award-winning journalist who has worked in radio and television news in New York City; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington. A native Oregonian, her reporting has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Oregonian, People, Entertainment Weekly, New York Newsday, American Theatre, and many other publications. She lives in Seattle.

    Her story stretches from industrial England to the French Riviera, from Ireland to New York, Shanghai, New Zealand, the Isle of Man and across Australia. Ethel claimed she was a cotton heiress, wartime nurse, casino hostess, stowaway, artist, opera singer, gambler, spy, close friend of the King, air raid warden, charity queen and even wife of Australian test cricketer Jack Fingleton.When her career imploded (with the abandonment of her glittering society marriage in post-war Sydney just two hours before the guests were due to arrive), the story of the Amazing Mrs Livesey was blazoned across newspapers around the world. But what was fact and what was fiction?With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary and constantly surprising story of the woman who was possibly Australia’s greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.Author's Note:Written as narrative or factional history, real people and actual events have been woven together with fictitious character names, and imagined conversations to bridge occasional gaps in the storyline or account for unnamed people.

    This is the extraordinary true story of the most prolific serial killer the nation had ever seen -- a case involving more than forty-nine female victims, two decades of intense investigative work...and one unrelenting killer who not only attended Ann Rule's book signings but lived less than a mile away from her home.