Shelf Interested: January 2022

Two Truths and a Lie

A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice

By: Ellen McGarrahan
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 13 hours 2 minutes

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST • A private investigator revisits the case that has haunted her for decades and sets out on a deeply personal quest to sort truth from lies.
 
CLUE AWARD FINALIST • “[A] haunting memoir, which also unfolds as a gripping true-crime narrative . . . This is a powerful, unsettling story, told with bracing honesty and skill.”—The... Read more

When Evil Lived in Laurel

The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer

By: Curtis Wilkie
Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year
A finalist of the for the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing.
By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black... Read more

Sleeper Agent

The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away

By: Ann Hagedorn
Narrated by: Laural Merlington
Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

This must-listen book tells the chilling story of an American-born Soviet spy in the atom bomb project in World War II, perfect for fans of The Americans.



George Koval was born in Iowa. In 1932, his parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated because of anti-Semitism, decided to return home to live out their socialist ideals. George, who was as... Read more

A Killer by Design

Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind

By: Ann Wolbert Burgess
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Written by the forensic nurse who transformed the way the FBI profiles and catches serial killers, this thought-provoking book takes an intimate look at the creation of the Behavioral Science Unit–the inspiration for Hulu’s Mastermind documentary. In the 1970s, the FBI created the "Mindhunters" (better known as the Behavioral Science Unit) to... Read more

The Dope

The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

By: Benjamin T. Smith
Narrated by: John Curless
Length: 17 hours 48 minutes

The Mexican drug trade has inspired prejudiced narratives of a war between north and south, white and brown; between noble cops and vicious kingpins, corrupt politicians and powerful cartels. In this first comprehensive history of the trade, scholar Benjamin T. Smith
tells the real story of how and why this once-peaceful industry turned violent.... Read more

Kidnapped

The Tragic Life of J. Paul Getty III

By: Charles Fox
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

Previously published as Uncommon Youth, Charles Fox's Kidnapped examines the glamorous life, gilded family, and tragic times of J. Paul Getty III, whose kidnapping made headlines in 1973.

J. Paul ("Little Paul") Getty III, the grandson of Getty Oil founder J. Paul Getty, may have been cursed by money and privilege from the moment he was born.... Read more

Sex Cult Nun

Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult

By: Faith Jones
Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

Educated meets The Vow in this story of liberation and self-empowerment—an inspiring and stranger-than-fiction memoir of growing up in and breaking free from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult.Faith Jones was raised to be part a religious army preparing for the End Times. Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, she... Read more

Norco '80

The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History

By: Peter Houlahan
Narrated by: Joe Barrett
Length: 13 hours 24 minutes

In the spirit of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Onion Field, Norco '80 is a gripping true crime account of one of the most violent bank heists in U.S. history.



Norco '80 tells the story of how five heavily armed young men—led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian—attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal... Read more

The Man from the Train

The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

By: Bill James & Rachel McCarthy James
Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
Length: 17 hours 4 minutes

An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal) shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial... Read more

The Icepick Surgeon

Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science

By: Sam Kean
Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
Length: 11 hours 45 minutes

“We like to think that science is a noble pursuit, but this isn't always the case. From lobotomies to corpse theft to bomb making, many horrible acts have been committed in the name of science. This book dives into these acts and the people behind them, showing how even the best of intentions can lead to disastrous results. It’s a strange,... Read more

The House of Gucci

A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed

By: Sara Gay Forden
Narrated by: Sara Gay Forden & Fajer Al-Kaisi
Length: 16 hours 20 minutes

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE from director Ridley Scott, starring Lady Gaga and Adam DriverThe sensational true story of murder, madness, glamour, and greed that shook the Gucci dynasty, now fully updated with a new afterwordOn the morning of March 27, 1995, four quick shots cracked through Milan’s elegant streets. Maurizio Gucci, heir to the... Read more

Tiger King

The Official Tell-All Memoir

By: Joe Exotic
Narrated by: George Newbern
Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix original documentary that “consumed the pop-cultural imagination” (The Atlantic) and transfixed a nation in the midst of a global crisis, opens up about his outlandish journey from Midwestern farmer to infamous Tiger King, and finally, to federal inmate.

Shortly after his arrest (for charges including hiring a... Read more

Every Move You Make

By: M. William Phelps
Narrated by: J. Charles
Length: 13 hours 55 minutes

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

The Wicked Boy

The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

By: Kate Summerscale
Narrated by: Corrie James
Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in... Read more

Almost Paradise

The East Hampton Murder of Ted Ammon

By: Kieran Crowley
Narrated by: Danny Campbell
Length: 13 hours 44 minutes

For the audience that read Maria Flook’s New York Times bestseller, Invisible Eden, this is the extraordinary story of a high-stakes murder case set in the high society world of East Hampton—the playground of New York’s superrich.On October 22, 2001, handsome multimillionaire financier Ted Ammon was found bludgeoned to death in the magnificent... Read more