True Crime

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in AutobiographyIndie Bound #1 BestsellerUSA Today BestsellerWall Street Journal Bestseller

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue. The ones that baffle the volunteers who comb the mountains, woods and badlands. The stories that should give you pause every time you venture outdoors.

Through Jacob Gray's disappearance in Olympic National Park, and his father Randy Gray who left his life to search for him, we will learn about what happens when someone goes missing. Braided around the core will be the stories of the characters who fill the vacuum created by a vanished human being. We'll meet eccentric bloodhound-handler Duff and R.C., his flagship purebred, who began trailing with the family dog after his brother vanished in the San Gabriel Mountains. And there's Michael Neiger North America's foremost backcountry Search & Rescue expert and self-described "bushman" obsessed with missing persons. And top researcher of persons missing on public wildlands Ex-San Jose, California detective David Paulides who is also one of the world's foremost Bigfoot researchers.

It's a tricky thing to write about missing persons because the story is the absence of someone. A void. The person at the heart of the story is thinner than a smoke ring, invisible as someone else's memory. The bones you dig up are most often metaphorical. While much of the book will embrace memory and faulty memory--history--The Cold Vanish is at its core a story of now and tomorrow. Someone will vanish in the wild tomorrow. These are the people who will go looking.

How did Charles Manson inspire his family to launch a campaign of murder? What twisted ideology lay behind horrific events like the Waco Siege, the Aum Shinrikyo's poison-gas attack on the Tokyo metro, and the mass suicides and murders of Jonestown? Why did the suicidal members of Heaven's Gate believe doomsday was at hand? How did the idealistic commune of Rajneeshpuram collapse into shocking controversies, involving biological terrorism and attempted murder?

Cults Uncovered explores these and many more strange and disturbing factions and sects from all over the world to expose terrifying stories of manipulation, coercion, abuse, and murder.

This suspenseful true story of a drug cartel hitman who got away with murder after murder in California's Central Valley over three decades reveals how the criminal justice system fails our most vulnerable immigrant communities.

On the surface, fifty-eight-year-old Jose Martinez didn't seem evil or even that remarkable--just a regular neighbor, good with cars and devoted to his family. But in between taking his children to Disneyland and visiting his mom, Martinez was also one of the most skilled professional killers police had ever seen.

He tracked one victim to one of the wealthiest corners of America, a horse ranch in Santa Barbara, and shot him dead in the morning sunlight, setting off a decades-long manhunt. He shot another man, a farmworker, right in front of his young wife as they drove to work in the fields. The widow would wait decades for justice. Those were murders for hire. Others he killed for vengeance.

How did Martinez manage to evade law enforcement for so long with little more than a slap on the wrist? Because he understood a dark truth about the criminal justice system: if you kill the "right people"--people who are poor, who aren't white, and who don't have anyone to speak up for them--you can get away with it.

Melding the pacing and suspense of a true crime thriller with the rigor of top-notch investigative journalism, The Devil's Harvest follows award-winning reporter Jessica Garrison's relentless search for the truth as she traces the life of this assassin, the cops who were always a few steps behind him, and the families of his many victims. Drawing upon decades of case files, interrogation transcripts, on-the-ground reporting, and Martinez's chilling handwritten journals, The Devil's Harvest uses a gripping and often shocking narrative to dig into one of the most important moral questions haunting our politically divided nation today: Why do some deaths--and some lives--matter more than others?

"Meticulously researched and tightly woven, The Devil's Harvest is an important story because it tells us that if [this] can happen in one place, then it can happen in any place. And that's damn scary." --Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author of The Closers, The Lincoln Lawyer, and The Night Fire

A New York Times Notable Book

Named a best book of the year by Amazon, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR, Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub, and Slate

This updated, expanded edition of The Phantom Prince, Elizabeth Kendall's 1981 memoir detailing her six-year relationship with serial killer Ted Bundy, includes a new introduction and a new afterword by the author, never-before-seen photos, and a startling new chapter from the author's daughter, Molly, who has not previously shared her story. Bundy is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history and one of the most publicized to this day. However, very rarely do we hear from the women he left behind--the ones forgotten as mere footnotes in this tragedy. The Phantom Prince chronicles Elizabeth Kendall's intimate relationship with Ted Bundy and its eventual unraveling. As much as has been written about Bundy, it's remarkable to hear the perspective of people who shared their daily lives with him for years. This gripping account presents a remarkable examination of a charismatic personality that masked unimaginable darkness.

On the morning of August 23, 1973, a man wearing a wig, makeup, and a pair of sunglasses walked into the main branch of Sveriges Kreditbank, a prominent bank in central Stockholm. He ripped out a submachine gun, fired it into the ceiling, and shouted, The party starts! This was the beginning of a six-day hostage crisis--and media circus--that would mesmerize the world, drawing into its grip everyone from Sweden's most notorious outlaw to the prime minister himself.

As policemen and reporters encircled the bank, the crime-in-progress turned into a high-stakes thriller broadcast on live television. Inside the building, meanwhile, complicated emotional relationships developed between captors and captives that would launch a remarkable new concept into the realm of psychology, hostage negotiation, and popular culture.

Based on a wealth of previously unpublished sources, including rare film footage and unprecedented access to the main participants, Six Days in August captures the surreal events in their entirety, on an almost minute-by-minute basis. It is a rich human drama that blurs the lines between loyalty and betrayal, obedience and defiance, fear and attraction--and a groundbreaking work of nonfiction that forces us to consider Stockholm syndrome in an entirely new light.

Cleveland. 1935. Eliot Ness, fresh from his legendary Chicago triumph over Al Capone and associates, set his sights on Cleveland. He went on a crusade that matched, and sometimes even surpassed, his past accomplishments. But dismembered body parts started washing up in a concentrated area of Lake Erie Sound. Headless torsos that left no clues to their identity or reason for death. Elliot Ness and his colorful gang of The Unknowns chased this killer through the underbelly of Cleveland for years. As far as the public was concerned, he was never captured. But what really happened is even more shocking.

Written and illustrated by Brian Michael Bendis, the awrd-winning author Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man, New Avengers and more, and Marc Andreyko, comes a new trade paperback edition of Torso!

Brian Michael Bendis's critically acclaimed Jinxworld library now comes to DC! These classic, award-winning graphic novels, including JINX, TORSO, POWERS, GOLDFISH, BRILLIANT, TAKIO and SCARLET among others, will now be re-released under the DC banner alongside other seminal books such as BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN. These beloved, hard-to-find Jinxworld titles will be accompanied by new stories from continuing series like POWERS, SCARLET and THE UNITED STATES OF MURDER INC., as well as new series such as PEARL and COVER. Catch up with the vast library of graphic novels from one of the greatest comics creators ever with Jinxworld!