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 (4.5 / 5.0) Coming in Summer 2009, the major motion picture from Universal Studios
" ludicrously entertaining" (Time), Public Enemies is the story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young J. Edgar Hoover, his FBI and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover's G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI's rise to power. 
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$7.16 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) Two Innocent Teens
The crime was unspeakable. On a summer night in Houston, two bright, beautiful, success-bound teenage girls crossed paths with a group of young men fueled with alcohol and rage. Four days later, when searchers finally found Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, their bodies were unrecognizable... An Orgy Of Violence At first, the teenage boys grabbed Elizabeth, while Jennifer escaped. But Elizabeth's desperate cries brought Jennifer back to help her best friend. Both girls were subjected to sexual assaults of every conceivable kind...and long, painful, drawn-out deaths... No Mercy For days afterward, the killers bragged openly about their crime. By the time prosecutors got the case, convictions for double murder looked like a "slam dunk." But the families of the victims were in for a horrible surprise. In this terrifying case, justice would be a torturous journey... Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos
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$3.23 |
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 (4.0 / 5.0) A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush”
In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect crime. With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of séances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form. From the Hardcover edition.
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$4.00 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) "I heard you paint houses" are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. Sheeran learned to kill in the U.S. Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat duty in Italy during World War II. After returning home he became a hustler and hit man, working for legendary crime boss Russell Bufalino. Eventually he would rise to a position of such prominence that in a RICO suit then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani would name him as one of only two non-Italians on a list of 26 top mob figures. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, he did the deed, knowing that if he had refused he would have been killed himself. Sheeran's important and fascinating story includes new information on other famous murders, and provides rare insight to a chapter in American history. Charles Brandt has written a page-turner that is destined to become a true crime classic.
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$9.74 |
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(4.0 / 5.0) For half a century, the American Mafia outwitted, outmaneuvered, and outgunned the FBI and other police agencies, wreaking unparalleled damages to America’s social fabric and business enterprises while emerging as the nation’s most formidable crime empire. The vanguard of this criminal juggernaut is still led by the Mafia’s most potent and largest borgatas: New York’s Five Families. Five Families is the vivid story of the rise and fall of New York’s premier dons from Lucky Luciano to Paul Castellano to John Gotti and more. This definitive history brings the reader right up to the possible resurgence of the Mafia as the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies turn their attention to homeland security and away from organized crime. The paperback has been revised and updated, with a new epilogue focusing on the trial of the notorious “Mafia Cops.”
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$11.81 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) The ultimate anti-hero, Iceberg Slim, takes you into the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, the sounds, the fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the evil men she brought into their lives, to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and greed, "Pimp" is a harrowing portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks, and a rich warning from a true survivor.
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$8.73 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first appeared, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.
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$4.28 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) He was Sammy the Bull Gravano’s partner in the killing of Paul Castellano. John Gotti hired him to torture and kill his neighbor. A favorite among all the seven East Coast crime families, Richard “Ice Man” Kuklinski conducted his business with coldhearted intensity. By his own estimate, he murdered over two hundred men, taking enormous pride in his variety and ferocity of technique. But behind Kuklinski’s trail of murder was a traditional, loving, Catholic family. A married father of three, Kuklinski was always regarded as being especially kind to children; he threw summer block parties in his New Jersey neighborhood, and he was always generous around Christmastime. And before his crimes finally caught up with him, his family never suspected a thing…
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$4.27 |
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(4.0 / 5.0) Controversial and compelling, "In Cold Blood" reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.
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$8.00 |
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(4.5 / 5.0) For more than half a century, Special Forces and CIA legend Billy Waugh dedicated his life to tracking down and eliminating America's most virulent enemies. Operating from the darkest shadows and most desolate corners of the world, he made his mark in many of the most important operations in the annals of U.S. Spec Ops. He spent seven and a half years behind enemy lines in Vietnam as a member of a covert group of elite commandos. He trailed Osama Bin Laden in Khartoum in the early '90s, and would have killed the terrorist kingpin if his superiors had allowed it. And at the age of seventy-two, he marched through the frozen high plains of Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Hunting the Jackal is the astonishing true account of the singular career of a courageous soldier in his nation's shadow wars -- including his pivotal role in the previously untold story of the capture of the most infamous and elusive assassin in history, Carlos the Jackal.
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$4.38 |