Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner

Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist

William R. Maples · 292 pages

William Maples is blessed with an eerie but powerful gift. From a skeleton, a skull, a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, he can deduce the age, gender and ethnicity of a corpse, and the manner in which the victim was dispatched; his gift has sealed the doom of many a killer. His skill is to read the tales of death written on the bones of the dead, and in this fascinating book he revisits his stran

Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science

William M. Bass, Jon Jefferson · 304 pages

There is no scientist in the world like Dr. Bill Bass. A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Bass created the world's first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition—three acres of land on a hillside in Tennessee where human bodies are left to the elements. His research at "the Body Farm" has revolutionized forensic science, helping police crack cold cases and pinpoint time of death.

Guilty by Reason of Insanity: A Psychiatrist Explores the Minds of Killers

Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Ira Wood · 301 pages

Everyone has felt the urge to kill. Most people don't kill. Some people do. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, has spent the last quarter century studying the differences between those who do and those who don't. Among the murderers she has examined are the notorious killers Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, and Mark David Chapman, the man who shot

Maximum Insecurity: A Doctor in the Supermax

William Wright · 256 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

Coroner's Journal: Stalking Death in Louisiana

Louis Cataldie · 344 pages

A chief coroner from a Creole section of Baton Rouge describes some of his cases, including the investigation of the violent deaths of an LSU professor, a young woman whose remains were scattered in a churchyard, and one of the Beltway Sniper shooting victims.

Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest

Gregg Olsen · 423 pages

In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary "fasting treatment" of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiti

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

Val McDermid · 315 pages

The dead can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces. This book draws on crime novelist McDermid's own interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top for

Murder on the Home Front

Molly Lefebure · 280 pages

Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam

Pope Brock · 330 pages

In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley--America's most brazen young con man--arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers.It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly tu

American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic

John Temple · 309 pages

The king of the pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic that served as a prototype for the rest. From a pristine former bank building, doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscle-heads ran security, greeting the morning rush of pill poppers with cries of Welcome to the dope hole! Stripp

Silent Witnesses

Nigel McCrery · 312 pages

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases

E.J. Wagner · 250 pages

From autopsies to zoology, how Holmes eliminated the impossible This unique book uses the legendary adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a jumping-off point to discuss the growth of forensic science during the Victorian era. The book explores the emergence of science from superstition, how forensic autopsies evolved from anatomical dissection, the huge advances in blood chemistry and poison detectio

Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

Mark Stevens · 192 pages

The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder

Charles Graeber · 320 pages

From the Author's Note... Every effort has been made to present this story accurately, through a relaying of the facts collected through police investigation reports, witness statements, transcripts, recorded wiretaps, surveillance tapes, court documents and legal depositions, and personal interviews. Some transcripts have been edited slightly for space and clarity, and some dialogue has been b

The Minds of Billy Milligan

Daniel Keyes · 426 pages

Subjected to horrific abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Billy Milligan "went to sleep" to protect himself from the pain. In his place other personalities rose: Ragan, the protector of children; Alan, the fast-talking con man; Christene, a cheerful innocent child; Adalana, a melancholy lesbian who yearned for love...twenty-four personalities in total. But when Billy is implicated in a series of

The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science

Sandra Hempel · 278 pages

Explores how an infamous murder case led to the birth of modern toxicology.

Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer

David Reichert · 320 pages

The riveting personal account of one sheriffs epic hunt for America's most heinous serial killer. For eight years, Sheriff David Reichert devoted days and nights to capturing the Green River Killer--the most notorious serial killer in American history. He was the first detective on the case in 1982 and doggedly pursued it as the body count climbed to 49 and it became the most infamous unsolved cas

The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London

Sarah Wise · 387 pages

Describes the 1831 murder of a young vagrant and the sale of his body to a London medical college, a case that led to the arrest of his killers, "resurrection men" who acted to satisfy the demand for fresh cadavers for the study of human anatomy.

Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes

Emily Craig · 304 pages

Teasing Secrets from the Dead is a front-lines story of crime scene investigation at some of the most infamous sites in recent history. In this absorbing, surprising, and undeniably compelling book, forensics expert Emily Craig tells her own story of a life spent teasing secrets from the dead.Emily Craig has been a witness to history, helping to seek justice for thousands of murder victims, both f

Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away with Murder

James B. Stewart · 334 pages

"Young, blond, handsome Dr. Swango seemed a godsend wherever he was hired to practice medicine. But acclaim would turn to disbelief, dismay, then horror, as the evidence mounted that he could actually be murdering his patients. Then Dr. Michael Swango would leave that hospital - only to be rehired at another. Today the FBI believes that Swango may he the most prolific serial killer in American his

Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring

Carolyn Jourdan · 168 pages

Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell

Jack Olsen · 544 pages

For twenty-five years, the trusted family doctor in a small Wyoming town had been raping and molesting the women and children who most relied on him. Mostly Mormons, the naive victims sometimes realized on their wedding nights the truth about what had happened in Dr. Story's office. In riveting detail, veteran crime writer Jack Olsen tells the searing story of a small group of courageous wo

The Shaking Woman, Or, a History of My Nerves

Siri Hustvedt · 262 pages