Praise for "The Science of Sherlock Holmes"

"Holmes is, first, a great detective, but he has also proven to be a great scientist, whether dabbling with poisons, tobacco ash, or tire marks. Wagner explores this fascinating aspect of his career by showing how his investigations were grounded in the cutting-edge science of his day, especially the emerging field of forensics. . . . Utterly compelling."
--Otto Penzler, member of the Baker Street Irregulars and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop

"E. J. Wagner demonstrates that without the work of Sherlock Holmes and his contemporaries, the CSI teams would be twiddling their collective thumbs. Her accounts of Victorian crimes make Watson's tales pale! Highly recommended for students of the Master Detective."
--Leslie S. Klinger, Editor, "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes"

"In this thrilling book, E. J. Wagner has combined her considerable strengths in three disciplines to produce a work as compelling and blood-curdling as the best commercial fiction. This is CSI in foggy old London Town. Chilling, grim fun."
--John Westermann, author of "Exit Wounds and Sweet Deal"

"I am recommending this delightful work to all of my fellow forensic scientists. . . . Bravo, Ms. Wagner!"
--John Houde, author of "Crime Lab: A Guide for Nonscientists"

"A fabulously interesting read. The book traces the birth of the forensic sciences to the ingenuity of Sherlock Holmes. A wonderful blend of history, mystery, and whodunit."
--Andre Moenssens, Douglas Stripp Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Missouri at Kansas City, and coauthor of "Scientific Evidence in Civil and Criminal Cases"

A New York Times Book of the Year, 2018 A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK A dazzling love letter to a beloved institution - our libraries. After moving to Los Angeles, Susan Orlean became fascinated by a mysterious local crime that has gone unsolved since it was carried out on the morning of 29 April 1986: who set fire to the Los Angeles Public Library, ultimately destroying more than 400,000 books, and perhaps even more perplexing, why? With her characteristic humour, insight and compassion, Orlean uses this terrible event as a lens through which to tell the story of all libraries - their history, their meaning and their uncertain future as they adapt and redefine themselves in a digital world. Filled with heart, passion and extraordinary characters, The Library Book discusses the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives.

An overview of evil throughout the ages. Not for those of a sensitive nature!

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER IN TRANSLATION 'Disturbing and powerful ... I loved it' - Leila Slimani, author of Lullaby 'Icy and chilling... In sharply drawn sentences, Sedira summons the beauty of a small French village, and the shocking acts of the people inside it' - Flynn Berry, author of the Reese Whitherspoon Book Club pick, Northern Spy You sprinted all the way to the river. What were you running from? Anna and Constant Guillot and their two daughters live in the peaceful, remote mountain village of Carmac. Everyone in Carmac knows each other, leading simple lives mostly unaffected by the outside world - that is until Bakary and Sylvia Langlois arrive with their three children. The new family's impressive chalet and expensive cars are in stark contrast with the modesty of those of their neighbours, yet despite their initial differences, the Langlois and the Guillots form an uneasy friendship. But when both families come under financial strain, the underlying class and racial tensions of their relationship reach breaking point, culminating in act of abhorrent violence. With piercing psychological insight and gripping storytelling, People Like Them asks the questions: How could a seemingly ordinary person commit the most extraordinary crime? And how could their loved ones ever come to terms with what they'd done? Lullaby meets Little Fires Everywhere, this intense, suspenseful prize-winning novel explores the darker side of human nature - and the terrible things people are capable of. *Winner of the Prix Eugene Dabit*

Late-seventies Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA's Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless skyline into their jackpot. After the promising team imploded, however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to treachery and secrets. To get even, one of the ex-partners launched a murder-for-profit corporation using, among other peculiar sorts, a bantam-sized epileptic with a deadeye shot and a cross-dressing sidekick. The hapless criminals required a comical number of attempts to execute their first target. Once they did, on a rainy night in the San Fernando Valley, the surviving founder of Space Matters was thrown into a pressure cooker existence out of a Coen Brothers movie. Threatened for money he didn't have, he donned a disguise, survived a heart-pounding encounter at the La Brea Tar Pits, and relied on an ex-Israeli mercenary for protection. In the end, he had to outfox a glowering murderer, while asking if you can ever really know anyone in a town where dirty deals send men to their graves. In The Darkest Glare, Chip Jacobs recounts a spectacular, noir-ish, true-crime saga from one of the deadliest eras in American history. You'll never gaze out windows into the dark again. Included as a bonus is an original true crime short from the same unhinged era. In "Paul & Chuck," a flashy, crusading attorney wages war against the messianic leader of a bloodthirsty cult determined to teach the world to stay away.

An urgent Penguin Special investigating the 2014 mass-kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the world's deadliest terrorists On 14th April 2014, 276 girls disappeared from a secondary school in northern Nigeria, kidnapped by the world's deadliest terror group. A tiny number have escaped back to their families but many remain missing. Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila tracks down the survivors and the bereaved. Two years after the attack, he bears witness to their stories and to their grief. And moving from the personal to the political, he presents a comprehensive indictment of Boko Haram, tracing the circumstances of their ascent and the terrible fallout of their ongoing presence in Nigeria.

Born in Brooklyn, Polisi was a member of one of the New York Mob's feared Five Families, when the Mafia was at the height of its vast wealth and power. Known by his Mob name, Sally Ubatz ("Crazy Sally"), he ran an illegal after-hours gambling den-The Sinatra Club-that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas-Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. For Polisi, the nonstop thrills of robbing banks, hijacking trucks, pulling daring heists-and getting away with it all, thanks to cops and other public servants corrupted by Mob money-were fleeting. When he was busted for drug trafficking, and already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life: a rat. In this pulse-pounding account of his brazen crimes, wild sexual escapades, and personal tragedies, Polisi tells his story of life inside the New York Mob in a voice straight from the streets. With shocking candor, he draws on a hard-won knowledge of Mob history to paint a never-before-seen picture of the once extensive and secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists.

One of the most notorious Victorian murders was committed by Dr George Henry Lamson, who stood trial in 1882 for poisoning his crippled brother-in-law Percy Malcolm John; he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. This book is the first full-length account of the Lamson case since the relevant 'Notable British Trials' volume appeared back in 1912. Using contemporary newspapers, the police and Home Office files at the National Archives, and various other archival sources, it describes Lamson's adolescence in a distinguished New York family, his successful medical studies in Paris and Edinburgh, and his valiant wartime service as a military surgeon in Serbia and Romania. Things then went rapidly downhill: he failed to establish himself as a general practitioner in Bournemouth, and descended into a maelstrom of drug addiction and moral irresponsibility, ending up a cruel, calculating murderer for the sake of profit. New light will be shed on Lamson's motive for the murder, and on his choice of poison; arguments will be presented that the murder of Percy Malcolm John was not the first attempt on the life of this hapless youth by the murderous doctor; nor was he the first victim of this cunning and subtle Victorian poisoner par excellence.

Did Jeremy Bamber murder five members of his adoptive family in a frenzy, or was he falsely imprisoned?

The year is 1859 and Congressman Daniel Sickles and his beautiful wife Teresa are the toast of Washington, D.C. society.

True-life reporting on vicious criminals and the haphazard system that punishes themIn 1969, the Supreme Court justices cast votes in secret that could have signaled the end of the death penalty. Later, the justices' resolve began to unravel. Why? What were the consequences for the rule of law and for the life at stake in the case? These are some of the fascinating questions answered in Murder at the Supreme Court. Veteran journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien not only pull back the curtain of secrecy that surrounds Supreme Court deliberations but also reveal the crucial links between landmark capital-punishment cases and the lethal crimes at their root. The authors take readers to crime scenes, holding cells, jury rooms, autopsy suites, and execution chambers to provide true-life reporting on vicious criminals and the haphazard judicial system that punishes them. The cases reported are truly "the cases that made the law." They have defined the parameters that judges must follow for a death sentence to stand up on appeal. Beyond the obvious questions regarding the dubious deterrent effect of capital punishment or whether retribution is sufficient justification for the death penalty (regardless of the heinous nature of the crimes committed), the cases and crimes examined in this book raise other confounding issues: Is lethal injection really more humane than other methods of execution? Should a mentally ill killer be forcibly medicated to make him "well enough" to be executed? How does the race of the perpetrator or the victim influence sentencing? Is heinous rape a capital crime? How young is too young to be executed?This in-depth yet highly accessible book provides compelling human stories that illuminate the thorny legal issues behind the most noteworthy capital cases.

It is 2007, a time of recession and impending climate crisis, and one young man decides to change the world. Meet Stephen Jackley, a British geography student with Asperger's Syndrome. Aged just twenty-one, obsessed with the idea of Robin Hood, and with no prior experience, he resolved to become a bank robber. He would steal from the rich and give to the poor. Jackley used disguise, elaborate escape routes and replica pistols to successfully hold up a string of banks, making away with thousands of pounds. He committed ten robberies in south-west England over a six-month period and bank notes marked with 'RH' - 'Robin Hood' - began finding their way into the hands of the homeless. The police, despite their concerted efforts, had no idea what was going on or who was responsible. That is until Jackley's ambition got the better of him. This is his story.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed a staggering number of political prisoners in Western Ukraine-somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000-in the space of eight days, in one of the greatest atrocities perpetrated by the Soviet state. Yet the Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941 is largely unknown. This sourcebook aims to change that, offering detailed scholarly analysis, eyewitness testimonies and profiles of known victims, and a selection of fiction, memoirs, and poetry that testifies to the lasting impact of the massacre in the collective memory of Ukrainians.

Unlock the cultural obsession with high-stakes robberies in Heist, a collection of the world's greatest real-life break-ins. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's famous art heist to the disappearance of the Marie Antoinette watch, these 100% true stories will have you on the edge of your seat--and double checking the locks on your doors! Have you ever watched a movie like Ocean's Eleven and thought: "There's no way that could ever actually happen, right?" Wrong. In the US alone, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of heists, from bank break-ins to museum plunders. In this premium compendium, we'll walk through the most impressive ones, diving into the details behind each case, the detectives that led the investigations, how the events unfolded, and what mysteries remain. The hardcover book will explore the top 50 incidents, including: 1. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist: In March of 1990, two men dressed up as police officers and sweet-talked their way past security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA. After tying up the real guards, these men dismantled and packed up 13 works of art, loaded them onto a truck, and drove off into the night, making the 81- minute breach one of the most expensive in modern history. Today, it remains the single largest property theft in the world. 2. The Great Train Robbery: Not all heists happen in buildings. In fact, one of the most popular ones was the 1963 train robbery in which nearly 2.6 million pounds was lifted from a Royal Mail train headed to London. Using intel provided by a man on the inside dubbed The Ulsterman, the group rigged the railways traffic light system to bring the train to an extended stop, during which time, they funneled the money from one of the carriages into a waiting truck by way of a human chain. 3. The French Bank Vault Tunnelers: On the morning of July 19, 1976, workers from a safe manufacturing company were called to the Societe Generale bank to fix a faulty vault door that appeared to be jammed. When they drilled into the vault and peered in to diagnose the problem, though, what they found was not a loose screw or broken hinge, but a door that has been welded shut...from the inside. Also scattering the room was a couple of wine glasses, a portable stove, and a giant tunnel system that proved to be the method of transport for thieves, who had dug their way into the bank, spent the weekend there, and left with ten million in cash. 4. D. B. Cooper's Escapades: The subject of many conspiracy theories, D. B. Cooper (not his real name) hopped on a Boeing 727 in a trench coat and sunglasses in 1971. When the plane had reached cruising altitude, Cooper hijacked it, extorting 200,000 dollars before strapping on a parachute, jumping out of the plane, and disappearing into thin air. This "aerial heist" remains unsolved to this day and remains one of the FBI's most frustrating open cases. 5. The Botched Crown Jewels of England Theft: Back in 1671, a man named Thomas Blood (a cool name, by any standard) decided: "Eh, I'm gonna steal the Crown Jewels." He reached out to Talbot Edwards, the keeper of the stones, with a proposition: if you give me a private viewing of the gemstones, I'll have my nephew marry your daughter (a nephew who, naturally, turned out to not exist). At this private viewing, Blood knocked out Talbot, smashed the jewels into pieces and threw the shards into his pockets, hoping to make a run for it. Though he didn't manage to escape, he did manage to escape jail time: The King at the time was so amused by this failed attempt that he let Blood off scot-free. And that's just the start of it. Plastered with gorgeous photography and big, sleek pages, Heist looks as good as it is captivating. Crack the code of the world's most elusive capers, from the popular tales your great grandad told you about to the ones that have been long forgotten.

Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.

Part travelogue, part true-thriller, Edward Fox's brilliantly original book investigates the murder of a US archaeologist on the West Bank in 1992 and opens up the Palestinian world he served - a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil of Palestine and the West Bank. On 19 January 1992, Dr Albert Glock - US citizen, archaeologist and Director of Archaeology at Bir Zeit University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was murdered by an assassin. Two bullets to the heart. The witness statements were confused, the autopsy inadequate. The police took three hours to arrive at the scene, from their HQ ten minutes away. Who killed Albert Glock? The Palestinians blamed the Israelis, the Israelis blamed an inter-departmental feud at the university, or extreme Palestinian groups. But those close to Bir Zeit, to the political situation on the West Bank, had a simple line of advice: 'Look to the archaeology, ' they repeated. 'Look to the archaeology.' For Albert Glock had started to uncover truths about the distant Palestinian past which Israel found uncomfortable. For Israel, Palestine was a country without a people - for a people without a country. Now Glock, through his archaeological finds, was showing that their version was flawed. He was publishing papers about the ancient traditions and settlements throughout Palestine, and discovering hugely significant facts about the ancient Palestinian way of life. Glock had given up a glittering career to teach at Palestine's beleaguered, besieged and underfunded university which faced closure at worst, and curfew at best - daily. Edward Fox's extraordinary book weaves together the story of Glock's murder with the history of biblical archaeology and the brutal, Byzantine politics of the intifada. It is written as a true-life thriller which opens up the Palestine in which Glock lived and worked, the people he knew and the turbulent politics of the middle east. This is brilliantly original writing and compelling storytelling quite unlike any other work yet published on the Middle East

A MONSTER PREYED UPON THE CHILDREN OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOSTON. HIS CRIMES WERE APPALLING -- AND YET HE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A CHILD HIMSELF.

When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend" was imprisoned at last. But the complex questions sparked by his ghastly crime spree -- the hows and whys of vicious juvenile crime -- were as relevant in the so-called Age of Innocence as they are today.

Jesse Pomeroy was outwardly repellent in appearance, with a gruesome "dead" eye; inside, he was deformed beyond imagining. A sexual sadist of disturbing precocity, he satisfied his atrocious appetites by abducting and torturing his child victims. But soon, the teenager's bloodlust gave way to another obsession: murder.

Harold Schechter, whose true-crime masterpieces are "well-documented nightmares for anyone who dares to look" (Peoria Journal Star), brings his acclaimed mix of page-turning storytelling, brilliant insight, and fascinating historical documentation to Fiend -- an unforgettable account from the annals of American crime.