Before the billboard, radio or television commercial, there was the painted ad. Today, these aging ads capture the imagination, harkening back to a bygone era. Vanishing paint on brick walls speaks to a time when commerce was much simpler and much more direct. Few cities in America have produced as many intriguing fading ads as St. Louis. Fewer still are home to such an expert on the subject as author Wm. Stage. For decades, Stage has studied and researched the lost art form of the painted...

New York City is eternally evolving. From its iconic skyline to its side alleys, the new is perpetually being built on the debris of the past. But a movement to preserve the city's vanishing landscapes has emerged. For nearly twenty years, Frank Jump has been documenting the fading ads that are visible, but less often seen, all over New York. Disappearing from the sides of buildings or hidden by new construction, these signs are remnants of lost eras of New York's life. They weave together...

LitchfieldA Town Gripped by TerrorMay 8, 1993: In the Central Illinois town of Litchfield, the nude, headless body of a woman is discovered in a pile of burning brush. Same time, same campground, several people take note of a mysterious red van. Seventy miles away, in St. Louis, a 35-year-old bank teller, Lynne Matchem-Thomas, is reported missing and presumed dead. Sixteen months pass before Illinois homicide investigators piece together the puzzle of events that connect th...

WHY IS FRANCIS X. LENIHAN SKULKING AROUND HOPEVILE, the tent city on the banks of the Mississippi at St. Louis? No, he's not trying to serve a summons, he's looking for an answer as to why his card was found in the pocket of a young homeless man who died in this camp. It's a mystery that Francis wants solved and so does Dr. Lambert, the father of the deceased and Francis' new benefactor.Lambert has hired Francis and his partner, Cale Twohey, to look into his son's ...

**#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...

From master storyteller Stephen King, his unforgettable and terrifying sequel to The Shining—an instant #1 New York Times bestseller that is “[a] vivid frightscape” (The New York Times)—also a major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor!Years ago, the haunting of the Overlook Hotel nearly broke young Dan Torrance’s sanity, as his paranormal gift known as “the shining” opened a door straight into hell. And even though Dan is all grown up, ...

The New York Times–bestselling journalist and serial killer expert recounts a tragic case of infanticide—including an exclusive interview with the killer.It started with a horrifying discovery in an Arizona self-storage facility: the abandoned bodies of three infants wrapped in plastic. Dianne O’Dell, a mother of eight children, admitted the babies were hers. She claimed they’d died of natural causes; that she’d been impregnated by her father when young; t...

The problem with Wake was that he was understandable. He was the type of villain that literally scared the absolute shit out of you because you knew that under the right circumstances, you could end up exactly like him.Which, sadly, was the case for me.I’d done the exact same thing as Wake, and now I was a murderer just like him.Did I know that I did wrong? Hell yes.Did I regret that? Hell no.Did I plan on changing a thing? Also, no.Was I fal...

The "fascinating" true story behind the HBO Max and Hulu series about Texas housewife Candy Montgomery and the bizarre murder that shocked a community ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ).Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as ...

Critically acclaimed and bestselling crime writer James Lee Burke returns to Louisiana where his ever-popular hero, Dave Robicheaux, sleuths his way through a hotbed of sin and uncertainty.For Dave Robicheaux, life in Louisiana is filled with haunting memories of the past—images from Vietnam, the violent streets of New Orleans, and his own troubled youth. In Crusader’s Cross, a deathbed confession from an old schoolmate resurrects a story of injustice, the...

A mother's search for the son she gave up uncovers terrifying secrets in a Minnesota town in this "masterfully depicted true-crime tale" ( Publishers Weekly).In 1962, Jerry Sherwood gave up her newborn son, Dennis, for adoption. Twenty years later, she set out to find him—only to discover he had died before his fourth birthday. The immediate cause was peritonitis, but the coroner had never decided the mode of death, writing "deferred" rather than indicate a...

“Taylor’s dialogue is snappy and contemporary . . . A witty and often amusing family drama.”—Kirkus ReviewsKassie O’Callaghan’s meticulous plans to divorce her emotionally abusive husband, Mike, and move in with Chris, a younger man she met five years ago on a solo vacation in Venice, are disrupted when she finds out Mike has chronic kidney disease—something he’s concealed from her for years. Once again, she postpones her path to freedom—at least, until sh...