Real true crime is not for everyone. The stories in this book represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. Television crime shows and news articles often skip the gruesome parts of true crime stories. The real details are just too grisly for the average viewer or reader.In my books, however, I do my best to include the details, regardless of how unsettling they may be. Each story requires hours of research. I search through old newspaper articles, court documents, police reports, autopsy results, and first-hand descriptions. Some of the specifics can be disconcerting. I choose to include the details not to shock, but to give the reader a deeper view into the mind of the killer. Although it’s unlikely any of us will understand the motives of a diabolical monster, the level of depravity will keep you turning pages.That being said, if you are overly squeamish about the details of true crime, this book may not be for you. If you’re okay with it… then let’s begin.Volume 7 features: Longer stories, more photos, a bonus chapter, and an online appendix with additional photos, videos, and documents. Volume 7 of True Crime Case Histories features twelve new stories from the past fifty years.A sampling of the stories include:You’ll read about a law enforcement officer that took advantage of the trust associated with his uniform. His brutal reign of terror lasted eight years. It took the bravery of two young women that escaped his grasp to bring him down.There’s the story of the recent law school graduate with a crush on his neighbor. Rather than asking her out on a date, he stalked and spied on his classmate, eventually taking her life. There’s also the heartbreaking story of a single mom, drowning in debt, that did the unthinkable for insurance money.Seven of the stories in this book feature women killers, two of which took the time to meticulously dismember their victims—a task that can take great strength. Another woman manipulated her two teenage boys into killing for her. Yet another woman staged an elaborate hoax to get rid of her loving husband rather than go through the agony of a messy divorce.You’ll also read of a sadistic group of up to twelve killers that took joy in abducting and torturing young men in Australia. Sadly, only one of the mysterious group has been brought to justice.Plus many more disturbing stories.The twelve stories in this volume are shocking and disturbing, but they’re true. These things really happen in the world. We may never understand why killers do what they do, but at least we can be better informed. You may have heard of a few of the stories in this volume, but there are several I’m almost certain you haven’t.

    From My Mother's Garden, the parable of an old woman who refuses to accept the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, to The Young People of Moscow, which describes an extraordinary day in the life of an aging couple selling antiquated Soviet poetry in an underground bazaar, these intricately woven narratives provide unforgettable slices of a Russia that is at once both exotic and disconcertingly familiar.

    . . Thirteen year old Ephraim Wright suffers the depredations of war along with the white family who reared him. Raised with the family since he was two years old, he is never once required to call Jonathan Wright, his benevolent owner, "master." His speech, manners and outlook on life are more akin to his white "siblings than the other slaves in the community who chide him for being a "pet" and "talkin' like white folk." He is stranded between two worlds; that of free whites, and of enslaved blacks. His life is irreversibly changed when Confederate conscript officers take the family's oldest son at gun point and a bushwhacker gang guns down Jonathan Wright. The law forbids a slave to touch a firearm, because a “negro with a gun is a nervous thing to white folks.” But where his family is concerned, Ep is never one to care about what the slave laws say. By seeking to send men to hell, will Ephraim send himself there as well?Advance Praise for The Secret of Wattensaw BayouWhile reading the book my feelings of anger and resentment toward the institution of slavery and those who fought to protect such rights were sometimes overwhelming and required me to take a deep breath. Nevertheless, the story from a historical perspective, although it was a work of fiction, was masterly woven and I found myself with the urge to continue reading. . . The book is well written and the author provides a fascinating glimpse into the everyday existence of many Southern families during the Civil War. Commander Harold Barnes (US Navy, retired)

    First, Nicholas, a would-be Living Artist, seeks to escape his demons in the shadowy underground–but in doing so makes a deal with the devil himself. In her fevered search for him, his twin sister, Nicola, spins her own unusual and hypnotic tale as she discovers the hidden secrets of the city. And finally, haunted by Nicola’s sudden, mysterious disappearance and gripped by despair, Shadrach, Nicola’s lover, embarks on a mythic journey to the nightmarish levels deep beneath the surface of the city to bring his love back to light. There he will find wonders beyond imagining…and horrors greater than the heart can bear. By turns beautiful, horrifying, delicate, and powerful, Veniss Underground explores the limits of love, memory, and obsession in a landscape that defies the boundaries of the imagination. This special edition includes the short stories “The Sea, Mendeho, and Moonlight”; “Detectives and Cadavers”; and “A Heart for Lucretia” and the novella Balzac’s War, offering a complete tour of the fantastic world of Veniss.

    Armed with the information from Cathryn's Wild Sexual Animal Kingdom research and her "Love is Important but Chocolate is Essential" Chocolate Fun Facts, her posse of Grrl Geniuses struggle with singlehood, married life, sexual preferences, widowhood, and friendship. Cathryn's journey veers from a "nails-on-chalkboard-scratchingly-awful" divorce and the botched kidnapping of her own dog, to pretending to be a lesbian, seeing her old lingerie sold on her old front lawn by her ex-husband's girlfriend, losing her job, and a tragic industrial accident-level bikini wax. And through everything, Cathryn searches for the answer to the most important relationship question of all: why are all the best men gay?If you've ever been tempted to have sex with another person, this is an essential read. If you've ever felt inadequate to a task or a failure at love or in any way anything less than a genius and you've sunk so low that even a new pair of cute shoes won't help, Cathryn Michon can show you the way to relationship happiness-all you have to do is learn from her very funny mistakes. However badly you think you've done anything, Cathryn has done it even worse, and reveals lessons learned in the wryly witty and devastatingly honest style that has made her the favorite of aspiring geniuses everywhere!

    I’m 16. I’ve got a skull for a face. And here's how shit went down." Having never been outside the walls of Gramm Jones Foster Care Facility, sixteen-year-old Levi leaves in the middle of the night with an empty backpack and a newfound lust for life. A journey that leads him into the arms of delusional newlyweds, drunkards, polygamists, the dangerous, and the batshit crazy. His destination? Hermosa Beach, California where he's told there is another like him, with the face of a skull. A coming-of-age road trip filled with surreal Lynch-ian encounters exploring the dark, the disturbing, and the lonely in a 1980s world—an epic venture for one disfigured boy struggling to find his place in the world."This is Huck lighting out for the territories, and kind of documenting an era for us on the way. Only--because it’s now not then--he’s got a skull face to deal with. As do we all. " ~Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels

    When the US grants approximately 4,000 unaccompanied minors political asylum, Majok becomes Michael, and he is given a new start in the US. Yet his life is not without trauma, culminating when a fellow student betrays him. This is the story of a survivor who summons the courageous spirit of millions of refugees throughout history—and it lives on today.

    His work has been a huge favorite of lucky insiders like me for years, and now the secret is finally and definitely out." -Dennis Cooper, author of The Marbled Swarm

    He was born in a car by the Merced River, and grew up in a hidden camp with his parents, surviving on fish, acorns, and unfinished food thrown away by the park's millions of tourists. But despite its splendor, Tenaya's Yosemite is a visceral place of opposites, at once beautiful, dangerous, and violent. When he meets Lucy, a young woman from the south side of the park, Tenaya must choose between this new relationship and the Valley, terrorism and legend, the sacred versus the material. In this modern retelling of Samson and Delilah, Graphic the Valley explores mythical strength, worldly greed, love, lust, and epic destruction. Set entirely in the majestic Yosemite Valley, Hoffmeister recalls Edward Abbey's vivid sense of place and urgent call for preservation of one of the world's most spectacular sites.

    The story revolves around a computer engineer living in Bangalore who is mentally affected by stress which pushes him to a greater extend.

    Four teens in a New Hampshire mill town abuse a bizarre hallucinogen called WHORL in order to cope with a devastating suicide epidemic.

    But when the life of their young son is taken, Jeanie starts to wonder if her family is being targeted by something supernatural. In this novella based on a true story, Jeanie narrates her family's time at the Maple House and the experiences in what she thought would be her dream home that still plague her family today.

    Sarah Caysum, a middle aged woman suffering from Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy (and perhaps something else far more sinister), leaves her four year old daughter Casey trapped in a car to die one summer afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona on a day when temperatures are expected to reach a record breaking 125 degrees.

    Getting out... will be another matter. *** It was supposed to be just one more job: in, out, and millions the richer. But when four thieves break into THIS house, they discover the owners were ready. And waiting. Now, the thieves find themselves in a deadly maze of traps. Traps designed not only to steal their lives, but their sanity. The only way out is the front door. The only way to get there is to survive. And the only way to survive is to be willing to do anything, to suffer all... and to lose everything.

    Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, and H. P. Lovecraft. This anthology, edited with an explanatory introduction by a noted weird fiction scholar, collects the tales of those writers that are relevent to True Detective. Unlike other ebook collections, that contain dozens of unrelated stories, such as Chambers's victorian romances and random Lovecraft stories that have nothing at all to do with True Detective, this anthology includes only those stories that directly reference The King in Yellow, Carcosa, and other important themes. This is the only collection that contains all of the stories by these authors that reference Hastur, the ancient god of Carcosa, who appears among the tattoos on Reggie Ledoux. It also includes the correct Lovecraft story that connects all of these works with the Cthulhu Mythos. This is the ideal collection for those who want to understand the many references to early weird fiction that have appeared in True Detective.