True Crime Authors

Discover the real-life inspirations behind history’s most infamous serial killers: John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and so many more.

Alone with her new husband on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman, combing the beach, finds an odd aluminum container washed up out of the lagoon, and beside it on the sand something glitters: a gold tooth in a scorched human skull. The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the best seller Helter Skelter, was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what really happened....

Instant New York Times Bestseller “Compelling. . . . Blum capably maintains the suspense and thoughtfully probes into the motives of key players in this intriguing yet profoundly unsettling story.”—Kirkus Reviews"" The definitive, inside story of the Idaho murders from acclaimed...

The doorbell rings in the home of a prominent Palm Beach citizen, quickly followed by a shotgun blast that shatters a window, cracking the calm of a cool January night. Rodger Kriger falls to the floor, mortally wounded, leaving a wife and six children. Murder in Palm Beach: The Homicide That Never Died is closely based on a sensational, real murder that happened in the posh oceanside town in 1976. In the thin guise of fiction, the audiobook contains shocking new information never before made public.

He plots perfect murders. Did he commit one? Award-winning author Diane Jeffrey returns with this blistering, dark thriller. 2019. 34 year-old Leona Walsh vanishes on a bitter afternoon while jogging on Exmoor. It’s a mystery which captures public interest and ignites wild speculation. The...

In her youth, amidst the throes of a reckless grief, aspiring Australian writer Marele Day is caught up in a shipwreck adventure and forges an unlikely bond with an international fugitive travelling under a pseudonym. For the next 30 years they correspond before reuniting, both older and wiser, in France.

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

Kelly Carlisle was three weeks old when her mother was strangled in downtown Los Angeles, leaving Kelly in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric Englishman who owned a porn store and lived on a boat in the harbor. It is here that Kelly finds a home among friendly alcoholics and the city's forgotten residents. But she can't help but wonder if she is destined to become a part of the dysfunction that surrounds her.

Back then, hot-headed gangsters, not-so-gentle dames and bullet-riddled corpses filled the newspaper headlines. And some of the stories below the headlines were even true. The 1920s was a period in American history when even the respectable were unwilling to stay sober. And not-so-fast cars carried assassins across Chicago, a city that for many captures the essence of the USA. In Tough Guys in the Room, the story of Al Capone and his rivals is told in separate and stand-alone topics that cover key figures and events.

Lacey Spears made international headlines in January 2015, when she was charged with the "depraved mind" murder of her five-year-old son, Garnett. Prosecutors alleged that the 27-year-old mother had poisoned him with high concentrations of salt through his stomach tube. To the outside world, Lacey had seemed like the perfect mother, regularly posting dramatic updates on her son's harrowing medical problems. But in reality, Lacey was a textbook case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

Criminal exploits, secret agent intrigue, and clever disguises fill the pages of Francois Eugene Vidocq’s memoirs. A legendary figure in history, Vidocq is known as the first detective and an inspiration to great writers such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Edgar Allen Poe. As a player in the criminal underworld, Vidocq is a master of disguises and an accomplished thief, eventually turning his unlawful talents toward catching criminals as the first French chief of secret police.

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.

Randy Roth was handsome, hardworking, kind, and in top physical shape. But for all his charm and good looks, he was seemingly cursed with the ladies. His first marriage ended in divorce before the couple's fifth anniversary; his second wife plunged to her death during a hike; and his third wife left him after less than five months. But when Roth's fourth wife, Cynthia, drowned in an apparent speedboating accident in Washington State's Lake Sammamish just weeks after their first anniversary, a pattern of suspicious behavior finally caught up to him.

I was born and broken in Birkenhead, abused from infancy by a network of every kind of pervert from ‘thinks it’s love’ to ‘show it hurts’. I was unwanted, beaten, sold, swapped, photographed, filmed, left for dead, corrupted, blamed, betrayed, ignored and orphaned. But I was also born with a fire inside me. I call it my Phoenix Fire. I am no victim—that word only describes what happened to me. Nor am I a survivor because that implies I am over it. I am a Phoenix—a work in progress. This is my story....

The long forgotten true story of two convict "assigned" servant girls, Sarah 18 y/o & Mary 20 y/o, tried in colonial Australia for the murder of their “master”. The witnesses except for the widow and her 12-year-old son saw no punches, allegedly the cause of death. The attending doctor did not arrive in time to give evidence. Hearsay evidence was admitted. There were no witnesses for the defense.

In 2015, Mary Yoder returned home from the chiropractic center that she operated with her husband, Bill, complaining that she felt unwell. Mary, health-conscious and vibrant, was suddenly vomiting, sweating, and weak. Doctors in the ER and ICU were baffled as to the cause of her rapidly progressing illness. Her loved ones - including Bill and their children, Adam, Tamryn, and Liana - gathered in shock to say good-bye. In the weeks that followed Mary's death, the grief-stricken family received startling news from the medical examiner: Mary had been deliberately poisoned with colchicine.

In 1985, Charles Ng and Leonard Lake were spotted shoplifting. Ng escaped, but Lake's capture led police to a concrete bunker in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where they discovered the grisly evidence of an orgy of sex crimes, torture, and murder that claimed at least 16 victims. Lake committed suicide: Ng fled to Canada, where he was tracked down and extradited to California. This 14-year, $10 million legal case was the costliest and longest criminal prosecution in California history.

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER! One of Amazon’s Best History Books of January Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter...

THE TRUE STORY OF AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME RING AND ITS DOWNFALL In 1957, as the Cold War raged, Ian Fleming took a respite from writing James Bond to craft a work of nonfiction every bit as tense as a Bond adventure. Aided by an ex-MI5 agent and International Diamond Security Organization...