"On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all...

"The girls' names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic. They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started. Then one night in the...

He was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later reached the Super bowl. He was a star tight end on the league-dominant New England Patriots, who extended his contract for a record $40 million. Aaron Hernandez's every move as a professional athlete played out in the headlines, yet he led a secret life - one that ended in a maximum-security prison. What drove him to go so wrong, so fast? Son of a University of Connecticut...

"Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix's children's school. Josie has been listening to Alix's podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her...

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, patrons and staff outside of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie.'" The fire was disastrous, reaching 2000 degrees and burning for more than seven hours. It consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more....

An acclaimed trial attorney presents a mock murder case to explore the jury system in this “compelling . . . intelligent . . . provocative” work (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Creating a composite legal case based on real-life criminal investigations and trials, Seymour Wishman’s Anatomy of a Jury carries us from crime scene to courthouse to jury room, providing a fascinating,...

A crime reporter’s thrilling account of the infamous 2015 prison break, manhunt, and capture based on interviews with one of the inmates who pulled it off.
 
On June 6, 2015, inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, New York State’s largest maximum-security prison. The media was instantly obsessed with the story: Aided by a prison seamstress, who smuggled hacksaw blades, chisels,...

"A rollicking historical account of Marguerite Steinheil ('the Red Widow"), a real-life French femme fatale who used her influence to arrange governmental appointments, blackmailed her opponents, and may have even attempted to poison those who got in the way of her agenda--and also mysteriously survived a home invasion that left her husband and mother dead, leaving the police with more questions than answers. For readers of The Radium Girls and Sin...

First published in 1904, this volume contains a collection of 12 essays written by Scottish author Andrew Lang dealing with various baffling historical mysteries, including the famous Gowrie conspiracy and much-investigated case of Elizabeth Canning. A fantastic collection of detailed examinations concerning some the world's most unsolvable secrets not to be missed by mystery lovers and those with an interest in true crime and history. Contents include:...

As heard on NPR's This American Life
“Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground...