In a Child's Name: The Legacy of a Mother's Murder


Peter Maas - 1990
    The custody battle over the couple's infant son makes this true story all the more tragic. 16 pages of photographs.

The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them


Tim Howard - 2014
    As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal on the field, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette’s syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.The Keeper recalls his childhood, being raised by a single mother who instilled in him a love of sports and a devout Christian faith that helped him cope when he was diagnosed with Tourette’s in the fifth grade. He looks back over his fifteen-year professional career—from becoming the youngest player to win MLS Goalkeeper of the Year to his storied move to the English Premier League with Manchester United and his current team, Liverpool’s Everton, to becoming an overnight star after his record-making performance with the United States Men’s National Team. He also talks about the things closest to his heart—the importance of family and the Christian beliefs that guide him.Told in his thoughtful and articulate voice, The Keeper is an illuminating look at a remarkable man who is an inspirational role model for all of us.The Keeper is illustrated with two 8-page color photo inserts.

Goombata: The Improbable Rise and Fall of John Gotti and His Gang


John Cummings - 1990
    . . and has never been convicted of racketeering, drug-trafficking or murder.Prize-winning journalists John Cummings and Ernest Volkman's shocking true account of the brutal and meteoric rise of John "Johhny Boy" Gotti from Brooklyn "bone-breaker" to lord of the Gambino Family -- a riveting exploration into the the bloody machinery of La Cosa Nostra operating on the dark side of the American dream.

Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men


Harold Schechter - 2018
    She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.

Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery


Paul Collins - 2013
    Still our nation’s longest running “cold case,” the mystery of Elma Sands finally comes to a close with this book, which delivers the first substantial break in the case in over 200 years.In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic. Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached—with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge—their animosity reached a crescendo. Central to their dispute was the Manhattan water supply, which Burr saw not just as an opportunity to help a city devastated by epidemics but as a chance to heal his battered finances.But everything changed when Elma Sands, a beautiful young Quaker woman, was found dead in Burr's newly constructed Manhattan Well. The horrific crime quickly gripped the nation, and before long accusations settled on one of Elma’s suitors, handsome young carpenter Levi Weeks. As the enraged city demanded a noose be draped around the accused murderer’s neck, the only question seemed to be whether Levi would make it to trial or be lynched first.The young man’s only hope was to hire a legal dream team. And thus it was that New York’s most bitter political rivals and greatest attorneys did the unthinkable—they teamed up.At once an absorbing legal thriller and an expertly crafted portrait of the United States in the time of the Founding Fathers, Duel with the Devil is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

Son of a Grifter: The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the Most Notorious Con Artists in America: A Memoir By The Other Son


Kent Walker - 2001
    Suddenly, America was transfixed by a pair of real-life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her twenty-three-year-old son Kenny.But the most chilling story of all was never told—until now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived forty years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away.As a child Kent watched his mother destroy his hardworking father, Ed Walker, and then—with Kent's painful collusion—snare what Sante called "my millionaire." When she married seemingly respectable real-estate developer Ken Kimes, it was a match made in hell.For the next two decades Kent's mother and stepfather indulged in a globetrotting orgy of criminal behaviour.Kent, their would-be recruit, was privy to the family business—torching houses, defrauding friends, crashing White When Kent's half-brother, Kenny was born, Kent was twelve years old—old enough to know that he was his younger sibling's only protector. Kent tried desperately to save Kenny from his mother's sinister bidding. His failure haunts him to this day.

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City


Nelson Johnson - 2002
    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.

Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case


Allen Weinstein - 1978
    Hiss's defense was the most gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt has remained an American enigma. Now, historian Allen Weinstein finally solves, once and for all, one of the great American mysteries. Weinstein also, for the first time ever, draws upon previously inaccessible information from Soviet archives. The result is an extraordinary book that leaves anyone who reads it with one inescapable conclusion: Alger Hiss was guilty.

Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder


Jeannie Walker - 2010
    She wasn't satisfied with a lavish lifestyle, and her rich husband stood in her way. She knew her middlle-aged lesbian lover would do anything to set her free, even if it meant premeditated murder.A few years after the millionaire's death, a bottle of arsenic and mail to the millionaire was found in a storage locker rented by a woman under an assumed name. Nobody could have predicted the murder or the aftermath with its strange twists and unexpected results as the millionaire's ex-wife becomes a sleuth to help solve the murder.

Kahawa


Donald E. Westlake - 1981
    As a group of scoundrels and international financiers hijack the train, the double and triple crosses pile up and the comic tension escalates in a brawling brew of buffoons, bumblers, beans and boxcars.

God's Nobodies: Misguided Faith and Murder in the Life of One American Family


Mark Obbie - 2012
    How one tragedy led to another is a true story that puts a horrifying twist on the familiar one of bullied gay teens. In this case, the bully was the teen's own mother, and instead of harming himself he killed her in a momentary but irreversible explosion of rage. God’s Nobodies, written by veteran crime reporter Mark Obbie, exposes the destruction of a meek young man whose only refuge was a childlike fantasy world of his own imagination. His family's blind obedience to their minister compounded the losses, first by turning Pam Ginocchetti against her son, and then by turning the rest of Tim's family against his loving grandmother — the one person brave enough to take a stand for forgiveness and truth after Pam's death. Through a searing and heartbreaking true-crime narrative, God’s Nobodies teaches profound lessons about tolerance and the human spirit's yearning for independence.

A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man


Holly George-Warren - 2014
    Following stints leading 60s sensation the Box Tops (“The Letter”) and pioneering 70s popsters Big Star (“the ultimate American pop band”—Time), Chilton became a dishwasher. Yet he rose again in the 80s as a solo artist, producer, and trendsetter, coinventing the indie-rock genre. By the 90s, acolytes from R.E.M. to Jeff Buckley embodied Chilton’s legacy, ushering him back to the spotlight before his untimely death in 2010.In the career-spanning and revelatory A Man Called Destruction, longtime Chilton acquaintance Holly George-Warren has interviewed more than 100 bandmates, friends, and family members to flesh out a man who presided over—and influenced—four decades of American musical history, rendered here with new perspective through the adventures of a true iconoclast.

Without a Trace: Unsolved Disappearances and Mysterious Vanishings


Troy Taylor - 2020
    Such strange and chilling tales run the gamut of the terrifying and the bizarre and include crime victims, lost explorers, ships vanished at sea, outdoor disappearances, and supernatural mysteries that defy all explanation. Among these pages you’ll find accounts of America’s Lost Colony, history’s most famous ghost ships, famous figures who vanished into the unknown, the unknown fate of America’s first kidnapping for ransom, a vanished heiress, lighthouse keepers who impossibly disappeared, the killer who escaped the noose – permanently, the Grand Canyon adventurers who were never seen again, the Prohibition lawman’s nephew who was never found, the Ohio sorority girl who never made it home, the abducted housewife who disappeared, the Hollywood starlet who left her family behind, a missing West Point cadet, the babysitter who vanished on Halloween, the missing Texas couple who may have been Russian spies, the little boy who walked away for good in the Smoky Mountains, a missing heiress to a candy empire, a missing TV news reporter, a long distance runner whose run never ended, plus infamous vanishings of figures like Theodosia Burr, Amelia Earhart, Glenn Miller, Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, and far too many more! Just remember as you turn the pages, that if these people so easily vanished from the face of the earth, then it means it could happen to anyone – perhaps even you. You may want to read this one with the lights on.

The Kind One


Tom Epperson - 2008
    According to the fellas, he used to pull all kinds of shoot-ups and shenanigans...but damned if he can't remember a thing from before last year, when he got hit over the head with a lead pipe. Sadistic mobster Bud Seitz — known to friends and enemies alike as "The Kind One" — seems to have big plans for him, but truthfully, Danny can't stomach the dirty work. His aim is off, the other wiseguys laugh at him, and he'd gladly trade in the drunken parties and the endless broads for a day at the movies with his colorful and mysterious neighbor Dulwich and eleven-year-old Sophie, whose deadbeat mother delivers an endless stream of emotional and physical abuse. But when Bud's beautiful girlfriend Darla begs Danny to help her escape the Kind One's dark, brutal world, Danny must confront a dangerous test of loyalty that could irrevocably change his future — and his past — forever.

Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs


Jason Ryan - 2011
    Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot does for marijuana smuggling what Blow and Snowblind did for the cocaine trade.