Coroner


Thomas T. Noguchi - 1983
    Noguchi recounts his colorful and stormy career, explains his innovative techniques, and reveals the full story behind his most fascinating investigations, including the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin, William Holden, Natalie Wood, John Belushi, and many more.

Maude


Donna Foley Mabry - 2014
    My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She opened her mouth to say something, but then her face flushed, and she turned her head to look out the window. After a second, she squeezed my hand and looked back in my eyes. She said, “You’ve always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now, you’re going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?"I didn’t understand, but I nodded my head anyway. It sounded strange to me, the way so many things did. I would do what she told me. I didn’t have a choice, any more than I had a choice in being born.

Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales


Dylan Howard - 2019
    But while he was flying around the world on his private jet and hosting lavish parties at his private island in the Caribbean, he also was secretly masterminding an international child sex ring—one that may have involved the richest and most influential men in the world. The conspiracy of corruption was an open secret for decades. And then this summer, it all came crashing down.   After his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July, it seemed Epstein’s darkest secrets would finally see the light. But hopes for true justice were shattered on August 10 this year, when he was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.   The verdict: suicide. The timing: convenient, to say the least.     Now, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales delivers bombshell new revelations, uncovers how the man President Trump once described as a “terrific guy” abused hundreds of underage girls at his mansions in Palm Beach and Manhattan… all while entertaining the world’s most powerful men—including President Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump himself. How much did they know about his perversions? And did they take part? How might they have helped him to continue his abuse, and to escape justice for it? What responsibility might they have for his sudden, shocking death? And is there a shocking spy and blackmail story at the heart of the scandal? The answers to these questions and more will be explored in Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales with groundbreaking new reporting, never-before-seen court files, and interviews with new witnesses and confidants.   Combining the very best investigative reporting from investigative journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson—who have been covering the case for close to a decade—will send shockwaves through the highest levels of the establishment.

Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith


Beth Holloway - 1975
     In May of 2005, Beth Holloway received the worst phone call a parent can imagine. Her beautiful daughter, Natalee, had disappeared without a trace in Aruba during her high school senior class trip. Two years later, for the first time, Beth Holloway steps forward in this astonishingly candid and inspirational memoir to tell of her harrowing ordeal and her never-ending belief in the power of faith that gave her hope against all odds. Natalee's senior class picture was splashed across the front pages of the country's newspapers and on television. Desperate for a clue as to her daughter's whereabouts, Beth and an army of faithful volunteers searched tirelessly for the missing eighteen-year-old. In their pursuit of Natalee, they encountered many roadblocks. As the horror stretched out, Beth stood on her foundation of faith, which at times was all she had to give her strength against a barrage of unbearable questions with no answers. Natalee's disappearance remains unsolved and her location unknown to this day. Beth's search continues.

Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million


Mark Bowden - 2002
    One afternoon, just blocks from his home, Coyle found two curious yellow containers containing $1.2 million in unmarked money from a casino. They had just fallen off the back of an armored truck. Even before news of the missing money exploded across the headlines, Detective Pat Laurenzi was working around the clock to track it down. Joey Coyle, meanwhile, was off on a bungling misadventure, sharing his windfall with everyone from his girlfriend to total strangers to the two neighborhood kids who were with him when he found it. Loaded with intrigue and suspense, Finders Keepers is the remarkable tale of an ordinary man faced with an extraordinary moral dilemma, and the fascinating reactions of the family, friends, and neighbors to whom he turns.

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud


Elizabeth Greenwood - 2016
    So off she sets on a darkly comic foray into the world of death fraud, where for $30,000 a consultant can make you disappear--but your suspicious insurance company might hire a private detective to dig up your coffin...only to find it filled with rocks.Greenwood tracks down a British man who staged a kayaking accident and then returned to live in his own house while all his neighbors thought he was dead. She takes a call from Michael Jackson (no, he's not dead--or so her new acquaintances would have her believe), stalks message boards for people contemplating pseudocide, and gathers intel on black market morgues in the Philippines, where she may or may not obtain some fraudulent goodies of her own. Along the way, she learns that love is a much less common motive than money, and that making your death look like a drowning virtually guarantees that you'll be caught. (Disappearing while hiking, however, is a way great to go.)Playing Dead is a charmingly bizarre investigation in the vein of Jon Ronson and Mary Roach into our all-too-human desire to escape from the lives we lead, and the men and women desperate enough to give up their lives--and their families--to start again.

H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil


Adam Selzer - 2017
    It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century. Although Holmes is just as famous now as he was in 1895, this deep analysis of contemporary materials makes clear how much of the previously known story came from reporters who were nowhere near the action, a dangerously unqualified new police chief, and lies invented by Holmes himself.

The Jefferson County Egan Murders: Nightmare on New Year's Eve 1964 (True Crime)


Dave Shampine - 2014
    The police suspected the trio in a long string of burglaries, and they were under investigation by the FBI for grand theft auto. But on that New Year's night, the Egans were shot execution style at a rest stop off Interstate 81. The gruesome gangland-style killings puzzled local and state police. Theories ranged from a simple confrontation gone awry to a premeditated act of retribution by hardened criminals who feared the Egans would turn state's witness. With interviews from key witnesses, authors Dave Shampine and Daniel Boyer recount the grisly story of this New Year's Eve North Country nightmare, which is still shrouded in mystery today.

Nightingale Point


Luan Goldie - 2019
    One extraordinary event. Their lives changed forever.On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries.Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after.Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years.Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight.Elvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things.Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there's no way out.It's a day like any other, until something extraordinary happens. When the sun sets, Nightingale Point is irrevocably changed and somehow, through the darkness, the residents must find a way back to lightness, and back to each other.

The Killer Book of Cold Cases: Incredible Stories, Facts, and Trivia from the Most Baffling True Crime Cases of All Time


Tom Philbin - 2011
    A crime that is so well executed, with clues and evidence so scarce, that even the experts are left baffled. The Killer Book of Cold Cases takes you behind the crime scene tape and deep into the investigations of some of the most puzzling and notorious cold cases of all time, from murders to kidnappings to massive bombings that were open for years before the criminal was finally brought to justice. Read about:The New York City judge whose disappearance was so famous, his name became synonymous with cold cases The first use of DNA to help solve a murder case that had been cold for years The bomber who took down an entire plane of people, just to collect on his mother's insurance The legendary bank robber D.B. Cooper The murder of two cops in a small California town-a case that took more than SO years to solve The Mad Bomber, who drove New Yorkers half crazy in the fifties by planting bombs all over the city Bury yourself in these edge-of-your-seat tales, read chilling quotes, and test your crime IQ with cold-case trivia. You'll stay up wondering which criminals might still be on the loose!

The Edge of Innocence: The Trial of Casper Bennett


David P. Miraldi - 2017
    Bennett's sensational trial pitted an aggressive, mercurial county prosecutor against the author's father, a civil trial attorney who had never before defended anyone for murder. The book not only recreates the tension and excitement of this courtroom battle, but also highlights the uncertain edge that often divides guilt from innocence. The author was ten years old when he answered the phone late at night when Bennett called his father from jail, seeking his legal representation. Forty years later and long after his father's death, the author found the Bennett file in the bottom of his mother's closet. From the moment he began reading the papers, the long-forgotten drama cast a spell on him. As he uncovered more and more of the facts, the story he had known as a child disappeared, replaced by one far different. The Edge of Innocence takes the reader through the criminal justice system and ultimately to the trial where the reader, like a juror, must sift through competing claims and conflicting evidence. Full of twists and turns and colorful characters, The Edge of Innocence is all the more entertaining because it tells a true story.

The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist


Kerry Daynes - 2019
    The job: to delve into the psyche of convicted men and women to try to understand what lies behind their often brutal actions. Follow in the footsteps of Kerry Daynes, one of the most sought-after forensic psychologists in the business and consultant on major police investigations. Kerry's job has taken her to the cells of maximum-security prisons, police interview rooms, the wards of secure hospitals and the witness box of the court room. Her work has helped solve a cold case, convict the guilty and prevent a vicious attack. Spending every moment of your life staring into the darker side of life comes with a price. Kerry's frank memoir gives an unforgettable insight into the personal and professional dangers in store for a female psychologist working with some of the most disturbing men and women.

The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth


Josh Levin - 2019
    The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship; after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody--not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan--seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery.Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of her color. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism and an expose of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. The Queen tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name.

The Jersey Shore Thrill Killer: Richard Biegenwald


John E. O'Rourke - 2014
    Explore the true story of the Jersey Shore's "Thrill Killer."