True Crime

6830 books

The Way of the Wiseguy: The FBI's Most Famous Undercover Agent Cracks the Mob Mind - Paperback

$35.98

by Joe Pistone (Author)Now in paperback, here's the first nonfiction work from Joe Pistone since his New York Times #1 bestseller and hit movie, Donnie Brasco. Perhaps no man alive knows the lifestyle of wiseguys better than Pistone does, having spent six years infiltrating the Mafia as an undercover FBI agent. Now, years later, Pistone reassesses the underworld. Often poignant, and in startling detail, THE WAY OF THE WISEGUY gives readers a first-hand look at the psychology and customs of th...

Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra - Paperback

$19.99

by Phil Leonetti (Author), Scott Burnstein (With), Christopher Graziano (With)A first-person account of the violent downfall of the traditional American Mafia in the final heyday of the 1980s.Author BiographyPhilip Leonetti (aka Crazy Phil) was the youngest underboss in the history of the American Mafia at the age of 31. He has been in the Witness Protection Program for almost two decades. Scott Burnstein is a true crime reporter and author of the regional bestseller Motor City Mafia. Christo...

$18.34

by Paul Williams (Author)In a twenty year career marked by obsessive secrecy, brutality, and meticulous planning, Martin Cahill, aka, The General, quickly rose through the ranks of the Irish underworld, until he himself became an international celebrity. His criminal record included assassination, kidnapping, the bombing of a car belonging to a forensics expert who could finger him, and pulling off one of the world's largest gold heists and even more incredible, the world's largest art heist....

Takedown: A Small-Town Cop's Battle Against the Hells Angels and the Nation's Biggest Drug Gang - Paperback

$17.99

by Jeff Buck (Author), Jon Land (Author), Lindsay Preston (Author)Takedown is the story of heroic undercover cop Jeff Buck's battle with Hells Angels and drug-smugglers on the American border with help from Jon Land and Lindsay Preston. Twenty years working undercover in the netherworld of drugs had left Jeff Buck burned out and grateful to assume the quiet job of police chief in the small town of Reminderville, Ohio. That is, until a simple domestic assault case turns out to have links to th...

Pillaging the Empire: Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500-1750 - Paperback

$102.04

by Kris E. Lane (Author), Kris Lane (Author), Robert M. Levine (Author)Between 1500 and 1750, European expansion and global interaction produced vast wealth. As goods traveled by ship along new global trade routes, piracy also flourished on the world's seas. Pillaging the Empire tells the fascinating story of maritime predation in this period, including the perspectives of both pirates and their victims. Brushing aside the romantic legends of piracy, Kris Lane pays careful attention to the va...

Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons - Paperback

$19.00

by Donald Dunn (Author)Just who was the man whose name has become synonymous with the classic "rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul" scam in which money from new investors is used to reward earlier ones? In December 1919, he was an unknown thirty-eight-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with a borrowed two-hundred dollars in his pocket. Six months later, he was Boston's famed "wizard of finance," lionized by the public and politicians alike. Based on exclusive interviews with people who knew Charles ...

$19.00

by A. J. Liebling (Author)A classic work on Broadway sharpers, grifters, and con men by the late, great New Yorker journalist A. J. Liebling.Often referred to as "Liebling lowlife pieces," the essays in The Telephone Booth Indian boisterously celebrate raffishness. A. J. Liebling appreciated a good scam and knew how to cultivate the scammers. Telephone Booth Indians (entrepreneurs so impecunious that they conduct business from telephone booths in the lobbies of New York City office buildings)...

$19.00

by J. R. Weil (Author), W. T. Brannon (Author)The story of Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil, a man who could--and often did--pull off scams to outshine The Sting.In his long career as a confidence man, Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil swindled the public of more than eight million dollars and established the reputation for robbery and trickery. Always beating the police at their own game, "Yellow Kid" used phony oil deals, women, fixed races, and an endless list of other tricks to best an increasingly gullib...

Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America - Paperback

$53.91

by Suzanne M. Shultz (Author)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 physici...

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders: The Unsolved Case of the 1946 Phantom Killer - Paperback

$35.98

by Michael Newton (Author) In 1946, years before the phrase "serial murder" was coined, a masked killer terrorized the town of Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas border. Striking five times within a ten-week period, always at night, the prowler claimed six lives and left three other victims wounded. Survivors told police that their assailant was a man, but could supply little else. A local newspaper dubbed him the Phantom Killer, and it stuck. Other reporters called the faceless predator the "Mo...

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism - Paperback

$63.00

by Lewis Hartshorn (Author)This is a consensus-challenging history of the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers controversy of 1948 to 1950, a criminal case in which Hiss was convicted of perjury after two long trials. Chambers claimed that Hiss had passed classified State Department documents to him in 1937 and 1938 for transmittal to the Soviet Union. Hiss denied the charges but was found guilty at his second trial (the jury could not reach a decision in the first). Hiss was not charged with espion...

The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London - Paperback

$53.91

by R. Michael Gordon (Author)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 London's 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...

Darrow's Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer: (Los Angeles 1911-1913) - Paperback

$21.55

by Nelson Johnson (Author)From the author of the New York Times bestselling book and hit HBO series BOARDWALK EMPIRE comes the forgotten story of the legendary Clarence Darrow, America's most famous criminal trial lawyer, and the charges that threatened to destroy his career."A fascinating portrait of Clarence Darrow as we've never seen him before-as a criminal defendant. In Darrow's Nightmare, Nelson Johnson tells the riveting tale of America's most famous lawyer as he fights for his life, m...

The Jack the Ripper Suspects: Persons Cited by Investigators and Theorists - Paperback

$53.91

by Stan Russo (Author)The legendary Jack the Ripper murdered as many as ten women between the years of 1887 and 1891 in the East End of London. The debate over his true identity has never been resolved. This unbiased history of the various suspects, including two women, will give any reader a grounding on which to make an informed decision on the identity. Suspects include influential artist Walter Sickert, children's author Lewis Carroll, Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill (father of Winston C...

The Sea's Bitter Harvest: Thirteen Deadly Days on the North Atlantic - Paperback

$21.99

by Douglas a. Campbell (Author)In the course of thirteen days in January 1999, four commercial clam boats sank in horrifying succession while working the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, taking the lives of ten men. Husbands, fathers, loners, and drug users, each man was lured to the nation's most dangerous trade by the lucrative wages offered to those who dared to reap the harvest of the ocean. In this compelling maritime tale of risk and danger, acclaimed journalist Douglas Campbell compassion...

After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - Paperback

$26.91

by Marilyn J. Bardsley (Author)The #1 Wall Street Journal ebook bestseller about the murder that shocked Savannah society and inspired the blockbuster film. As a premier antiques dealer in Savannah, Jim Williams had it all: style, culture, charisma, and sophistication. But three decades of hard work came crashing down the night he shot Danny Hansford, his wild young lover. Jim Williams stood trial four times over the next decade for premeditated murder. While Clint Eastwood's movie--starrin...

The Best System Money Can Buy: Corruption in the European Union - Hardcover

$86.31

by Carolyn Warner (Author)As the European Union moved in the 1990s to a unified market and stronger common institutions, most observers assumed that the changes would reduce corruption. Aspects of the stronger EU promised to preclude--or at least reduce--malfeasance: regulatory harmonization, freer trade, and privatization of publicly owned enterprises. Market efficiencies would render corrupt practices more visible and less common.In The Best System Money Can Buy, Carolyn M. Warner systemati...

Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia - Hardcover

$82.71

by Louise McReynolds (Author)How a society defines crimes and prosecutes criminals illuminates its cultural values, social norms, and political expectations. In Murder Most Russian, Louise McReynolds uses a fascinating series of murders and subsequent trials that took place in the wake of the 1864 legal reforms enacted by Tsar Alexander II to understand the impact of these reforms on Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. For the first time in Russian history, the accused were placed ...

No One Helped: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy - Paperback

$64.71

by Marcia M. Gallo (Author)In "No One Helped" Marcia M. Gallo examines one of America's most infamous true-crime stories: the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens, New York. Front-page reports in the New York Times incorrectly identified thirty-eight indifferent witnesses to the crime, fueling fears of apathy and urban decay. Genovese's life, including her lesbian relationship, also was obscured in media accounts of the crime. Fifty years...

Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme - Paperback

$68.31

by Jan Bondeson (Author)The Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a major figure in world politics and an ardent opponent of apartheid, was shot dead on the streets of Stockholm in February 1986. At the time of his death, Palme was deeply involved in Middle East diplomacy and was working under UN auspices to end the Iran-Iraq war. Across Scandinavia, Palme's killing had an impact similar to that of the Kennedy assassinations in the United States--and it ignited nearly as many conspiracy theories...

Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa - Paperback

$71.91

by Scott Straus (Author)Winner of the Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 2018Winner of the Joseph Lepgold PrizeWinner of the Best Books in Conflict Studies (APSA)Winner of the Best Book in Human Rights (ISA)In Making and Unmaking Nations, Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place--and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing ...

$149.31

by Gregory Mitrovich (Author)Following the Allied victory in World War II, the United States turned its efforts to preventing the spread of Communism beyond Eastern Europe. Gregory Mitrovich argues, however, that the policy of containment was only the first step in a clandestine campaign to destroy Soviet power. Drawing on recently declassified U.S. documents, Mitrovich reveals a range of previously unknown covert actions launched during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Through the ...

Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell - Hardcover

$116.91

by Elaine Forman Crane (Author)"It was Rebecca's son, Thomas, who first realized the victim's identity. His eyes were drawn to the victim's head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he 'clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.' James Moills, a servant of Cornell... described Rebecca 'lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.' He recognized her only 'by her shoes.'"--from Killed Strangely On a winter's evening in 1673, trag...

Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell - Paperback

$55.71

Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956 - Paperback

$31.27

$62.91

by Vadim Volkov (Author)Entering the shady world of what he calls "violent entrepreneurship," Vadim Volkov explores the economic uses of violence and coercion in Russia in the 1990s. Violence has played, he shows, a crucial role in creating the institutions of a new market economy. The core of his work is competition among so-called violence-managing agencies--criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state--...

Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire - Paperback

$17.00

by Mark Bowden (Author)Doctor Dealer is the story of Larry Lavin, a bright, charismatic young man who rose from his working-class upbringing to win a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, earn Ivy League college and dental degrees, and buy his family a house in one of Philadelphia's most exclusive suburbs. But behind the facade of his success was a dark secret -- at every step of the way he was building the foundation for a cocaine empire that would grow to generate over $60 million i...

The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History - Paperback

$17.00

by David A. Vise (Author)Called "a first-rate spy story" (Entertainment Weekly), The Bureau and the Mole is the sensational New York Times best-seller that tells the inside story of FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Philip Hanssen, a seemingly all-American boy who would become the perfect traitor, jeopardizing America's national security for over twenty years by selling top-secret information to the Russians. Drawing from a wide variety of sources in the FBI, the Justice Department, the Wh...

Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious Big Murder Investigation - Paperback

$20.00

by Randall Sullivan (Author)Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan delivers an explosive investigation into the murder of the Notorious B.I.G., with exclusive material from the FBI investigation and his estate's wrongful death suit against the City of Los Angeles. In 2002, acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan's groundbreaking book LAbyrinth ignited a firestorm with its startling disclosures about corruption in the LAPD. It told the story of Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective, wh...

The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Paperback

$23.95

by Dorothy Hoobler (Author), Thomas Hoobler (Author) Turn-of-the-century Paris was the beating heart of a rapidly changing world. But the City of Light was also a violent place. Criminals eagerly took advantage of the inventive nature of the age--the first getaway car, increasingly dangerous weapons, more creative disguises. The police battled back with a weapon of their own: Alphonse Bertillon, the world's greatest detective, the inventor of the mug shot and the crime-scene photo, and a bril...

In Cold Storage: Sex and Murder on the Plains - Paperback

$16.95

by James W. Hewitt (Author)In 1973 the small southwest Nebraska railroad town of McCook became the unlikely scene of a grisly murder. More than forty years later, author James W. Hewitt returns to the scene and unearths new details about what happened. After pieces of Edwin and Wilma Hoyt's dismembered bodies were found floating on the surface of a nearby lake, authorities charged McCook resident Harold Nokes and his wife, Ena, with murder. Harold pleaded guilty to murder and Ena pleaded guil...

The Gambler and the Bug Boy: 1939 Los Angeles and the Untold Story of a Horse Racing Fix - Paperback

$23.95

by John Christgau (Author)"Scandal on the Turf!" the Los Angeles Times proclaimed. It was October 1940, a mere few months after Seabiscuit had won the Santa Anita Derby, and now this bombshell: "Six Jockeys Admit Horse Races Fixed." The Gambler and the Bug Boy recounts this dark chapter in horse racing history. At its center is Bernard "Big" Mooney, a flashy L.A. bookmaker who began his seedy career by threatening young jockeys with death if they didn't "pull" their horses. His unwilling part...