True Crimes Africa

During the civil rights movement, the state of Mississippi created an elaborate spy network. Its mission was to preserve segregation by any means necessary—including voter interference, sponsorship of white supremacy groups, and even murder.

The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights-era killing, When Evil Lived in Laurel plumbs the nature and harrowing consequences of institutional racism, and brings fresh light to this chapter in the history of civil rights in the South - one with urgent implications for today.

Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities.

At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma.

For the first time, learn what really happened inside the walls of Hotel des Mille Collines. In Inside the Hotel Rwanda, survivor Edouard Kayihura tells his own personal story of what life was really like during those harrowing days within the walls of that infamous hotel and offers the testimonies of others who survived there, from Hutu and Tutsi to UN peacekeepers. Kayihura writes of a divided society and his journey to the place he believed would be safe from slaughter.

When Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957, it immediately became a target for opportunists determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. The military ousted the new nation’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of stealing the country’s gold and hiding it overseas. Into this story stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, John Ackah Blay-Miezah – a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty, Blay-Miezah declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions.

We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister.

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within 24 hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation's imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching. In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene.

In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, 10-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small-town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time.

Somalia, on the tip of the Horn of Africa, has been inhabited as far back as 9,000 BC. Its history is as rich as the country is old. Caught up in a decades-long civil war, Somalia, along with Iraq and Afghanistan, has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Getting there is a 45-hour, five-flight voyage through Frankfurt, Dubai, Djibouti, Bosaso (on the Gulf of Aden), and, finally, Galkayo. Somalia is a place where a government has been built out of anarchy.

In this gripping – and sometimes terrifying – account, former South African Police Service (SAPS) head profiler Dr Gérard Labuschagne, successor to the legendary Micki Pistorius, recalls some of the 110 murder series and countless other bizarre crimes he analysed during his career. An expert on serial murder and rape cases, Labuschagne saw it all in his 14 and a half years in the SAPS.

Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird, with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth.

Descended from Arkansas sharecroppers, BJ, Larry, and Willie Chambers moved to Detroit seeking economic opportunity, and built a successful drug empire by applying strict business principles to their trade; their business grossed an estimated $55 million annually until the brothers were sent to prison in 1989.

In November 1942, as a part of Operation Torch, 33,000 American soldiers sailed undetected across the Atlantic and stormed the beaches of French Morocco. Seventy-four hours later, the Americans controlled the country and one of the most valuable wartime ports: Casablanca. In the years preceding, Casablanca had evolved from an exotic travel destination to a key military target after France's surrender to Germany. Jewish refugees from Europe poured in, hoping to obtain visas and passage to the United States and beyond.

Meet Marcel and Sabrina, a hitman and a bookkeeper for the Mob. The couple should have never met, let alone fallen in love. When they decide to go against the grain, all hell breaks loose. Somebody wants them dead; they just don't know who. It could be Leo, Marcel's jealous older brother; Othello, Sabrina's crooked father; or it could be The Family, a roundtable of the top contenders in the underworld. There is no honor amongst thieves. Marcel and Sabrina will find the old adage to be true the hard way.

Stephen L. Carter delves into his past and retrieves the inspiring story of his grandmother’s life. She was Black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s - and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected 20 lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.

Malcolm is a young lawyer who just buried his great-grandfather and is now called to action. He takes on the case of a young black man destined for an Ivy League school when he kills three white men that broke into his house in self-defense. The only problem is these three thieves are cops which causes this small-town boy’s hopes and dreams to come crashing down. Malcolm fights for this young man to stay free as well as free himself by trying to find the killer of his dead fiancée, which leads to more harm than good...

What does it take to make a dictator answer for his crimes? Hissene Habre, the former despot of Chad, terrorized, tortured, and killed on a horrific scale over eight years in power—while enjoying full American and Western support. After Habre's overthrow, his victims and their supporters were determined to see him held responsible for his atrocities. Their quest for justice would be long, tense, and unnerving, but they would not back down.

Police Investigation: In the atlas of world history, it would occupy a small space of time. Without warning a bomb goes off in a shopping complex. Two housewives and three children are left dead. An act of anger and retaliation in a holiday resort, which triggered a violent chain of events.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.