In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more...

"A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer-- the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade-- from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding...

The world's most popular thriller writer presents the definitive, never before told account of the Aaron Hernandez case. Everyone thought they knew Aaron Hernandez. He was an NFL star who made the game of football look easy. Until he became the prime suspect in a gruesome murder. But who was Aaron Hernandez, really? Rich with in-depth, on-the-ground investigative reporting that gives readers a front row seat to Hernandez's tumultuous downward spiral,...

Mark Bowden has written about crime throughout his long and illustrious career, and was recognized in 2010 with a lifetime achievement award by the International Thriller Writers organization. The Case of the Vanishing Blonde collects six of his most riveting stories -- acounts spanning four decades of searing characters and unsettling tales to illustrate all manner of crimes and the ways technology has progressively altered criminal investigation....

"Vanity Fair's Joe Pompeo investigates the notorious 1922 double murder of a high-society minister and his secret mistress, a Jazz Age mega-crime that propelled tabloid news in the 20th century. On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey. The killer had arranged the bodies in a pose conveying intimacy. The murder of Hall,...

"In Tangled Vines, bestselling true crime author John Glatt reconstructs the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh. Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity-but it was an unimaginable tragedy...

In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith's life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic...

After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death-using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Here, complete with the testimony of women who suffered his unspeakable sexual abuses and barely escaped with their lives, and of the police who...

Two true-crime tales relate the stories of a wealthy man buried alive with only forty-eight hours of air, and a grisly shooting high in the Sierra Nevada mountains involving the locals and rich developers. Murder beyond the grave: "Stephen Small has it all -- a Ferrari, fancy house, loving wife, and three sons. But the only thing he needs right now is enough air to breathe. Kidnapped, buried in a box, and held for ransom, Stephen has forty-eight...

"A thought-provoking, masterfully told work of literary journalism about a shocking crime committed by a teenager-and its even more shocking aftermath. In 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a black teenaged girl kills an elderly white woman in a robbery gone wrong. The shock and awe of the case captivates the state, whose citizens cry out for vengeance. Soon after, Paula Cooper, the fifteen-year-old killer, is sentenced to death. Indiana's minimum age for the...