The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge

The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding

Sarah Burns · 240 pages

An in-depth account of one of New York City's most notorious crimes. On April 20, 1989, the body of a woman is discovered in Central Park, her skull badly smashed. Within days, five black and Latino teenagers confess to her rape and beating. The ensuing media frenzy and hysterical public reaction is extraordinary. The young men are tried and convicted as adults, despite the fact that the teens qui

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars

Paul Collins · 325 pages

On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspec

Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family

John H. Davis · 544 pages

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Peter Matthiessen · 646 pages

An investigative account of the fatal shootout between FBI agents and American Indians in 1975. On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serv

All God's Children

Fox Butterfield · 389 pages

A startling examination of an American heritage of violence - a legacy from the pre-Revolutionary white rural South to today's urban America - that helps answer the question of how America became so violent. The tradition is reflected in the experiences of one black family, the Boskets, from the days of slavery to the present. This tragic family history culminates in the twentieth century with th

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

David Grann · 352 pages

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was

Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi

Morris Dees, Steve Fiffer · 280 pages

Recounts the trial of Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance for the murder of an Ethiopian student in Portland, Oregon.

The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan

Laurence Leamer · 378 pages

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history--the Ku Klux Klan. On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The yo

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Casey Cep · 314 pages

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

Claire Prentice · 418 pages

Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong

Raymond Bonner

Murder in Mississippi

John Safran · 384 pages

WINNER OF THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST TRUE CRIME *'Say, John Safran,' he says. 'Yes?' I say. 'I can get you killed from right behind this door, man. Real talk.' 'You can get me killed from behind your door?' 'Real talk,' he says. 'I can get your ass killed from behind this door, if you playin'.* Taking us places only John Safran can, *Murder in Mississippi* paints an engrossing, revealing p

A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation

Tal McThenia, Margaret Dunbar Cutright · 464 pages

"A Case For Solomon is irresistable . It does what all rewarding non-fiction should do.: It takes the reader on a fascinating and informative journey. It also raises serious questions about the role of media in shaping public opinion. More importantly, it sets the record straight." --- Stephen Smith, August 2012, The Pinestraw Magazine

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Gilbert King · 545 pages

In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming with cheap Jim Crow labor. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, vicious Sheriff McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves. Then the Ku Klux Klan rolled into town, burning homes and chasing hundreds of blacks into the swamps. So began the chain of events that would bring Thurgo

Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee

Chloe Hooper · 267 pages

In November 2004, in the small township of Palm Island in the far north of Queensland, Detective Hurley arrested Cameron Doomadgee for swearing at him. Doomadgee was drunk. A few hours later he was dead, his liver (according to the inquest) so badly damaged it was almost severed.

Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America

Tanner Colby · 307 pages

“Tanner Colby woke up one day and realized that he didn’t know any black people – his friends, former classmates, coworkers, acquaintances, just about everyone he knew and interacted with was white. And this lopsided state of affairs, as he soon discovered, was hardly unique. Pressing those friends and coworkers about their own lives, he found the same thing to be true again and again: even with a

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Heather Ann Thompson · 738 pages

>*Blood in the Water* recounts the history of an infamous prison rebellion in which, on September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 incarcerated men seized control of a major section of New York State’s Attica Prison. Over the next four days, these rebels attempted to negotiate for the release of 43 hostages, but rather than accede to their demands, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller deployed an assault

Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson

Tourmaline · 306 pages

A Death in Belmont

Sebastian Junger · 288 pages

In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. Sensing a break in the case that has paralyzed the city of Boston, the police track down a black man, Roy Smith, who cleaned the victim's house that day and left a receipt with his name on the kitchen counter. Smith is hastily convicted of the

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences

Catherine Pelonero · 380 pages

Written in a flowing narrative style, Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences presents the story of the horrific and infamous murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman stalked and stabbed on the street where she lived in Queens, New York in 1964. The case sparked national outrage when the New York Times revealed that dozens of witnesses had seen or heard the a

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

Chris Crowe · 144 pages

Presents a true account of the murder of fourteen-year-old, Emmett Till, in Mississippi, in 1955.

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

Anand Giridharadas · 327 pages

Days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walked into the Dallas minimart where Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a former Bangladesh Air Force officer, has found temporary work and shoots him, nearly killing him. Giridharadas traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter, following them as they rebuild shattered lives. Ten year

A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment

John Preston · 352 pages

Behind oak-panelled doors in the House of Commons, men with cut-glass accents and gold signet rings are conspiring to murder. It's the late 1960s and homosexuality has only just been legalised, and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide. As long as Norman Scott, his beautiful, unstable lover is around, Thorpe's brilliant career is at risk. With the help

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

Jill Leovy · 384 pages