A non-fiction account written in story form about the murders of teenagers Marilyn Sheckler and Glenn Eckert at the ruins of Dreamland Park near Pricetown, Pennsylvania in 1969 and Michael Abate near Wernersville, Pennsylvania in 1994 with a focus on the trials of those accused of the crimes and on persons associated with both crimes. Dialog is based on court transcripts and interviews with people associated with the crimes, the trials, the victims, and/or the accused.
Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts? Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost? FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
On a warm night in September 1985, teenagers Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were brutally murdered in Westside Park in Muncie, Indiana. Their killer has never been charged. Early on, police focused on a family member of one of the teens as a primary suspect. The investigation even ruled out fantastic scenarios, including a theory that the perpetrator was a Dungeons & Dragons devotee. The case grew cold. Only decades later did a dogged police investigator narrow the scope to a suspect whose name has never been publicly revealed until now. Keith Roysdon and Douglas Walker, authors of Wicked Muncie and Muncie Murder & Mayhem, have followed the investigation into the Westside Park murders for decades and, for the first time, report the complete and untold story.
The notorious true crime story of a sex party that ended in double murder in the woods of Chattanooga County, Georgia. On December 12th, 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. Then they brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder had been a professor of pharmacology at Chicago’s Loyola University before he and his boyfriend Joey Odom moved to Georgia and built their own home in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Scudder had absconded with twelve thousand doses of LSD and had a very particular vision for their “castle in the woods.” It included a “pleasure chamber,” and rumors of Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. But when Scudder and Odom welcomed West and Brock into their strange abode, they had no idea the men were armed and dangerous. When the evening of kinky fun turned to a scene of gruesome slaughter, the murders set the stage for a sensational trial that engulfed the sleepy Southern town of Trion in shocking revelations and lurid speculations.
A spellbinding account of the real facts of the Central Park jogger case that powerfully reexamines one of New York City's most notorious crimes and its aftermath. • A must-read after watching Ava DuVernay's When They See Us On April 20th, 1989, two passersby discovered the body of the "Central Park jogger" crumpled in a ravine. She'd been raped and severely beaten. Within days five black and Latino teenagers were apprehended, all five confessing to the crime. The staggering torrent of media coverage that ensued, coupled with fierce public outcry, exposed the deep-seated race and class divisions in New York City at the time. The minors were tried and convicted as adults despite no evidence linking them to the victim. Over a decade later, when DNA tests connected serial rapist Matias Reyes to the crime, the government, law enforcement, social institutions and media of New York were exposed as having undermined the individuals they were designed to protect. Here, Sarah Burns recounts this historic case for the first time since the young men's convictions were overturned, telling, at last, the full story of one of New York’s most legendary crimes.
Cherri Mason has three wealthy husbands and high end antique shops in London, New York and Los Angeles. She is a woman of action, not words. Lately, her husbands and those little shops have become a bit of a strain. Maybe, it's time to take the money and run. The only way to do that is to kill her husbands and sell the antique shops. The trick is to get away with it. Does she? Well, yes and no. She has some wild times along the way with some unusual friends. Some of those friends aren't what they seem.
“The mystery fiction that Sara Paretsky fashions from Chicago’s South Side is fully matched in Raleigh’s gritty North Side tales” (Publishers Weekly). Margaret O’Mara’s brother disappeared decades ago. But now that his last known associate has just been found dead, O’Mara hires PI Paul Whelan to investigate. Whelan makes the rounds through seedy bars and dilapidated apartment buildings, discovering connections to a long-gone Chicago amusement park that was once the site of another murder. Soon, Whelan is navigating his way through dark pasts, deep secrets, and a mystery that may cost him his life. “What makes this riveting private-eye yarn work is a mixture of superior Chicago atmosphere, with the ghost of the legendary Riverview amusement park lurking in the shadows; great dialogue; and compassionately drawn characters.” —Booklist
In her second book of poetry from Strangehouse Books, Sara Tantlinger (Love For Slaughter) takes inspiration from accounts and tales which spawned from the misdeeds of one Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. Fact and speculation intertwine herein, just as they did during the man's own lifetime.
The year is 1909. Coney Island is a bright, malodorous, and garish place, luring work-weary folks in with its dangerous roller coasters, bizarre displays, and promises of "improper" gaiety to be remembered. Three grand amusement parks—Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland—make Coney Island their home, as do countless independent shows along the Bowery. And some, such as the sinister Snow's Symposium of Secrets and Surprises, take much more from customers than they give. Suzanne Heath is a ticket-seller for Luna Park as well a reluctant psychic. She has been called in by police Lieutenant Granger to help find and stop a murderer whose victims have been dreadfully mutilated. Suzanne feels obligated to offer her assistance even thought doing forces her to recall memories of her youth, a time when her psychic talents only brought about rejection and pain. Suzanne's one true friend is Cittie Parker, a young man who ran away from the Colored Waifs' Asylum and now performs as a bloodthirsty Zulu drummer in Dreamland. He knows of Suzanne's abilities and fears for her safety. As Suzanne digs deeper into the grisly Coney Island murders and her own past, she finds herself and Cittie caught up in a nightmare where worlds converge and collide, where death gleefully beckons, and insanity grins like a devil at the gate of hell.
