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The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
Daniel Stashower · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCareless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby
Sarah Churchwell · 432 pages
" Tracing the genesis of a masterpiece, a Fitzgerald scholar follows the novelist as he begins work on The Great Gatsby. The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America's carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home
A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York
Timothy J. Gilfoyle · 480 pages
A Pickpocket's Tale is a fascinating true-crime story. Gilfoyle uses George Appo's unpublished memoirs to re-create the world of the nineteenth-century criminal in astonishing detail. George Appo was half Irish, half Chinese who became a pickpocket at the tender age of twelve. he was first arrested at age fourteen and sentenced to a year on a prison ship for juvenile offenders served . In and out
American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century
Paula Uruburu · 400 pages
The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge
T.J. English · 474 pages
The safest big city in America? That would be the question a certain generation of New Yorkers would ask someone who praises New York for it's safety and prosperity. A generation that has experienced living in this city at a time that could only be described as a nightmare.
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
Brad Ricca · 436 pages
Presents the true story of the first female U.S. District Attorney and traveling detective who found missing eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger when the entire NYPD had given up. "In 1917, on the day before Valentine's Day, eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger disappeared. When the police gave up, a mysterious woman in black vowed to find her. Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells the true story of Grace Humiston, the
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
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester · 265 pages
Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
Michael Cannell · 304 pages
Documents the nearly two-decade manhunt for a serial bomber in mid-twentieth-century New York, citing the contributions of police captain Howard Finney and psychiatrist James Brussel in developing investigative techniques that would shape new approaches in American law enforcement.
Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America
Kevin Cook · 242 pages
"At last, the true story of a crime that shocked the world. New York City, 1964. A young woman is stabbed to death on her front stoop--a murder the New York Times called "a frozen moment of dramatic, disturbing social change." The victim, Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, became an urban martyr, butchered by a sociopathic killer in plain sight of 38 neighbors who "didn't want to get involved." Her sensa
The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century
Harold Schechter · 494 pages
From renowned true-crime historian Harold Schechter, whom The Boston Book Review hails as "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers," comes the riveting exploration of a notorious, sensational New York City murder in the 1890s, the fascinating forensic science of an earlier age, and the explosively dramatic trial that became a tabloid sensation at the turn of the century
Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family
John H. Davis · 544 pages
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Deborah Blum · 327 pages
The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
Casey Cep · 314 pages
The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
Herbert Asbury · 400 pages
Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People
Tim Reiterman · 623 pages
Tim Reiterman’s *Raven* provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award–winning work explores the ideals-gone-wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America. Reiterman’s reportage clarifies enduring misperceptions of the character and moti
Thunderstruck
Erik Larson · 480 pages
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world's "great hush." In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men--Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication--whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy
The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women
Lisa Perrin · 208 pages
Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
David King · 424 pages
Death in the City of Light is the gripping true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with traking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, Resistance fighters, pimps,
Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life
Robert Lacey · 547 pages
Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
Hampton Sides · 480 pages
From the acclaimed bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder, a taut, intense narrative about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the largest manhunt in American history. On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man--whose real name wa
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde
Jeff Guinn · 473 pages
An account of the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde explores the ways in which they captured the imaginations of people during and after their time, reveals the role of youth and luck in their two-year crime spree, and recounts the events that led to their deaths.
Wiseguy
Nicholas Pileggi · 308 pages
Presents a firsthand account of organized crime showing it's brutality and fascination.
Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory
Kimberly L. Craft · 379 pages
Reputed to be the world's worst female serial killer, Countess Bathory is also said to have been a lesbian, a vampire, and a witch who bathed in the blood of the 650 people she murdered before being walled alive in the tower of her castle. The truth, however, is finally revealed through actual letters, documents, and trial transcripts, many of which have been translated into English for the first