Once famous mystery writers involve the audience as they apply their individual methods to solving various murders. They include a couple who write sophisticated murders, a young author of the James Bond school, a retired writer of the hard hitting method and an aging queen of the logical murder. -- Publisher's description.
'Harris draws the guilty and the innocent into an engrossing tale while inventing a heroine as capable and complex as P. D. James's Cordelia Gray' (Publishers Weekly) In the eighth book in bestselling author Charlaine Harris's compelling mystery series, Aurora Teagarden, 'a genuine steel magnolia' (Booklist) will have to use all of her southern wiles to investigate a murder within her own family . . . Not just any woman in Lawrenceton, Georgia, gets to be a member of the Uppity Women Book Club. But Roe's stepsister-in-law Poppy has climbed her way up the waiting list of the group - only to die on the day she's supposed to be inducted. What makes Poppy's murder even worse are the rumors of infidelity on both sides of the marriage swirling around town. To find the killer, Roe must determine if the sordid stories are true. Suspects abound, and the things she uncovers make her question her own heart, but her passion for the truth drives her on: into the path of the cold-blooded killer . . . 'Clearly focused plot, animated description of character and sparkling prose commend this breath of fresh air to all collections' (Library Journal) 'Great bloody fun' (Barbara Paul)
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime "Bugliosi, the quintessential prosecutor, has written a crime book that should be read by every lawyer and judge in America." —F. Lee Bailey On December 11, 1966, a mysterious assassin shot Henry Stockton to death, set his house on fire, and left the scene without a trace. A year later, when a woman was found brutally killed, shreds of evidence suggested a connection between the two murders. In the Palliko-Stockton trial, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi offered a brilliant summation that synthesized for the jury the many inferences and shades of meaning in the testimony, fitting all the pieces together in a mosaic of guilt. But will the jury be persuaded?
The bestselling author of The Hot House once again combines the facts, the real people, and the location itself into this true story, a wide-ranging portrait of the interplay of race, sex, and justice in the American South, made all the more real because it takes place in the same small Alabama town that was the fictional "Maycomb" in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Optioned for film by MGM. Photos.
Details the unsolved murder of successful attorney Charles Bravo, a cruel man who tormented his wife Florence, in a mystery that paints a portrait of Victorian culture and one woman's fight to exist in this repressive society.
A Fairy Tale Beginning Six-year-old beauty JonBenet Ramsey was a dream child--smart, talented and blessed. Her mother, a former Miss America contestant, had entered her in every child beauty pageant possible. Wearing lipstick, heavy makeup, and provocative costumes that cost thousands of dollars, with her hair bleached and teased, JonBenet flirtatiously paraded down runways, exuding a sophistication beyond her years. A Nightmare Ending But that dazzling future of crows and titles was brutally cut short the day after Christmas when her mother discovered a random note on the stairs of their luxurious Boulder, Colorado home. Hours later JonBenet's distraught father, millionaire businessman John Ramsey, found his beloved daughter's lifeless body, gagged and strangled in a windowless room in the basement of their million-dollar mansion. An Unspeakable Crime As detectives worked to uncover what happened Christmas night in the darkened mansion, the nation grieved for the innocent little girl whose life was cruelly snuffed out.
"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
This is R. J. Rummel's fourth book in a series devoted to genocide and government mass murder, or what he calls democide. He presents the primary results, in tables and figures, as well as a historical sketch of the major cases of democide, those in which one million or more people were killed by a regime. In Death by Government, Rummel does not aim to describe democide itself, but to determine its nature and scope in order to test the theory that democracies are inherently nonviolent. Rummel discusses genocide in China, Nazi Germany, Japan, Cambodia, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Pakistan. He also writes about areas of suspected genocide: North Korea, Mexico, and feudal Russia. His results clearly and decisively show that democracies commit less democide than other regimes. The underlying principle is that the less freedom people have, the greater the violence; the more freedom, the less the violence. Thus, as Rummel says, “The problem is power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom.” Death by Government is a compelling look at the horrors that occur in modern societies. It depicts how democide has been very much a part of human history. Among other examples, the book includes the massacre of Europeans during the Thirty Years' War, the relatively unknown genocide of the French Revolution, and the slaughtering of American Indians by colonists in the New World. This riveting account is an essential tool for historians, political scientists, and scholars interested in the study of genocide.
Scream meets Happy Death Day in this terrifying stand-alone horror novel from YA scream queen Danielle Valentine. "This terrifying book reads like a horror movie. No, wait. It has the suspense and shocks and screams of TEN horror movies in one. Great nasty fun!" —R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street Alice Lawrence is the sole witness in her sister’s murder trial. And in the year since Claire’s death, Alice’s life has completely fallen apart. Her parents have gotten divorced, she’s moved into an apartment that smells like bologna, and she is being forced to face her sister’s killer and a courtroom full of people who doubt what she saw in the corn maze a year prior. Claire was an all-American girl, beautiful and bubbly, and a theater star. Alice was a nerd who dreamed of becoming a forensic pathologist and would rather stay at home to watch her favorite horror movies than party. Despite their differences, they were bonded by sisterhood and were each other’s best friends. Until Claire was taken away from her. On the first day of the murder trial, as Alice prepares to give her testimony, she is knocked out by a Sidney Prescott look-alike in the courthouse bathroom. When she wakes up, it is Halloween night a year earlier, the same day Claire was murdered. Alice has until midnight to save her sister and find the real killer before he claims another victim.
For more than 300 years Massachusetts executed men and women convicted of murder. This book offers an account of how the efforts of reformers and abolitionists and the Supreme Judicial Court's commitment to the rule of law ultimately converged to end the death penalty in Massachusetts.