The bestselling author and true crime master Ann Rule presents her fifteenth volume of the acclaimed Crime Files series focusing on disturbing stories of people in danger,. Walking home on a dark night, you hear footsteps coming up behind you. As they get closer, your heart pounds harder. Is it a dangerous stranger or someone you know and trust? The answer is as simple as turning around, but don't look behind you...run. With her signature in-depth research and compelling writing, Ann Rule chronicles fateful encounters with the secret predators hiding in plain sight. First in line is a stunning case that spanned thirty years and took one determined detective to four states-ending, finally, in Alaska-where he unraveled not one but two murders. A second case appears to begin and end with the hunt for the Green River Killer, focusing on a Washington State man who was once cleared as a suspect in that deadly chain of homicides. In another true story, a petite woman went to a tavern, looking only for conversation and fun. Instead, she met violent death in the form of a seven-foot tall man who had seemed shy and harmless. You'll feel a chill as you uncover these and numerous other cases of unfortunate victims who made one tragic mistake: trusting the wrong person-even someone they thought they knew.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this thrilling (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a modern Gatsby swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in the heist of the century (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

This is a chronology of a private investigation into the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, the London Estate Agent. It began on the 28th July 1999 and lasted for four years. The research revealed a direct link between Suzy and John West - the younger brother of Fred West. At first the research was given to the Metropolitan Police who began a new review into the case in 2000. The investigation has opened up a whole new perspective on the Cromwell Street murders and three new victims have been named together with a possible third. After twenty-five years the mystery of Suzy Lamplugh has finally been solved.

A TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 SPORTS BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 The incredible true story of four ordinary working mums from Yorkshire who took on an extraordinary challenge and broke a world record along the way. Janette, Frances, Helen and Niki, though all from Yorkshire, were four very different women, all juggling full time jobs alongside being mothers to each of their 2 children. They could never be described as athletes, but they were determined to be busy and the local Saturday morning rowing club was the perfect place to go to have a laugh and a gossip, get the blood pumping in the open air, and feel invigorated. Brought together by their love of rowing, they quickly became firm friends, and it wasn't long before they cooked up a crazy idea over a few glasses of wine: together, they were going to do something that fewer people than had gone into space or climbed Everest had succeeded in doing. They were going to cross 3,000 miles of treacherous ocean in the toughest row in the world, The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Yes, they had children and husbands that they would be leaving behind for two months, yes they had businesses to run, mortgages to pay, responsibilities. And there was that little thing of them all being in their 40s and 50s. But two years of planning, preparation, fundraising, training and difficult conversations later, and they found themselves standing on the edge of the San Sebastian harbour in the Canary Islands, petrified, exhilarated and ready to head up the race of their lives. This is the story of how four friends together had the audacity to go on a wild, terrifying and beautiful adventure, not to escape life, but for life not to escape them.

La Bte du Gvaudan was a real wolf-like monster living in the Auvergne from 1764 to 1767. She killed about one hundred people. Prowling Catholic pre-Revolutionary France, she spread terror among the aristocrats and peasants of the beautiful Auvergne countryside. Her story beats most mystery novels in false trails, horror and atmosphere. The big difference is La Bte was real, not fiction, and leaves for ever the unanswered question, "What was she?" All efforts to stop her failed and she became infamous throughout France. The king - Louis XV - took a personal interest in her activities and how to destroy her. Many explanations - alien, prehistoric beast, mutant etc. - were put forward at the time and during the two centuries since but none have ever been widely accepted. A mass of evidence remains that La Bte did exist and was not just a legend. Compared with other monster mysteries she is unique, leaving graves, witnessed parish records, and archives of official documents, many of them included in this book, proving her real and guilty beyond doubt. Read Pourcher's book carefully and draw your own conclusions. Even if you arrive at a conventional solution to the mystery, doubts might linger as darkness falls. If twigs crack, don't whistle.

THE CHICAGO KILLER: The Hunt For Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy is the story of the capture of John Wayne Gacy, as told from the perspective of the former Chief of Detectives of the Des Plaines, Illinois Police Department, Joseph Kozenczak. The conviction of Gacy on 33 counts of murder is a record in the archives of the criminal justice system in the United States. Two additional bonus chapters give the reader a comprehensive insight into the use of psychics and the lie-detector in a serial murder investigation.

The true story of 2 year-old Anna, abandoned by her natural parents, left alone in a neglected orphanage. Elaine and Ian had travelled half way round the world to adopt little Anna. She couldn't have been more wanted, loved and cherished. So why was she now in foster care and living with me? It didn't make sense. Until I learned what had happened. ... Dressed only in nappies and ragged T-shirts the children were incarcerated in their cots. Their large eyes stared out blankly from emaciated faces. Some were obviously disabled, others not, but all were badly undernourished. Flies circled around the broken ceiling fans and buzzed against the grids covering the windows. The only toys were a few balls and a handful of building bricks, but no child played with them. The silence was deafening and unnatural. Not one of the thirty or so infants cried, let alone spoke.

John "Red" Shea, 40, was a top lieutenant in the South Boston Irish mob run, led by James "Whitey" Bulger. An ice-cold enforcer with a red-hot temper, Shea was a legend among his peers in the 1990s South Boston, as much as John Gotti, Bugsy Siegel, and Al Capone were in their time and place. When the actor and producer Mark Wahlberg, raised in nearby Dorchester, learned of a script based on Shea's life circulating in Hollywood, he immediately committed to playing the gangster on screen. A major feature film project is now in development.

From the age of thirteen, when he started robbing delivery trucks, to the age of twenty-seven, when he began serving a twelve-year federal sentence for drug trafficking, Shea was a portrait in American crime - a bantam-weight, red-headed terror, brutal with his fists and deadly with a lead pipe, a baseball bat, or a knife. At fifteen he was selling marijuana . At seventeen he was handling Bulger's cocaine. At eighteen he was loan sharking and laundering Bulger's money. At twenty, initiated into Bulger's inner circle at the point of an Uzi, he was running a multimillion-dollar narcotics operation for his mentor.

RAT BASTARDS was the first-ever, firsthand account of mob life that wasn't told by a rat. Red Shea did his crime, then did his time--and never informed, unlike Henry Hill of Wiseguy, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano of Underboss, and so many others. Holding fast to the code of his upbringing, he remained a man of honor.

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 SUNDAY TIMES NO.2 BESTSELLER Like A Streecat Named Bob before it, Finding Gobi is a truly heart-warming story for animal lovers worldwide... In 2016, Dion Leonard, a seasoned ultramarathon runner, unexpectedly stumbled across a little stray dog while competing in a gruelling 155 mile race across the Gobi Desert. The lovable pup, who earned the name 'Gobi', proved that what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in heart, as she went step for step with Dion over the treacherous Tian Shan Mountains, managing to keep pace with him for nearly 80 miles. As Dion witnessed the incredible determination of this small animal, he felt something change within himself. In the past he had always focused on winning and being the best, but his goal now was simply to make sure that his new friend was safe, nourished and hydrated. Although Dion did not finish first, he felt he had won something far greater and promised to bring Gobi back to the UK for good to become a new addition to his family. This was the start of a journey neither of them would ever forget with a roller coaster ride of drama, grief, heartbreak, joy and love that changed their lives forever. Finding Gobi is the ultimate story of hope, of resilience and of friendship, proving once again, that dogs really are 'man's best friend.'

Soldier Magazine's Book of the Month Fascinating... Incredibly dangerous. The Times Gripping. Adrenalin fuelled true-life account with all the makings of a military thriller. The action unfolds like a Le Carre novel. Soldier Magazine 'Jihad isn't a war. It's an objective. An aberration. If there are young women with children, lost boys... If they are trapped in that hell and we can get them out, don't we have a duty to do so? Every person we can bring back is living proof that Islamic State is a failure.' Ex-British Army soldier John Carney was running a close protection operation for oil executives in Iraq when the family of a young Dutch woman asked him to extract her from the collapsing 'Islamic State' in Syria. Hearing first-hand about the naive young girls, many from the West, who'd been tricked, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing - he had to get them out of that living hell. This is the incredible true story of how - armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks - Carney launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many of them as he could. From 2016 to 2019, he led his small band of committed Kurdish freedom fighters into the heart of the Syrian lead storm. Backed by humanitarian NGOs, and feeding intel to MI6, Carney and his men went behind enemy lines to deliver the women and their children to the authorities, to deradicalization programmes and fair trials. Carney, a born soldier, was moved to action by the women's terrifying stories. He and his men risked their lives daily, not always making it safely home... Gripping, shocking and thought-provoking, Operation Jihadi Bride tackles the complex issue of the jihadi brides head on - an essential read for our troubled times.

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.

In August of 1838, in the middle of a devastating civil war, a grotesque figure arrived with the mail coach at Santiago de Compostela, the ancient pilgrimage town in the North-West of Spain. He was a former Swiss mercenary, who thirty years previously had heard a rumour about a massive hoard of church plate buried by the soldiers of Marshal Ney. A fantasy? A daydream? Just one of the many hollow legends of hidden gold that abound in Spain? Perhaps so. But, astonishingly, the Swiss vagrant did not come on his own errand. He came sponsored by Spain's savvy Minister of Finance, Don Alejandro Mon, who for some shadowy reason of his own lent credence to the tale. Like an historical Sherlock Holmes, Peter Missler traces the true tale of Benedict Mol, the treasure hunter, through the mists of time and a smoke-screen of cover-stories. It is a fascinating saga which takes us into Portugal with the looting French invaders, into the wildest mountains of Northern Spain with the brilliant polyglot George Borrow, and - by the hand of Mol - into the darkest nooks and corners of a hospital for syphilitics. No treasure was ever found, either in the first attempt, which toppled the government, or in the second one, which ended with the murder of two innocent peasants. Therefore, quite possibly, Ney's treasure still lies waiting elsewhere in a Santiago park...

'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.