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Books > Fiction > True stories > Crime
By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen
countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. I'll
know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation,
and most important, how to disappear . . . To the young Cheryl
Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling
down the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld
fixers. Her family appeared to be an unbreakable gang of five. One
day they were in Australia, the next in South Africa, the pattern
repeating as they crossed continents, changed identities, and
erased their pasts. What Diamond didn't yet know was that she was
born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest
international law enforcement agencies, a family with secrets that
would eventually catch up to all of them. By the time she was in
her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she
grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her
family--the only people she had in the world--began to unravel. She
started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the
people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and
her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even
existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere. Surviving would
require her to escape, and to do so Diamond would have to unlearn
all the rules she grew up with. Wild, heartbreaking, and often
unexpectedly funny, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true
story of self-discovery and triumph.
________________________________________ The bestselling true story
and inspiration behind the hit Netflix show of how one underfunded
FBI team became the first to explore the dark world of serial
murderers. John Douglas is a former FBI Special Agent and expert in
criminal profiling and behavioural science. He made a career of
looking evil in the eye - and understanding it. No wonder that he
was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence
of the Lambs, as well as the film's consultant on the reality of
serial killers. Douglas invented and established the practice of
criminal profiling, and submerged himself in the world of serial
killers in a quest to understand why they killed, and to help
prevent more innocent lives from being ended by future killers. As
his serial crime unit developed from a derided two-bit operation in
a dingy officer to one of the FBI's elite task forces, Douglas
personally confronted the most terrible crimes of the age,
including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and
the Atlanta child murderer. With the fierce page-turning power of a
bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true
crime classic. ________________________________________ 'John
Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world'
- Jonathan Demme, director of The Silence of the Lambs 'A cracker
of a book' - Esquire
'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.
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 twelve-year rampage of "Missoula Mauler" Wayne Nance-and the
shocking end to his murder spree To his neighbors, Wayne Nance, a
furniture mover from Missoula, Montana, appeared to be an affable,
considerate, and trustworthy guy. No one knew that Nance was the
"Missoula Mauler," a psychopath responsible for a series of
sadistic sex slayings that rocked the idyllic town between 1974 and
1986. Nance's only requirement for murder was accessibility-a
preacher's wife, a teenage runaway, a female acquaintance, a
married couple. Putting on a friendly facade, he could easily gain
his victims' trust. Then, one September night, thirty-year-old
Nance pushed his luck, preying on a couple who lived to tell the
tale. A true story with an incredible twist, written by former Wall
Street Journal editor John Coston and complete with photos, To Kill
and Kill Again reveals the disturbing compulsions of a charming
serial killer who fooled everyone he knew, stumped the authorities,
terrified a community, and nearly got away with it.
The true story of Louisiana serial killer Ronald Dominique's
ten-year murder spree, the men he slayed, and the detectives who
hunted him down. In 1997, the bodies of young African American men
began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New
Orleans. The victims-many of them transient street hustlers-had
been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the
killer's identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast
Louisiana's gay community rattled and authorities desperate for a
break in the case. Then, Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn
Bergeron came together as task force partners, indefatigable in
their decade-long effort to track down the killer. In 2006, DNA
evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming
Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years,
working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald
Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes? With
direct access to the investigation, Dominique's confession, and all
of the killer's body dump sites in throughout the state, author
Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a
troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other
serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the
Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer), Rosen
provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to
which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his
victims.
When Maximilian Potter went to Burgundy to report for Vanity Fair
on a crime that could have destroyed the Domaine de la Romanee
Conti-the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive,
exquisite wines in the world-he soon found a story that was much
larger, and more thrilling, than he had originally imagined. In
January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the DRC,
received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his
priceless vines by poison-a crime that in the world of high-end
wine is akin to murder-unless he paid a one million euro ransom.
Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal
miscalculation; the crime was committed and shocked this fabled
region of France. The sinister story that Potter uncovered would
lead to a sting operation by top Paris detectives, the primary
suspect's suicide, and a dramatic trial. This botanical crime
threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding
the world's greatest wine. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil, SHADOW IN THE VINEYARD takes us deep into a captivating world
full of fascinating characters, small town French politics, an
unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned
veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the
land that run through it.
It was called the trial of the century in a century whose end is
now a decade in the past. But its impact has reverberated well into
this one, as its subject continues to make headlines. In Simpson
Agonistes, author Robert Metcalfe offers an original angle on the
O. J. Simpson murder case and trial using Herodotus's lost
perspective as a guide.
"Simpson Agonistes" revisits the Brentwood murders and their
aftermath from two opposite perspectives. One is a modern,
fact-based reinterpretation of pieces of the key evidence-the uncut
left-hand glove and the thumps on Kato Kaelin's guesthouse
wall-that have never been satisfactorily explained. The other
perspective discusses what Herodotus would have had to say about
this case as Metcalfe begins a study in nemesis or retributive
justice.
He applies both methodologies to an analysis of what went wrong
that fatal night to spoil an almost perfect crime, as well as
changes to Simpson's story since. Simpson Agonistes presents a
scenario that often reads like a tragedy or psychodrama, complete
with a catharsis at its close.
This chronicle of ten controversial mid-Victorian trials features
brother versus brother, aristocrats fighting commoners, an imposter
to a family's fortune, and an ex-priest suing his ex-wife, a nun.
Most of these trials-never before analyzed in depth-assailed a
culture that frowned upon public displays of bad taste, revealing
fault lines in what is traditionally seen as a moral and regimented
society. The author examines religious scandals, embarrassments
about shaky family trees, and even arguments about which
architecture is most likely to convert people from one faith to
another.
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Murder Thy Neighbor
(Hardcover)
James Patterson; Contributions by Max DiLallo; Read by Chloe Cannon
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No one could believe the handsome young doctor might be a serial killer. Wherever he was hired -- in Ohio, Illinois, New York, South Dakota -- Michael Swango at first seemed the model physician. Then his patients began dying under suspicious circumstances. At once a gripping read and a hard-hitting look at the inner workings of the American medical system, Blind Eye describes a professional hierarchy where doctors repeatedly accept the word of fellow physicians over that of nurses, hospital employees, and patients -- even as horrible truths begin to emerge. With the prodigious investigative reporting that has defined his Pulitzer Prizewinning career, James B. Stewart has tracked down survivors, relatives of victims, and shaken coworkers to unearth the evidence that may finally lead to Swango's conviction. Combining meticulous research with spellbinding prose, Stewart has written a shocking chronicle of a psychopathic doctor and of the medical establishment that chose to turn a blind eye on his criminal activities.
'Thank God we have found her.' Sara Payne's words as she announced
that the body of her daughter - snatched and murdered by
paedophile, Roy Whiting - had finally been found. In this memoir,
Sara tells her personal story. She describes the numbness as she
waited for seventeen days, desperate to hear news of her missing
daughter, and the terrible moment when her worst fears became
reality. She explains how her family tried to cope with their grief
and the stress placed upon them by the media campaign for Sarah's
Law. As the family tried to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of
tragedy, they found that each reminded the other of the child they
had lost. Guilt and anger pushed Sarah's marriage into a spiral of
alcohol abuse and violence. This is the ultimate story of a
family's journey through hell, but Sara's strength is an
inspiration as, despite everything, she and her family slowly found
a way to go on.
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