National Network for Equitable Library Service

An exploration of the study of crime-scene blood spatter, featuring real-life examples and scientific analysis. Blood Secrets reveals how forensic experts read the story of a murder told in the traces of blood left behind, providing crucial evidence that has helped convict criminals who might have otherwise walked free. When Rod Englert began his career in law enforcement, virtually no police force in the world knew how to correctly examine blood spatter. He spent years studying and testing how blood behaves, pioneering a vital new tool that is now a part of any criminal investigation.

A rollicking true story of Bibles and bank robberies in Southern California, from a talented and highly praised gonzo journalist. Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma’s favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart, earned a degree from Bible college, and settled into a family and a stable career.

When the FBI turned an Irish mobster into an informant, they corrupted the entire judicial system and sanctioned the worst crime spree Boston has ever seen. This is the true story behind the major motion picture. James "Whitey" Bulger became one of the most ruthless gangsters in US history, and all because of an unholy deal he made with a childhood friend. John Connolly, a rising star in the Boston FBI office, offered Bulger protection in return for helping the Feds eliminate Boston's Italian mafia.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller - The extraordinary true story and basis for the Academy Award winning film BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver - When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man.

Inside a drug war so screwy that people don't know what's illegal—until it's too late. Bizarro is a page-turning tale of the unprecedented prosecution of Burton Ritchie and Ben Galecki, the Florida-based founders of a sprawling "spice" (synthetic cannabinoid) operation. With this book, journalist and former New York City narcotics prosecutor Jordan S. Rubin exposes a Reagan-era law called the Analogue Act, which targets dealers selling drugs that are "substantially similar" to controlled substances—an unwieldy law that produces erratic results in court.

True crime icon Ann Rule presents a "must-read" (People) New York Times bestseller—and inspiration behind the Lifetime movie A House on Fire—following a woman whose apparent perfect life hides a harrowing and deadly madness. Debora Green, a doctor and mother in a picturesque and exclusive Kansas town, seems to have the perfect life with her own medical practice, a handsome physician husband, and three lovely children. It seems like a horribly tragic accident when a raging fire destroys her home and takes two lives.

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.

The disturbing true story of the notorious Cecil Hotel in downtown LA, by its general manager for a decade and star of the controversial Netflix documentary series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. When Amy Price took a temporary design job at an Art Deco hotel in Los Angeles to help a friend, she had no idea the path it would lead her down.

One woman's "raw, poetic and compulsively readable" account of growing up with a bank robber for a father (Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help). In the summer of 1994, when Molly Brodak was thirteen years old, her father robbed eleven banks, until the police finally caught up with him. Dubbed the "Mario Brothers Bandit" by the FBI, he served seven years in prison and was released, only to rob another bank several years later and end up back behind bars.

"Grips you by the throat from beginning to end."—Cleveland Plain Dealer. 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.