American True Crime

The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.

In the world of high finance, multibillion-dollar Wall Street banks greedily guard their secrets. Enter Robert Kerbeck, a working actor who made his real money lying on the phone, charming people into revealing their employers’ most valuable information. In this exhilarating memoir that will appeal to fans of The Wolf of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can, unsuspecting receptionists, assistants, and bigshot executives all fall victim to “the Ruse.”

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multi-millionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers", writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new cars for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

TRUE TALES OF MURDER & MAYHEM - VOLUME #1 (Edition #2. Updated and corrected 28th Feb 2024)*MURDEROUS FAMILIES The process of growing up as part of a small family group prepares a child to take a constructive part in the world. But when a family turns to crime together, there seems to be no limit to their ambition. This is clearly seen in the case of the Bender family. Kate Bender would charm the travellers who stopped at their house for a meal cooked by her mother. The men of the family then killed, robbed and buried them, sharing out the proceeds. The trial is of the Manson "family" for ...

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family. They socialized with music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, did business with New York's king of bling Jacob "The Jeweler" Arabo, and built allegiances with rap superstars Young Jeezy and Fabolous. Yet even as BMF was attracting celebrity attention, its crew members struck fear in a city.

H. H. Holmes’ story has become one of legend. Holmes committed his crimes during a time in history where the idea of murdering on a mass scale was being introduced to the world through the actions of Jack the Ripper. Unlike Jack the Ripper, Holmes’ motives were clear; he killed out of greed, convenience, and curiosity.

On September 5th, 1934, a young beachcomber made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Cleveland’s Lake Erie: the lower half of a female torso, neatly severed at the waist. The victim, dubbed “The Lady of the Lake,” was only the first of a butcher’s dozen. Over the next four years, twelve more bodies would be scattered across the city. The bodies were dismembered with surgical precision and drained of blood. Some were beheaded while still alive.

With books like Serial Killers, Female Serial Killers and Sons of Cain, Peter Vronsky has established himself as the foremost expert on the history of serial killers. In this first definitive history of the "Golden Age" of American serial murder, when the number and body count of serial killers exploded, Vronsky tells the stories of the most unusual and prominent serial killings from the 1950s to the early 21st century. From Ted Bundy to the Golden State Killer, our fascination with these classic serial killers seems to grow by the day.

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of Black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

The first serious external threat to the mafia's existence in America comes from U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who repeatedly expresses his desire to eradicate organized crime in America. Kennedy unleashes the full force of the U.S. Justice Department to the apparent dismay of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The mafia's unforgiving response is executed by Louisiana don Carlos Marcello along with Florida don Santo Trafficante, who together take aim at the attorney general's brother, the president of the United States.

Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes", Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places.

Uncovering a cold-blooded execution at the hands of a conspiring police force, this engaging account relentlessly pursues the murderers of Black Panther Fred Hampton. Documenting the entire 14-year process of bringing the killers to justice, this chronicle also depicts the 18-month court trial in detail. Revealing Hampton himself in a new light, this examination presents him as a dynamic community leader whose dedication to his people and to the truth inspired the young lawyers of the People's Law Office.

A mesmerizing narrative about the rise and fall of an unlikely international crime boss. Based on hundreds of interviews, Patrick Radden Keefe's sweeping narrative tells the story not only of Sister Ping, but of the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death and braved a 17,000 mile odyssey so that they could realize their own version of the American dream.

He's a predator. She's his latest prey. Will she fall for him or bring him to his knees? When it is revealed there is a serial predator in the midst, the women of the congregation must come together to stop him before someone else gets hurt. It may already be too late. Scroll up and "Click Buy to Buy" for your Instant Copy

Four years after his father died a hero's death fighting a fire, Tim Ginocchetti was behind bars for killing his mother. How one tragedy led to another is a true story that puts a horrifying twist on the familiar one of bullied gay teens. In this case, the bully was the teen's own mother, and instead of harming himself he killed her in a momentary but irreversible explosion of rage.

We know what it was like to live in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings. We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong. We’ve learned so much about the four heartbroken families—the Mogens, Goncalves, Kernodles, and Chapins. And we have the backstory for Bryan Kohberger, brilliant grad student, loner, apparent incel. Now you are the jury. The evidence is in.

When you think about the police, who do you think of: Do you think of one officer, or the police as an institution? From movies and TV to the real world, a police presence looms over most conflict. But if there was a defining feature of the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, it was the collective confusion about how America got to this point. Despite fragmented media coverage about police unions, militarization, and systemic racism, the average citizen’s knowledge remained hazy on what exactly police officers had been doing all along. It’s probably different than you would expect.

The notorious Gotti family is the stuff of mob legend. The "Dapper Don", John Gotti Sr., and his son John A. "Junior" Gotti ran New York's powerful Gambino crime family and were well known for their flamboyant style and brutal ways, an image perpetuated in popular Mafia mythology. John Alite, a mob hit man, associate, and close friend of the Gottis, has a very different story to tell.