True Crime
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson
364.1523 /Larson
True Crime
The Devil in the White City intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. He imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that 'The Devil in the White City' is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.
All the president's men
Carl Bernstein
973.9241 /Bernstein
True Crime
The most devastating political detective story of the century: two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. All The Presidents Men revealed the full scope of the scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver a riveting firsthand account of their reporting. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters.
The 1976 film version starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford is available on DVD from ICPL. -Beth
Catch me if you can : the amazing true story of the youngest and most daring con man in the history of fun and profit
Frank W. Abagnale
364.163 /Abagnale
True Crime
Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks, all before he was twenty-one. Known by the police of twenty-six foreign countries and all fifty states as "The Skywayman," Abagnale lived a sumptuous life on the lam—until the law caught up with him. Now recognized as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play, Abagnale is a charming rogue whose hilarious, stranger-than-fiction international escapades, and ingenious escapes-including one from an airplane-make Catch Me If You Can an irresistible tale of deceit.
Steven Spielberg's film version of this book, starring Leonardo DiCaprio is available on DVD from ICPL. -Beth
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story
John Berendt
364.1523 /Berendt
True Crime
Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.
The basis for the film of the same name, which is available on DVD from ICPL. -Beth
American predator : the hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century
I enjoyed this super fast read about a serial killer most people have never heard of. This true crime narrative has all of the details you want chronologically about how serial killer Israel Keyes got caught and confessed and none of the information you don't want, or at least I don't. This book delves into interrogation tactics from the police and FBI and psychoanalyzes the childhood of a calculated murderer who managed to abscond law enforcement across several states and over a dozen murders in a post 9/11 high security world. -Mari
The last book on the left : stories of murder and mayhem from history's most notorious serial killers
Ben Kissel
364.1523/Kissel
True Crime, Humor
An equal parts haunting and hilarious deep-dive review of history's most notorious and cold-blooded serial killers, from the creators of the award-winning Last Podcast on the Left.
As a fan of Last Podcast on the Left, I knew I'd love this book. The information presented is interesting and terrifying, but broken up with dark comedy and unique illustrations. -Shawna
Yellow Bird : oil, murder, and a woman's search for justice in Indian country
Sierra Crane Murdoch
eBOOK
True Crime, History
"When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher 'KC' Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and no one but his mother was actively looking for him. Unfolding like a gritty mystery, Yellow Bird traces Lissa's steps as she obsessively hunts for clues to Clarke's disappearance. She navigates two worlds -- that of her own tribe, changed by its newfound wealth, and that of the non-Native oil workers, down on their luck, who have come to find work on the heels of the economic recession. Her pursuit becomes an effort at redemption -- an atonement for her own crimes and a reckoning with generations of trauma. Yellow Bird is both an exquisitely written, masterfully reported story about a search for justice and a remarkable portrait of a complex woman who is smart, funny, eloquent, compassionate, and -- when it serves her cause -- manipulative. Ultimately, it is a deep examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing"--
Added by Candice
The third rainbow girl : the long life of a double murder in Appalachia
Emma Copley Eisenberg
eBOOK
True Crime
"In the early evening of June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were killed in an isolated clearing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though suspicion was cast on a succession of local men. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. With the passage of time, as the truth seemed to slip away, the toll became more inescapable--the unsolved murders were a trauma, experienced on a community scale. Emma Copley Eisenberg spent five years re-investigating these brutal acts, which once captured the national media's imagination, only to fall into obscurity. A one-time New Yorker who took a job in Pocahontas County, Eisenberg shows how a mysterious act of violence against a pair of middle-class outsiders, has loomed over all those involved for generations, shaping their identities, fates, and the stories they tell about themselves. In The Third Rainbow Girl, Eisenberg follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, forming a searing portrait of America and its divisions of gender and class, and of its violence"--
Added by Candice
Race against time : a reporter reopens the unsolved murder cases of the civil rights era
Jerry Mitchell
eBOOK
True Crime, History
*Starred Review* Award-winning journalist Mitchell began working for Mississippi's statewide newspaper The Clarion-Ledger in 1986 as the "lowliest of reporters. After a screening of Mississippi Burning, the 1988 film about the murders of three civil rights workers, he gets a tip that there was more to the story and that many of the responsible parties were free, living in Mississippi, and likely still active in the KKK. This starts Mitchell down a road of looking into some of the highest-profile crimes of the Civil Rights era. Starting with his own investigative work, he helps to reopen the murder cases of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer; the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in which four girls died; and, 20 years later, the Mississippi Burning case. Mitchell's straightforward style suits the stories perfectly: neither the families' continued heartache nor the hate of those on trial need be embellished to be affecting. While the cases themselves are drawn out over many years, the reading, especially the extensive courtroom scenes, is riveting. A great readalike for Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice (2004), this is both an important Civil Rights document and a timely read in the wake of the recent rise of hate crimes.
Added by Candice
Murder by the book : the crime that shocked Dickens's London
Claire Harman
eBOOK
True Crime, History
"From the prize-winning biographer--the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: can a novel kill? In May 1840, Lord William Russell, well known in London's highest social circles, was found with his throat cut. The brutal murder had the whole city talking. The police suspected Russell's valet, Courvoisier, but the evidence was weak. And the missing clue lay in the unlikeliest place: what Courvoisier had been reading. In the years just before the murder, new printing methods had made books cheap and abundant, the novel form was on the rise, and suddenly everyone was reading. The best-selling titles were the most sensational true-crime stories. Even Dickens and Thackeray, both at the beginning of their careers, fell under the spell of these tales--Dickens publicly admiring them, Thackeray rejecting them. One such phenomenon was William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, the story of an unrepentant criminal who escaped the gallows time and again. When Courvoisier finally confessed his guilt, he would cite this novel in his defense. Murder By the Book combines the thrilling true-crime story with a illuminating account of the rise of the novel form and the battle for its early soul between the most famous writers of the time. It is a superbly researched, vividly written, fascinating read from first to last"--
Added by Candice
Added by Beth