American Crime

In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century.

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.

William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in "expert witnesses", and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes.

Marquez has been a free man for almost 72 hours. But he still hasn't gotten that release of tension that he's been yearning for. When he sits down and talks with Kalisha, he realizes that he's not going to be able to wait any longer. His body yearns for her. And he can see from the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice, that she's feeling the same way. But right before they're about to sneak off together, a woman from his past explodes on the scene. She threatens to ruin everything. She drops a bombshell on him. One that could completely destroy all of the plans he has going forward. ...

The untimely death of St. Louis kingpin King David has left a vacuum in the underworld. He leaves behind his vast empire to his surviving heirs, David Jr. and Davita. Born barely one year apart, they were raised in very different worlds. Will the family ties that bind keep the families together, or will sex, greed, drugs, and their mothers' divisive ways tear it all to hell, bringing St. Louis down with them? David Jr. and Davita have decisions to make!

In the jungles of Southeast Asia, American sniper Mack Bolan honed his skills. After 12 years, with 95 confirmed hits, he returns home to Massachusetts. But it's not to reunite with his family, it's to bury them - victims in a mass murder/suicide. Even though Bolan's own father pulled the trigger, he knows the old man was no killer. He was driven to madness by Mafia thugs who have turned his idyllic hometown into a new kind of war zone.

The romance of the West is built on an endless armature of shootouts and train robberies, cowboys versus Indians, white hat versus black, and everybody versus the wilderness. From John Colter's harrowing escape from the Blackfeet to Hugh Glass' six-week crawl to civilization after a grizzly attack, from Custer's final moments to John Wesley Powell's treacherous run through the rapids of the Grand Canyon, Cowboys, Mountain Men, and Grizzly Bears takes the top 50 wildest episodes in the region's history and presents them to the listener in one convenient, narrative-driven package.

An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States. Only one in 10,000 are found dead. Yet unsolved child murders are almost a daily occurrence - of nearly 52,000 juvenile homicides between 1980 and 2008, more than 20 percent remain open. Drawing on FBI reports, police and court records, and interviews with victims’ families, this book provides details and evidence for 18 unsolved cases from 1956 to 1998.

The Robinson Brothers have been reunited. For better or worse, they're going to be forced to work together. There's no one else for them to turn to. Drako thought that he had left the streets behind years ago. But if he plans on raising the money that'll keep him out of a Federal prison, then he's going to have to dip back into the underworld. And the only way for him to do that successfully will be to work alongside his brother. Marquez had no idea that his first few days out of prison would be so hectic. But he's not going to complain. Instead, he's going to do everything in his power to ...

Born into the laps of luxury, as the son of kingpin parents, Mackintosh ‘Young Mack’ Miller was destined to be crowned the next king of Houston’s underworld . . . until the unexpected happens and Young Mack is forced to come into his own at a very young age. Is he ready for the smoke? Sworn to the streets, Young Mack has to do what he does to survive while murder, treachery, and betrayal lurks around every corner of the game. Trials and tribulations riddle his life, but will Young Mack and his brooding team of Products of the Streets prevail or will the street’s grimy code of ...

Three friends. One slim chance to beat the streets. But even when you fight your way out by any means necessary, cold hard cash is still no guarantee you'll escape....

The queen of the street lit genre, De’nesha Diamond pens tales about the toughest ride-or-die chicks ever to roam the streets of the Dirty South. In Street Divas, four powerful women vie for total control of the Memphis hood, and they aren’t about to let past loyalties get in their way. While Lucifer is hitting the streets to get her revenge for a deadly shooting, Essence is hitting the sheets - with her best friend’s man. And Yolanda knows her path to power lies with her baby’s hustler father, but Queen G Leshelle is dead set on keeping this game all to herself.

A Harlem Kingpin meets a Struggling, Single Mother. Hood Love is in the Air. Growing up in the projects of East Harlem, life has never been easy for Tatiana “Taytay” Watkins. Having two kids before graduating high school didn't make things any easier. Life wouldn't be so bad if she had a loving man to come home to after her long shifts. But her baby daddy is anything but loving. For years, she's felt neglected and unloved. She needs a change. She wants freedom and independence. And above all, she wants to be the great, loving, nurturing mother that she never had. Just when she thinks ...

When her dreams of rising through the Accra police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her career. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. Meanwhile, Gordon Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington, DC, has found solace in an online community after his wife's passing. Through the support group, he's even met a young Ghanaian widow he's come to care about.

The fast-paced, hood drama continues in Heart of a Thug 3. Markell did the unthinkable. There's no turning back now. Every local, state, and federal official in New York is after him. There's nowhere to run or hide. But that doesn't mean he's going to give up. He can't do that. Not until he reunites Kayla with her daughter. Being in Markell’s world has shown Kayla how different her life could be. But just when she starts to get comfortable, this new sense of peace and tranquility is ripped from her. It seems like everyone is against her. Especially her baby daddy and his trifling family. ...

In 1976, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota—or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up.

After being betrayed by his first love while in prison, Face grows a callous on his heart and embarks on a slew of meaningless flings. He vows to never give his heart to another until he crosses paths with a feisty beauty who’s a little too friendly with the sweetness between her thighs. By the time Face comes to this realization, he’s in too deep. Face’s newfound love is made aware of his tender calculated Kold Killing nature and manipulates it to her advantage. Love and attachment have nothing to do with each other, but to Face they’re one and the same. Will there be consequences ...

Norco '80 tells the story of how five heavily armed young men - led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian - attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in US history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco '80 transports the listener back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all.