Crime Culture

A possible genius, a smidgen of madness, a twist of science, and an invention that very nearly changed the world - all collide in a giddy, unbelievably true mystery set in turn-of-the-century Paris.

“Happy, sad and all emotions!” Dull and predictable English retiree, Frank, gets more adventure than he bargained for when he sets off on a road trip across 1980s Europe hoping to shake up his mundane life. Be transported with him to Berlin as the Berlin Wall falls, to Nice in the South of France, and to Naples and Sicily. In East Germany, Frank finds getting in much easier than getting out. In France, Frank meets the exotic Delphine who persuades him to cast a lifetime of caution to the wind. He's having the time of his life on the Cote d'Azur until things get complicated and the two ...

Most Evil II is Steve Hodel's follow-up investigation (2009-2015) into his father's potential murders and introduces new evidence and additional linkage obtained by him over the past six years. Included in that evidence is the solving of the Zodiac's 45-year-cryptic cipher, which gives us the answer to the question asked in Most Evil: Were Black Dahlia Avenger and Zodiac the same serial killer?

Was Diogo Alves really Portugal’s first - or biggest - serial killer, or just the subject of legend? Stories claim he threw dozens of victims from Lisbon’s famous aqueduct, that he was the country’s most infamous murderer, and that his severed head was even preserved for study. But how much of it is true? This book is a simplified adaptation of Os Segredos de Diogo Alves, offering an English-speaking audience a look into the essentials of the research behind the legend. Instead of lengthy historical documents, it presents just the key findings, the myths, and the real story behind ...

The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal - a string of assaults taking place within the Catholic Church - exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications, including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors, pointing to him as Croteau's killer, Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent." Drawing on more than ten thousand pages of police and court findings and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth.

On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the white beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.

At the Tan Yards, Victor Prizeman bends everyone to his will. Then he surprises them by saying his forefathers worked there as tanners. Next the narrator tells a tale about the Prizeman clan, and how their patriarch met his end. And back in the present, history appears to be repeating itself when Victor demands that he light the annual Halloween bonfire. The Tan Yards is a story that will delight fans of horror, as well as those with a special place in their hearts for Halloween. Now with a Five Star editorial review from Readers' Favorite

Coal Country Killing revolves around the cold-blooded 1969 assassination of United Mineworkers of America "reform candidate" Jock Yablonski, and the murder of his wife and daughter in their Pennsylvania farmhouse. But driving the story are the extraordinary efforts of a special prosecutor and his "army" of investigators to bring the gunmen, the union boss who ordered the murders, and his henchmen who saw them carried out, to justice.

Glasgow, 2015. When Valium addict Felix McAveety's best friend Marina is found murdered in the local park, he goes looking for answers to questions that he quickly forgets. In a haze of uppers, hallucinogens and diazepam, Felix enlists the help of a brilliant but mercurial GP; a bright young trade unionist; a failing screenwriter; semi-celebrity crime novelist Jane Pickford; and his crisis fuelled downstairs neighbour Donnie.

Almost everything has been invoked to account for Trump's victory and the rise of alt-right, from job loss to racism to demography - everything, that is, except popular culture. In The Sky Is Falling best-selling cultural critic, Peter Biskind, dives headlong into two decades of popular culture - from superhero franchises such as the X-Men and the Avengers and series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to thrillers like Homeland and 24 - and emerges to argue that these shows are saturated with the values that are currently animating our extreme politics.

An explosive novel filled with motorcycles, martial arts, and mayhem from the author of Answer Death and Dead Beat. Stu Heinrichs was the kind of guy who drank beer with your dad and let you drive his DeLorean. But he wasn’t a good guy then, and he’s not a good guy now—something ex-state cop Dan Spalding always knew but kept forgetting on purpose. Now, when a twenty year-old porn star takes a deliberate header off Stu’s luxury yacht with Dan as a witness, he’s caught in a web of murder and media outrage with more questions than answers. As the body count mounts, the blitz is on, ...

2015 saw the worst American maritime disaster in decades. The captain of the SS El Faro commanded his crew to sail straight into a hurricane. The ship sank and all 33 crew members died. The sinking raised troubling questions: Why did the captain choose to sail into the hurricane? Why did no one on board or on shore stop him? And why was such an old and heavily loaded ship even allowed on the water?

As the recent tragedies in Oregon, Arkansas, and Colorado Have shown, children as young as eight years old are capable of murder and violence. No community is safe from this tragic phenomenon, and experts ranging from law enforcement officials to guidance counselors are confused and conflicted about how to approach it.

The Dowager Duchess has decided to sell off the less important family possessions. Blotto and Twinks are dispatched to help the valuer. He spies some Egyptian artifacts and in some excitement rushes back to London, leaving Blotto and Twinks alone in the attic, where they are drawn to a sarchophagus decorated with hieroglyphs. Twinks starts to translate: "Anyone who desecrates this shrine will be visited by the Pharoah's curse..." - just as Blotto prises the lid off.

Today's world is complicated: companies are becoming more powerful than nations, the lines between public and corporate institutions grow murkier, and the internet is shredding our privacy. To combat these onslaughts, people everywhere - rich and not so rich, in business and in their personal lives - are turning away from traditional police, lawyers, and government regulators toward a new champion: the private investigator.

Cinema emerged alongside the rules that ushered in boxing’s modern age and the “squared circle” proved the ideal stage for cinematic display. The public had its first taste of the new medium in 1894 through a heavyweight bout, recognized today as the world’s first feature film. Smash Hit: Race, Crime, and Culture in Boxing Films uses twenty films as the basis of a hard-nosed exploration as to how the genre held a bloody mirror to twentieth century America’s most prominent social anxieties, elucidating two conjoined mediums that serve as bellwether to an ever-shifting cultural zeitgeist.

MG Martin thought she’d turned the last page on the dangerous Golden Arrow case. The bad guys are behind bars, and the rest is up to her detective boyfriend, Matteo Kildaire. But when Golden Arrow impersonators start popping up all over Los Angeles, the writer in MG can’t help but be intrigued. Are they impostors, or has the original Golden Arrow returned? A reemergence of drug crime has left the LAPD baffled, and golden arrows are once again being left at crime scenes. Matteo asks MG if she’ll resume consulting on all things geek, and she jumps at the opportunity.

What if you found your father living with your mother’s murderer? Burnt out from death, mayhem and relationships gone sour, former special forces operative Rayna Tan returns home to Vancouver to recharge, only to discover her father is hiding the illegal Mexican student who killed Rayna’s mom. The principal of a Canadian private school duped the teenager and her friends from an impoverished village with promises of free education and living expenses. But if it’s too good to be true… Deception and lies were the real price. The school is a front for a drug operation. Rayna’s mother ...

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

In Tangled Webs, James B. Stewart reveals in vivid detail the consequences of the perjury epidemic that has swept our country, undermining the very foundation of our courts.With many prosecutors, investigators, and participants speaking for the first time, Tangled Webs goes behind the scene of the trials of media and homemaking entrepreneur Martha Stewart; top White House political adviser Lewis "Scooter" Libby; home-run king Barry Bonds; and Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff. Tangled Webs reaffirms the importance of truth.