Shelf Interested: August 2021

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the... Read more »

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... Read more »

The 170-year history of the San Francisco Bay Area told through its crimes and how they intertwine with the city's art, music, and politics.

In The Murders That Made Us, the story of the San Francisco Bay Area unfolds through its most violent and depraved acts. From the city's earliest days, where vigilantes hung perps from buildings and... Read more »

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... Read more »

New York Times Bestseller: The "fascinating" true story of John Dale Cavaness, a much-admired Illinois doctor—and the cold-blooded killer of his own son. (The Washington Post).

Fusing the narrative power of an award-winning novelist and the detailed research of an experienced investigator, author Darcy O'Brien unfolds the story of Dr. John Dale... Read more »

"This true-crime gem—Green's first full-length work, sensitively and incisively narrated by Pittu—is an illuminating and deeply humanizing testament to victims overlooked by the media and forgotten in cultural memory...An insightful and essential conversation among author, narrator, and producer concludes this highly recommended recording." --... Read more »

In 1974, Mark Felt was given the code name "Deep Throat" and shared intelligence on the Watergate break-in with a young reporter from the Washington Post named Bob Woodward. Thus began the greatest political scandal in the twentieth century, which would besmirch an entire administration and bring down a presidency.

A patriotic man, Felt only... Read more »

The gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris.

As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters,... Read more »

A Fever in the Heart dissects an explosive triangle that led to obsession and murder in a small town in the northwest of America. Ann Rule reveals the story of an alluring wife and the two men desperate for her love; a story with a bizarre and deadly twist that no one could have suspected. In this and several other riveting true-crime cases from... Read more »

On July 14th, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck swept through a quiet Chicago townhouse like a summer tornado and stabbed, strangled, and killed eight young nurses in a violent sexual rampage. By morning, only one nurse, Corazon Amurao, had miraculously survived, and her scream of terror was heard around the world. As the eight bodies were carried... Read more »

Con Man
In December 1989, in upstate New York, Gary C. Evans, 35, a master of disguise and career criminal who had befriended David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, began weaving a web of deadly lies. Evans told a female friend that Damien Cuomo, the father of her child, had deserted her. Of that he could be certain, since he’d killed Cuomo, and... Read more »

“A great true crime story…Readers will feel the effects of Phelps’ skill from beginning to end.” - Stephen SingularBig and brash, Jeff Zack didn’t hide his rough lifestyle. And when he died, it was in plain sight: executed in the parking lot of a BJ’s Wholesale Club in Akron, Ohio, by a motorcycle-riding assassin dressed in black.“Phelps uses a... Read more »

It was a bleak November in 2012 when Cari Lea Farver vanished from Omaha, Nebraska. Cari, thirty-seven, was a devoted mother, reliable employee, and loyal friend—not the type to shirk responsibilities, abandon her son, and run off on an adventure while her dying father took his last breaths. Yet, the many texts from her phone indicated she had... Read more »

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

An Amazon “Best Book of 2019”
A Washington Post “10 Books To Read in July”
A Los Angeles Times “Seven Highly Anticipated Books for Summer Reading”
A USA Today “20 of the Season’s Hottest New Books”
A New York Post “25 Best Beach Reads of 2019 You Need to Pre-Order Now”
A Bustle “The Best New True Crime Books You... Read more »

Highly esteemed history professor, author and editor, Kevin Boyle was presented with the National Book Award for this stunning literary achievement. Arc of Justice artfully captures a tumultuous period in American history as it tells a shocking story of violence and racial strife. The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an... Read more »

By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. The son of a wealthy hedge fund manager and a financier, he grew up surrounded by a loving family and all the luxury an Upper East Side childhood could provide: education at the elite Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, summers in a sprawling seaside mansion in the Hamptons. He was... Read more »

After more than twenty years in prison, Adnan Syed’s murder conviction was overturned, and he was finally set free. Rabia Chaudry’s New York Times bestseller and award-winner Adnan’s Story reveals how the case was mishandled and became the subject of Sarah Koenig’s Peabody Award-winning podcast Serial.

In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and... Read more »

New York Times Bestseller • Now a Netflix FilmThe bestselling account of the lives of five young women whose fates converged in the perplexing case of the Long Island Serial Killer.“Rich, tragic...monumental...true-crime reporting at its best.”—Washington Post
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert—after running through the oceanfront... Read more »

This evocative and gripping investigative look into romantic relationships between incarcerated people and their spouses on the outside “is impossible to put down” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto).

What is it like to fall in love with someone in prison?

Over the course of five years, Elizabeth Greenwood followed the ups and downs of five couples... Read more »

If you enjoyed Say Nothing, then you’ll love Killers of the Flower Moon.

“The Osage Indians were the wealthiest people per capita in the 1920s - they were also getting murdered in diabolical schemes. This story touches on a range of topics, it is a lament for the mistreatment of the Native Americans, a sinister domestic thriller, a perplexing mystery set in the untamed west, a testament to a dying breed of wily western frontiersmen. You will hurtle through this compelling and insightful work that restores a piece of forgotten history to its rightful place.”

Samantha, Rediscovered Books