True Crime

The 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from The New Yorker by Stephen J. Dubner (the coauthor of Freakanomics ) about a high-society silver thief, and an extraordinarily memorable "ode to bar fights" written by Jonathan Miles for Men's Journal after he punched an editor at a staff party. But this year's edition includes a bonus -- an original essay by James Ellroy detailing his fascination with Joseph Wambaugh and how it fed his obsession with crime -- even to the point of selling his own blood to buy Wambaugh's books. Smart, entertaining, and controversial, The Best American Crime Writing is an essential edition to any crime enthusiast's bookshelf. more...

Price: $11.95

The FBI's former top serial-killer hunter shares his unique perspective as both a lawman and a member of the clergy counseling convicts--revealing the dangerously thin line between good and evil. more...

Price: $7.99

For thirty-one years, an unremarkable family man stalked, killed, and terrorized the people of Wichita, Kansas. He was a devoted husband. A helpful Boy Scout dad. A reliable, conscientious employee. A dependable church president. And behind it all, the notorious serial killer BTK—a self-anointed acronym for ''bind, torture, kill.''. Now that he's in prison serving ten consecutive life sentences, the whole world knows that Dennis Rader is BTK. But the intricate twists and shocking turns of this story have never before been told by the people who were intimately acquainted with the BTK killer and Rader the family man, or by the dedicated cops who finally caught him. Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Next Door takes readers behind closed doors, revealing the full and horrific tale as seen through the eyes of the killer, his victims, the investigators, and the reporters who covered it all. Bind, Torture, Kill is written by four award-winning crime reporters for The Wichita Eagle with the enthusiastic help of Wichita police lieutenant Ken Landwehr and his BTK Task Force. With hours of exclusive interviews with key Task Force members; in-depth interviews with the families of victims; an interview with Jeff Rader, the notorious killer's brother; and over thirty years' worth of original reporters' notes, archival news stories, photos, documents, and material previously suppressed at the request of the police, Bind, Torture, Kill lays bare the secret story behind the BTK psychopath and the people who brought him down. more...

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Anna Nicole Smith: she was famous for being famous.   She was Americana at its scarlet letter wearing best --a bodacious young girl from Texas who remade herself into the centerfold of the world.   She was a Playboy star, a stripper, a ''gold-digger,'' a ''dumb blonde'' who nevertheless found herself before the Supreme Court of the United States.  Easy to dismiss, she was nevertheless, a complex character -- helpless yet brazen, beautiful yet ugly, outwardly confident yet inwardly frightened. And her tragic life and death evoke an odd mix of fascination and disgust, yet a desperate thirst in millions to discover more and more about who she was and what motivated her. more...

Price: $16.99

A behind-the-scenes look at death in New York City. For almost a century, New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has presided over the dead. Over the years, the OCME has endured everything-political upheavals, ghastly murders, bloody gang wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and non-stop battles for power and influence-and remains the final authority in cases of sudden, unexplained, or violent death. Founded in 1918, the OCME has evolved over decades of technological triumphs and all-too human failure to its modern-day incarnation as the foremost forensics lab in the world, investigating an average caseload of over 15,000 suspicious deaths a year. This is the behind-the-scenes chronicle of public service and private vendettas, of blood in the streets and back-room bloodbaths, and of the criminal cases that made history and headlines. more...

Price: $15.00