True Crime

"Sam Little is the monster in this story and Jillian Lauren is the slayer. She is the one who stuck her nose into it, saw something was not right, was dreadfully wrong, in fact, and did something about it." --Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author

He was sitting right across the table... and he would have killed her if he could

Jillian Lauren had no idea what she was getting into when she wrote her first letter to prolific serial killer Samuel Little. All she knew was her research had led her to believe he was good for far more murders than the three for which he had been convicted. While the two exchanged dozens of letters and embarked on hundreds of hours of interviews, Lauren gained the trust of a monster. After maintaining his innocence for decades, Little confessed to the murders of ninety-three women, often drawing his victims in haunting detail as he spoke. How could one man evade justice, manipulating the system for over four decades?

As the FBI, the DOJ, the LAPD, and countless law enforcement officials across the country worked to connect their cold cases with the confessions, Lauren's coverage of the investigations and obsession with Little's victims only escalated.

New York Times bestselling author and lead of the Starz docuseries Confronting a Serial Killer Jillian Lauren delivers the harrowing report of her unusual relationship with a psychopath. But this is more than a deep dive into the actions of Samuel Little. Lauren's riveting and emotional accounts reveal the women who were lost to cold files, giving Little's victims a chance to have their stories heard for the first time.

"Jillian Lauren's devastating portrait of Sam Little and his innumerable victims is a journey into a darkness that is almost unfathomable; as well as an indictment of a failed justice system and the social decay that created a serial killer in the first place. Utterly gripping, this book will tear you apart." --Janelle Brown, New York Times bestselling author

For fans of We Keep the Dead Close and The Night of the Gun, a propulsive and moving memoir about a brother's decades-long investigation into the circumstances surrounding his sister's tragic death--and his own journey to forgiveness and closure.

On a summer evening in 1974, Jim Thomson arrived home from a baseball game to the news that his younger sister, Eileen, had taken her own life. To Jim, his parents, and brother, the loss was unexpected and devastating. Only twenty-seven, Eileen had been living in California with her high school sweetheart, Vic, a cop. She had a circle of close friends and a job she loved. But details soon emerged that Eileen had been depressed, her storybook marriage plagued by infidelity and guilt. On the day of her death, Vic later explained, he stormed out of the room in the midst of a bitter argument. Moments later, a gunshot went off. The revelations were deeply troubling, but Jim and his family believed him. The police ended the investigation and the Thomsons moved on as best they could.

In 2001, his parents and brother all dead, Jim often found himself thinking about Eileen. What had the final months of her life been like? Why had she not told him about her troubled marriage? What other demons had she been battling? Frustrated by how little he knew, Jim hired a private investigator to help track down Eileen's old friends and the police reports from that fateful afternoon, beginning a two-decade journey through a tangled web of secrecy, deception, and shifting stories that would force him to consider the unthinkable: Had Eileen really committed suicide?

Told with the precision and pace of a whodunit and the searing emotion of a family saga, A Better Ending is an unforgettable tale about the love between siblings, the murkiness of truth and memory, and the path to acceptance.

On the night of October 23/24, 1995 in Prairie Village, Kansas, a fierce, wind-driven fire devastated the luxurious mansion of Dr. Debora Green and her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar. Trapped and burned to death in the flames were twelve-year-old Tim and his six-year-old sister Kelly. Lissa, ten, was barely able to leap to safety from the garage roof into the arms of her mother, who was standing outside the house. When Michael Farrar returned to the scene, he had lost more than his children and his home. His entire life was in ruins.
The fire was the climactic event of Michael and Debora's lives. Until that summer, they seemed to have it all -- a happy marriage, successful medical practices, three bright and beautiful children. Then they went on a trip to Peru with their son. There, they met attractive, blonde Celeste Walker, whose husband, John was also a successful doctor. But after that trip, nothing was the same again for either couple, and all the dark hidden places in Debora and Michael's marriage bubbled to the surface in a series of almost unbelievable horrors.
"Bitter Harvest" is the chronicle of this tragedy in the heartland of America, the true story of the disintegration of a marriage and its horrifying consequences. Rule takes us deep in the psyche of a killer whose behavior was so twisted and so evil that it defies belief. Gripping, powerful, and ultimately terrifying, "Bitter Harvest" is a vivid recreation of an unthinkable crime -- and a depiction of the unimagined depths of a darkness within the human spirit.

Copyright © 1998 Ann Rule. All Rights Reserved
Performance copyright 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc. All Rights Reserved

Detective Rick Jackson, a decorated LAPD detective and a key inspiration in the development of Harry Bosch, delivers a shocking and immersive look into the one case he could never let go.

In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck?

Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker's two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King.

In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly's beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it.

The highly anticipated inside look at the collapse of the Murdaugh dynasty by the celebrated investigative journalist and creator of the #1 hit Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Mandy Matney.

Years before the name Alex Murdaugh was splashed across every major media outlet in America, local South Carolina journalist Mandy Matney had an instinct that something wasn't right in the Lowcountry. The powerful Murdaugh dynasty had dominated rural South Carolina for generations. No one dared to cross them.

When Mandy and her reporting partner Liz Farrell looked closer at a fatal boat crash involving the storied family's teenage son Paul, they began to uncover a web of mysteries surrounding the deaths of the Murdaughs' long-time housekeeper and a young man found slain years earlier on a backcountry road. Just as their investigations were unfolding, the brutal double murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh rocketed Alex Murdaugh onto the international stage.

From the newsroom to the courtroom, to the kitchen-table studio where Mandy recorded her #1 Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Blood on Their Hands is a propulsive true crime saga, an empathetic work of investigative journalism, and an excoriation of the "good old boy" systems that enabled a network of criminals.

Now updated with shocking details about the identity of Wayne Adam Ford's first victim - revealed 25 years after her death - the brand new edition of a true crime classic from New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Rother delves into the disturbing mind and brutal crimes of the Humboldt County serial killer now on Death Row.

"I hurt some people."



With these words, a tearful man hinted at a deadly crime, leading investigators to uncover a horrifying saga of abuse, tragedy, and serial murder . . .



When Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office in November 1998 with a woman's body part in his jacket pocket, the 36-year-old truck driver wasn't a suspect in any crime. After a lengthy investigation spanning four California counties and a sensational trial, he was convicted of the torture and murder of four women. His first victim, whom he dismembered, would remain unidentified for 25 years.

While serving honorably in the Marine Corps, Ford had learned life-saving techniques that gave him structure and purpose. But a severe head injury worsened pre-existing emotional problems, rendering him unable to suppress his dark sexual impulses. Knowing he would kill again, he enlisted his brother's help to turn himself in.

Award-winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother drew on previously sealed testimony and interviewed key players in the case, including Ford's brother and father, to write this intimate and psychologically resonant narrative. Extensively updated with the inside details of how Ford's first victim was recently identified through DNA testing and forensic genealogy, this classic true crime story continues to haunt us.

A Boston Globe Book We're Most Excited About This Summer ● An Oprah Daily Best Book of the Summer ● A Chicago Review of Books Must-Read Book of the Month ● A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year ● A Crime Reads Year of Literary True Crime Pick ● A Book Culture Most Anticipated Book of the Month ● A Best Evidence Most Anticipated True Crime of the Year Pick ● An InsideHook Book You Should be Reading This Month

Acclaimed author Sarah Gerard turns her keen observational eye and penetrating prose to the 2016 murder of her friend Carolyn Bush, examining the multi-faceted reasons for her death―personal and societal, avoidable and inevitable―as "nuanced and subtly intimate" (NPR) as her lauded essay collection, Sunshine State.

"Astonishing. . . . What stuns about Carrie Carolyn Coco is . . . the intricate ways in which Sarah Gerard unravels poison in the dark corners of Carolyn Bush's world: a fancy liberal arts college with a chilling history of violence; the violence in Bush's everyday existence; the web of people who are willing to stand up for Bush's murderer, some with dubious motives." ―Esmé Weijun Wang, New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias

On the night of September 28, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends and family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong?

This is the question that has plagued acclaimed author Sarah Gerard and driven her obsessive pursuit to understand this horrific tragedy. In Sarah's exploration of Carolyn's life and death, she spent thousands of hours interviewing Carolyn's and Render's friends and family, poring over court documents and news media, reading obscure writings and internet posts, and attending Carolyn's memorials and Render's trial.

What emerged from Sarah's relentless instinct to follow a story and its characters to their darkest ends is a book that is at once a striking homage to Carolyn's life, a chilling excavation of a brutal crime, and a captivating whydunit with a shocking conclusion.

The gripping story of a young woman's murder, unsolved for over two decades, brilliantly investigated and reconstructed by her stepsister.

Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was at the height of her life-in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry and close to her students and her family. And then, one morning, she was gone.

Around Rochester-a region which has spawned such serial killers as Arthur Shawcross and the "Double Initial" killer-Stephanie's disappearance was just a familiar sort of news item. But Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story of a missing woman: Rachel's mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy.

In Catch the Sparrow, Rachel Rear writes a compulsively readable and unerringly poignant reconstruction of the case's dark and serpentine path across more than two decades. Obsessively cataloging the crime and its costs, drawing intimately closer to the details than any journalist could, she reveals how a dysfunctional justice system laid the groundwork for Stephanie's murder and stymied the investigation for more than twenty years, and what those hard years meant for the lives of Stephanie's family and loved ones. Startling, unputdownable, and deeply moving, Catch the Sparrow is a retelling of a crime like no other.