Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff's edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it's this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it's that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick. The premier storytelling podcast studio Parcast has been focusing on unearthing these mechanics--the cult leaders and followers, and the world and culture that gave birth to both. Parcast's work in analyzing dozens of case studies has revealed patterns: distinct ways that cult leaders from different generations resemble one another. What links the ten notorious figures profiled in Cults are as disturbing as they are stunning--from Manson to Applewhite, Koresh to Rael, the stories woven here are both spellbinding and disturbing. Cults is more than just a compilation of grisly biographies, however. In these pages, Parcast's founder Max Cutler and national bestselling author Kevin Conley look closely at the lives of some of the most disreputable cult figures and tell the stories of their rise to power and fall from grace, sanity, and decency. Beyond that, it is a study of humanity, an unflinching look at what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are manipulated and how the things we hold most sacred can be twisted into the lowest form of malevolence.

The newest series from Globe features regional history with a true crime twist! Written by true crime author-experts, each book focuses on the most significant (and prolific) violent female criminals from that state or region. Female killers are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Angels of Death, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories of these women are much more complex. The author provides a look at the lives of at each killer through primary source materials, including diaries and trial records. Readers will be glued to their seats as they follow the killers through broken childhoods, first brushes with death, and overwhelming urges that propelled these women to commit these heinous crimes. The kidnappings, murders, investigations, trials, and ultimate verdicts will stun and surprise readers as they live vicariously through the killers and the dogged investigators who caught them.

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust. Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler's Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel's extraordinary story in full for the first time.

During the last few decades, financially and technologically corrupt practices, such as financial and technological crimes, frauds, forgeries, scandals, and money laundering, have been monitored in many countries around the globe. There is a general lack of awareness regarding these issues among various stakeholders including researchers and practitioners. Concepts, Cases, and Regulations in Financial Fraud and Corruption considers all aspects of financial and technological crimes, frauds, and corruption in individual, organizational, and societal experiences. The book also discusses the emergence and practices of financial crimes, frauds, and corruption during the last century and especially in the current technological advancement. Covering key topics such as financing, ethical leadership, tax evasion, and insider trading, this premier reference source is ideal for computer scientists, business owners, managers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

'Hugely insightful and thought provoking . . . I read it from cover to cover in one go' - Emilia Fox 'With characteristic brilliance and admirable sensitivity, Wilson illuminates the complex causes of their often horrific crimes' - Professor Simon Winlow, Vice President of the British Society of Criminology Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged twenty-nine he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison Governor in charge of a jail and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are a psychopath. Some of these men became David's friends; others would still love to kill him. My Life with Murderers tells the story of David's journey from idealistic prison governor to expert criminologist and professor. With experience unlike any other, David's story is a fascinating and compelling study of human nature.

THE FIRST VICE LORD is the story of the life and death of Big Jim Colosimo and Chicago's infamous segregated red-light district--the Levee. For the first time, the true story is told of the colorful characters who peopled the Levee from the time of the Columbian Exposition to the Roaring Twenties, clearly the most colorful period in Chicago's history. The product of five years of research through Chicago daily newspapers, magazines, and periodicals, and books on the city's history, it documents the story as it occurred, with all of the sights, sounds, and smells of that lusty, unruly era. THE FIRST VICE LORD is the story of an immigrant Italian lad who grew up in the tenements of Chicago, where he worked first as a lowly street sweeper, then as a brothel operator and vice lord, and finally as the owner of the most famous restaurant of his day. His story is told against the backdrop of an open red-light district so famous it was known to the crown heads of Europe.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family blind enemies by slashing them with the disposable safety razor blades stitched in to the peaks of their flat caps, as they fight bloody gangland wars involving Irish terrorists and the authorities led by a devious Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. But who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist? Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, has spent decades searching them out. Now he reveals the true story of the notorious Peaky Blinders, one of whom was his own great grandfather and, like the Shelbys, his grandfather was an illegal bookmaker in back-street Birmingham. In this gripping social history, Chinn shines a light on the rarely reported struggles of the working class in one of the great cities of the British Empire before the First World War. The story continues after 1918 as some Peaky Blinders transformed into the infamous Birmingham Gang. Led by the real Billy Kimber, they fought a bloody war with the London gangsters Darby Sabini and Alfie Solomon over valuable protection rackets extorting money from bookmakers across the booming postwar racecourses of Britain. Drawing together a remarkably wide-range of original sources, including rarely seen images of real Peaky Blinders and interviews with relatives of the 1920s gangsters, Peaky Blinders: The Real Story adds a new dimension to the true history of Birmingham's underworld and fact behind its fiction.

Nineteenth-Century Female Poisoners investigates the Essex poisoning trials of 1846 to 1851 where three women were charged with using arsenic to kill children, their husbands and brothers. Using newspapers, archival sources (including petitions and witness depositions), and records from parliamentary debates, the focus is not on whether the women were guilty or innocent, but rather on what English society during this period made of their trials and what stereotypes and stock-stories were used to describe women who used arsenic to kill. All three women were initially presented as 'bad' women but as the book illustrates there was no clear consensus on what exactly constituted bad womanhood.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway." This chilling and personal story that reveals, in detail, how the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly bungled a critically important cybersecurity investigation and betrayed the American public.

Michael J. Daugherty, author and CEO of LabMD in Atlanta, uncovers and details an extraordinary government surveillance program that compromised national security and invaded the privacy of tens of millions of online users worldwide.

Background: The FTC, charged with protecting consumers from unfairness and deception, was directed by Congress to investigate software companies in an effort to stop a growing epidemic of file leaks that exposed military, financial and medical data, and the leaks didn't stop there. As a result of numerous missteps, beginning by "working directly with" malware developers, such as Limewire, instead of investigating them, the agency allowed security leaks to continue for years. When summoned before Congressional Oversight three times since 2003, the agency painted a picture of improving security when in fact leaks were worsening. Then, rather than focus on the real problem of stopping the malware, the FTC diverted Congress' attention from the FTC's failure to protect consumers by playing "get the horses back in the barn." How? By attacking small business.

"The Devil Inside the Beltway" is riveting. It begins when an aggressive cybersecurity company, with retired General Wesley Clark on its advisory board, downloads the private health information of thousands of LabMD's patients. The company, Tiversa, campaigns for LabMD to hire them. After numerous failed attempts to procure LabMD's business, Tiversa's lawyer informs LabMD that Tiversa will be handing the downloaded file to the FTC. Within this page turner, Daugherty unveils that Tiversa was already working with Dartmouth, having received a significant portion of a $24,000,000 grant from Homeland Security to monitor for files. The reason for the investigation was this: Peer to peer software companies build back doors into their technology that allows for illicit and unapproved file sharing. When individual files are accessed, as in the case of LabMD, proprietary information can be taken. Tiversa, as part of its assignment, downloaded over 13 million files, many containing financial, medical and top secret military data.

Daugherty's book exposes a systematic and alarming investigation by one of the US Government's most important agencies. The consequences of their actions will plague Americans and their businesses for years.

Jimmy James was only twelve-years-old when he tried drugs for the first time. That one taste of marijuana affected him the rest of his life. He didn't graduate from high school, but he did graduate with excellence from the drug game, which eventually led him into the drug dealer lifestyle.

It's that lifestyle that contributed to forty-year-old Jimmy James' arrest for the death of a female friend, forty-four-year-old Lisa Amour. A general laborer in Huntsville, he was charged with first-degree reckless homicide by use of the dangerous weapon of cocaine.

"A Line 2 Die 4" provides a firsthand account of his actions and thoughts, his arrest, incarceration, court proceedings, and interactions with police, attorneys, family, and friends. At one time in his life, James felt on top of the world as a user and dealer. But a dealer's life will end in one of three ways: broke and living on the street with no family or money, dead on the street, or in prison. That's the story of James' life.

From the dense woods of the Appalachian Mountains comes this true tale of deception, murder, and greed in a tiny West Virginia town. M. M. Stoddart returns to the scene of the decades-old murders of Glenn Roberts and his teenaged son, Timothy, to conduct a new investigation of the biggest homicide case in Tucker County history-one shrouded by suspicion and doubt for more than twenty years. Glenn and Timothy were killed by near-contact shotgun blasts from the same weapon on the same night. But their bodies were found eight miles and three weeks apart. Stoddart reopens the cold case, and soon finds that the murders were much more than a simple botched robbery, as West Virginia authorities had previously concluded. New information uncovers a vast web of missing evidence, deceit, and family intrigue. Set in an impoverished mountain community in the early 1980s, this shocking and compelling story exposes the tragedy of wrongful conviction and the true meaning of justice.

As the first person of mixed race with dreadlocks to be a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation, on both television and radio (Today Programme, Six O'clock News, Panorama and The One Show) I helped re-write the rules on what makes an international BBC correspondent. I am an experienced undercover and investigative journalist and presenter on both prime-time television and international platforms such as Netflix. Yet it is being an inspiration to an under-served and diverse audience across the globe that inspires me. I broke the mold on what an international reporter looks like, sounds like and has as a background; I am proud of the fact that in doing so I inspire others. Less than a year later I began a new career as a journalist and broadcast reporter for the BBC, starting at the Today programme, the pinnacle of BBC Radio 4. I had a voice, and I was lucky enough to be allowed to use it. There were many other reporters, but none were ex prisoners, non had dreadlocks and non were mixed race. From this most prestigious and influential show I moved to television reporting in 2003 for BBC1's The Six O'Clock News. This is the pinnacle of prime-time television, and here I was, dreadlocks and mixed race, with a long stretch of my life lost to incarceration and fighting to prove my innocence. Not exactly the stereotypical BBC reporter! However, it was precisely this that propelled my career even further and between 2004 and 2006 I made hard hitting documentaries for BBC2 and BBC3, covering issues such as serial killers, knife crime, drugs, corrupt UN peacekeepers, enviromental crime and terrorism. One of my investigations played a pivotal part in freeing a man convicted of the assasination of a high profile BBC celebrity. The BBC recognised that I have tenacity, courage and the life experience that most investigative journalists can only read about, and I became a correspondent for the prestigious Panorama show. This is World's longest running current affairs TV series and once again I was the first ex-prisoner and person of colour, with dreadlocks, to have achieved such a position. This was a far cry from those years in prison cells, fighting to prove I did not commit the crimes of which I was accused. I was now able to use that experience and the skills it taught me of patience and perseverance to become a recognised household name. My work has taken me to some of the world's most dangerous places, but I thrive on it. At times I had to operate undercover to expose injustice and crime. I smuggled conflict diamonds to show how the system was corrupted, secretly filmed Congolese militia rebels to expose their ruthless tactics and threw light on the illegal international logging and deforestation of some of the World's most precious resources. In undertaking that particular assignment I risked my own life to save the life of an orangutan and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I currently host Inside the World's Toughest Prisons on Netflix. Even with my experiences of life inside behind me, and my position as a free and innocent man confirmed, it has been one hell of a discovery. People ask me why go back into maximum security prisons, as an innocent man, after fighting for so many years to get out? "I am scarred by my life experience but I have not allowed it to hold me back."

The true story of how federal law enforcement flipped the playbook and convicted a corrupt unit of Baltimore police. In 2015 and 2016, Baltimore was reeling after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the protests that followed. In the midst of this unrest, a violent, highly trained, and heavily armed criminal gang roamed the city. They robbed people, sold drugs and guns, and divided the loot and profit among themselves. They had been doing it for years. But these were not ordinary career criminals. They were the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF). Formed in 2007 to get the guns and criminals responsible for Baltimore's high crime rates off the streets, they went rogue and abused their power to terrorize people throughout the city. On March 1, 2017, all members of the GTTF were arrested on federal racketeering charges. In Who Speaks for You?, Leo Wise, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, tells you how. Wise gives an inside look into the investigation and prosecution of this group of elite and corrupt cops. He shares the unbelievable twists and turns of the case, revealing not only what these officers did but how they were brought to justice. Wise dramatically recounts how his team put together their case, what happened during the trial and court proceedings, and how his team successfully prosecuted these extraordinary defendants. This is his firsthand story of a once-in-a-generation police corruption case told by the prosecutor who was intimately involved in every step of the investigation.

It was a cold and foggy February night in 1983 when a group of armed thieves crept onto Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland, to steal Shergar, one of the Thoroughbred industry's most renowned stallions. Bred and raced by the Aga Khan IV and trained in England by Sir Michael Stoute, Shergar achieved international prominence in 1981 when he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths -- the longest winning margin in the race's history. The thieves demanded a hefty ransom for the safe return of one of the most valuable Thoroughbreds in the world, but the ransom was never paid and Shergar's remains have never been found. In Taking Shergar: Thoroughbred Racing's Most Famous Cold Case, Milton C. Toby presents an engaging narrative that is as thrilling as any mystery novel. The book provides new analysis of the body of evidence related to the stallion's disappearance, delves into the conspiracy theories that surround the inconclusive investigation, and presents a profile of the man who might be the last person able to help solve part of the mystery. Toby examines the extensive cast of suspects and their alleged motives, including the Irish Republican Army and their need for new weapons, a French bloodstock agent who died in Central Kentucky, and even the Libyan dictator, Muammar al-Qadhafi. This riveting account of the most notorious unsolved crime in the history of horse racing will captivate serious racing fans and aficionados as well as entertain a new generation of horse racing enthusiasts.