Biography Collection

Learn about the early lives and exciting careers of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. The Rock Box! celebrates the musicians who have made us sing along to their songs for decades.

Plato recorded the final days of his mentor, Socrates, who was tried and condemned in Athens in 399 B.C. on trumped-up charges of being a heretic and corrupter of the young. This collection comprises 4 books: Euthyphro, in which Socrates engages Euthyphro in a debate on the steps of the courthouse where he is to stand trial, The Apology, in which Socrates argues on his own behalf, Crito, in which Socrates's friends and supporters visit him in prison and urge him to recant.

If you’re familiar with the previous books in the True Crime Case Histories series, you already know that I start each book with a brief warning. Real true crime is not for everyone. The stories in this book represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. Television crime shows and news articles often skip the gruesome parts of true crime stories. The real details are just too grisly for the average viewer or reader.

In this riveting collection of true crime stories from the files of award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author of 32 books M. William Phelps, someone tries to pin a gruesome murder on a horse, infamous serial killer Son of Sam shows us his true evil nature in a series of lost letters this psychopath never wanted you to see, and Sesame Street's Big Bird comes home to find a dead woman on his estate. These join several other tales only a master storyteller like Phelps can bring to life for listeners.

The inspiring true story of Loïe Fuller, a radical 19th-century art nouveau icon who turned artificial light into performance art and became the incandescent inventor of modern dance, is revealed in this transportive and hypnotic historical narrative.

El 15 de mayode 2017 fue asesinado en Culiacán el periodista Javier Valdez Cárdenas, autor de una serie de libros excepcionales para entender el fenómeno del narco y el voraz crecimiento de la delincuencia organizada en México.

Periodista valiente y puntual, crítico hasta el extremo con la realidad de nuestro país, su trabajo logró reconocimiento internacional y, sobre todo, por una pluma vibrante, conmovedora, profundamente humana.

Have you ever read a suspense novel so good you had to stop and think to yourself, "How did the author come up with this idea? Their characters? Is some of this story real?" For more than five years, Mark Rubinstein, physician, psychiatrist, and mystery and thriller writer, had the chance to ask the most well-known authors in the field just these kinds of questions in interviews for the Huffington Post. Collected here are interviews with 47 accomplished authors, including Michael Connelly, Ken Follett, Meg Gardiner, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, and Don Winslow.

What makes someone become a serial killer? What goes through the mind of these coldblooded killers while they pretend to be normal like the rest of the world? We can't say for sure for every single one of them - but for those who were caught and told their stories, we can. Plunge yourself into the dark and chilling abyss, and peek inside the minds of the world's most dangerous monsters - the infamous and cold-blooded serial killers.

When a middle-class kid from the suburbs was caught using Facebook to distribute firearms bought legally at Indiana gun shows to notorious gangsters across the border - was he a kingpin or a scapegoat? David Lewisbey received perhaps the harshest sentence ever in a gun-trafficking trial. A college student from the suburban outskirts of Chicago, he allegedly embodied the enterprising swagger of his favorite rap lyrics, moving weapons for stacks of cash. John H. Richardson tours Chicago’s gun-soaked South Side with Lewisbey’s clientele and meets with the “Big Man” himself to unpack the truth.

This extraordinary collection of correspondence by Paul Bowles spans eight decades and provides an evolving portrait of an artist renowned for his privacy. From his earliest extant letter, written at the age of four, to his precocious effusions to Aaron Copeland and to Gertrude Stein; from his meditations on mescaline as relayed to Ned Rorem, to his intensely moving letters to Jane Bowles during her illness, In Touch fills in the lacunae left by previous biographers and offers a rare look at the many aspects of Bowles's brilliant career.

Best-selling authors Gregg Olsen and Kathryn Casey take a new look at some of the Southwest's most heinous crimes, including drag queen Cliff Youens (who went by the name Brandi West on stage), convicted of stabbing his/her girlfriend 39 times; Hurley Fontenot, a junior high school principal accused of killing his rival, the football coach, over the love of a school secretary; and Tanya Reid, the first Munchhausen Syndrome By Proxy mother most Americans ever heard of.

It was early February 1912, and Franz Reichelt, a Paris tailor, and Rodman Law, a self-described “professional jackass” from New York, were poised, respectively, on the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, ready to deploy an experimental parachute. In bat wings and bundled linen, they were almost certain their contraptions would work. Here is the tale of their inspirations and their pluck - and what happened next.

As with the two prior volumes of True Crime Case Histories, I want to start with a quick word of warning. Most news articles and television true crime shows skim over the sticky details of truly gruesome crimes. In my books I don't gloss over the facts, regardless of how horrible they may be. I try to give my listeners a clear and accurate description on just how demented the killers really were. I do my best not to leave anything out. The stories included in these books are not for the squeamish.

Dr. Hans Holzer is perhaps best known as the famed ghost hunter and paranormal investigator associated with the Amityville horror investigations, which later became the subject of several popular horror films. In January 1977, Holzer, working with the well-known trance medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers, entered 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. In 1974 this had been the place of a horrific crime when the then-occupant Ronald DeFeo, Jr., murdered his own parents and four siblings.

It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more.

The Faceless Villain: Volume Two is the second in a three-volume series that explores the most mysterious and disturbing unsolved murders of the 20th century. This volume is comprised of the years 1960 through 1979, and includes all of the best known cases of the period, as well as many more lesser-known murders, all presented in a compelling chronological narrative that takes the reader on a grisly journey through the blood-soaked avenues of mid-20th century crime.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional title of the unfinished record of his own life written by Franklin from 1771 to 1790. it is an honest self-appraisal of the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and negotiated the peace treaty with Britain. The work contains many passages on reading, self-improvement, and the art of conversation, and it has become one of the most famous and influential exemplars of an autobiography ever written.

Unlike most artists, Van Gogh developed very slowly, beginning with work as an art dealer that exposed him to many great works. He undertook this work for several years, after which he spent time as a missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church. After that, he drifted for several years before re-turning home to his parents’ house, where he took up painting, largely self-taught with books on anatomy and painting. His great works all date from the later years of his life.

The first in a series of books, I Somehow Survived is an extraordinary collection of true stories giving testimony to those who survived World War II. Based on interviews with numerous veterans from across the spectrum of wartime experience, the book documents and reflects upon one of the most gruesome times in history. From anti-partisan warfare in the French mountains and atrocities in East Prussia to the experience of a Norwegian concentration camp, the accounts include rarely heard stories from a range of people caught up in the war.

From the author of the Prison Days series comes the next chapter of life behind bars. These are the personal stories of prisoners as they negotiate day-to-day life behind the walls of a maximum-security facility. Listen to their tales as they try and fit in, adjust, and survive one of the toughest places on earth.