True Tragedy

In 1944, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford caught fire during the middle of an afternoon performance. Nine thousand people were inside. In seconds, the big top was burning out of control. The toll of the fire, and its circumstances, haunt Hartford to the present day. But it is the intense, detailed narrative - before, after, and especially during the panic under the burning tent - that will remain with listeners long after they finish this book.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: The Tragedy of the West Memphis Three tells the haunting story of a small-town murder case that spiralled into one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in American history. In 1993, three eight-year-old boys were found brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. Within weeks, three teenagers—Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley—were arrested, tried, and convicted, not because of hard evidence, but because of their appearance, music taste, and the town’s fear of the unknown. What followed was a decades-long fight for truth, as cracks in...

Hallie is having the time of her life working at the retreat. There, she meets Pete, a shy and overweight man who tugs on Hallie's heartstrings. Pete needs Hallie, which is very attractive to her. But she also has a thing for Conrad, her housemate. When she's given a choice between the two, who will she choose? Meanwhile, Fiona Kennedy, who is an acquaintance of Samantha's, and an A-List, Academy Award-winning actress, joins the group. She has everything in her life except a family. But she discovers she was adopted and her mother is Greer Davidson, who is a tarot reader and new friend of ...

In April 2020, 20-year-old US Army specialist Vanessa Guillen vanished from Fort Hood, Texas. What followed was a harrowing tale of injustice, cover-up, and ultimately, her brutal murder. Missing from the Barracks retraces the chilling final days of a young soldier whose pleas for help were ignored, and whose disappearance ignited an outcry from her family, fellow service members, and a nation demanding answers. This book lays bare how systemic failures within the military - ranging from unchecked sexual harassment to institutional deceit - shaped Vanessa’s fate. Through exclusive ...

This story follows a true crime murder case from New York in 1906. Clyde Griffiths is the impoverished young man from a family of street preachers who dreams of bettering his station in life. However, his dream ends in murder and he is subsequently arrested and put on trial—putting the media in a frenzy.

The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than 100 passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly, an iceberg tore the ship asunder, and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.

By 1977 the University of Evansville’s Purple Aces basketball team had won five small-college national championships. With a charismatic young coach and a freshman phenom, this small Indiana city hoped to see its team shine in the national spotlight. Then, on a foggy night, after just four games, the plane carrying the team and its coach crashed after takeoff, killing everyone on board.

True Grit and Grace tells the story of a woman's life forever altered by a horrific motorcycle accident that shattered her right leg. Despite the initial recommendation to amputate, she endured 34 surgeries to save it. However, as a sexual-abuse and divorce survivor, she determined to save not only her leg, but her career, her dreams, and her dignity.

During the height of the blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard dispatched a patrol boat, but was soon in as much trouble as the tanker. Then pilot boat captain Frank Quirk, hearing of the Coast Guard's troubles on his radio, decided to act.

In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother. This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple for more than 30 years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then.

In September 2011, Erik Weissman and two friends were murdered in a brutal triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts. The case went unsolved for months and then years, with no discernible leads. Erik’s friend Susan Zalkind, an investigative journalist, needed closure and knew that finding it would be up to her. As Susan began digging, and as the Boston Marathon bombing exposed startling new leads, the case led her down a tangled and sometimes dangerous path to the truth.

On a cold February night in 2007, a devoted father of four and a seventeen-year-old drunk driver both received life sentences. In one violent, devastating instant, both faced a drastically different - and uncertain - future. But as Chris Williams sat in his demolished vehicle, staring at the car that had just caused the death of his wife, his unborn baby, his nine-year-old daughter, and his eleven-year-old son, he committed to do something extraordinary: he would forgive.

Set in the remote arctic region of Northern Canada, this book takes listeners on a harrowing canoe voyage that results in tragedy, redemption, and, ultimately, transformation. George Grinnell was one of six young men who set off on the 1955 expedition led by experienced wilderness canoeist Art Moffatt. Poorly planned and executed, the journey seemed doomed from the start. Ignoring the approaching winter, the men became entranced with the peace and beauty of the arctic in autumn.

THE TRAGEDY AT RICHMOND: A COMMUNITY SHATTERED, YET UNBROKEN In the heart of a serene Richmond neighborhood, a night of tranquility was torn apart by an unthinkable act of violence. The Richmond massacre left a close-knit community reeling, forever scarred by loss. Families stood amidst the wreckage of their lives, grappling with heart-wrenching grief and questions that echoed in the silence: How could such horror invade our peaceful home? Where do we find the strength to carry on? The pain was unbearable, the questions relentless: The shock of senseless loss, as loved ones were ripped away...

For generations, they ruled over blacks and whites. They were—and still are—the Seminoles, the only American Indians who never surrendered to Uncle Sam. Runaways from other tribes, the Seminoles carved a kingdom for themselves out of the wilds of Florida, despite British and Spanish imperialists theoretically ruling the day. The Seminoles also enslaved fugitives from American plantations, creating a slaveholding society unlike any other. When the Americans wanted not only their slaves back, but unsurpassed control over Florida, the Seminoles formed a groundbreaking alliance with those ...

Considered by Ty Cobb as the "finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average - which is still ranked third all-time - the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.

One of the most notorious murders in US history, the 1892 killing of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, officially remains an unsolved case. Although Lizzie Borden was charged with the axe murders of her father and stepmother, the jury found her not guilty. No one else was ever charged. Edwin H. Porter was a young police reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe who covered the crime. Beginning with the discovery of the bodies, all the way through the investigation, trial, and final verdict, Porter gives a detailed account with first-hand access to the crime scene.

An intimate exploration of race and inequality in America, Little Brother tells the story of journalist Ben Westhoff's long-time relationship with his mentee Jorell Cleveland through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and investigates Jorell's tragic fatal shooting at the age of nineteen.

Dallas, Texas. November 22, 1963. Shots ring out at Dealey Plaza. The president is struck in the head by a rifle bullet. Confusion reigns. Special Agent Paul Landis is in the follow-up car directly behind JFK’s and is at the president’s limo as soon as it stops at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He is inside Trauma Room #1, where the president is pronounced dead. He is on Air Force One with the president’s casket on the flight back to Washington, DC, an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office. What he saw is indelibly imprinted upon his psyche.

On the afternoon of September 8, 1900, 200-mile-per-hour winds and 15-foot waves slammed into Galveston, the prosperous and growing port city on Texas' Gulf Coast. By dawn the next day, when the storm had passed, the city that had existed just hours before was gone. Shattered, grief-stricken survivors emerged to witness a level of destruction never before seen: 8,000 corpses littered the streets and were buried under the massive wreckage.