This true story begins on a sunny July morning in 2003, just outside of Flint Michigan, when an eighty year old grandmother has mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth. Days later the charred remains of her car were identified, after being completely destroyed by an intentional fire; but she was nowhere to be found. We had to find her. She was my mom...

    County Sheriff’s detective Danny R. Smith put his life on the line for twenty-one years. His career covered some of L.A.’s darkest hours: a crack cocaine epidemic, unprecedented gang warfare, a spike in homicides that stunned the nation, flames lighting the skies while gunfire rang through the nights during the Rodney King riots. There were deadly encounters: fights, pursuits, shootings, and a beating that left him unconscious. A confrontation with a murderous gangster in a dark alley, where only the miraculous malfunction of a fully automatic weapon saved his life. Hardened by the years spent on the streets and the hundreds of deaths and untold numbers of tragedies he would witness, Smith’s frustrations with a dysfunctional system weighed heavily, and his continued pledge to see justice for the victims came at an astronomical personal cost.In this no-holds-barred memoir, Smith reveals the shocking imagery of fallen colleagues, murdered children, gang warfare, and a Native American who was tortured and burned alive by skinheads. And through his unique insights battling PTSD and being forced to leave the profession he loved, his story will offer new insight into the aftermath of working in law enforcement.Nothing Left to Prove is by turns shocking, terrifying, poignant, and thought-provoking. It’s the very personal story of one man’s career and its effect on his life afterwards, unveiled through Smith’s masterful storytelling. If you think you know cops, if you love compelling true-crime stories, then you’ll love Danny R. Smith’s powerful narrative.

    For everyone who thinks the bad guys are so much more fun to read than the good guys, this is a book just for you. The definitive volume containing every major villain from the Crouch/Kilborn/Konrath Universe is here.First, there was Serial, the collaborative smash-hit that has been downloaded 500,000 times and optioned for film.Then came Serial Uncut, which expanded on that story.Then Killers, the sequel to Serial.Then Birds of Prey which introduced every major villain the writers had ever created into one cohesive novel. (Birds of Prey + Killers = Killers Uncut.)And now, all that and more has been brought together for this definitive, omnibus monster...Serial Killers UncutThis epic work, over two years in the making, contains Serial Uncut, Killers, Birds of Prey, Crouch's Break You, an interview with the authors, and more. Serial Uncut + Break You + Killers + Birds of Prey = Serial Killers Uncut If you haven't read anything by Crouch, Kilborn, or Konrath, Serial Killers Uncut is the perfect introduction to the dark side of their universe. And if you enjoy a despicable bad guy (or bad girl), you're going to love this.There are twenty-one serial killers featured in this book: Lucy and Donaldson from Serial, Orson and Luther from Desert Places, Locked Doors, and Break You, Mr. K from Shaken, Alex and Charles Kork from Whiskey Sour and Rusty Nail, Isaiah from Abandon, Taylor from Afraid, Javier from Snowbound, and many, many more.There are some good guys too, including Andrew Z. Thomas (Desert Places, Locked Doors), Jack Daniels (Whiskey Sour, Shaken), Violet King (Locked Doors, Break You), Tequila (Shot of Tequila), and Clayton Theel (Draculas).Serial Killers Uncut is an original 120,000 word double novel that stands alone without having read any of Konrath's, Kilborn's, or Crouch's work.

    During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer. Some of his victims were buried—in pieces—right there, in his garden in the woods. Though Tony Costa’s gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later. Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal the chilling and unforgettable true story of a charming but brutal psychopath through the eyes of a young girl who once called him her friend.

    An idyllic beachside community. A series of abductions and rapes. So what happened to Trudie Adams?Back in the 1970s, Sydney's Northern Beaches felt like a slice of paradise to those lucky enough to live there. Bordered on one side by the glistening blue of the Pacific, and on the other by stunning rugged bushland, it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone. No wonder the area was known as 'the Insular Peninsula'. So, when a popular local girl, 18-year-old Trudie Adams, disappeared one night while hitchhiking home from the surf club dance, her family, friends and community were devastated. It just seemed wrong that something so terrible could happen in a place so perfectly picturesque.But as police began to investigate, the dark underbelly of the peninsula was exposed. It was a place where surfers ran drugs home from Bali, teenagers hitchhiked everywhere due to a lack of public transport, predatory men prowled the streets, and countless young women were abducted and raped, crimes rarely reported or, if they were, rarely investigated.Inspired by the Walkley Award-shortlisted #1 podcast and acclaimed ABC TV series, and containing information never previously revealed, Barrenjoey Road is a compelling expose of why the disappearance of Trudie Adams was never solved. It takes us all the way to the top, from a criminal perpetrator with a lifelong record and links to organised crime who was never formally accused, to police corruption at the highest level.

    The most authoritative account ever written of how an ordinary juvenile delinquent named Charles Manson became the notorious murderer whose crimes still shock and horrify us today. More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that author Jeff Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some members of the Manson Family have provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn has made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person on the property where the murders occurred was spared. Manson puts the killer in the context of his times, the turbulent late sixties, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege. Guinn shows us how Manson created and refined his message to fit the times, persuading confused young women (and a few men) that he had the solutions to their problems. At the same time he used them to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions, relocating to Los Angeles in search of a recording contract. His frustrated ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal consequences as he convinced his followers to commit heinous murders on successive nights. In addition to stunning revelations about Charles Manson, the book contains family photographs never before published.

    After a sensational trial, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and fifteen years later, on February 24, 2000, she was executed.

    Manson...It started with a college course assignment, then escalated into a dangerous obsession. Eighteen-year-old honor student Jason Moss wrote to men whose body counts had made criminal history: men named Dahmer, Manson, Ramirez, and Gacy.Dear Mr. Dahmer...Posing as their ideal victim, Jason seduced them with his words. One by one they wrote him back, showering him with their madness and violent fantasies. Then the game spun out of control. John Wayne Gacy revealed all to Jason -- and invited his pen pal to visit him in prison...Dear Mr. Gacy...It was an offer Jason couldn't turn down. Even if it made him...The book that has riveted the attention of the national media, this may be the most revealing look at serial killers ever recorded and the most illuminating study of the dark places of the human mind ever attempted.

    A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK"—for "bind them, torture them, kill them"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church.Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.

    But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet   • Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead.   • Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan.   • Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later.   • Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.”   Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.

    His confidence games and sleight-of-hand scams relieved the filthy rich of their cash during America’s depraved Jazz era. He evaded the law like a figure from fiction, slipping into disguise, leaping from jail cell windows, and leaving sneering letters for his enemies at the Secret Service. In Handsome Devil, acclaimed journalist Jeff Maysh brings to life one of the 20th century’s most unforgettable public enemies, "Count" Victor Lustig, a dashing criminal mastermind and counterfeiter whose fake banknotes threatened to topple America’s economy. Written in staggering detail and culminating in a desperate manhunt led by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Handsome Devil reveals the real man behind the myth: A genius who applied his talents to crime, and who kept a loving wife and daughter in the dark for most of his storied career. Set during America’s original financial “bubble,” Lustig’s tale, from petty thief on the streets of Europe, to the most wanted man in the world, is the ultimate parable of American greed.Jeff Maysh investigates outrageous criminal plots and urban legends. His deeply immersive stories have appeared in publications including the Atlantic, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan. His story about the rise and fall of the “Bombshell Bandit” for the BBC was named the best crime story of 2015 by Longform.org. He is British, and lives in Los Angeles.Cover design by Adil Dara.

    As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges.  Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.

    Steve Osborne is the real deal, people: the tough, streetwise New York cop of your dreams, one with a big, big heart. Kojak? NYPD Blue? Law & Order? Fuggedaboudem! The Job blows them out of the water.     Steve Osborne has seen a thing or two in his years in the NYPD—some harmless, some definitely not. In “Stakeout,” Steve and his partner mistake a Manhattan dentist for an armed robbery suspect, and reduce the man to a puddle of snot and tears when questioning him. In “Mug Shot,” the mother of a suspected criminal makes a strange request and provides a sobering reminder of the humanity at stake in his profession. And in “Home,” the image of Steve’s family provides the adrenaline he needs to fight for his life when assaulted by two armed and violent crackheads.      From stories about his days as a rookie cop to the time spent patrolling in the Anti-Crime Unit—and his visceral, harrowing recollections of working during the weeks after 9/11—The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop captures the humanity, the absurdity, and the dark humor of police work, as well as the bravery of those who do it. These stories will speak to those nostalgic for the New York City of the 1980s and ’90s, a bygone era when the city was a crazier, more dangerous (and possibly more interesting) place.

    Now, with the benefit of twenty years' worth of additional knowledge and insight, Stanton Samenow offers a completely updated edition of his classic work, including fresh perceptions into crimes in the spotlight today, from stalking and domestic violence to white-collar crime and political terrorism. Dr. Samenow's three decades of working with criminals have reaffirmed his argument that factors such as poverty, divorce, and media violence do not cause criminality. Rather, as Samenow documents here, all criminals share a particular mind-set--often evident in childhood--that is disturbingly different from that of a responsible citizen. While new types of crime have grown more prevalent, or at least more visible to the public eye--from spousal abuse to school shootings--little has changed in terms of our approach to dealing with crime. Rehabilitation programs based on the assumption that society is more to blame for crime than the criminal, an assumption for which a causal link has yet to be established, have proved to be grossly inadequate. Crime continues to invade every aspect of our lives, criminal court dockets and prisons are oppressively overcrowded and expensive, and recidivism rates continue to escalate.To embark on a truly corrective program, we must begin with the clear understanding that the criminal chooses crime; he chooses to reject society long before society rejects him. The criminal values people only to the extent that he can use them for his own self-serving ends; he does not justify his actions to himself. Only by "habilitating" the criminal, so that he sees himself realistically and develops responsible patterns of thought, can we change his behavior. It is vital that we know who the criminal is and how and why he acts differently from responsible citizens. From that understanding can come reasonable, compassionate, and effective solutions.

    But though Jordan had long accepted his fate, his parents still held out hope, and would do everything in their power to get him the help he so desperately needed.After a harrowing journey that proves the life of an active addict will always get worse, never better, Jordan found himself at the gates of Sand Island, Hawaii’s most notorious two-year inpatient treatment facility. He soon discovers that though his heart was in the right place, the hardest battle of his life was yet to come.One Hit Away is his arduous and unlikely true story of recovery, rehabilitation and redemption.