I Know My First Name is Steven: The True Story of the Steven Stayner Abduction Case


Mike Echols - 1991
    Now, the next terrible chapter unfolds as his brother Cary admits he's the Yosemite Killer.Bright and likeable, seven-year-old Steven Stayner always listened to his mother. Especially about talking to strangers. But when soft spoken "Reverend" Parnell asked to speak with his mother about church, Steven guessed it would be okay. Until he got into the man's car. By then, it was too late.Held captive by convicted child molester Kenneth Eugene Parnell for seven years as his "son Dennis," Steven was forced to endure abuse so terrible that he forgot his own name. Parnell evaded a statewide search for Steven, keeping his young prisoner moving from one cheap motel to the next. Finally, Steven made a desperate escape with five-year-old Timmy White, another kidnapped boy, return home to their parents, then courageously testifying to convict Parnell for his inhuman crimes.The basis for the blockbuster TV movie, I Know My First Name Is Steven is the compelling true account of Steven Stayner's seven years of horror and of his parents who never gave up hope for his safe return. It is also the complete, updated story of how Cary Stayner made headlines of his own—as the cold-blooded killer who terrorised Yosemite.

Chasing the Ripper


Patricia Cornwell - 2014
    Applying modern science and forensic techniques to a century-old crime, Cornwell’s research led to the publication of Portrait of a Killer, in which she identified the renowned British painter Walter Sickert as the Ripper. The book became a #1 bestseller but also embroiled Cornwell in controversy as Ripperologists dismissed her claims and her credibility. But for Cornwell, the book was only the beginning. For more than a decade, Cornwell has devoted countless hours and invested millions in her pursuit of new evidence against Sickert. Now, twelve years later, Cornwell revisits the most notorious unsolved crime in history—determined to solve the mystery once and for all.In this exclusive Kindle Single, Cornwell restates her case against Sickert, unveils new evidence, clarifies his motivations, and makes him human—and, along the way, explains how such a prominent cultural figure could be a notorious killer. She also directly faces down her critics with withering skill and, in doing so, is likely to re-ignite the debate over history’s most heinous unsolved crime.Chasing the Ripper offers a surprisingly personal and revealing look into what it has been like for Cornwell to pursue the most sensational murder case in criminal history—even as she continues to thrill her fans with a steady diet of new Scarpetta novels, including Flesh and Blood, her latest New York Times bestseller.

A Twist in the Tale


Jeffrey Archer - 1988
    From Africa to the Middle East, and from London to Beijing, Archer takes us to places we've never seen and introduces us to people we'll never forget.Meet the philandering husband who thinks he's committed the perfect murder; the self-assured chess champion who plays a beautiful woman for stakes far higher than cash; and the finance minister who needs to crack the secrets of a Swiss bank. Jeffrey Archer's collection of twelve spellbinding stories will sweep you on a journey of thwarted ambition, undying passion, and unswerving honor that you'll never forget.

The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes


Robin Odell - 2010
    More than 300 cases also shed light on advances in crime detection, law enforcement, and forensic science.

The Murder Files - 8 Stories of Murder, Lies and Mystery: (A thriller and suspense short story collection)


Terry Keys - 2017
     Fans of James Patterson, Harlan Coben, John Grisham, David Baldacci, Lydia Davis and Stephen King will love this collection of exclusive short stories that will be sure to leave you breathless.  The award-winning and best-selling authors in this collection turn up the heat - it's pedal to the metal break-neck action from start to finish! The short story is back with a vengeance! Murder, mystery, suspense, chills, thrills and kills this collection has it all!  About the Stories What Money Can’t Buy – by Paul Casselle Are you a bad person trying to be good or a good person that sometimes does bad? It’s a difficult question to answer, but that doesn’t stop life asking regularly! The Butcher – by Will Patching Not all of us are ‘normal’. Some of us are stone cold killers… Collin O’Connor by Ernest Dempsey In a world where terrorist attacks seem to cover the front page of every news outlet, the people of Earth need a new kind of hero. The planet needs someone who isn’t afraid to do whatever it takes to bring justice to those who would harm the innocent. We need Collin O’Connor. A Love Affair by Leah Monroe Have you ever asked yourself, "What am I here for?" Is it wealth? To leave a legacy? Or perhaps you're playing with the cards life deals you. One man comes face-to-face with this age old question and his decision will leave you speechless. Downside Up by Jane Thornley She climbs roofs at night but how could she know how far she’ll have to fall to find the truth? The Son-in-Law by Craig Hart Can you go straight by committing murder? One man is about to find out-if he lives long enough. Linking Arms with the Devil by Michael Maxwell They tell us, “You can’t take it with you”. Maybe you can if you link arms with the devil. Red Eyes – by Terry Keys A small town middle-school teacher suddenly vanishes and returns six months, six days, and six hours after he disappeared. But now he is hiding a terrible secret, and only the next victim can see the . . . Red Eyes.

The Monster of Florence


Douglas Preston - 2008
    Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more.This is the true story of their search for—and identification of—the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide—and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.

Through a Mother's Eyes


Cary Allen Stone - 2002
    It’s a compelling account of one woman's life, and what drove her to take the life of her six-year-old son. How everyday choices shape our perceptions, justifications, and actions. One must consider how close to the edge we all are. It’s a true story told in layman’s terms, with the hope of preventing another tragic loss.

True Crime: Real Girls, Real-Life Stories


Seventeen Magazine - 2007
    Aimed at ages 13-21 years, this illustrated book features true crime and life stories that will motivate readers to reflect on their own lives.

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence


Becky Cooper - 2020
    government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget.1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.   Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.

Killers in Uniform


Adrian Vincent - 2016
    Yet here are over thirty true stories of real life murderers who abused the trust of the public, their patients, their friends and their colleagues, indulging in chilling killing sprees. Neville Heath, the charming RAF officer with uncontrollable urges. Susan Christie, the ‘Fatal Attraction’ killer from the Ulster Defence Regiment. Robert Erler, the so-called Super Cop who shot a mother and daughter seemingly on a whim. Genene Jones, the loving nurse who killed many of the children in her care. James Camb, the ship’s steward who charmed and then killed one of his passengers. What drove these people to commit such heinous acts and how did they utilise the confidence placed in those in uniform? Killers in Uniform is saturated with stark reminders that real-life killers are far from monsters of fiction. In providing a comprehensive history of some of the most shocking crimes on record, Adrian Vincent raises important questions about patterns of crime, the psychology of murder and regulation of systems where trust and exploitation can unfortunately go hand in hand. He also charts changes in the justice system and controversial judicial attitudes towards punishment: documenting the move away from the death penalty and punitive punishment towards rehabilitation and flexible sentencing terms, detailing crimes which ended in hanging and life-sentences to prisoners sent to psychiatric hospitals including Broadmoor. Adrian Vincent worked in Fleet Street for twenty-seven years, becoming managing editor of IPC’s educational magazines. He is the author of many books on art and antiques, novels and true crime.

Letters from Alcatraz


Michael Esslinger - 2008
    Their letters capture the true essence of life in prison, with fresh and historical insights to their sufferings and occasional triumphs. It is a finer example of history from one of America's most historical treasures. This rare collection features many never before published personal letters from Al Capone, George Machine Gun Kelly, Robert Stroud - the Birdman of Alcatraz, Alvin Karpis, Henri Young, John & Clarence Anglin, Roy Gardner and numerous others. Also included are narratives on the Battle of Alcatraz and other harrowing escape attempts. The letters are all presented in their original unedited form... revealing in their authenticity, representing their lives suspended in slow motion while serving time on the Rock and other prisons. They are confessionals of earnestness and probe their introspective thoughts. Sometimes deep, and sometimes they are almost too overwhelmingly honest in their descriptive accounts. Many represent their torn and textured histories in crime and the intricately layered stories of life at Alcatraz. Letters from Alcatraz is an epic exploration of a secret cloak and dagger culture once hidden behind a mythical curtain. This book is much more than a mere exercise in myth busting. Paired with its contextual and intrinsic complexities, Letters from Alcatraz grants readers privileged access to the formidable confinement conditions endured by these inmates along with their compelling portraits, and a thorough overview of the rich history of Alcatraz Island. The depth of feeling in its story, its setting, its cast and sheer inimitability, these are their lives in prose and the stories of the forgotten...

The Crime of the Century


Dennis L. Breo - 1993
    He broke in as his helpless victims slept, bound them one by one, and then stabbed, assaulted, and strangled all eight in a sadistic sexual frenzy. By morning only one young nurse had miraculously survived. The barbarity of the attack shocked a nation and opened a new chapter in the history of American crime: mass murder. Here is the never-before-told story of Richard Speck by the prosecutor who put him in prison for life."In the Crime of the Century," William J. Martin has teamed up with Dennis L. Breo to re-create the blood-soaked night that made American criminal history, offerning fascinating behind-the-scenes descriptions of Speck, his innocent victims, the desperate manhunt and massive investigation, and the trial that led to Speck's successful conviction. In 1991 Richard Speck died of a heart attack in prison, but the horror of his crime still haunts the conscience of a nation.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher


Kate Summerscale - 2008
    In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder


Steve Hodel - 2003
    Despite an unprecedented allocation of money and manpower, police investigators failed to identify the psychopath responsible for the sadistic murder and mutilation of beautiful twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short. Decades later, former LAPD homicide detective-turned-private investigator Steve Hodel launched his own investigation into the grisly unsolved crime—and it led him to a shockingly unexpected perpetrator: Hodel's own father.A spellbinding tour de force of true-crime writing, this newly revised edition includes never-before-published forensic evidence, photos, and previously unreleased documents, definitively closing the case that has often been called "the most notorious unsolved murder of the twentieth century."

Rust & Stardust


T. Greenwood - 2018
     When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says. This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.