Book picks similar to
Perfect Victim by Elizabeth Southall
true-crime
non-fiction
nonfiction
crime
Body Lengths
Leisel Jones - 2015
I am a fish out of water. Even in the pool.Leisel Jones is rightly regarded as one of the greatest breaststrokers ever. At just fifteen, she won two silver medals at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000; she went on to win gold at Athens and Beijing, and at London 2012 became the first Australian swimmer to compete at four Olympics. For the first time, Leisel candidly describes what it’s like to be thrust into the limelight so young. She reveals the constant pressure she was under – from coaches, from the media and from herself – to be perfect. Despite the highs of her swimming stardom, she suffered depression, and at one time planned to take her own life. In London, criticised in the media for her weight, and appalled by the bulling and dysfunction in the Australian swim team, Leisel nevertheless handled herself with great composure. She has emerged with maturity and good humour, having finally learnt how to be herself and live with confidence. Body Lengths is the inspiring story of an Australian sporting hero, told with humour, optimism and style.
And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder
Deborah Spungen - 1983
But for Deborah Spungen, the mother of Nancy, who was stabbed to death at the Chelsea Hotel, it was both a relief and a tragedy. Here is the incredible story of an infant who never stopped screaming, a toddler who attacked people, a teenager addicted to drugs, violence, and easy sex, a daughter completely out of control--who almost destroyed her parents' marriage and the happiness of the rest of her family.
Going Back: How a former refugee, now an internationally acclaimed surgeon, returned to Iraq to change the lives of injured soldiers and civilians
Munjed Al Muderis - 2019
The book also detailed his early work as a pioneering orthopaedic surgeon at the cutting edge of world medicine. In Going Back, Munjed shares the extraordinary journey that his life-changing new surgical technique has taken him on. Through osseointegration, he implants titanium rods into the human skeleton and attaches robotic limbs, allowing patients genuine, effective and permanent mobility. Munjed has performed this operation on hundreds of Australian civilians, wounded British soldiers who've lost legs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a survivor of the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand. But nothing has been as extraordinary as his return to Iraq after eighteen years, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, to operate on soldiers, police and civilian amputees wounded in the horrific war against ISIS. These stories are both heartbreaking and full of hope, and are told from the unique perspective of a refugee returning to the place of his birth as a celebrated international surgeon.
Mr. Nice
Howard Marks - 1996
Whether bars, recording studios, or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. Marks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford, but soon he was moving much larger quantities. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia. This is his extraordinary story.
Living with Evil
Cynthia Owen - 2009
But behind the facade of respectability lurked a hideous reality. Cynthia was just eight years old when she was sexually abused by her father amongst others. Shortly before her eleventh birthday she was made pregnant and, minutes after giving birth to the baby, Cynthia watched in horror as her own mother murdered the tiny infant, named Noleen, by repeatedly stabbing her with a knitting needle. Cynthia's mother then wrapped the baby girl in a plastic bag, dumped her in an alleyway and made her daughter go back to school and pretend nothing had ever happened. After enduring many more years of rape and violence, Cynthia came forward and reported her abuse and Noleen's death. Finally, in 2007, after a fifteen-year legal fight to have her baby girl formally identified, the jury at the 'Dun Laoghaire Baby' inquest declared that the baby found dead in an alleyway thirty-four years previously was Noleen Murphy, the daughter of Cynthia Owen. Cynthia's is a horrific story of brutality and loss, but ultimately, it is an account of love, immense bravery and her fight for justice in Noleen's name.
Tiger, Tiger
Margaux Fragoso - 2011
She is seven; he is fifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice. In time, he insidiously takes on the role of Margaux's playmate, father, and lover. Charming and manipulative, Peter burrows into every aspect of Margaux's life and transforms her from a child fizzing with imagination and affection into a brainwashed young woman on the verge of suicide. But when she is twenty-two, it is Peter -- ill, and wracked with guilt -- who kills himself, at the age of sixty-six. Told with lyricism, depth, and mesmerizing clarity, Tiger, Tiger vividly illustrates the healing power of memory and disclosure. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the psyche of a young girl in free fall and conveys to readers -- including parents and survivors of abuse -- just how completely a pedophile enchants his victim and binds her to him.
Inside 25 Cromwell St
Stephen West - 1995
The two oldest surviving children of Fred and Rosemary West tell the terrifying story of life at 25 Cromwell Street.How does a serial killer stay concealed within a family for 23 years? What kind of family could allow this to happen? Here Stephen and Mae West tell a compelling story of family life tested to destruction.Their unpredictable world of brutality, sexual abuse and violence finally came apart with the most shattering series of discoveries any child could be asked to face.As body after body was removed from 25 Cromwell Street, Stephen and Mae West were forced to confront the truth about their family including, for Mae, the unbearable knowledge that she might easily have been the next victim.
Darkest Waters (True Crime Box Set): Notorious USA
Katherine Ramsland - 2014
For DARKEST WATERS, Wall Street Journal bestselling author Katherine Ramsland is the perfect guide to the famous and not so famous cases that still haunt the states huddled around the Great Lakes. Say hello to Notorious USA! Dr. Ramsland is one of the best in the business and here she takes readers on a journey through darkness with insight and clarity. With this box set, the acclaimed crime author set her sights on Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois. Any state that contains a large city will yield many crime stories. Chicago has certainly had its share. With the impact of gangsters, Prohibition, and a few creative serial killers, this city has it all. But murder happens in smaller towns, too, because greed, depravity, and jealousy exist everywhere. Indiana or the “Hoosier State” has its share of serial killers, from pig farmers to nurses to psychopathic businessmen. Indiana also hosted a historic murder that decimated the Midwestern Ku Klux Klan. With Katherine as your guide, you’ll meet a kid who watched too much TV, a woman who sent “company” to heaven for her deceased husband, and a cop who fought to clear his name and identify the real killer of his wife and kids. And as they say, there’s much, much more. We’ve included maps of each state and a photo archive so you can see what these infamous people look like. Don’t miss Bodies of Evidence, Notorious USA’s first box set and New York Times bestselling collection about the criminals from my neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest). Like all of our collections, Bodies of Evidence (and Unnatural Causes and Overkill) is available as an eBook on most formats, as paperback and audio.
The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir
Cylin Busby - 2008
Then, in the space of a night, everything that was normal about her life changed. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his midnight shift when someone pulled up alongside and leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed tore through his face and left him clinging to life. Overnight, the Busbys went from being the "family next door" to one under twenty-four-hour armed guard, with police escorts to and from school and no contact with friends. Worse, the shooter was still on the loose, and it seemed only a matter of time before he'd come after John-or someone else in the family-again. With their lives unraveling around them and few choices remaining for a future that could ever be secure, the Busby family left everything and everyone they had ever known...and simply disappeared.As told by both father and daughter, this is a harrowing, at times heartbreaking, account of a shooting and its aftermath-even as it shows a young girl trying to make sense of the unthinkable and the triumph of a family's bravery in the face of crisis.
Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
Sam Chaiton - 1991
They bring Lesra to Toronto to help with his education. While learning to read, Lesra finds a copy of Rubin Carter's The Sixteenth Round.Rubin Carter, the subject of Bob Dylan's song "Hurricane", was a #1 middleweight boxing contender who had been wrongfully imprisoned after a white jury found him guilty of the murder of three whites in 1966. A huge public outcry followed the publication of Carter's memoir The Sixteenth Round in 1974, culminating in a retrial, which was a virtual reenactment of the original travesty, with Carter receiving the same triple-life sentence.Inspired by Lesra's passion, his adopted Canadian family made contact with Carter and reinvigorated the legal battle. The Hurricane is the moving story of the eight year struggle Carter and his Canadian friends waged to win his exoneration and freedom.
Buried Memories
Irene Pence - 2001
After a sensational trial, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and fifteen years later, on February 24, 2000, she was executed.
The Court Reporter
Jamelle Wells - 2018
As a seasoned court reporter, the ABC's Jamelle Wells has filed thousands of stories on murderers, sex offenders, thieves, bad drivers, family feuds and business deals gone wrong. In more than 10 years, Jamelle has witnessed many of Australia's most notorious and high-profile court cases. In the line of duty, she has sat next to criminals and their families, been chased, spat on, stalked and carted off by ambulance for emergency surgery after an accident outside ICAC.Every day in courts across Australia the evidence, facts and theories are played out in a kind of theatre, with their own characters, costumes and traditions. But ever-present is the human tragedy of ordinary people's lives disrupted, destroyed and forever altered. The judges, the lawyers and barristers, the witnesses and the victims - all striving to play their part in the quest for fairness, justice and always, the truth of what really happened. From the calculated and cruel, to the unfair and unlucky, from pure evil to plain stupid - Jamelle Wells has seen it all. The Court Reporter is a tough and fearless journalist's memoir that looks at the cases that have shocked, moved and never left us.
Missing William Tyrrell
Caroline Overington - 2020
How can a three year old child simply disappear?On Friday 12 September 2014, William Tyrrell - a playful three-year-old boy dressed in a fire-engine red Spider-Man suit - disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. It's assumed he's lost in the nearby bushland, but despite an intensive search, he's not found, and police start to suspect he's been abducted. No trace of William - not a shoe, not a hair - has ever been found, but now is not the time to surrender. How can a little boy just vanish? We have to find him.From best-selling author and Walkley Award-winning journalist, Caroline Overington, Missing William Tyrrell is a moving and compelling exploration of one of Australia's most baffling and heartbreaking mysteries.
Can We Live Here?
Sarah Alderson - 2015
Now, I am sleeping in kickers and a vest under a fan. Let the mosquitos bite me. They can have me ... Can we live here? ... If I don't become roadkill in the next few days, I'll let you know my thoughts. In 2009, Sarah and John Alderson quit their full-time jobs in London and headed off, with Alula, their three-year-old daughter, on a global adventure to find a new home. For eight months, they travelled through Australia, the US and Asia navigating India with a toddler in a tutu, battling black magic curses in Indonesia and encountering bears in North America asking themselves one defining question: Can We Live Here? Inspirational, hilarious and fascinating this is an unforgettable travel memoir and a unique guide to quitting your job, following your dreams and finding your home in a far-flung paradise
The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What's My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen
Mark Shaw - 2016
The autopsy report concluded she accidentally died of an “Acute Ethanol and Barbiturate Intoxication: Circumstances Undetermined.”Despite an apparently staged death scene, no police investigation followed even though friends believed the courageous media icon was murdered. Afraid to speak out, they remained silent about Kilgallen, a gifted wordsmith who broke the “glass ceiling” by succeeding in a man’s world.In The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, fresh evidence including explosive never-before-seen videotaped interviews provides motives to help identify who may have silenced her, and why. Suspects include arch-enemy Frank Sinatra, those threatened by her 18-month JFK assassination investigation, and a “mystery man” connected to the Mafia who might have betrayed Kilgallen.A true Renaissance woman, Kilgallen was known as “The Most Powerful Voice In America.” She once wrote, “Justice is a big rug; when you pull it out from under one man, a lot of others fall too.” But, as author Mark Shaw reveals in this true crime, “whodunit” mystery, Kilgallen was denied justice. Until now.