Staff Picks
True Crime - Hold the Murder
- Sara M.
- Friday, March 29
Collection
Do you love true crime but want something a little less... bloody? Here's a list of true crime books about heists, cons, spies, and hacks - everything but murders. (There may be violent content, but murder is not the main theme in these books.)
Catch Me if You Can
The Amazing True Story of the Most Extraordinary Liar in the History of Fun and Profit
Published in 2000
The Gardner Heist
The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft
Published in 2010
One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld--the story behind the lost Gardner masterpieces worth $500 million and the art detective who swore to get them back.
Bad Blood
Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Published in 2018
"The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos--the Enron of Silicon Valley--by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in an early fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley"-- Provided by publisher.
The Lizard King
The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers
Published in 2008
The Rescue Artist
A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
Published in 2005
The Spider Network
The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
Published in 2017
A Kim Jong-Il Production
The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
Published in 2015
"A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, [this book] offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today"--Amazon.com.
The Falcon Thief
Published in 2020
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs?and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions?and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom's National Wildlife Crime Unit, who's hell bent on protecting the world's birds of prey. The Falcon Thief whisks readers from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe's Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It's a story that's part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure?and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.
The Wizard of Lies
Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
Published in 2011
Examines the life, career, and notorious multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme of the formerly prominent New York financier, as well as the tragic consequences of his criminal activity.
Operation Paperclip
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America
Published in 2013
Empire of Deception
The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation
Published in 2015
"It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties ... Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people ... to invest as much as $30 million--upwards of $400 million today--in phantom timberland and nonexistent oil wells in Panama ... When Leo's scheme finally collapsed in 1923, he vanished, and the Chicago state's attorney, a man whose lust for power equaled Leo's own lust for money, began an international manhunt that lasted almost a year"--Provided by publisher.
Black Edge
Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
Published in 2017
"Steven A. Cohen is a Wall Street legend. Born into a middle class family in a decidedly upper class suburb on Long Island, he was unpopular in high school and unlucky with girls. Then he went off to Wharton, and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which grew into a $15 billion empire. He cultivated an air of mystery and reclusiveness -- at one point, owned the copyright to almost every picture taken of him -- and also of extreme excess, building a 35,000 square foot house in Greenwich, flying to work by helicopter, and amassing one of the largest private art collections in the world. But on Wall Street, he was revered as a genius: one of the greatest traders who ever lived. That public image was shattered when SAC Capital became the target of a sprawling, seven-year criminal and SEC investigation, the largest in Wall Street history, led by an undermanned but determined group of government agents, prosecutors, and investigators. Experts in finding and using "black edge" (inside information), SAC Capital was ultimately fined nearly $2 billion -- the largest penalty in history -- and shut down. But as Sheelah Kolhatkar shows, Steven Cohen was never actually put out of business. He was allowed to keep trading his own money (in 2015, he made $350 million), and can start a new hedge fund in only a few years. Though eight SAC employees were convicted or pleaded guilty to insider trading, Cohen himself walked away a free man. Black Edge is a riveting, true-life thriller that raises an urgent and troubling question: Are Wall Street titans like Steven Cohen above the law?"-- Provided by publisher.
Three Cups of Deceit
How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
Published in 2011
Argues that author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson, noted for his campaign to open schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has not been truthful about his past, his reasons for opening schools, or his abduction by the Taliban.
Octopus
Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con
Published in 2012
This story is a real-life thriller that tells the inside story of a hedge fund fraud and the wild search, for a secret market beneath the financial market we all know. Sam Israel was a man who seemed to have it all, until the hedge fund he ran, Bayou, imploded and he became the target of a nationwide manhunt. Born into one of America's most illustrious trading families, Israel was determined to strike out on his own. So after apprenticing with one of the greatest hedge fund traders of the 1980s, Sam founded his own fund and promised his investors guaranteed profits. With the proprietary computer program he had created, he claimed to be able to predict the future. But his future was already beginning to unravel. After suffering devastating losses and fabricating fake returns, Israel knew it was only a matter of time before his real performance would be discovered, so when a former black-ops intelligence operative told him about a secret market run by the Fed, Israel bet his last $150 million on a chance to make billions. Thus began his year-long adventure in the "Upperworld", a society populated by clandestine bankers, shady European nobility, and spooks issuing cryptic warnings about a mysterious cabal known as the Octopus. Whether the secret market was real or a con, Israel was all in, and as the pressures mounted and increasingly sinister violence crept into his life, he struggled to break free of the Octopus' tentacles.
Ghost in the Wires
My Adventures As the World's Most Wanted Hacker
Published in 2011
The world's most famous former computer hacker, now a security consultant, describes his life on the run from the FBI creating fake identities, finding jobs at a law firm and a hospital, and keeping tabs on his pursuers.
The Orchid Thief
[A True Story of Beauty and Obsession]
Published in 2014
Chronicles the 1994 crime story of John Laroche, a plant dealer who teamed up with three Seminole Indians to steal rare orchids from a southern Florida swamp with the intention of having the orchids cloned to sell to collectors; examines the ramifications of the case, which concerned a wide variety of groups, including environmentalists, Native Americans, and orchid enthusiasts.
Vanished Smile
The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
Published in 2009
Part love story, part mystery, "Vanished Smile" reopens the case of the most audacious and perplexing art theft ever committed--the theft of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" from the Paris Louvre on August 21, 1911.
Flawless
Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
Published in 2010
The authors uncover how a group of thieves stole over $108 million dollars worth of diamonds from an allegedly airtight vault in the international diamond capital of Antwerp.
The Professor and the Parson
A Story of Desire, Deceit, and Defrocking
Published in 2020
"One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest, and imposter extraordinaire. The Professor and the Parson traces the strange career of one of Britain'smost eccentric criminals. Motivated not by money but by a desire for prestige, Peters lied, stole, and cheated his way to academic positions and religious posts from Cambridge to New York, Singapore, and South Africa. Frequently deported, and even more frequently discovered, his trail of destruction included seven marriages (three of which were bigamous), an investigation by the FBI, and a disastrous appearance on Mastermind. Based on Trevor-Roper's own detailed "file on Peters," The Professor and the Parson is a witty and charming account of eccentricity, extraordinary narcissism, and a life as wild and unlikely as any in fiction"-- Provided by publisher.
My Friend Anna
The True Story of the Fake Heiress
Published in 2019
"From a photo editor at Vanity Fair comes the true account of her friendship with "Anna Delvey"--a woman posing as a German heiress who conned her out of $62,000--and her quest to obtain justice"-- Provided by publisher.