Within two years he's a multimillionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder.

    Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.

    Spousal murder is never acceptable, but newlywed murder seems to be on a completely different level. It is unconscionable to think someone could stand in front of his family and friends, pledging to honor and cherish another person for the rest of his life, and then kill his spouse in cold blood just months, weeks, or even days later. It happens more than you'd think--and, contrary to popular belief, it's not always the husband who acts as the aggressor. In her third true crime book, bestselling author JJ Slate examines more than twenty true stories of newlywed murders, delving into the past of the victims and aggressors, searching for answers to the question everyone is asking: How does this sort of thing happen? These shocking cases of betrayal and murder might just make you think differently about those five sacred words, "till death do us part."

    or Murder?On November 6, 2000, paramedics answered a call to find Kristin Rossum, 24, sobbing. Her husband, Gredg de Villers, wasn't breathing and she claimed he had overdosed on drugs after learning she was leaving him. But family and friends who knew of Greg's distaste for drugs weren't buying Kristin's story - particularly the idea that he would take his own life.American BeautyThe daughter of a well-to-do California family, Rossum was a brainy blonde beauty whose talent for toxicology had won her a post at the San Diego Count Medical Examiner's Office. But her sweet smile masked a dark side. She'd developed a taste for methamphetamine in high school, and six months after her marriage to Greg, she'd begun seeking secret trysts with other men.Toxic PassionAt the time of her husband's death, Rossum was engaged in an illicit affair with her married boss. Investigations found that the Medical Examiner's Office was missing supplies of meth and fentanyl, the narcotic that had killed her husband. With each clue discovered, another piece of Rossum's "good girl" façade fell away. What the world would eventually see was the true face of a murderer - and the hand of justice ...

    As Lisa and Kosta Fotopoulos lay sleeping in their home, a burglar broke in and shot Lisa at point-blank range in the head. Miraculously, she survived to learn the sobering truth about her would-be assassin—and about her sociopathic husband's deadly agenda.

    He died in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland, in January 2016, aged sixty-eight, unmourned, and entirely unrepentant of his repellent crimes.These bald facts, horrific as they are, do not begin to scratch the surface of the truth about Robert Black, a Scottish-born serial killer who undoubtedly committed further murders for which he was never tried, both in this country and on the Continent. In this ground-breaking account, Robert Giles, who has spent years tracing the killer’s movements and sifting through all the evidence, including transcripts of the trials, convincingly argues that Black was an habitual serial killer over many years, and quite certainly responsible for more than the four child murders for which he was convicted.Co-written with Chris Clark, a former police intelligence officer whose tireless work into the Yorkshire Ripper produced convincing new evidence of other murders that went unnoticed or unrecorded, The Face of Evil shows once and for all that Robert Black was a serial killer whose crimes went far beyond what is generally believed. In doing so, it paints a portrait of human cruelty at its worst.

    She was twenty-five when she married him and forty-four when she killed him.In October 2002, the quiet northern California town of Orinda was rocked by murder when Susan Polk, the mother of three teenage boys, was arrested for stabbing her husband and former therapist, Dr. Felix Polk, to death. The arrest and subsequent trial quickly became one of the most talked about murder cases in the country, as spectators and reporters learned the strange history behind this shocking killing.Now in Seduced by Madness, Carol Pogash—the leading journalist working the case—has written the definitive account of the Polk family saga, offering a rich and textured re-creation of this disturbing and tragic American tale. Examining the decadent culture of California in the 1970s, Pogash looks at how, in this period of drugs and sexual exploration, a fifteen-year-old Susan found herself caught in the grasp of Felix, her therapist—who, like others in the mental health profession, fell for every passing trend in mental health therapy. Culled from years of careful research, Pogash reconstructs the vague beginnings of the couple's sexual relationship in the therapist's office, exploring how Felix's relaxed attitude toward therapy blinded him to the complex nature of Susan's mental state, and how their mutual obsession with each other sealed their fate.With lyrical prose, Pogash skillfully traces the Polks' story—from their early yearnings for one another through their flawed marriage, which produced three highly intelligent but emotionally divided sons. Weaving a complex narrative of a family who lived in multimillion dollar homes but lingered in the shadow of dysfunction, Pogash reassembles their life in the years and months before Felix's death, intimately describing what led this soft-spoken wife to murder.Three years after Felix's death, Susan Polk was tried for first degree murder, and here Pogash provides a first-hand account of the wild, media-circus trial in which Susan defended herself and cross-examined two of her sons. Illustrating how the prosecution and the court responded to Susan's volatile behavior, Pogash takes you inside the deliberation room and uncovers how jurors reached their surprising verdict.Filled with the most complete case facts and interviews available, Seduced by Madness offers an unparalleled look at one of the most captivating murder cases in recent years.

    Over the course of two years, the impressionable teenager endured manipulation, psychological control, and physical abuse as the harsh realities and looming darkness of Charles Manson’s true nature revealed itself. From Spahn ranch and the group acid trips, to the Beatles’ White Album and Manson’s dangerous messiah-complex, Dianne tells the riveting story of the group’s descent into madness as she lived it.Though she never participated in any of the group’s gruesome crimes and was purposely insulated from them, Dianne was arrested with the rest of the Manson Family, and eventually learned enough to join the prosecution’s case against them. With the help of good Samaritans, including the cop who first arrested her and later adopted her, the courageous young woman eventually found redemption and grew up to lead an ordinary life.While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying and fascinating chapters in modern American history.Member of the Family includes 16 pages of photographs.

    It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone’s rise to underworld domination, Chicago’s corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and the frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people (who should have known better) to invest as much as $30 million--upwards of $400 million today--in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama. When Leo’s scheme finally collapsed in 1923, he vanished, and the Chicago state’s attorney, a man whose lust for power equaled Leo’s own lust for money, began an international manhunt that lasted almost a year. When finally apprehended, Leo was living a life of luxury in Nova Scotia under the assumed identity of a book dealer and literary critic. His mysterious death in a Chicago prison topped anything in his almost-too-bizarre-to-believe life.Empire of Deception is not only an incredibly rich and detailed account of a man and an era; it’s a fascinating look at the methods of swindlers throughout history. Leo Koretz was the Bernie Madoff of his day, and Dean Jobb shows us that the dream of easy wealth is a timeless commodity.

    Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe

    Rick Porrello writes about the important connection with mega-mobsters Charles Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the Cleveland mob's move to Las Vegas, and the first top-level national meeting of the Sicilian-American Mafia.

    What was left of Fred West's eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests' previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country outside the city. Several victims had been decapitated and dismembered, their remains showing signs of sexual torture. These twelve are just the ones the police found when the Wests were arrested in 1994. There may be more whose bones have not been located.Howard Sounes broke the first major story about the Wests as a journalist, and covered the murder trial of Rosemary West, before writing this , the classic book about the case. Beginning with Fred's and Rose's bizarre childhoods, Sounes charts their lives and crimes in forensic detail, creating a fascinating and truly frightening account of a marriage soaked in blood.

    A surprising number go on to kill a second or even third wife or girlfriend, often in exactly the same way. In more than fifty chilling case studies, Marilee Strong examines the strange and complex psychology that drives these killers—from the murder a century ago that inspired the novel An American Tragedy to Scott Peterson, Mark Hacking, Jeffrey MacDonald, Ira Einhorn, Charles Stuart, Robert Durst, Michael White, Barton Corbin, and many others. Erased also looks at how these men manipulate the legal system and exploit loopholes in missing persons procedures and death investigation, exposing how easy it can be to get away with murder.

    But he was an A student, a Deans’ Award winner. How could this happen?CNN could not get the story. The Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and all others came up empty because Steve’s friends and professors knew very little. He had reinvented himself in his final five years. But David Vann, investigating for Esquire, went back to Steve’s high school and junior high friends, found a life perfectly shaped for mass murder, and gained full access to the entire 1,500 pages of the police files. The result: the most complete portrait we have of any school shooter. But Vann doesn’t stop there. He recounts his own history with guns, contemplating a school shooting. This book is terrifying and true, a story you’ll never forget.

    The shocking true story of Barbara Opel, a woman who convinced a group of teenagers, including her 13-year-old daughter, to savagely kill her boss.