In 1912, a prosperous Illinois farm family-Charles; his wife, Mathilda; their fifteen-year-old daughter, Blanche; and boarding schoolteacher Emma Kaempen-were brutally murdered, the crime concealed by arson, and the family's surviving son, handsome Ray Pfanschmidt, arrested. He was convicted by the press long before trial. In Lies Told Under Oath, author Beth Lane retells the story of the murders, the trial, the verdict, and the aftermath.

Using information culled from actual trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, Lane presents the day-to-day testimony as Ray's battle for his life surged through three courtrooms-the drama complicated by brilliant attorneys, allegations of perjury, charges of rigged evidence, jailhouse informants, legal loopholes, conflict over the large estate being inherited by the alleged murderer, and appeals to the state supreme court. The remaining family became divided over Ray's guilt while his fiancee staunchly stood by him.

"Lies Told Under Oath" provides a fascinating, historical account of the times and the people-when science was in its infancy, telephones meant shared party lines, bloody evidence was contested (or contrived), and automobiles competed with bloodhounds and buggies. It captures the essence of an emotional crime that rocked this small Illinois community.

The man with the gun pushed me down onto the carpet. I tried to cower to make my body curl smaller, instinctively covering my head. `Oh God, please don't kill me.' My words clung to my teeth and now my whole body was so cold. All I had left were these words. `Please. Please don't kill me. Jesus. God. Please.' I wanted to live and I knew it with absolute certainty. I don't want to die. Emma Slade was a high-flying debt analyst for a large investment bank, when she was taken hostage in a hotel room on a business trip to Jakarta. She thought she was lucky to come out of it unscathed, but over the ensuing weeks and months, as the financial markets crashed, Emma became her own distressed asset as the trauma following the event took hold. Realising her view on life had profoundly changed she embarked upon a journey, discovering the healing power of yoga and, in Bhutan, opening her eyes to a kinder, more peaceful way of living. From fast-paced City life to the stillness of Bhutan's Himalayan mountains, Set Free is the inspiring true story of Emma's astonishing life lived to extremes and all that that entails: work, travel, spirituality, Buddhism, relationships, and the underlying question of what makes a meaningful life.

This glittering, "wild romp of a story, boldly and beautifully told" (Neal Thompson, author of The First Kennedys) explores the darkly intertwined fates of infamous socialite Ann Woodward and literary icon Truman Capote, sweeping us to the upper echelons of Manhattan's high society-where falls from grace are all the more shocking. When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote. Acclaimed for his bestselling nonfiction book In Cold Blood, Capote was looking for new material and followed the scandal from beginning to end. Like Ann, he too had ascended from nobody to toast of the town, but he always felt like an outsider, even among the exclusive coterie of high society women who adored him. He decided the story of Ann's turbulent marriage would be the basis of his masterpiece-a novel about the dysfunction and sordid secrets revealed to him by his high society "swans"-never thinking that it would eventually lead to Ann's suicide and his own scandalous downfall. "A 20th-century morality tale of enduring fascination" (Laura Thompson, author of The Heiresses), Deliberate Cruelty is a haunting cross between true crime and literary history that is perfect for fans of Furious Hours, Empty Mansions, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Donna Freed was six years old when her sister casually revealed that she and her siblings were all adopted, a subject her parents refused to discuss. The revelation fractured Donna's sense of identity. The death of her tricky yet treasured adoptive mother died left Donna feeling exposed, her life un-witnessed without a mother to look over her. When she became a mother herself, Donna felt compelled to track down her birth mother. Trawling through records of the now notorious Louise Wise Adoption Service, many previously redacted, she uncovered an explosive and salacious story, one of the biggest true crime investigations to grip the USA in the late 1960s.

The True American tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at other gas stations, aren t so lucky, dying at once.

The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives one striving on Death Row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an unfamiliar country.

Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman's life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign, against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have his attacker spared from the death penalty.

Ranging from Texas's juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions. Ultimately it tells a story about our love-hate relationship with immigrants, about the encounter of Islam and the West, about how or whether we choose what we become."

"A Deadly Silence" tells a true story set in Annandale, an exclusive Pasadena neighborhood overlooking the Rose Bowl-an unlikely backdrop for a triple homicide. David Adkins and his girlfriend, Kathy Macaulay, had been dating for four years, but it hadn't been good lately. He could feel her pulling away, and he wasn't going to allow that to happen. Kathy and two of her friends, Heather Goodwin and Danae Palermo, were having a sleepover when David and two of his friends visited them.

Things turned ugly quickly, and David Adkins and one of his friends blasted them with a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, brutally killing all three of the girls. A telephone call prompted Heather's parents, Darrell and Mimi Goodwin, to get there quickly. When the police arrived, Darrel entered the blood-spattered room and identified the bodies of his daughter and her friends.

Detectives Mike Korpal and Tim Sweetman-husband of author Adele Sweetman-were assigned to the intense investigation. "A Deadly Silence" reveals their investigative reasoning and privileged findings. At a highly publicized double-jury trial, jurors heard gripping taped confessions. No motive was given. Convicted, Hebrock told his story to Adele Sweetman from his cell in Pelican Bay Prison.

This gripping, true-crime account also examines victims' rights and parents' torment when personal tragedy is converted into melodrama as front page news.

"Tragedy in Tin Can Holler" is a captivating must read true story of a family's past transgressions revealing a family member who was a serial killer that got away with murder during the great depression, incest and child abuse, lies and betrayals and domestic violence buried for decades! The vicious murder of the author's mother haunted her for 48 years, but discovering the truth about her mother's murder was just the tip of the iceberg. Her story is spell-bounding as she unveils the hidden secrets that shocked the residents of 3 counties in southeast Tennessee. This book has also been made into a documentary. This hard cover version has some new material.

Andrea Reynolds was Claus von Bulow's mistress from 1982 to 1987, and she helped him successfully appeal his conviction of attempted murder, for which he had been sentenced to thirty-two years in prison.

Von Bulow was convicted in 1982 of two counts of attempted murder of his wife, the immensely wealthy heiress Martha "Sunny" von Bulow. His wife was rich, beautiful, and American-and the case stirred up a firestorm of coverage in the tabloids and mainstream press.

But Reynolds, an aristocratic married to the famous television producer Sheldon Reynolds, believed in his innocence. She defied her husband by corresponding with the convict before slipping into a passionate love affair-risking everything for von Bulow.

"My Claus von Bulow Affaire" offers an insider's account of a controversial case that spawned two bestsellers and was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close. What's more, it provides a portrait of a largely vanished world, vividly depicting how rich and titled people on both sides of the Atlantic talked and thought, what they ate, how they dressed and made love, argued, and handled money.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this 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'.

Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is 'an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale' (Publishers Weekly, starred review), 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 symbolise 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 US 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.

Shows the reality behind the movie The Gangs of New York In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York. This book tells the story of the Bowery Boys, one gang that emerged as part urban legend and part street fighters for the city's legions of young workers. Poverty and despair led to a gang culture that was easily politicized, especially under the leadership of Mike Walsh who led a distinct faction of the Bowery Boys that engaged in the violent, almost anarchic, politics of the city during the 1840s and 1850s. Amid the toppled ballot boxes and battles for supremacy on the streets, many New Yorkers feared Walsh's gang was at the frontline of a European-style revolution. A radical and immensely popular voice in antebellum New York, Walsh spoke in the unvarnished language of class conflict. Walsh was an original, wildly unstable character who directed his aptly named Spartan Band against the economic and political elite of New York City and New England. As a labour organizer, state legislator, and even U.S. the right to strike, free land for settlers on the American frontier, against child labour, and to restore dignity to the city's growing number of industrial workers. * Brings to life a colourful era in American history and politics * Shows the reality behind the movie The Gangs of New York * Provides an insight into class and labour history

Canzio Ricci survived a parachute jump behind enemy lines during WWII. Figuring he has won one roll of the dice, he is determined to do it his way on the next roll. Coming home after the war he becomes the smartest gangster on the east coast, living large, driving big cars, and having beautiful ladies on his arm. Never busted, never needed a lawyer, he outsmarted police chiefs, mayors, and other crew bosses. From cons and scams to loan sharkin in Vegas, its all there. Philadelphia reporter Sal Luca gives details of what this very wise guy got away with in CANZIO: A Sal Luca Gig.