True Crime Ebooks
True crime buffs will love our gripping selection of the best true crime ebooks that dig through the depths of real-life criminal minds. Serial killers, psychopaths, and white-collar criminals are all here in the deadly pages of the best true crime books online. Discover your newest true crime obsession right here.
True crime buffs will love our gripping selection of the best true crime ebooks that dig through the depths of real-life criminal minds. Serial killers, psychopaths, and white-collar criminals are all here in the deadly pages of the best true crime books online. Discover your newest true crime obsession right here.
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People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still Standing: Finding Light Inside a Guatemalan Prison, The Battle of an Innocent Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scream at the Sky: Five Texas Murders and One Man's Crusade for Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, and Amish Secrets Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Too Young to Kill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wiseguy: The 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I: The Creation of a Serial Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In with the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5We Thought We Knew You: A Terrifying True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, Deception, and Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Tangled Web: A Cyberstalker, a Deadly Obsession, and the Twisting Path to Justice. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
New & Noteworthy: True Crime
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls The first full account of the Slenderman stabbing, a true crime narrative of mental illness, the American judicial system, the trials of adolescence, and the power of the internet On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two twelve-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman.” Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case. Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls tells that full story for the first time in deeply researched detail, using court transcripts, police reports, individual reporting, and exclusive interviews. Morgan and Anissa were bound together by their shared love of geeky television shows and animals, and their discovery of the user-uploaded scary stories on the Creepypasta website could have been nothing more than a brief phase. But Morgan was suffering from early-onset childhood schizophrenia. She believed that she had seen Slenderman long before discovering him online, and the only way to stop him from killing her family was to bring him a sacrifice: Morgan’s best friend Payton “Bella” Leutner, whom Morgan and Anissa planned to stab to death on the night of Morgan’s twelfth birthday party. Bella survived the attack, but was deeply traumatized, while Morgan and Anissa were immediately sent to jail, and the severity of their crime meant that they would be prosecuted as adults. There, as Morgan continued to suffer from worsening mental illness after being denied antipsychotics, her life became more and more surreal. Slenderman is both a page-turning true crime story and a search for justice.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Women Kill Alia’s first book with CHP, The Remainder, was a finalist for the 2019 International Booker Prize and received high praise from Kirkus, Vanity Fair, TIME, Vulture, the LA Times, and more. When Women Kill has the same curiosity and fierce intelligence that readers loved in The Remainder. Translator Heather Cleary is well known and admired for her work on Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season; we will include a translator’s note from Heather in When Women Kill. Alia carefully considered the complexities and implications of this project. “At a time when feminism has taken to the streets to denounce epidemic proportions of gender-based violence, the question of why one would write about murderous women is not a trivial one,” says Alia. “I have never fired a gun, yet women who do seem to transgress many norms, and I have always been interested in female transgression.” For readers of Tori Telfer’s Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History, Emma Copely Eisenberg’s The Third Rainbow Girl, and Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone In the Dark.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America's Original Gangster Couple The true Jazz Age tale of America’s first gangster couple, Margaret and Richard Whittemore Before Bonnie and Clyde there were Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid. In the wake of world war, a pandemic, and an economic depression, Margaret and Richard Whittemore, two love-struck working-class kids from Baltimore, reached for the dream of a better life. The couple headed up a gang that in less than a year stole over one million dollars’ worth of diamonds and precious gems—over ten million dollars today. Margaret was a chic flapper, the archetypal gun moll, partner to her husband’s crimes. Richard was the quintessential bad boy, whose cunning and violent ambition allowed the Whittemores to live the kind of lives they'd only seen in the movies. Along the way he killed at least three men, until prosecutors managed a conviction. As tabloids across the country exclaimed the details of the couple’s star-crossed romance, they became heroes to a new generation of young Americans who sought their own version of freedom. Set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties’ excesses, acclaimed author Glenn Stout takes us from the jailhouse to the speakeasy, from the cabarets where the couple celebrated good times to the gallows where their story finally came to an end—leaving Tiger Girl pining for a final kiss. Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid is a thrilling tale of rags to riches, tragedy and infamy.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER “As exciting as any spy novel” (Daily News, New York), The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring World War II spies before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman of No Importance and Code Girls. When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections. “[A] meticulously researched, beautifully crafted work of nonfiction that reads like a James Bond thriller” (Bookreporter), The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a spirited American woman who risked everything to serve her country.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP From New York Times bestselling author Alex Tresniowski comes a “compelling” (The Guardian) and “riveting” (The New York Times Book Review) true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection, and the launch of the NAACP. In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-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. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly-covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces—religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics, and America’s Jim Crow racial violence. History and true crime collide in this “compelling and timely” (Vanity Fair) murder mystery featuring characters as complex and colorful as those found in the best psychological thrillers—the unconventional truth-seeking detective Ray Schindler; the sinister pedophile Frank Heidemann; the ambitious Asbury Park Sheriff Clarence Hetrick; the mysterious “sting artist,” Carl Neumeister; the indomitable crusader Ida Wells; and the victim, Marie Smith, who represented all the innocent and vulnerable children living in turn-of-the-century America. “Brisk and cinematic” (The Wall Street Journal), The Rope is an important piece of history that gives a voice to the voiceless and resurrects a long-forgotten true crime story that speaks to the very divisions tearing at the nation’s fabric today.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Duct Tape Killer: The True Inside Story of Sexual Sadist & Murderer Robert Leroy Anderson "MY MOMMY IS GOING TO DIE," SHAINA SOBBED INTO THE PHONE. When Piper Streyle failed to show up for work, a coworker called her home. Piper's three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Shaina, answered and said, "A mean man carried Mommy away." Then the line went dead. In the tranquil region of southeast South Dakota, word of the young mother who was brazenly abducted from her home in broad daylight shocked residents. Piper was the second woman to vanish, following the startling incident of a young woman who narrowly escaped abduction by fighting for her life on a dark and secluded highway. An intensive search by an elite team of investigators uncovered a secret crime location, but the discovery of a nightshirt cut in half, a burnt candle, and a homemade bondage board revealed the chilling truth behind the missing women. With the help of a quick-witted and streetwise maximum security prison inmate, prosecutor Larry Long and his team were able to piece together the sinister facts of the diabolical crimes. Bestselling authors PHIL AND SANDY HAMMAN, along with former Attorney General LARRY LONG, dive into the grim and demented world of Robert Leroy Anderson, a sexual sadist, rapist, and murderer. Duct Tape Killer is also the story of perseverance and proof that love will not be extinguished by the ruinous evil that seeks to take root in our world.
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilmington's Lie (WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION From Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino comes a searing account of the Wilmington riot and coup of 1898, an extraordinary event unknown to most Americans. By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the state—and the South—white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny. In 1898, in response to a speech calling for white men to rise to the defense of Southern womanhood against the supposed threat of black predators, Alexander Manly, the outspoken young Record editor, wrote that some relationships between black men and white women were consensual. His editorial ignited outrage across the South, with calls to lynch Manly. But North Carolina’s white supremacist Democrats had a different strategy. They were plotting to take back the state legislature in November “by the ballot or bullet or both,” and then use the Manly editorial to trigger a “race riot” to overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government. Led by prominent citizens including Josephus Daniels, publisher of the state’s largest newspaper, and former Confederate Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, white supremacists rolled out a carefully orchestrated campaign that included raucous rallies, race-baiting editorials and newspaper cartoons, and sensational, fabricated news stories. With intimidation and violence, the Democrats suppressed the black vote and stuffed ballot boxes (or threw them out), to win control of the state legislature on November eighth. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington, torching the Record office, terrorizing women and children, and shooting at least sixty black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. Prominent blacks—and sympathetic whites—were banished. Hundreds of terrified black families took refuge in surrounding swamps and forests. This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S. It halted gains made by blacks and restored racism as official government policy, cementing white rule for another half century. It was not a “race riot,” as the events of November 1898 came to be known, but rather a racially motivated rebellion launched by white supremacists. In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters and official communications to create a gripping and compelling narrative that weaves together individual stories of hate and fear and brutality. This is a dramatic and definitive account of a remarkable but forgotten chapter of American history.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killer's Shadow: The FBI's Hunt for a White Supremacist Serial Killer The legendary FBI criminal profiler and international bestselling author of Mindhunter and The Killer Across the Table returns with this timely, relevant book that goes to the heart of extremism and domestic terrorism, examining in-depth his chilling pursuit of, and eventual prison confrontation with Joseph Paul Franklin, a White Nationalist serial killer and one of the most disturbing psychopaths he has ever encountered. Worshippers stream out of an Midwestern synagogue after sabbath services, unaware that only a hundred yards away, an expert marksman and avowed racist, antisemite and member of the Ku Klux Klan, patiently awaits, his hunting rifle at the ready. The October 8, 1977 shooting was a forerunner to the tragedies and divisiveness that plague us today. John Douglas, the FBI’s pioneering, first full-time criminal profiler, hunted the shooter—a white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin, whose Nazi-inspired beliefs propelled a three-year reign of terror across the United States, targeting African Americans, Jews, and interracial couples. In addition, Franklin bombed the home of Jewish leader Morris Amitay, shot and paralyzed Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and seriously wounded civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. The fugitive supported his murderous spree robbing banks in five states, from Georgia to Ohio. Douglas and his writing partner Mark Olshaker return to this disturbing case that reached the highest levels of the Bureau, which was fearful Franklin would become a presidential assassin—and haunted him for years to come as the threat of copycat domestic terrorist killers increasingly became a reality. Detailing the dogged pursuit of Franklin that employed profiling, psychology and meticulous detective work, Douglas and Olshaker relate how the case was a make-or-break test for the still-experimental behavioral science unit and revealed a new type of, determined, mission-driven serial killer whose only motivation was hate. A riveting, cautionary tale rooted in history that continues to echo today, The Killer's Shadow is a terrifying and essential exploration of the criminal personality in the vile grip of extremism and what happens when rage-filled speech evolves into deadly action and hatred of the “other" is allowed full reign. The Killer's Shadow includes an 8-page color photo insert.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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