The harsh discipline of Puritan life bred the hard-bitten and hard-working people of Massachusetts, but did it also breed a unique type of criminal? This book explores the headline crimes of the state to find an answer.

The definitive travel reference for America'smost famous—and infamous—Civil War battle sites:a tribute to the war's 150th anniversary (2011–2015)With The Big Book of Civil War Sites, history-focused travelers finally have ready access to in-depth and thorough listings of all sites associated with the major battles of a devastating war that transformed the nation. Whether for exploring the Southern states or the Eastern theater, this book provides a full range of his...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The master of the legal thriller” (Associated Press) teams up with “the godfather of the innocence movement” (Texas Monthly) to share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions.“Each of these stories is told with astonishing power.”—David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon**“Gripping . . . compelling . . . What makes [Framed] important reading isn’t the shock value advertised in t...

“A haunting true crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism” (New York Times) – and its devastating effect on innocent livesAfter two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.The Cadaver King a...

New York Times bestselling USA seriesFlorida, Georgia, South CarolinaWelcome to Florida, the Sunshine state with a darker side than most. The mecca for wealthy retirees to enjoy their younger girlfriends, yachts and marble-floored mansions, where recreational drugs, sex and booze flow like the warm water that hugs the coast. Where teenage girls and their boyfriends kill their parents in the name of love, and women shoot their boyfriends then claim self-defense. New York Tim...

A shocking exploration of America’s preferred method of capital punishment.In early 2013, Robert Gleason became the latest victim of the electric chair, a peculiarly American execution method. Shouting Póg mo thóin (Kiss my ass” in Gaelic), he grinned as electricity shot through his system. When the current was switched off, his body slumped against the leather restraints, and Gleeson, who had strangled two fellow inmates to ensure his execution was not p...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents—from the author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers.With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws o...

Box set from Notorious USA: Florida, Georgia, South CarolinaWelcome to Florida, the Sunshine state with a darker side than most. The mecca for wealthy retirees to enjoy their younger girlfriends, yachts and marble-floored mansions, where recreational drugs, sex and booze flow like the warm water that hugs the coast. Where teenage girls and their boyfriends kill their parents in the name of love, and women shoot their boyfriends then claim self-defense. New York Tim...

The man who revolutionized the way we think about baseball now examines our cultural obsession with murder—delivering a unique, engrossing, brilliant history of tabloid crime in America.Celebrated writer and contrarian Bill James has voraciously read true crime throughout his life and has been interested in writing a book on the topic for decades. Now, with Popular Crime, James takes readers on an epic journey from Lizzie Borden to the Lindbergh b...

A landmark in the fight against the death penalty. Extensively researched and brilliantly written . . . The Wrong Men is a gem.” Martin Garbus, criminal defense attorneyEvery day, innocent men across America are thrown into prison, betrayed by a faulty justice system, and robbed of their lives-either by decades-long sentences or the death penalty itself. Injustice tarnishes our legal process from start to finish. From the racial discrimination and violence used by...

Despite a decline in the number of murders in the United States since the 1960s, thousands go unsolved each year.As of 2013, the solve rate was at an all-time low at only 65 percent of the total committed.The 15 murders profiled in this book were committed between 1958 and 2014. The oldest of the set involves the bizarre murder of Pearl Eaton, one of the famous Ziegfeld Follies Girls of the 1920s. From the beginning, the crime had no leads or suspe...

Attorney and true crime writer examines the unsolved 1969 murders of two female college students whose bodies were left off the Garden State Parkway.In the early hours of May 30, 1969, the brutally stabbed bodies of two nineteen-year-old friends, Elizbeth Perry and Susan Davis, were dumped near Ocean City, New Jersey. This is the story of their case.Among the numerous suspects author and attorney Christian Barth identifies are infamous serial killers Ted Bu...