True Con Artist

In 1977, Vera 'Toddie' Hays and Florice 'Beezie' Bessire thought they were about to embark on the trip of a lifetime when Vera's nephew, Vern Todd, offered them a campervan to drive from Germany to India. Little did the women know that Vern and his accomplices would secretly pack two tonnes of hashish into the vehicle along the way. This shocking inside story chronicles Toddie and Beezie's wild ride across continents and oceans to our shores, their arrest by Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents and all that the women faced in the aftermath.

If you want to keep a secret, put it on Facebook! What would you do if you found out that the man you married had a secret life that culminated in the ultimate betrayal? Yve Gibney tells the real-life story from their love-at-first-sight chance encounter while working as expats in Nigeria to the gradual realization that her husband of 19 years, Maurice Gibney, was actually full of deceit, manipulation, and coercive control and that their marriage had been a lie from the moment they had met.

Following a deadly car crash, small-town lawyer Lance Cooper risked everything to battle one of the most powerful auto corporations in the world to get justice for a young woman. A fast-paced, journalistic account of tragedy turned to triumph, despair to hope, Cobalt Cover-Up is an inspirational, thoroughly compelling, and victorious listen.

It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each blood-soaked account.

Ann Rule presents another collection of fascinating and disturbing true-crime stories - drawn from her real-life personal files - in this seventeenth volume in the #1 New York Times bestselling Crime Files series.

Marilyn Sheppard, four months pregnant and mother of a toddler son, was bludgeoned to death in her Bay Village, Ohio, home in the early morning of July fourth, 1954. The cause of death was 27 blows to the head with a heavy instrument. Who took her life so brutally has been the subject of much controversy and debate for nearly half a century.

King is the story of how Kirkland Gaynes rose to become "Top Pimp" in Chicago's seedy underworld. It's an unapologetic account of what is known as the "Pimp Game". King shows that dreams can come true. But the flip side to a dream is nightmarish.

Crimes fueled by emotions. When it comes to the emotions, people can react in strange and unexpected ways. Whether it's a heart hurt by unrequited love, or a lover so passionate they'll stop at nothing to get their way - even the most mild-mannered soul can suddenly flip, becoming a vengeful spirit with dark intentions. From the ancient Greek myth of Jason and Medea to Shakespeare's Othello, themes dealing with deeply felt emotions have persisted. But unlike mythology or fiction, The Best New True Crime Stories contains stories from real life.

The third of a trilogy, this collection features 16 of the world's most outrageous scams and hoaxes. They all really happened, and were taken from firsthand accounts, newspaper reports, or historical documents found in public libraries. They date as far back as the late 1800s, but most are more recent. However, you won't find any defrauded widows or orphans in these stories; the victims are institutions or corporations quite capable of defending themselves, and the crooks who match wits with them are just as savvy. You could almost call it a fair fight!

Nina, a new graduate from fashion design in college, gladly accepts the offer to have her palm read as a graduation gift. Smiling, the palm reader tells Nina that she has a long lifeline, as she traces it on her hand. As soon as the words are uttered, the palm reader’s facial expression turns to one of fear. In broken English, she whispers, “Break – very bad break in middle of life. Maybe you die.”

In this compelling story of greed, chicanery and tarnished idealism, two Wall Street Journal reporters investigate a man who Bill Gates and Western governments entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars to make profits and end poverty but now stands accused of masterminding one of the biggest, most brazen frauds ever.

In 2006 an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a group of easily manipulated administrators, and they could reap huge profits by nudging it fractions of a percent to suit their trading portfolios. This group generated incredible riches - until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.

In Los Angeles, a series of murders occurred during the summer of 1980 that left an indelible mark on countless individuals. This string of brutal and bloody crimes would make the already famous Sunset Boulevard aka the Sunset Strip infamous and a place forever synonymous with the word evil. This true story blends statements to law enforcement and trial testimony with personal accounts from those who experienced the events firsthand. The psychology behind these violent crimes is explored, along with a look at the psychological state and the possible motives of the individuals.

Not all unknown forces are amiable to us humans, and some may be quite worth the fear that we instinctively feel when it comes to these forces. The idea of being confronted with a paranormal phenomenon of any kind is enough to flabbergast most people. But what if that paranormal phenomenon is coupled with a crime? Seeing a Bigfoot in the wilderness would be stunning enough, but imagine one grabbing your wallet and running off with it!

Chrissy was an attractive, recently divorced 40-year-old, living with her three children in their family home in Cheltenham, when in 2003, she met 44-year-old ‘Alex’ in a local coffee shop. He claimed to be an international financier, Alexander Marc d’Ariken de Rothschild-Hatton, the illegitimate son of multi-millionaire heir, Edmund de Rothschild. Charming and smooth-talking, it wasn’t long before he gained Chrissy’s love and trust, with marriage on the cards and a new baby on the way.

On February 20, 1926, landlady Clara Newman (60) opened her door to a potential tenant who enquired into the availability of one of her rooms. Despite his grim and bulky appearance, he introduced himself politely and in a soft-spoken voice whilst clutching a Bible in one of his large hands. She invited him in. The moment he stepped into her home, he lunged forward, wrapping his oversized fingers around her throat and forced her to the ground.

Eye-opening, enlightening, and utterly engaging, How to Spot a Liar in 7 Seconds or Less is an essential addition to the bookshelf of anyone who wants to learn what makes people tick, what motivates liars to bend the truth, and how to defend themselves against deceivers and others who want to take advantage of them.

It's the late 1960s, and homosexuality has only just been legalised, and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide. As long as Norman Scott, his beautiful, unstable lover is around, Thorpe's brilliant career is at risk. With the help of his fellow politicians, Thorpe schemes, deceives and embezzles - until he can see only one way to silence Scott for good. The trial of Jeremy Thorpe changed our society forever: it was the moment the British public discovered the truth about its political class.

The killing of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey—found in the basement of her family home in Boulder, Colorado, with a smashed skull and a garrote placed around her neck—remains one of America’s most shameful unsolved crimes. A flawed investigation, fraught with police, prosecutorial misconduct, and widespread evidence tampering, means that the little girl’s killer remains at large after more than two decades.

When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane - the credited artist of the weepy waifs - for a San Diego Reader cover story in 1992, he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a conman than an artist and that he forced his wife, Margaret, to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed.