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Books & Authors

For Fans of True Crime

If you’ve loved the recent surge in popularity of crime documentaries and podcasts like “The Staircase” and “Serial”, don’t forget to hit the books for even more true crime. Even better, check out My Favorite Crime Book Club, a book discussion group which meets at Tie & Timber Beer Co. at 1451 E. Cherry St. Upcoming meetings are Wednesday September 11th and Wednesday November 13th at 7:30 p.m. Grab a copy of "The Woman Who Wasn't There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception" by Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr for September’s discussion and a copy of "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou for November’s. Keep up with all of the Library’s upcoming book discussions at https://thelibrary.org/programs/other/book.cfm.

 

Adnan's Story : The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial by Rabia Chaudry
In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan's story.

Bad Blood : Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Recounts the story behind Theranos, the medical equipment company that misled investors to believe they developed a revolutionary blood testing machine, detailing how its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, perpetuated the lie to bolster the value of the company by billions.

Chase Darkness With Me : How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders by Billy Jensen
Have you ever wanted to solve a murder? Gather the clues the police overlooked? Put together the pieces? Identify the suspect? Journalist Billy Jensen spent 15 years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common - it didn't have an ending. The killer was still out there. But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops have given up. A plan to solve the murders himself. In Chase Darkness with Me, you'll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You'll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle's pursuit of the Golden State Killer which is chronicled in I'll Be Gone In The Dark which Billy helped finish after Michelle's passing, and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown 4 family. And Billy gives you the tools - and the rules - to help solve murders yourself.

Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey N Cep
Documents the remarkable story of 1970s Alabama serial killer Willie Maxwell and the true-crime book on the Deep South's racial politics and justice system that consumed Harper Lee in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark : One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
An account of the unsolved Golden State Killer case, written by the late author of the TrueCrimeDiary.com website and featuring an afterword by her husband, comedian Patton Oswalt, traces the rapes and murders of dozens of victims and the author's determined efforts to help identify the killer and bring him to justice.

In cold blood by Truman Capote
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Killers of the Flower Moon : The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds--a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.

The Mad Sculptor : The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder That Shook the Nation by Harold Schechter
Beekman Place, one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, hasn't always been home to the rich. In the 1930s, when bluebloods like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers began to build luxury towers, poor European immigrants lived in filthy slums among the riverside factories and abbatoirs. It was in this setting that a young man committed a grisly triple-murder on Easter Sunday, 1937.

The Woman Who Wasn't There : The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher
Traces the story of Tania Head, who falsely claimed to be a September 11 survivor, describing her interviews with the co-author and the discovery that she was not in America at the time of the attacks.

Tinderbox : The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation by Robert W Fieseler
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic--families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors' needs--revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.

 

 

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