Staff Picks
Historic True Crime
- Bland L.
- Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Collection
Many true crime books are roughly contemporary in setting. But there’s a whole subgenre of nonfiction crime narrative drawn from historical cases, many of them scandalous in their day and some of them still unsolved. A recent standout in this subgenre is Who Killed Jane Stanford? by respected historian Richard White, which explores the poisoning murder of the widow of Stanford University founder Leland Stanford. Check out White’s book, as well as these other intriguing titles, from our collection.
The Ghosts of Eden Park
The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America
Published in 2019
"The epic true crime story of bootlegger George Remus and the murder that shocked the nation, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multi-millionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States. Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: with Remus behind bars, Franklin and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder. Combining deep historical research with novelistic flair, THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and a long-forgotten heroine, of the excesses and absurdities of the Jazz Age, and of the infinite human capacity to deceive"-- Provided by publisher.
The Girl on the Velvet Swing
Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
Published in 2018
The Poisoner
The Life and Crimes of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor
Published in 2014
"In 1856, a baying crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford prison to watch the hanging of Dr. William Palmer, "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey" as Charles Dickens once called him. Palmer was convicted of poisoning and suspected in the murders of dozens of others, including his best friend, his wife, and his mother-in-law--and cashing in on their insurance to fuel his worsening gambling addiction. Highlighting his gruesome penchant for strychnine, the trial made news across both the Old World and the New. Palmer gripped readers not only in Britain--Queen Victoria wrote of "that horrible Palmer" in her journal--but also was a different sort of murderer than the public had come to fear--respectable, middle class, personable--and consequently more terrifying. But as the gallows door dropped, one question still gnawed at many who knew the case: Was Palmer truly guilty? The first major retelling of William Palmer's story in over sixty years, The Poisoner takes a fresh look at the infamous doctor's life and disputed crimes. Using previously undiscovered letters from Palmer and new forensic examination of his victims, journalist Stephen Bates presents not only an astonishing and controversial revision of Palmer's life but takes the reader into the very psyche of a killer"-- Provided by publisher.
The Thieves of Threadneedle Street
The Incredible True Story of the American Forgers Who Nearly Broke the Bank of England
Published in 2016
Murder at Teal's Pond
Published in 2022
"In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of 'Twin Peaks.' Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities--a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty? The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that's ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired"-- Provided by publisher
Before and After
The Incredible Real-life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
Published in 2019
"From the 1920s through 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents--hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen children of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity words that their babies died. The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the fifteen family stories in this book, many determined survivors set out to trace their roots and find their families. Often raised by older parents as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. Wingate and Christie tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed, and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art-meets-life, long silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with the authors to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children's Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results"-- Provided by publisher.
Blood & Ivy
The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard
Published in 2018
Traces the scandalous murder of a Harvard Medical School graduate and the ensuing trial that riveted mid-nineteenth-century America, exploring how the case established important precedents in medical forensics and the definition of reasonable doubt.
Goat Castle
A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South
Published in 2017
In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery--known in the press as the "Wild Man" and the "Goat Woman"--enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed. The crime drew national coverage when it came to light that Dana and Dockery, the alleged murderers, shared their huge, decaying antebellum mansion with their goats and other livestock, which prompted journalists to call the estate "Goat Castle." Pearls was killed by an Arkansas policeman in an unrelated incident before he could face trial. However, as was all too typical in the Jim Crow South, the white community demanded "justice," and an innocent black woman named Emily Burns was ultimately sent to prison for the murder of Merrill. Dana and Dockery not only avoided punishment but also lived to profit from the notoriety of the murder by opening their derelict home to tourists. Strange, fascinating, and sobering, Goat Castle tells the story of this local feud, killing, investigation, and trial, showing how a true crime tale of fallen southern grandeur and murder obscured an all too familiar story of racial injustice.
The Axeman of New Orleans
The True Story
Published in 2017
A look at the 1910-1919 New Orleans murders committed by the Axeman, the surrounding trial of later-exonerated Iorlando and Frank Jordano, and the likelihood that the Axeman continued to murder after he left New Orleans.
The Valentino Affair
The Jazz Age Murder Scandal That Shocked New York Society and Gripped the World
Published in 2014
Conan Doyle for the Defense
The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer
Published in 2018
"In this thrilling true-crime procedural, the creator of Sherlock Holmes uses his unparalleled detective skills to exonerate a German Jew wrongly convicted of murder. For all the scores of biographies of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the most famous detective in the world, there is no American book that tells this remarkable story--in which Conan Doyle becomes a real-life detective on an actual murder case. In Conan Doyle for the Defense, Margalit Fox takes us step-by-step inside Conan Doyle's investigative process and illuminates a murder mystery that is also a morality play for our time--a story of ethnic, religious, and anti-immigrant bias. In 1908, a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home. The police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater--an immigrant Jewish cardsharp--who, despite his innocence, was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor in a brutal Scottish prison. Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was outraged by this injustice and became obsessed with the case. Using the methods of his most famous character, he scoured trial transcripts, newspaper accounts, and eyewitness statements, meticulously noting myriad holes, inconsistencies, and outright fabrications by police and prosecutors. Finally, in 1927, his work won Slater's freedom. Margalit Fox, a celebrated longtime writer for The New York Times, has "a nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality" (Kathryn Schulz, New York). In Conan Doyle for the Defense, she immerses readers in the science of Edwardian crime detection and illuminates a watershed moment in the history of forensics, when reflexive prejudice began to be replaced by reason and the scientific method"-- Provided by publisher.
City of Devils
The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
Published in 2018
Shanghai, 1930s; it was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could beforgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, and fortunes made--and lost. "Lucky" Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-U.S. Navy boxing champion,he escaped from prison and rose to become the Slots King of Shanghai. "Dapper" Joe Farren--a Jewishboy who ed Vienna's ghetto--ruled the nightclubs. His chorus lines rivalled Ziegfeld's. In 1940, Lucky Jack and Dapper Joe bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all aroundthe Solitary Island was poverty, starvation, and war. They thought they ruled Shanghai, but the cityhad other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction leftin their wake. Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting momenteven the wildest dreams could come true.
Murdered Midas
A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise
Published in 2019
On an island paradise in 1943, Sir Harry Oakes, gold mining tycoon, philanthropist and "richest man in the Empire," was murdered. The news of his death surged across the English-speaking world, from London, the Imperial centre, to the remote Canadian mining town of Kirkland Lake, in the Northern Ontario bush. The murder became celebrated as "the crime of the century." The layers of mystery deepened as the involvement of Oakes' son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, came quickly to be questioned, as did the odd machinations of the Governor of the Bahamas, the former King Edward VIII. Despite a sensational trial, no murderer was ever convicted. Rumours were unrelenting about Oakes' missing fortune, and fascination with the Oakes story has persisted for decades. Award-winning biographer and popular historian Charlotte Gray explores, for the first time, the life of the man behind the scandal, a man who was both reviled and admired - from his early, hardscrabble days of mining exploration, to his explosion of wealth, to his grandiose gestures of philanthropy. And Gray brings fresh eyes to the bungled investigation and shocking trial in the remote colonial island streets, proposing an overlooked suspect in this long cold case. Murdered Midas is the story of the man behind the newspaper headlines, who, despite his wealth and position, was never able to have justice.
Murder by the Book
The Crime That Shocked Dickens's London
Published in 2018
"From the prize-winning biographer--the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: can a novel kill? In May 1840, Lord William Russell, well known in London's highest social circles, was found with his throat cut. The brutal murder had the whole city talking. The police suspected Russell's valet, Courvoisier, but the evidence was weak. And the missing clue lay in the unlikeliest place: what Courvoisier had been reading. In the years just before the murder, new printing methods had made books cheap and abundant, the novel form was on the rise, and suddenly everyone was reading. The best-selling titles were the most sensational true-crime stories. Even Dickens and Thackeray, both at the beginning of their careers, fell under the spell of these tales--Dickens publicly admiring them, Thackeray rejecting them. One such phenomenon was William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, the story of an unrepentant criminal who escaped the gallows time and again. When Courvoisier finally confessed his guilt, he would cite this novel in his defense. Murder By the Book combines the thrilling true-crime story with a illuminating account of the rise of the novel form and the battle for its early soul between the most famous writers of the time. It is a superbly researched, vividly written, fascinating read from first to last"-- Provided by publisher.
The Midnight Assassin
Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer
Published in 2016
"In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders. Along the way, the murders would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life"-- Provided by publisher.
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream
The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer
Published in 2021
"Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, a fascinating and vividly told true-crime narrative about the hunt for one of the first known serial killers, whose poisoning spree in the US, Canada, and England coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels"-- Provided by publisher.
Hell's Half-acre
The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier
Published in 2022
"In 1873 the people of Labette County in Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried on a homestead seven miles south of the town of Cherryvale, in a bloodied cellar and under frost-covered soil, were countless bodies in varying states of decay. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for over two decades, and the land on which the crimes took place became known as 'Hells Half-Acre.' When it emerged that a family of four known as the Benders had been accused of the slayings, the case was catapulted to infamy. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders--one among thousands who were relocating further west looking for land and opportunity after the Civil War--were capable of operating 'a human slaughter pen' appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree, and what became of them when they fled from the law is a mystery that has remains unsolved to this day--not that there aren't some convincing theories. Part gothic western, part literary whodunnit, and part immersive study of postbellum America, Hell's Half-Acre sheds new light on one of the most notorious cases in our nation's history while holding a torch to a society under the strain of rapid change and moral disarray. Susan Jonasus draws on extensive original archival material, and introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, including the despairing families of the victims as well as the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell's Half-Acre is not simply a book about a mass murder. It is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and wearily building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact, and an entire family of criminals can slip right through a community's fingers, only to reappear at the most unexpected of times"-- Provided by publisher.
Tinseltown
Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Birth of Hollywood
Published in 2014
Bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, and the diverse cast that surrounded him before he was murdered in 1922 -- including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; the ruthless founder of Paramount locked in a struggle for control of the film industry; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet.
Cry of Murder on Broadway
A Woman's Ruin and Revenge in Old New York
Published in 2020
"Amelia Norman challenged the idea that the fallen woman of the nineteenth century was inevitably 'ruined.' This book shows how the desperate act of this aspiring murderess came to momentarily embody the anger and anxiety felt by many people at a time of economic depression and expanding expectations for equal rights"-- Provided by publisher.
The Wilderness of Ruin
A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer
Published in 2015
Documents a series of child abductions in Great Fire-devastated Boston and the discovery of their teenaged killer that sparked a system-changing investigation and influential debates among the world's most revered medical minds.
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane
A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder
Published in 2016
Blood Runs Green
The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago
Published in 2015
On May 26, 1889, four thousand mourners proceeded down Chicago's Michigan Avenue, followed by a crowd forty thousand strong, in a howl of protest at what commentators called one of the ghastliest and most curious crimes in civilized history. The dead man, Dr. P.H. Cronin, was a respected Irish physician, but his brutal murder uncovered a web of intrigue, secrecy, and corruption that stretched across the United States and far beyond. O'Brien tells the story of Cronin's murder from the police investigation to the trial-- and the story of a booming immigrant population clamoring for power at a time of unprecedented change.
Inspector Oldfield and the Black Hand Society
America's Original Gangsters and the U.S. Postal Detective Who Brought Them to Justice
Published in 2018
"The incredible true story of the US Post Office Inspector who took down the deadly Black Hand, a turn-of-the-century Italian-American secret society that preyed on immigrants across America's industrial heartland--featuring fascinating and never-before-seen documents and photos from the Oldfield family's private collection. Before the emergence of prohibition-era gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, there was the Black Hand: an early twentieth-century Sicilian-American crime ring that preyed on immigrants from the old country. In those days, the FBI was in its infancy, and local law enforcement were clueless against the dangers--most refused to believe that organized crime existed. Terrorized victims rarely spoke out, and the criminals ruled with terror--until Inspector Frank Oldfield came along. In 1899, Oldfield became America's 156th Post Office Inspector--joining the ranks of the most powerful federal law enforcement agents in the country. Based in Columbus, Ohio, the unconventional Oldfield brilliantly took down train robbers, murderers, and embezzlers from Ohio to New York to Maryland. Oldfield was finally able to penetrate the dreaded Black Hand when a tip-off put him onto the most epic investigation of his career, culminating in the 1909 capture of sixteen mafiosos in a case that spanned four states, two continents--and ended in the first international organized crime conviction in the country. Hidden away by the Oldfield family for one hundred years and covered-up by rival factions in the early 20th century Post Office Department, this incredible true story out of America's turn-of-the-century heartland will captivate all lovers of history and true crime."--Amazon.com.
The Phantom Killer
Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders
Published in 2014
"The salacious and scandalous murders of a series of couples on Texarkana's 'lovers lanes' in seemingly idyllic post-WWII America created a media maelstrom and cast a pall of fear over an entire region. What is even more surprising is that the case has remained cold for decades. Combining archival research and investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize nominated historian James Presley reveals evidence that provides crucial keys to unlocking this decades-old puzzle. Dubbed 'the Phantom murders' by the press, these grisly crimes took place in an America before dial telephones, DNA science, and criminal profiling. Even pre-television, print and radio media stirred emotions to a fever pitch. The Phantom Killer, exhaustively researched, is the only definitive nonfiction book on the case, and includes details from an unpublished account by a survivor, and rare, never-before-published photographs. Although the case lives on today on television, the Internet, a revived fictional movie and even an off-Broadway play, with so much of the investigation shrouded in mystery since 1946, rumors and fractured facts have distorted the reality. Now, for the first time, a careful examination of the archival record, personal interviews, and stubborn fact checking come together to produce new insights and revelations on the old slayings."--from publisher's description.
Deliberate Evil
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, and the 1830 Murder of a Salem Slave Trader
Published in 2022
The 1830 murder of wealthy slaver Joseph White shook all of Salem, Massachusetts. Soon the crime drew national attention when it was discovered that two of the conspirators came from Salem?s influential Crowninshield family: a clan of millionaire shipowners, cabinet secretaries, and congressmen. A prosecution team led by famed Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster made the case even more newsworthy. Meanwhile, young Salem native Nathaniel Hawthorne, who knew several of the accused, observed and wrote.
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
Published in 2016
The Trial of Lizzie Borden
A True Story
Published in 2019
"The remarkable new account of an essential piece of American mythology--the trial of Lizzie Borden--based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence. The Trial of Lizzie Borden tells the true story of one of the most sensational murder trials in American history. When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple's younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone--rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople--had an opinion about Lizzie Borden's guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn't she? The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central enigmatic character has endured for more than one hundred years. Immortalized in rhyme, told and retold in every conceivable genre, the murders have secured a place in the American pantheon of mythic horror, but one typically wrenched from its historical moment. In contrast, Cara Robertson explores the stories Lizzie Borden's culture wanted and expected to hear and how those stories influenced the debate inside and outside of the courtroom. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper accounts, unpublished local accounts, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden offers a window onto America in the Gilded Age, showcasing its most deeply held convictions and its most troubling social anxieties"-- Provided by publisher.
Maniac
The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer
Published in 2021
"In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school--one of the most modern in the Midwest--Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history. Maniac is Harold Schechter's gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a "human time bomb" whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age."--Amazon.
A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin
The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer
Published in 2014
Describes the true story of a Nazi party member and serial killer who attacked women riding on trains at night in World War II-era Berlin.
Terror in the City of Champions
Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society That Shocked Depression-era Detroit
Published in 2016
The Kidnap Years
The Astonishing True History of the Forgotten Kidnapping Epidemic That Shook Depression-era America
Published in 2020
"The Great Depression was a time of incomparable financial desperation in America. Thugs with submachine guns and square-jawed G-men have long dominated the vernacular images of fear, lawlessness, and corruption set against the decimating poverty of thatdecade. But little known-until now-are the many serial dramas that played out in homes and hideouts, courtrooms and cold cases across the country. In a time of panic, legal lethargy, corruption, and incompetence, there was one sure-fire means to make money, one that was seized upon by both criminals and resourceful civilians. Best of all, one was likely to go unpunished: kidnapping. Gritty, visceral, and thoughtfully reported, The Kidnap Years chronicles a forgotten time in America's history when the economic hardships of the Great Depression and the low legal risk of kidnapping led to a sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country"-- Provided by publisher.
Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid
America's Original Gangster Couple
Published in 2021
"A thrilling Jazz Age chronicle of America's first gangster couple, Margaret and Richard Whittemore"-- Provided by publisher.
The Black Hand
The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History
Published in 2017
Chronicles the dramatic story of the origins of the mafia in early twentieth-century America and the achievements of Italian-born detective Joseph Petrosino, who gave his life to fight it.
The Good Assassin
How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia
Published in 2020
"The untold story of a Latvian Nazi's gruesome crimes and an Israeli spy's epic journey to bring him to justice, a case that altered the fates of all ex-Nazis."-- Provided by the publisher.
City of Light, City of Poison
Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris
Published in 2017
Nicolas de La Reynie, appointed by Louis XIV as the first police chief of Paris, pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city, unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests, and discovers that the distance between the quiet backstabbing world of the king's court and the criminal underground is disturbingly short. As he continues his investigations, La Reynie suspects that Louis's mistresses are involved in many of the nefarious plots he has uncovered, and he must decide just how far he will go to protect his king. Tucker has crafted a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie's notebooks, letters, and diaries.
The Real Lolita
The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World
Published in 2018
Who Killed Jane Stanford?
A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University
Published in 2022
"A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why. In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner's jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university's lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked. Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford's murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city's machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White's search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford's imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had themeans"-- Provided by publisher.