True Crime

Taking as his text Georges Bataille's insight that "only at the extremes is there freedom," critically acclaimed "guerrilla writer" Harold Jaffe documents Bataille's aperçu with 15 bone-chilling illustrations. Manson, Starkweather, Speck, Son of Sam, the Night Stalker, Aileen Wuornos, the Unabomber, Dahmer, Bundy, Gacy, Kemper, Kevorkian and Kissinger are not merely present and accounted for, they are rendered into a "reality TV" that you've never seen before. Widely praised as a virtuoso stylis... more info>>

In the spring of 1917, at the height of World War I, a young South African was recruited by the Royal Flying Corps to be trained as a fighter pilot on the Western Front. His name was Andrew Weatherby Beauchamp-Proctor. A tiny man, who needed cushions in the cockpit of his SE 5A in order to reach the controls, Beauchamp-Proctor proved so proficient, that by the end of the war, he had become the fifth-ranking ace on the Allied side with 54 kills. After recovering from wounds sustained in September... more info>>

The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's infant son, and the subsequent trial and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, have been a source of fascination for more than 70 years. Now, for the first time, William Norris delves into sources of information ignored by previous investigators and comes up with the identity of the true culprit.

Ten True Stores of America's Most Depraved Murderers of All Time. If your heart and stomach are strong enough, then you will surely enjoy this blood-chilling parade of murders and other grisly deeds too ghastly to mention here. This collection of true stories of unholy horror and unspeakable evil were written by one of America's most brilliant fact-crime reporters--Alan Hynd. Excerpt: "What do you want fly paper in the middle of the winter for, Mrs. Lewis?" asked the grocer."I can't explain it,... more info>>

"Love and Murder" is an Esquire anthology of 10 true stories about crime and obsession. The contributing authors are Michael Paterniti, Tom Junod, Alec Wilkinson, Scott Raab, Daniel Voll, John H. Richardson, Celia Farber, Robert Kurson, Sean Flynn, and Russ Baker. Esquire magazine presents a compelling anthology of ten true stories about about love and murder, crime and obsession, and the complex moral universes created by characters in extraordinary circumstances: The polyamorou... more info>>

The latest ghosted memoir from Andrew Crofts, the bestselling ghost writer of The Little Prisoner, The Kid and Just a Boy. This is the extraordinary true story of a young woman from the Philippine mountains who wanted to help her family and ended up on trial for murder in the UK in 2001.

The tormented and exhausted man at the center of W.R. Burnett's High Sierra is a notorious criminal whom the newspapers call "Mad Dog" Roy Earle. Earle is every bit the criminal the newspapers depict, but he is a complicated soul who is the tragic hero of the novel--a horribly flawed man, a violent criminal who still retains a bit of a conscience but never gets a decent break. As in most of Burnett's novels, High Sierra ostensibly describes a carefully plotted crime that is undermined by human n... more info>>

Inside Death Row is both a qualitative and quantitative study of death row inmates in America, based on several years of research and correspondence with the condemned.

So who was Jack the Ripper? No-one in the annals of crime is capable of arousing such passionate debate as the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. Was he a demented Royal, a Masonic assassin, a sexually-frustrated artist, a member of the Czarist secret police, a crazed reformist or even an escaped gorilla? More than a century has passed since this unknown killer murdered East End prostitutes under the very noses of the police and yet we seem no closer to uncovering the Ripper's ident... more info>>

On 24 February 1994, the police turned up at 25 Cromwell Street, an ordinary three-story house in central Gloucester, with a warrant to dig up the back garden. The door was answered by Stephen West, the 20-year-old son of the householders Fred and Rosemary West. The police told him that they were looking for the body of his sister Heather, who had disappeared in May 1987 at the age of 16. The world's most depraved murderers were somebody's neighbour, someone else's father. What turns a person in... more info>>

Missing is a true story. In retelling it, writer Thomas Hauser did not need to novelize it. Using the facts alone, the book unfolds with the breathtaking suspense and intrigue of a fully imagined political thriller. Missing explores the fate of a young American journalist named Charles Horman who, living in Chile in 1973 just before the overthrow of the country's Marxist president Salvatore Allende, discovered evidence of the United States' involvement in an impending right-wing coup to overthro... more info>>

Serial murders, hate crimes, torture... Who would have expected such violence in the quiet country community of Hernando County, Florida? Initially covered by award winning reporter Patricia Lieb during her tenure with The Daily Sun Journal, she recounts these and other shocking true crime events in MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND.

In New York, a psychopathic killer will strike on October 15, as he always does--the anniversary of his mother's death, when he will kidnap, rape and murder an innocent young girl by slashing her jugular vein. William P. McGivern's Night of the Juggler tells the tense story of the serial killer as he prepares to kill again and the New York cops who are trying to find him before he strikes. A task force has been formed in the NYPD to find the killer known as the Juggler. Detective Vincent "Gypsy"... more info>>

Fredric Brown's The Fabulous Clipjoint comes from a now-vanished world of crime fiction that once satisfied the same appetites in the audience that are now fed by television programming. Neatly crafted and loaded with atmosphere and humor, The Fabulous Clipjoint, published in 1947, follows the exploits of an unlikely pair of amateur sleuths--a teenaged boy and his uncle, who follows the carnival--in solving a disturbing murder. The victim is a drunk, who seems to have gotten rolled and winds up ... more info>>

The Fatty Arbuckle Rape Case was responsible for bringing to the attention of the public a more startling, shocking side of the glamour capital of the world: Hollywood in the 1920's! Suddenly the town became known as SinCity, one of the labels which still, even today, sometimes is leveled at the Industry that made it famous. If you have ever wondered what made Hollywood the sin city of the world during the twenties, how it finally cleaned itself up, this series will reveal some of the startling ... more info>>

An English court in 1736 described rape as an accusation “easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, though never so innocent. ”To prove the crime, the law required a woman to physically resist, to put up a “hue and cry,” as evidence of her unwillingness. Beginning in the 1970s, however, feminist and victim-advocacy groups began changing attitudes toward rape so the crime is now seen as violent in itself: the legal definition of rape now includes eve... more info>>

First published in 1964, this intimate account of the workings of the Sicilian Mafia is an absorbing and sometimes horrifying read. Lewis helps us to understand the power of the organization and the charisma of its leaders without ever forgetting the sheer brutality of their methods. "The Honoured Society is the most penetrating book ever written on the Mafia."    TIME OUT "This book has not a dull moment in it; it is indeed imbued with that terrible quality of terribilita ... more info>>

A deeply moving and realistic account of prison life and its social ramifications. A combination of first-hand observations, psychological theory, and critical philosophical insights into a forlorn culture which few endeavor to understand, but which for the lack of such understanding we are all very much at a loss. Sometimes controversial; sometimes pathetic; humorous; shocking, but always realistic, resourceful, and insightful. [Cover art Dirk A. Wolf]

Captain Alfred Lowenstein, Companion of the Bath, multi-millionaire, aviator and sportsman, friend of kings, maker and loser of fortunes, was going to his grave almost alone at the age of fifty-one. Here is the true story of the gaudy life and bizarre demise of 20's tycoon Alfred Loewenstein--and the modern-day quest to solve the tantalizing mystery of his death.

This notorious work, published by Maurice in NY, needs little introduction beyond an explanation of the acronym: The Society for Cutting Up Men. Ms. Solanas is of course most famous, not for cutting up, but rather for shooting one Andy Warhol. She did not finish the job. We do, in any case, admire some of Ms. Solanas' anarchist tendencies, and think of her often when forced to leave the bar when we want to smoke.

During the early years of film making Hollywood managed to remain a wide open town, where anything might happen, and did. Films reflected this more liberal living standard. And many people in middle America felt its New Babylon image to be a bad influence on their families. It would take several scandals to force change. Censorship was just one step from becoming a harsh reality. The William Desmond Taylor murder mystery was a shocking and convoluted tale of intrigue that involved a couple of ve... more info>>