THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. American Kompromat unravels the Russian-influenced operations that amassed the dirty little secrets of the richest and most powerful men on earth. American Kompromat is based on extended and exclusive interviews with high-level sources in the KGB, CIA, and FBI, as well as lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, and thousands of pages of FBI reports, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. A narrative offering jaw-dropping context, and set in Upper East Side mansions and private Caribbean islands, gigantic yachts, and private jets, American Kompromat shows that, from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, Russian operations transformed the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world into potent weapons that served its interests. Among its many revelations, American Kompromat addresses what may be the single most important unanswered question of the entire Trump era - and one that Unger argues is even more important now that Trump is out of office: Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could such an audacious feat have been accomplished? To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to understand kompromat - operations that amassed compromising information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged power by appealing to what is, for some, the most prized possession of all: their vanity. This is a story that transcends the end of the Trump administration, illuminating a major underreported aspect of Trump's corruption that has profoundly damaged American democracy.

Also called ""resurrectionists,"" body snatchers, were careful not to take anything from the grave but the body--stealing only the corpse was not considered a felony since the courts had already said that a dead body had no owner. (""Burking""--i.e., murder--was the alternative method of supplying ""stiffs"" to medical schools; it is covered here as well). This book recounts the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, why body snatching came about and how disinterment was done, and presents information on: efforts to prevent the practice, a group of professional grave robbers, and the European experience.

James Tillman was stretched out on his basement couch, relaxing after a long day of work at the car wash, the smell of sweet onions and simmering steak filling the air of his modest apartment in the projects of Hartford, Conn. His mother, a bible perched nearby, was softly singing a hymn when she was shaken by the thundering sound of pounding on the front door. It wasn't a knock; it was an act of sheer force. In an instant, the police burst in, lifted James out of his home and shoved him into prison, arresting him for the brutal rape of a young corporate executive. For over 18 years, James professed his innocence, through the investigation, trial, appeals, and to anyone who would listen. Finally, after a series of extraordinary events, the Connecticut Innocence Project took up James' case, eventually winning his freedom-the first person to be exonerated in the state through the use of DNA. This is an inspirational story about the power of conviction: the wrongful conviction that sent James Tillman to prison for over 18 years, and the power of his own conviction that helped him persevere, offer a transformational forgiveness and earn a redemption that is so valued he remarkably calls his experience in prison, "a gift." "The Power of Conviction" is for people who are facing tough times. You will understand that you're not alone, that things can be brutally bad and we can react poorly at times, but where there is love, there is always hope. How did James Tillman endure 18 years of hell in prison? What specific lessons can you learn about the transformational power of forgiveness, love and conviction? When faced with your own challenges in life, what will you choose?

"But Bill isn't there some other way? I didn't give up all I had and come here just to let some 'punk' gang leader kill me?" "Well Jim, there's the door; you can either go out, turn left, walk down to the corner, face Eddie, and see if he really intends on killing you: or you can turn right and run for your life; hoping he doesn't catch you. Either way, your life and ministry here are probably over. You must decide whether to stay and fight for those you love or run away to live another day. No one can make that decision for you, not even me." Jim was called of God to leave the college ministry where he was working at the University of Maryland and move to New York City to join with Young Life in their work with violent youth and gang bangers. Never did Jim imagine that when we say we are willing to die for Jesus, that one day he would have to face that ultimate challenge. "A Bullet for Jesus" is based on a real story. A faced paced thriller filled with danger, romance, joy and tragedy. A young man with high spiritual values jeopardizes his very life while trying to help those caught up in a world of drugs and violence. What he encounters though will not only change his life, but put his very faith at risk.

Skip and Lily Taylor's oldest son Stephen learned as a young teenager that he could make good money selling drugs and traded a bright future for 8 and a half years in prison. When a chance encounter with a well-dressed guest at a party in Austin, Texas, results in Stephen becoming a mule for a drug cartel, he takes a devastating detour from a well-planned life. Unconfined chronicles the true story of Stephen's arrest and incarceration for a nonviolent drug crime. Readers will: Get a glimpse at what it is really like to go to federal prison in America Understand the emotions and experiences of family members who love someone in prison See how God can still work in the most unthinkable circumstances Unconfined tells the first-hand account through the eyes of Stephen and Skip and shares the transformational power of faith to overcome anger, grief, and loss.

"The thrilling history of the torso murderer. The tale of the 'Untouchable' who got Al Capone but failed to solve his goriest case." -Dan Jones, The Sunday Times In the spirit of Devil in the White City comes a true detective tale of the highest standard: the haunting story of Eliot Ness's forgotten final case-his years-long hunt for "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," a serial killer who terrorized Cleveland through the Great Depression. "After helping to put Al Capone behind bars, lawman Eliot Ness came to Cleveland, where he did battle with a vicious killer. ... Even Ness was stumped trying to apprehend the 'torso murderer' responsible for a series of ghoulish killings. ... The authors have done Ness justice." -Wall Street Journal In 1934, the nation's most legendary crime-fighter-fresh from taking on the greatest gangster in American history-arrived in Cleveland, a corrupt and dangerous town about to host a world's fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started turning up. The young detective, already battling the mob and crooked cops, found his drive to transform American policing subverted by a menace largely unknown to law enforcement: a serial murderer. Eliot Ness's greatest case had begun. Now, Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz-the acclaimed writing team behind Scarface and the Untouchable-uncover this lost crime epic, delivering a gripping and unforgettable nonfiction account based on decades of groundbreaking research. Ness had risen to fame in 1931 for leading the "Untouchables," which helped put Chicago's Al Capone behind bars. As Cleveland's public safety director, in charge of the police and fire departments, Ness offered a radical new vision for better law enforcement. Crime-ridden and devastated by the Depression, Cleveland was preparing for a star-turn itself: in 1936, it would host the "Great Lakes Exposition," which would be visited by seven million people. Late in the summer of 1934, however, pieces of a woman's body began washing up on the Lake Erie shore-first her ribs, then part of her backbone, then the lower half of her torso. The body count soon grew to five, then ten, then more, all dismembered in gruesome ways. As Ness zeroed in on a suspect-a doctor tied to a prominent political family-powerful forces thwarted his quest for justice. In this battle between a flawed hero and a twisted monster-by turns horror story, political drama, and detective thriller-Collins and Schwartz find an American tragedy, classic in structure, epic in scope.

"A suspenseful memoir from the real life American gangster, Frank Lucas

"In his own words, Frank Lucas recounts his life as the former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who ran Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. From being taken under the wing of old time gangster Bumpy Johnson, through one of the most successful drug smuggling operations, to being sentenced to seventy years in prison, "Original Gangster "is a chilling look at the rise and fall of a modern legacy. Frank Lucas realized that in order to gain the kind of success he craved he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian mafia held in New York. So Frank cut out middlemen and began smuggling heroin into the United States directly from his source in the Golden Triangle by using coffins. Making a million dollars per day selling "Blue Magic"--what was known as the purest heroin on the street--Frank Lucas became one of the most powerful crime lords of his time, while rubbing shoulders with the elite in entertainment, politics, and crime. After his arrest, Federal Judge Sterling Johnson, the special narcotics prosecutor in New York at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas and his operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street." This powerful memoir reveals what really happened to the man whose career was dramatized in the 2007 feature film "American Gangster, "exposing a startling look at the world of organized crime.

'Not just a readable, pacey account of an extraordinary individual and his quixotic quest ... but also a troubling expose of the fragility of our entire financial system ... I loved it' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland For fans of Bad Blood and The Big Short, the story of how one reclusive trading prodigy manipulated Wall Street and amassed millions from his childhood bedroom - then short-circuited the global market. A real-life financial thriller, Flash Crash gives panoramic insight into our economic landscape - its weaknesses, its crooks and its exploitable loopholes - and uncovers the remarkable, behind-the-scenes narrative of a mystifying market crash, a globe-spanning investigation into international fraud, and the man - Navinder Singh Sarao - at the centre of it all. Depending on whom you ask, Sarao was a scourge, a symbol of a financial system run horribly amok, or a folk hero: an outsider who took on the tyranny of Wall Street and the high-frequency traders.

Over 50 billion dollars in securities. Gold reserves that exceed those of industrialized nations. Real estate holdings that equal the total area of many countries. Opulent palaces containing the world's greatest art treasures. These are some of the riches of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in 1929 the Vatican was destitute. Pope Pius XI, living in a damaged, leaky, pigeon-infested Lateran Palace, could hear rats scurrying through the walls, and he worried about how he would pay for even basic repairs to unclog the overburdened sewer lines and update the antiquated heating system. How did the Church manage in less than seventy-five years such an incredible reversal of fortune? The story here told by Church historian Paul L. Williams is intriguing, shocking, and outrageous.
The turnaround began on February 11, 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Through this deal Mussolini gained the support of the staunchly Catholic Italian populace, who at the time followed the lead of the Church. In return, the Church received, among other benefits, a payment of $90 million, sovereign status for the Vatican, tax-free property rights, and guaranteed salaries for all priests throughout the country from the Italian government. With the stroke of a pen the pope had solved the Vatican's budgetary woes practically overnight, yet he also put a great religious institution in league with some of the darkest forces of the 20th century.
Based on his years of experience as a consultant for the FBI, Williams produces explosive and never-before published evidence of the Church's morally questionable financial dealings with sinister organizations over seven decades through today. He examines the means by which the Vatican accrued enormous wealth during the Great Depression by investing in Mussolini's government, the connection between Nazi gold and the Vatican Bank, the vast range of Church holdings in the postwar boom period, Paul VI's appointment of Mafia chieftain Michele Sindona as the Vatican banker, a billion-dollar counterfeit stock fraud uncovered by Interpol and the FBI, the "Ambrosiano Affair" called "the greatest financial scandal of the 20th Century" by the New York Times, the mysterious death of John Paul I, profits from an international drug ring operating out of Gdansk, Poland, and revelations about current dealings.
For both Catholics and non-Catholics this troubling expose of corruption in one of the most revered religious institutions in the world will serve as an urgent call for reform.

Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

A mother's fight to bring her daughter's killer, Christopher Halliwell, to justice 'I have lived every parent's worst nightmare. On what would have been my daughter's 29th birthday, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher knocked on the door and told me my beautiful Becky was dead. Found buried in a shallow grave in a remote field, Becky had been brutally murdered.' When Becky Godden-Edwards was killed, her mother Karen awoke to a world where the truth was never guaranteed; where taxi driver Christopher Halliwell got away with murder and the police officer who found her daughter was punished instead. This is Karen's story. Despite unimaginable tragedy, her love for her daughter has been unbreakable: from her despair through Becky's troubled teenage years, to the agonising eight years when Becky was missing, and then the dramatic story of how a killer's confession led to a terrible discovery. The one constant has been Karen's determination to fight for Becky, tirelessly campaigning for the truth about what happened to be heard and for Halliwell to face the consequences of his evil actions. *The murders of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O'Callaghan will soon be the focus of major new ITV series A Confession starring Martin Freeman as Stephen Fulcher and Imelda Staunton as Karen Edwards*

After Capone is the first book to present the complete story of one of America's leading crime kingpins. This is a fascinating and chilling account of mob power, as it traces Frank "the Enforcer"Nitti from his Italian origins and rise in Chicago's underworld mob to his near fatal shooting by city detectives, his strange death and the ultimate downfall of those associated with him. Meticulously researched, combining previously scattered accounts, the book provides a comprehensive and arousing portrait of underworld boss Frank. Nitti and his gang's far-reaching power emanating from Chicago in the 1930s.

In a place where murder isn't supposed to happen--rural Missouri and Southern Illinois--deputy sheriff and investigator Harry Spiller learned the hard reality: murder is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you live in a big city or small county with farms and churches--murder is swift and can happen to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. All too often, victims fall prey in places we think are safe to raise our families, where we take walks on hot summer nights, where our children play in the park or yard without concern, and where we leave our doors unlocked at night. Murder in the Heartland, Book 2 tells the stories of innocent victims in these seemingly innocent places. From his research and investigations of ten murder cases, Spiller recounts the gruesome details of a fraternity hazing gone deadly, teen killings, and even murders by those living and working with the victims. As much as we like to think we're safe, murder can happen even in rural America--and it does. Join Spiller in the second installment of his three-book series of these horrifying murders in the heartland.

THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

She looked like everyone's grandmother: white-haired, plump, bespectacled, and kindly. Only Dorothea Montalvo Puente's eyes, black and hard behind her glasses, hinted at the evil that lurked within. She was the rarest of murderers, a female serial killer--probably the most cold-blooded ever recorded in the annals of crime.

This shocking story of the gruesome murder of seven men for profit comes from bestselling author William P. Wood, the Deputy D.A. who had earlier prosecuted Puente for drugging and robbing elderly people. He knew intimately the malice that coursed through her veins, and thought he had seen the last of this callous and calculating woman. But her chameleon-like deviousness helped her reappear as a sweet, benevolent landlord--and later allowed her to escape police custody as they stood in her yard surrounded by the gaping graves. "The Bone Garden" chronicles the discoveries that ignited a media firestorm and transfixed a nation, putting an entirely new face on evil in this country.

The machine-gun murders of seven men on the morning of February 14, 1929, by killers dressed as cops became the gangland crime of the century."" Or so the story went. Since then it has been featured in countless histories, biographies, movies, and television specials. 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, ' however, is the first book-length treatment of the subject, and it challenges the commonly held assumption that Al Capone ordered the slayings to gain supremacy in the Chicago underworld.""

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN Diamond thief, guerrilla fighter, spy, decorated hero, bohemian rogue and lover of several notorious women - all describe Major Harry Larkyns. Yet he has long been dismissed as merely a liar and a cheat, famous only for being shot dead in 1874 by the unnerving photographer Eadweard Muybridge. But has history properly understood either the killer or his victim? Part biography, part crime investigation, THE SCOUNDREL HARRY LARKYNS uncovers some extraordinary truths, and is historical detective work at its finest. 'One of the best books of the year' Irish Times 'Strange, brilliant, quirky and illuminating' Country Life 'A story that is as eventful as it is tragic' Guardian 'A masterpiece of historical detective work' Keith Lowe

Laura Thompson re-examines the truths behind one of post-war Britain's most notorious murders: the bludgeoning to death of nanny Sandra Rivett in a Belgravia basement on 7 November 1974. Lord Lucan, found guilty of the murder, was only granted a death certificate in 2016.

His wife Veronica – last surviving participant in this dark episode – died in September 2017. In this revised edition, Laura Thompson sheds new light on the volatile mental state of Veronica Lucan, and on the theories surrounding the murder, to which she adds a new, extraordinary and shocking possibility.

Take a drive through the Mississippi Delta today and you'll find a landscape dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most chilling are those devoted to the murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The ways this event is remembered have been fraught from the beginning, revealing currents of controversy, patronage, and racism lurking just behind the placid facades of historical markers. In Remembering Emmett Till, Dave Tell gives us five accounts of the commemoration of this infamous crime. In a development no one could have foreseen, Till's murder-one of the darkest moments in the region's history-has become an economic driver for the Delta. Historical tourism has transformed seemingly innocuous places like bridges, boat landings, gas stations, and riverbeds into sites of racial politics, reminders of the still-unsettled question of how best to remember the victim of this heinous crime. Tell builds an insightful and persuasive case for how these memorials have altered the Delta's physical and cultural landscape, drawing potent connections between the dawn of the civil rights era and our own moment of renewed fire for racial justice.

Aileen Wuornos was executed in Florida, on the 9th of October, 2002 at the age of 46. She was the 10th woman to be sentenced to death in the USA since the death penalty resumed in 1976. Convicted for the murder of six men, in a two month period, Aileen claimed she acted in self defence however the investigation into these claims was poor and she later retracted her statement announcing to the Supreme Court, "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again." All-too-often female prostitutes have been the victims of male serial killers - the killings of Aileen 'Lee' Wuornos were the inverse of this. She was a child prostitute, fleeing an abusive childhood at the hands of her grandparents, which led straight into a disastrous adulthood of difficult affairs with both men and women. Her metamorphosis from victim to attacker had brutal consequences: a stream of dead men. Following a renewed interest in this woman after the film "Monster", this is her story in her own words.

A deadly secret. A horrifying discovery. A daughter tells the devastating true story her mother tried to hide... Growing up in a chaotic home on Merseyside, young Joanne raised herself and her brother and sister, while her mother lapsed into a downward spiral of drinking and casual sex. But the consequences of her mother's messy lifestyle turned out to be far worse than Joanne could ever have imagined. In Silent Sisters, the daughter who was falsely accused of murdering her own baby sister tells the full story for the first time since exposing her mother's crimes.

The Thames Torso Murders have been overshadowed by Jack the Ripper and his crimes, but were just as brutal and gruesome. They began in 1887 in Londons East End, just north of the Thames River in Rainham, England. The killer took one victim that year, another in 1888, and two more in 1889. He resumed his crimes in 1902, taking his last victim south of the Thames and leaving her body in a pile of dismembered parts as he had done with most of his other victims. This work delves deep into the case of the Thames Torso Murders. It begins with a look at London in the late 1800s, a time of great confusion and tremendous population increase, and the killers path to London, which seems to include a murder in Paris in 1886. The book then examines in great detail each murder and the investigation that may have been hindered by the search for Jack the Ripper. It also raises the idea that Jack the Ripper and the Torso Murderer may have been the same man--Severin Klosowski, better known as George Chapman, the Borough Poisoner. It ends with an examination of Serial Killers; the Ripper, Torso, and Borough Poisoner murder cases; the search for clues to the serial killer responsible for the five Thames Torso murders; and Wolff Levisohn, a dark horse who seems to have known much about all three sets of murders, testified at Chapmans murder trial, and then faded away as Chapman was sent to the gallows.