As seen on the Oxygen mini-series The Disappearance of Maura MurrayWhen an eleven year old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighborhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession leads James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011, James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who...

For readers of Ann Rule and Gregg Olsen, a riveting new true crime book from the acclaimed author of True Crime Addict and creator/host of the podcasts True Crime This Week and The Philosophy of Crime, as he explores the unsolved murder of 16-year-old Lisa Pruett in the real life town of the bestselling novel Little Fires Everywhere for a painstakingly researched account of a senseless and heartbreaking tragedy and the people who were pulled into...

In this timely and deeply personal true crime memoir, acclaimed journalist, author, creator of the True Crime This Week podcast, and former Boy Scout James Renner, explores the dark side of an American institution, its pervasive culture of sexual abuse, and the traumatic—even deadly—repercussions of its long-buried secrets.In the summer of 1995, at the largest Boy Scout camp in Ohio, a night of sexual violence ended with one counselor dead and another hosp...

“Poignant and wonderfully well-written.” — Richard North Patterson, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Witness“I fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic not long before her body was discovered lying facedown in an Ashland County wheat field. I fell for her the first time I saw that school photo TV stations flashed at the beginning of every newscast in the weeks following her kidnapping in the autumn of 1989—the photo with the side-saddle ponytail . . .”So b...

Rewind:Once upon a time in Ohio there lived an elderly recluse, 'the man from Primrose Lane'. He had no friends or family. He wore mittens all year round. And one summers day, he was murdered.Fast-Forward:Bestselling author David Neff is a broken man, lonely, desolate and lost ever since his wife's suicide. But something about the man from Primrose Lane grabs his attention and he decides to investigate the mystery - only to be dragged back into a world he thought he h...

In the summer of 1995, at the largest Boy Scout camp in Ohio, a night of sexual violence ended with one counselor dead and another hospitalized. The death was ruled "accidental." It wouldn't be the last death associated with Seven Ranges Reservation.James Renner, too, was a counselor at Seven Ranges that year. He was always sure there must be more to the story of Mike Klingler's death, because Renner also knew firsthand that the 900-acre camp was not the safe getaway it was portray...

The acclaimed journalist's genre-bending debut novel: "Fascinating and unpredictable, with shades of Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft" ( Guardian, UK).In West Akron, Ohio, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known as the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day, someone murdered him.Fast-forward four years. David Neff, the bestselling author of a true-crim...

Investigative reporter James Renner reopens cold cases that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including:● Murder—Beverly Jarosz, just sixteen years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home. It all started with an anonymous gift.● Stolen Identity—Joseph Newton Chandler was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was the Zodiac killer; others say he was D. B. Cooper, or ev...

"A lost friend, a mysterious Pacific island and an evil conspiracy come together in strange ways in Renner's sci-fi/conspiracy thriller/fantasy novel." — New York PostIn The Man from Primrose Lane, James Renner fused time travel with serial-killer thrillers, resulting in what the Associated Press called "a superbly crazy and imaginative story." Now, in The Great Forgetting, he blends science fiction and conspiracy thrillers with a touch of...

In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend, when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home.The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: "weird" high school outcast Kevin Young. Wit...

33 Pieces of short nonfiction by James Renner. These stories were written when Renner was a reporter for Scene and the Free Times, and include profiles of famous/infamous Ohioans like Bill Watterson, Tom Batiuk, Jeff Krotine, Louis Stokes, Calvin Blocker, Dave Chappelle, Dr. Robert White, Lawrence Krauss, Bill O'Neill, and Tim Russo. There is a section devoted to scandals that features articles about Marc Dann, Kevin Coughlin, Ross Verba, Tim Timken, and a kickback scheme at Hopkins airpor...

A young couple discover their home may exist within a computer glitch.