Nonfiction True Crime

Please Don't Shoot: A Shocking True Crime Story Three angry women. Three loaded handguns. And nine innocent lives caught in the crossfire. Do you think it will help to plead, "Please don't shoot"? In these chilling true crime stories, the answer is "no." One woman ends her ex-husband's new romance with a single, cold-blooded shot—right in front of their Christmas tree, with her twin daughters as horrified witnesses. Another mother guns down her own children on a quiet suburban street—a twisted act of revenge meant to punish her husband. And in a third harrowing case, a young woman ...

From its inception in 1829 up to the eve of World War II, Scotland Yard: A Bloody History tells the full story of how the Yard developed and advanced modern crime-fighting techniques one infamous case at a time. Following detectives in pursuits across the sea, midnight hunts through Whitechapel and a grand manor death that inspired many a murder mystery, this enthralling book shows how the Yard helped pioneer bloodstain analysis, criminal profiling, fingerprinting, ballistics and more to 'catch their man' (or, sometimes, woman).

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.

Frieda "Fritizie" Mann had several identities during her brief life, and the mysterious circumstances of her death raise as many questions as they do answers. She was born in 1903 near the present border between Poland and Ukraine. And in the last year of her life, Mann became locally famous. She had reinvented herself as a flapper and "Oriental" dancer. She claimed to have friends in Hollywood and a movie contract. On the night of her murder, she said she was going to a party to meet her Hollywood friends; instead she traveled to an isolated roadside hotel where she met her death.

Real-life thrillers, mysteries, and tales of cold-blooded murder from the Reader's Digest archives.

Heirs to the renowned German-American Bergdoll Beer fortune at a young age, the Bergdoll boys used their millions to become champion race car drivers and pioneer aviation heroes in the early 1900s. Grover, the most notorious, is celebrated for his daring record-setting flights in a Wright Brothers airplane. Erwin drives a powerful Benz to win a prestigious motor car race, the equivalent of the Daytona 500. Then they're snared by vengeful local military draft officials.

Police called it murder on New York’s Hudson River. She said it was a tragic accident. Should her name go down in the annals of America’s female murderers, or is she just one more victim of a fractured court system? Angelika Graswald claims she’s not a cold-blooded killer, but New York prosecutors say she purposely pulled a plug on her fiance’s kayak so he’d drown in the storm-tossed waves of the Hudson River. She Cries Alone: A Shocking True Crime Story takes you through the day Vincent Viafore died, the afternoon Angelika walked and talked with a New York State Police detective,...

Across the globe, millions of people are involved in the brutal, cold-blooded world of drug dealing, but only a small number make life-changing money. Only a few get to the top, make the calls, know how it all works and truly become drugs lords. And even fewer survive. I know because I am one of those drug lords. After 30 years, I've decided to retire and tell the story of how I got to the top of this tainted profession, what's involved in being a serious criminal, the tricks of the trade, the art of the deal and what it really takes to stay alive for so long.