National Network for Equitable Library Service

Go deep into the L.A. underworld with the true story of one obsessive gangster’s unparalleled quest for privilege, power, and paydays

This biography of celebrity gangster Mickey Cohen digs past the sensational headlines to deliver a remarkable story of a man who captivated, corrupted, and terrorized Los Angeles for a generation.

A thoroughly researched and authoritative page-turner about this unprecedented operation — and bust

Mark Coakley lifts the veil on the riveting story of a group of criminals — Ontario police would call them “a gang with no name” — whose most famous exploit was turning an abandoned Molson beer factory north of Toronto into a giant indoor jungle of cannabis. The operation produced tens of millions of dollars in profits and involved gun smuggling, slavery, violence, pornography, and running cocaine and other illegal chemicals.

The Benoit murder-suicide in 2007 was one of the most shocking stories of the year, and a seminal event in the history of wrestling. It laid bare the devastating prevalence of steroids and its effects on users.

In order to tackle the whole story, dig up the facts, and connect the dots, Irvin Muchnick gives the most sensational scandal in pro wrestling history the full true-crime treatment in Chris & Nancy.

In the wake of the horrific double-murder suicide, four noted wrestling writers grapple with the life and death of Chris Benoit in this book by Steven Johnson, Heath McCoy, Irvin Muchnick, and Greg Oliver, all respected investigative journalists committed to looking at this terrible event with integrity and passion. All four authors have been interviewed extensively about the Benoit situation, including by CNN and Fox.

The book will discuss the subject from distinct perspectives:

Caliph Washington's life was never supposed to matter. As a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957. Sentenced to death, he came within minutes of the electric chair-nearly a dozen times. A Kafka-esque legal odyssey in which Washington's original conviction was overturned three times before he was finally released in 1972, his story is the kind that pervades the history of American justice. Here, in the hands of historian S.

On August 13, 1986, just one day after his thirty-second birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple's bed-and the Williamson County Sherriff's office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of physical evidence. Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, has carried out many of the biggest terrorist plots of the past twenty years, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Millennium Plots, and the beheading of Daniel Pearl. As the world awaits his trial, bestselling author and investigative journalist Richard Miniter brings to life his shocking true story.

When U.S. Marshal John Partington suddenly found himself protecting the family of renowned mobster Joe "The Animal" Barboza, he made up the rules as he went along. Among Partington's diverse activities: managing a rotating crew of U.S. Marshals; chasing the family cat; convincing Barboza's wife not to leave; keeping the witness, his wife, and their child alive; and transporting the witness to and from hearings in the face of death threats. Unbenownst to him, this experience would lead to his becoming one of the founders of the Witness Protection Program.

What separates a masterpiece from a piece of junk? Thanks to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow and its American spin-off, everyone is searching garage sales and hunting online for hidden gems, wondering whether their attics contain trash or treasures.

In April 2002, Janine Latus's youngest sister, Amy, wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer: "Today Ron Ball and I are romantically involved, but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways." That same spring Janine was struggling to leave her marriage, to a handsome and successful man--a marriage in which she felt afraid, controlled, inadequate, and trapped. Ten weeks later, Janine had left her marriage when she learned Amy was missing. It took more than two weeks to find Amy's body, and two years to convict her former boyfriend for her murder.