White Crime

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.

Thirty years ago, award-winning journalist Jon Ronson stumbled on the mystery of Carol Howe—a charismatic, wealthy former debutante turned white supremacist spokeswoman turned undercover informant. In 1995, Carol was spying on Oklahoma’s neo-Nazis for the government just when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker’s two male roommates, one Black, and one white.

American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis. The narrative, which swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, is populated by a diverse cast of characters.

Millions of people–looking to cheat on their partners–signed up for Ashley Madison in the early 2000s, seeking a private space to share their public desires. The promise of discretion was shattered in the summer of 2015, when anonymous hackers stole the company’s cache of user information and published it worldwide. The result? One of the most shocking data breaches of the internet age. Overnight, millions of unfaithful spouses had their real names, addresses and sexual preferences published online in a searchable database that anyone could browse.

The execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife looks like a simple case, except that there is no obvious suspect. Wallander follows a lead on a determined stalker. But when his alibi turns out to be airtight, Wallander begins to realize that what seemed a simple crime of passion is actually far more complex and dangerous. Eventually, his search uncovers an assassination plot, and Wallander soon finds himself in a tangle with the secret police and with a ruthless foreign agent.

Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.

Best-selling author Bryan Burrough recently made a shocking discovery: The small town of Temple, Texas, where he had grown up, had harbored a dark secret. One of his high school classmates, Danny Corwin, was a vicious serial killer. In this chilling tale, Burrough raises important questions of whether serial killers can be recognized before they kill or rehabilitated after they do. It is also a story of Texas politics and power that led the good citizens of the town of Temple to enable a demon who was their worst nightmare.

TRUE CRIME! PTA president Kelli Peters had a normal, happy life in Orange County, California, where she volunteered at her daughter's school, carpooled, and took care of her family. When a school parent angrily accused Kelli of keeping her son waiting during the afterschool pick-up, it appeared to be a simple confrontation with an overprotective mother. Kelli soon learned, however, that she was the target of a twisted plot against her that involved drugs, lies, schemes, and a campaign to ruin her life. The vendetta led to reputations tarnished, careers lost, secret lives uncovered, two ...

While attending the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Winnifred Wylde believes she witnessed a woman being kidnapped. She tries to convince her father, an inspector with the Chicago police, to look into reports of mysterious disappearances around the White City. Inspector Wylde tries to dismiss her claims as exaggeration of an overactive imagination, but he eventually concedes to letting her go undercover as secretary to the man in question - if she takes her pistol for protection and Jude Thorpe, a policeman, for bodyguard.

Styvie Savard was a damn good cop - before she made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she lives in her car, works a dead-end job, and scrapes by on the fumes of a dwindling savings account. Life couldn’t get much worse, until it does. One morning on the way to work, Styvie hits a 16-year-old, Dharma, with her car. When the injured girl flees the scene, Styvie finds that she can’t leave well enough alone.

An unhealthy friendship takes a sinister turn. Almost everyone has a friend whom they barely tolerate. It’s that person whose jokes are always annoying, who tries to butt in on nights out, or who keeps coming over unannounced. For Martha, that friend is her new neighbor, Jennie.

When a troubled young man named Billy asks Cormoran Strike to help him investigate a crime he witnessed as a child, the private eye is left deeply troubled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.

A novelist ambles down the lanes of a cosy country village, replete with Tudor houses and quaint cottages. In her writer's mind she pictures the sordid truth beyond the veneer, a seemingly laughable proposition - until the coming of the letters. Anonymous letters from a poisoned pen, sowing discord and defaming everybody from the Rector to the 'queen of the village' Miss Decima Asprey. Naturally, where there is venom in the air and dark secrets are threatening to come to light, the shadow of death is not far behind.

Barely out of his 20s, Chester Hines knows the score. He's just another bug crawling through the streets of Detroit, waiting to be squashed under the heel of a system meant to keep a brother down. But with his old lady on his back, his only options are on the wrong side of the law. He didn't need a fortune-teller to tell him that sooner or later he'd end up in a system more brutal than the one that forced him there.

At first, they struggle to escape. Then a torrent of blows rains down upon their bodies until their eyes cloud over in final agony. The killer shows no remorse - just a twisted need to witness each victim's last terrified moments. Public defender Rachel Wainwright is struggling to reopen a decades-old case, convinced that the wrong man is in prison. Homicide detective Deke Morgan doesn't want to agree. But if Rachel's hunch is correct, whoever fatally bludgeoned young, beautiful Annie Dawson 30 years ago could be the source of a new string of brutal slayings.

When the federal government catches hotshot financial adviser Louis Martin “Marty” Blazer defrauding his NFL-player clients, it’s time to come clean. He has no reasonable defense. What he has is a bigger story to spill to the feds—that of a multibillion-dollar conspiracy that exploits the most talented college athletes and implicates one of the most popular entertainment industries in the nation. The DOJ is listening, and the truth could literally set Marty free. All he has to do is prove that the NCAA is a vast ongoing scam.

Geoff White charts the astonishing development of hacking, from its birth among the ruins of the Eastern Bloc to its coming of age as the most pervasive threat to our connected world. He takes us inside the workings of real-life cybercrimes, revealing how the tactics of high-tech crooks are now being harnessed by nation states. From Ashley Madison to election rigging, Crime Dot Com is a thrilling account of hacking, past and present, and of what the future might hold.

Beneath the grandeur and innovation of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair lurked a sinister presence: H.H. Holmes, America’s first known serial killer. Armed with charm, intelligence, and a chilling lack of conscience, Holmes constructed his infamous "Murder Castle" — a labyrinth of secret passages, soundproof rooms, and deadly traps designed to ensnare his unsuspecting victims. This book delves into Holmes’s twisted life, from his manipulative rise to wealth and power to the gruesome crimes that shocked a nation. Discover how he exploited the chaos of a booming city, lured victims into ...

Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers - both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.

Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief - until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library.