True Crime from I Cannot Live Without Books

Ratman: The Trial and Conviction of Whitey Bulger by Howie Carr With a $2 million reward on his head, James "Whitey" Bulger had been the most-wanted fugitive in America for 16 years when he was captured by the FBI in June 2011. Two years later, this Boston organized-crime boss went on trial in his hometown. In his latest book, best-selling author… Read more about this item

Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree that Changed America by Harry N. MacLean On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend and possible accomplice, Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to… Read more about this item

Murder Thy Neighbor by James Patterson Murder Thy Neighbor: Ann Hoover is a nice woman, but she's come to hate her neighbor. Roy Kirk moved in next door with plans to renovate. But as the weeks go by, his DIY construction turns to shambles and Roy himself becomes sullen and hostile. When Ann takes him to court, Roy's retaliation will be… Read more about this item

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper 1969: the height of the counterculture; the year Harvard would begin the tumultuous process of merging with sister school Radcliffe; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious graduate student in Harvard's Anthropoloy department, would be found bludgeoned to death in her apartment.… Read more about this item

To Poison a Nation: The Murder of Robert Charles and the Rise of Jim Crow Policing in America by Andrew Baker On a steamy Monday evening in 1900, New Orleans police officers confronted a Black man named Robert Charles as he sat on a doorstep in a working-class neighborhood where racial tensions were running high. What happened next would trigger the… Read more about this item

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson THERE IS A RED "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. On December 14, 2012, a gunman killed twenty first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Ten years later, Sandy Hook has become a foundational story of how false conspiracy narratives and misinformation… Read more about this item

City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. Appointed to conquer the "crime capital of the world," the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Appointed by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins… Read more about this item

Behold the Monster: Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer by Jillian Lauren Jillian Lauren had no idea what she was getting into when she wrote her first letter to prolific serial killer Samuel Little. All she knew was her research had led her to believe he was good for far more murders than the three for which he had been convicte.… Read more about this item

With Malice Aforethought: The Execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti by Theodore W. Grippo For Sacco and Vanzetti, the nightmare began on the night of May 5, 1920. They were riding on a streetcar to Sacco's home when it suddenly stopped. Officer Connolly boarded with his gun drawn. He confronted the two Italians and asked where they came from and… Read more about this item

Murder Beyond the Grave (True Crime Thrillers)by James Patterson Murder Beyond the Grave: Stephen Small has it all -- a Ferrari, fancy house, loving wife, and three sons. But the only thing he needs right now is enough air to breathe. Kidnapped, buried in a box, and held for ransom, Stephen has forty-eight hours of oxygen. The clock is ticking. Murder in… Read more about this item

Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the maximum-security Jefferson City Penitentiary in Missouri, stuffed himself into a bread-filled metal box bound for the prison farm workers. He became the first man to successfully escape in the institution's… Read more about this item

Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America's Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist by Lis Wiehl with Lisa Pulitzer On April 3, 1996, a team of FBI agents closed in on an isolated cabin in remote Montana, marking the end of the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. The cabin's lone inhabitant was a former mathematics… Read more about this item

The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During her Cape Cod summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter -- the gentle, handsome handyman at the motel -- took her and her sister on adventures… Read more about this item

Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman 1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts... and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire -- the leader of their counter-culture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands… Read more about this item

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners by Margaret A. Burnham In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition,… Read more about this item

At Any Cost: A Father's Betrayal, A Wife's Murder, and a Ten-Year War for Justice by Rebecca Rosenberg and Selim Algar Wealthy, beautiful, and brilliant, Shele Danishefsky had fulfillment at her fingertips. Having conquered Wall Street, she was eager to build a family with her much younger husband, promising Ivy League graduate Rod Colvin. But when his hidden vices surfaced, marital… Read more about this item

Murder in the Heartland, Book 3 by Harry Spiller In a place where murder isn't supposed to happen -- rural Missouri and Southern Illinois -- deputy sheriff and investigator Harry Spiller learned the hard reality: murder is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you live in a big city or a small county with farms and churches -- murder is… Read more about this item

Murder in the Heartland, Book #2 by Harry Spiller In a place where murder isn't supposed to happen -- rural Missouri -- deputy sheriff and investigator Harry Spiller learned the hard reality: murder is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you live in a big city or a small county with farms and churches -- murder is swift and can… Read more about this item

Murder in the Heartland, Book #1 by Harry Spiller In a place where murder isn't supposed to happen -- Southern Illinois -- deputy sheriff and investigator Harry Spiller learned the hard reality: murder is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you live in a big city or a small county with farms and churches -- murder is swift and can… Read more about this item

Death on the Devil's Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey by Jesse P. Pollack & Mark Moran As Springfield residents decorated for Halloween in September 1972, the crime rate in the quiet, affluent township was at its lowest in years. That mood was shattered when the body of sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma was discovered in the local woods, allegedly… Read more about this item