True Crime Fiction

Can an aging detective from a city police department make it as a special agent? The pulse-pounding action continues to escalate in Detective Patrick MacKenna's world. As an investigator in Major Crimes, he's been immersed in the darkest depths of criminality for four long years. Perched on the supervisor's list, time seems suspended in the frozen confines of the City of Syracuse Police Department in Central New York. Amidst this chaos, a glimmer of hope emerges in his personal life as he reunites with his one true love. Yet, doubt lingers among his loyal comrades On the Job, casting ...

Writer Karen Walker knows more than most about murderers. Her first love went on to become The Bagman, a notorious serial killer now locked away for life in a maximum-security prison. Karen has spent her life running from the weight of having loved him, defended him and, ultimately, leading the police to his door. But now, ten years later, just as she’s about to publish her account of his crimes, a young woman is abducted in horribly familiar circumstances.

In 1998 an Alku, Minnesota, family of five was brutally murdered in their sleep. The event shook the insulated community but, without any solid leads, was relegated to the cold case files, where it moldered for twenty-five years. Until today. Agent Harry Steinbeck hoped never to return to the northland, a place that holds terrible memories of his sister’s abduction. But when a recent homicide is connected to Alku’s unsolved mass murder, he and cold case agent Evangeline Reed have no choice but to investigate.

No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won't say who fired the shot that killed their friend, Grant; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them. Kate Marino's senior year internship at the District Attorney's Office isn't exactly glamorous - more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen.

In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows. From the start, Frankie senses something uneasy going on in the small town. The locals whisper about The Game, and her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults. When a bullying gang of girls invites Frankie to The Game, she accepts, determined to find out what’s really going on in Litani. She’s not the only one becoming paranoid. Hysteria burns through the community. Dark secrets emerge.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

Mrs. Grace Humiston was an amazing lawyer and a traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing those professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. One of her greatest accomplishments was solving the cold case of a missing 18-year-old girl, Ruth Cruger. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls, but it came with a price: she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD.

On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history.

Here local priest Father Byrne meets his unexpected demise. Jack and Sarah investigate - who could harm the beloved Father? And what secrets did he take to the grave? The Cherringham Regatta is shaken when vandalism of boots turns into bloody murder. And when a murder suspect is freed from prison after 25 years, it's apparent someone in Cherringham wants him to continue serving his sentence - to death. But Jack and Sarah start to question... did he commit the crime in the first place?

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

In this very personal work - adapted from the original number one best seller, which the New York Times calls "as compelling as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so" - acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom.

Widowed in Memphis during 1932, Cecile Dowd is struggling to provide for her three-year-old daughter. Unwittingly trusting a neighbor puts little Millie Mae into the clutches of Georgia Tann, corrupt Memphis Tennessee Children's Home Society director suspected of the disappearance of hundreds of children. With the help of a sympathetic lawyer, the search for Millie uncovers a deep level of corruption that threatens their very lives.

You probably already know my name. Lucy Chase, the woman who doesn’t remember murdering her best friend. Even though they couldn’t find enough evidence to charge me, I know you all think I did it. That’s OK. I realise being found wandering the streets the next day covered in her blood wasn't a great look. Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’d love to know if I’m a murderer – it’s the sort of thing you really should know about yourself, isn’t it? And now, thanks to true-crime podcast Listen for the Lie, I finally have the chance to find out.

Hollywood. Saturday night. A broken taillight leads to a routine traffic stop. It shouldn’t have changed the lives of the four men involved, but it did. The Onion Field is the frighteningly true story of a fatal collision of destinies that would lead two young cops and two young robbers to a deserted field on the outskirts of Los Angeles, towards a bizarre execution and its terrible aftermath.

It’s October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they’re pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd. The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction.

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

Set in 1991, just as Star Trek: The Next Generation has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters, that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD, and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance.

“…at least 60, maybe more.” Beginning in the spring of 1984, a series of letters were sent to the LAPD, wrapped in light blue envelopes with ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ stamped across the back. These letters described multiple gruesome murders that were allegedly committed by the writer. At first the typewritten letters seemed to be the ramblings of a mad man. However, in time, and as more bodies were found, the accuracy of details foretold in the letters made it clear that they were, in fact, written by the prolific killer. This is the story of The Glendale Butcher, one of the most prolific ...

The story about Simon Fountaine’s magical cowboy ranch had been told in their family for more years than she cared to count. It was a fanciful story filled with drama, adventures, and Simon’s determination to find the special place he always dreamed about. Now, Elizabeth Fountaine wondered if there might be a bit of truth to the whimsical fairytale…if it was more than just an elaborate bedtime story to tell children. More than ever before, she very much needed for even just a small piece of the fairytale to be real. If it was, Simon's magical cowboy ranch could be the answer to her ...

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion.