Shelf Interested: June 2023

The Crime of the Century

Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation

By: Dennis L. Breo & William J. Martin
Narrated by: Christina Delaine
Length: 18 hours 26 minutes

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

Cellar of Horror

The Story of Gary Heidnik

By: Ken Englade
Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive—some for four months—half-naked and chained. They had been tortured,... Read more

The Night Stalker

The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez

By: Philip Carlo
Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
Length: 18 hours 28 minutes

Decades after Richard Ramirez left thirteen dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling... Read more

Blood Games

A True Account of Family Murder

By: Jerry Bledsoe
Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
Length: 18 hours 6 minutes

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bitter Blood, comes the story of a greed so powerful it led to an unspeakable crime. Wealthy Lieth von Stein lay dead and his wife Bonnie near death in their North Carolina home after a vicious assault with knife and baseball bat as they slept. The crime seemed totally baffling until police followed... Read more

The Search for the Green River Killer

The True Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

By: Carlton Smith & Tomas Guillen
Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
Length: 17 hours 26 minutes

In the 1980s and 1990s, forty-nine women in the Seattle area were brutally murdered, their bodies dumped along the Green River and Pacific Highway South in Washington State. Despite an exhaustive investigation—even serial killer Ted Bundy was consulted to assist with psychological profiling—the sadistic killer continued to elude authorities for... Read more

Everything She Ever Wanted - Abridged

By: Ann Rule
Narrated by: Blair Brown
Length: 2 hours 35 minutes

WAS SHE A SWEET SOUTHERN CHARMER?
OR A COLD-BLOODED KILLER?
For their wedding portrait, petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett. Both came from fine Southern families, and dreamed of the Tara-like plantation where they would grow roses, raise horses, and move in the genteel circles of Atlanta society. Less than... Read more

Reasonable Doubt

A Shocking Story of Lust and Murder in the American Heartland

By: Steve Vogel
Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
Length: 16 hours 47 minutes

A mother and her three young children are found hacked to death in their beds. The apparent weapons, an ax and butcher knife, are found nearby. A month later the husband and father, who was away on a business trip when the bodies were found, is accused of the killings. Police believe he methodically murdered his wife and children before he left.... Read more

Death Trap

By: M. William Phelps
Narrated by: Kevin Foley
Length: 11 hours 34 minutes

A loving father and his new wife set out to pick up his kids for a scheduled weekend visit—but never suspected they were walking into a death trap.



A handwritten note instructed Alan and Terra Bates to enter the back door of his ex-wife's Alabama home. A day later their charred bodies were found hundreds of miles away, wrapped in blankets, in a... Read more

Every Breath You Take - Abridged

A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder

By: Ann Rule
Narrated by: Blair Brown
Length: 5 hours 29 minutes

America’s #1 true-crime writer fulfills a murder victim’s desperate plea with this shattering New York Times bestseller.

“If anything ever happens to me…find Ann Rule and ask her to write my story.”

In perhaps the first true-crime book written at the victim's request, Ann Rule untangles a web of lies and brutality that culminated in the murder of... Read more

The Innocent Man

Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

By: John Grisham
Narrated by: Craig Wasson
Length: 12 hours 27 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES • “Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime masterpiece that tells the story of small town justice gone... Read more

HOMICIDE - Abridged

By: David Simon
Narrated by: Reed Diamond
Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

Through wonderfully descriptive writing, Simon details the work of fifteen detectives, three sergeants and a lieutenant charged with investigating dozens of Baltimore's 234 murders that year. Simon takes listeners inside the detectives' lives, describing the frustration of departmental red tape and politics, the bursts of energy and moments of... Read more

The Third Rainbow Girl

The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia

By: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Narrated by: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

“In this thoughtful and immersive chronicle of the 1980 murders that thrust West Virginia’s Pocahontas County into the national spotlight, Eisenberg seeks to better understand not only the crimes and their aftermath, but also the lasting impact the region (which she came to know independent of her inquiry) had on her. A complex and captivating... Read more

The Skripal Files

The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy

By: Mark Urban
Narrated by: Mark Urban
Length: 9 hours

This program is read by the author.

The explosive story of the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and what it reveals about the growing clandestine conflict between the West and Russia.

Salisbury, England: March 4, 2018.

Slumped on a bench, paralyzed and barely able to breathe, were a former Russian intelligence officer named Sergei... Read more

Cherry

A novel

By: Nico Walker
Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
Length: 8 hours 5 minutes

“Cherry is a book for our times, a bit like if Jim Carroll, Denis Johnson, and Tim O’Brien had conspired to break your heart. Walker’s writing is bare and essential, direct and unforgiving. Whether or not the reader has any sense of war, PTSD, or addiction, they will have a clearer one by the end of this blistering debut. I can’t wait for an encore. Read more

The Mad Sculptor

The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

By: Harold Schechter
Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

2015 Edgar Award NomineeBeekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930s: SKYSCRAPER SLAYER, BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB read the headlines. On Easter Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again—and... Read more

A Death on W Street

The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy

By: Andy Kroll
Narrated by: Greg D. Barnett
Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

 A true-crime story for the post-truth era
 
In the early hours of July 10, 2016, gunshots rang out and a young man lay fatally wounded on a quiet Washington, DC, street. But who killed Seth Rich? When he was buried in his hometown, his rabbi declared: “There are no answers for a young man gunned down in the prime of his life.” The rabbi was... Read more

Genealogy of a Murder

Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night

By: Lisa Belkin
Narrated by: Erin Bennett
Length: 12 hours 55 minutes

Independence Day weekend, 1960: a young cop is murdered, shocking his close-knit community in Stamford, Connecticut. The killer remains at large, his identity still unknown. But on a beach not far away, a young Army doctor, on vacation from his post at a research lab in a maximum-security prison, faces a chilling realization. He knows who the... Read more

Forensics

What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us about Crime

By: Val McDermid
Narrated by: Sarah Barron
Length: 11 hours 20 minutes

Val McDermid is one of the finest crime writers we have, whose novels have captivated millions of listeners worldwide with their riveting narratives of characters who solve complex crimes and confront unimaginable evil. In the course of researching her bestselling novels, McDermid has become familiar with ever branch of forensics, and now she... Read more

Careless People

Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

By: Sarah Churchwell
Narrated by: Kate Reading
Length: 13 hours 12 minutes

Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting readers across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel... Read more

Madness Under the Royal Palms

Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach

By: Laurence Leamer
Narrated by: Todd McLaren
Length: 11 hours 5 minutes

In March 1999, a Palm Beach matron and her socially ambitious husband invited the elite of the island for a dinner dance honoring Prince Edward. Among those dancing to the string orchestra that evening would be those accused of murder and spousal abuse, and others who would suffer fates both unseemly and unspeakable. Among the outer circle there... Read more