True Crime
The art thief : a true story of love, crime, and a dangerous obsession
Finkel, Michael, author.
364.16287 /Finkel
Nonfiction, True Crime, Art / Art History
"For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years-in museums and cathedrals all over Europe-Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser's strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them to his heart's content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to assess practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtakingly number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict's need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend's pleas to stop-until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down"--
Gentleman bandit : the true story of Black Bart, the Old West's most infamous stagecoach robber
Boessenecker, John, 1953- author.
364.1552 /Boessenecker
Nonfiction, True Crime, History
"Black Bart is widely regarded today as not only the most notorious stage robber of the Old West but also the best behaved. Over his lifetime, Black Bart held up at least twenty-nine stagecoaches in California and Oregon with mild, polite commands, stealing from Wells Fargo and the US mail but never robbing a passenger. Such behavior earned him the title of a true 'gentleman bandit.' His real name was Charles E. Boles, and in the public eye, Charles lived quietly as a boulevardier in San Francisco, the wealthiest and most exciting city in the American West. Boles was an educated man who traveled among respectable crowds. Because he did not drink, fight or consort with prostitutes, his true calling as America's greatest stage robber was never suspected until his final capture in 1883. Sheriffs searched and struggled for years to find him, and newspaper editors had a field day reporting his exploits. Legends and rumors trailed his name until his mysterious death, and his ultimate fate remains one of the greatest mysteries of the Old West. Now historian John Boessenecker sheds new light on Black Bart's beginnings, reputation and exploits, bringing to life the glittering story of the mysterious stage robber who doubled as a rich, genteel socialite in the golden era of the Wild West"--
A little western history with your crime never hurts! The extremely picky Kirkus Reviews says: "An entertaining, well-researched foray into the life of a well-known but legend-layered outlaw." -Candice
The angel makers : arsenic, a midwife, and modern history's most astonishing murder ring
McCracken, Patricia Nell, author.
364.1523 /McCracken
Nonfiction, True Crime, History
"THE ANGEL MAKERS is a true-crime story like no other--a 1920s midwife who may have been the century's most prolific killer, leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men"--
A story that seems unlike any other, with an old-world, clandestine feel that could easily be the plot of a fiction book--but it isn't. -Candice
College girl, missing : the true story of how a young woman disappeared in plain sight
Cohen, Shawn, author.
363.2336 /Cohen
Nonfiction, True Crime
"When Lauren Spierer-a gregarious young woman at a crossroads in her life-vanished from Indiana University in 2011, her story drew global attention from celebrities and news outlets such as People magazine, CNN, Fox News, and USA Today. What made the case so confounding to those outlets was that the 20-year-old was out with dozens of classmates in a bustling university town on the night she went missing. She was seen in public by witnesses and security cameras, and ended up in a townhouse complex with several wealthy, well-connected male students-never to be seen again. Despite the media frenzy surrounding the case, the police investigation went nowhere and her body was never found. Armed with the support of Lauren's parents and never-before-seen evidence that chronicles a cover-up, a botched investigation, conflicting testimony, and new interviews, Cohen leads readers through a gripping narrative before finally shining a light on those often forgotten in true crime: the innocent people left behind. College Girl, Missing will provide an incisive look at "Missing White Woman Syndrome" to expose the prejudice in true crime reporting and demonstrate how the excessive media coverage that Lauren received, paradoxically, damaged the quest to bring her home"--
One of those stories that continues to haunt years later, not only for because of the missing person, but also because of *how* people are searched for, and *who* gets searched for (or rather, who doesn't). -Candice
The King of Diamonds : the search for the elusive Texas jewel thief
Pederson, Rena, author.
364.162 /Pederson
True Crime, Nonfiction
"As a string of high profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the press dubbed the elusive thief "the King of Diamonds" because he eluded police and the FBI for more than a decade."--
Get your fill of crime with a side-helping of glitz! Jewel thieves are in a class of their own, and the setting of mid-century Dallas should be interesting. -Candice
American black widow : the shocking true story of a preacher's wife turned killer
Olsen, Gregg, author.
364.1523 /Olsen
Nonfiction, True Crime
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of If You Tell comes the chilling, unputdownable story of Sharon Nelson, the minister's wife whose two husbands mysteriously ended up dead. Colorado, 1976. When Reverend Mike Fuller and his beautiful wife Sharon arrive in the sleepy town of Rocky Ford, local residents think something's off about the new couple. The God-fearing minister is gruff and cold, while charismatic Sharon has her husband wrapped around her finger. It isn't long before Sharon is charming her husband's congregation, and finds herself in a tryst with local, married optometrist Perry Nelson. After the affair ends both their marriages, Sharon and Perry tie the knot. But shortly afterwards, Perry disappears. When his body is shockingly discovered the bottom of a canyon, his death is ruled an accident, allowing grieving widow Sharon to claim his substantial life insurance.Trying to move on from the tragedy, Sharon soon remarries fireman Glenn Harrelson. But when the charred remains of Glenn's body are discovered with two bullet holes in his skull, the police can't help but question if both men dying in such mysterious circumstances is one coincidence too many..." --
Ripped from the headlines! If you're a fan of Ann Rule books, you might like this as well! -Candice
Rabbit heart : a mother's murder, a daughter's story
Ervin, Kristine S., author.
364.1523 /Ervin
Nonfiction, True Crime, Biographies
"Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp-from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding its way into her own fraught adolescence. In the process of both, she reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be-a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim-what a "true" victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be"--
This book has rave reviews, and Booklist says: "This may be the best way true crime should be written, with nuance and unfettered compassion and with the words of the living victims or their families at the center." It looks to have a deep emotional impact, especially related to missing/absent parents and growing up with familial trauma, so read with care if those are triggers. -Candice
Little, crazy children : a true crime tragedy
Renner, James, 1978- author.
364.1523 /Renner
Nonfiction, True Crime
"In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home. The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: "weird" high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn't diminish the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin got away with murder. With a fresh perspective and painstaking research culled from police files, court records, transcripts, uncollected evidence, and new interviews, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents--its single-minded authorities, protective status-conscious parents, and the deeply peer-pressured teen within Lisa's circle. Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed"--Dust jacket flap.
James Renner created the excellent, deep-dive podcast called Missing Maura Murray, about about a still-unsolved case from his hometown. He also wrote a book (True Crime Addict, also in our collection) about how that case and his obsession affected him, so he's definitely making his mark in the true crime world. This book gets great reviews from journals, with Publisher's Weekly saying "True crime aficionados of all stripes will devour this." -Candice
Hell put to shame : the 1921 Murder Farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery
Swift, Earl, 1958- author.
973.9 /Swift
History, True Crime, Nonfiction
On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War. Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before. By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists--then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
A book that combines history, true crime, racial injustice, and taut courtroom drama. NYT says that "...Swift shines a powerful light on the practice of debt slavery, and notes that it persists to this day as human traffickers continue to coerce immigrants..." making it timely as well. -Candice
Homegrown : Timothy McVeigh and the rise of right-wing extremism
Jeffrey Toobin
363.325 /Toobin
History, True Crime
"Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets. Jeffrey Toobin details how McVeigh's principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Toobin reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future"--
Toobin does an excellent job of giving an easy-to-follow true crime narrative, giving plenty of background information that lead to the event and some of the aftermath. An engaging read, and I could easily see Ryan Murphy wanting to turn it into a mini-series. -Amanda
This book got rave reviews and has been very popular, but I had to give it mention...You'll be left wondering just what kind of person steals pieces of art on a weekly basis, from churches and small museums, in order to basically create their own collection of hundreds of priceless items. That they then store in their room. In their mother's house. For real. -Candice