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  The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes...

  Alexandre Dumas

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  To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language—has minced no words—to describe violent scenes of violent times. In particular, the torture of Beatrice Cenci at the hands of the authorities of Rome is given in brutal and clinical detail, sparing nothing.In this, the second of the series, Dumas tells the frankly horrifying story of the tragic sons and daughers of Francesco Cenci. More beast than man in Dumas' portrait, Francesco hated them all with extraordinary cruelty and exploited them all diabolically; in particular, he sexually exploited his two daughters, especially Beatrice, both at the same time and often in the same bed as his wife Lucrezia (no relation to the famouse Borgia princess of the same name.) When, finally, his family turned on him and had him murdered, it looked for a while as though they might get away with it, but their fortunes were not that fortunate. The authorities, from Pope Clement VI on down, took bloody and terrible vengeance upon them. In what is arguably the first battered-woman defence, the crimes of the father meant nothing; the crimes of the women, everything.Never one to allow a mere fact to stand in the way of a good story, Dumas seems to restrain himself more than usual here, though he does occasionally portray a scene from the point of view of the proverbial fly on the wall. Again, as the translator notes, "The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, will recognize, and allow for, this fact." We're reading Dumas here, not Tuchman or Toynbee.Enjoy!

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  Beast of New Castle - The...

  Larry Sells, Margie Porter

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  The terrifying life of a rampaging Indiana killer is vividly chronicled in this true crime book by the co-authors of Race to Justice.   Maybe the youngest son of a violent criminal named Hoggy Thompson was born a beast. Maybe rage was beaten into him. One thing was certain, by the time he reached manhood, Jerry Thompson was a savage killer. He had no conscience about rape, child molestation, or thrashing a dozen men in a prison fight. Once he got his hands on a gun, any target would do. He didn't leave witnesses. When he terrorized an entire courtroom and threatened to rip deputy prosecutor Larry Sells apart, people wondered if there would ever be a way to stop his viciousness. In Beast of New Castle, Sells and co-author Margie Porter take a deep dive into the life and crimes of this unrelenting violent offender, and the desperate quest by law enforcement to stop him for good.

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  Identity Crisis - The Murder the...

  Jefferson Bass

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  Renowned forensic anthropologist Bill Bass—founder of the Body Farm—tackles one of his most baffling cases ever in this real-life spellbinder. 
  In 1978, fifty-six-year-old Leoma Patterson left a bar in Clinton, Tennessee, and was never seen again. Six months later, a female skeleton was found on a wooded lakeshore in a neighboring county. The bones were consistent with those of the missing woman, and one of Patterson's daughters recognized a ring found at the death scene as her mother's. The bones were buried, and six years later, a relative of Patterson's—one of the men she was last seen alive with—confessed to killing her. Case closed. 
  But the tentative identification—made years before DNA testing was available to confirm it—failed to convince some of Patterson's relatives. And so it was that in 2005 Dr. Bass found himself winding around hairpin curves to the mountainside grave, where he would unearth the disputed remains and collect DNA samples. The forensic twists and turns that followed would test the limits of DNA technology . . . and of Dr. Bass's half-century of forensic knowledge.

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  384 Months: The Sacrificial Lamb

  Anthony Gonzalez

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  How could a man who had the world as his playground while the manager of a platinum-selling rap group suddenly lose it all? Anthony “Geezy” Gonzalez writes in his own words about how his life’s circumstances and choices led him from being called “The Man” on the streets to a federal prisoner. Feel his joy, pride, and even his shame as he takes you from his beginnings on Southgate Ave. in Virginia Beach, around the world with The Clipse, and into a courtroom where he hears his sentence: 384 Months.

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  Tender Murderers - Women Who Kill

  Trina Robbins

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  The did it for love or money...or both!Some of them fabled femme fatales of yesteryear. some headliners in yesterday's newspapers. Jean Harris, Ruth Snyder, Kate Bender, Belle Starr, Bonnie Parker, Phoolan Devi, Lizzie Borden, Grace Marks, Valerie Solanas, Amy Fisher and more - true - life who, where, why, when, and howdunnits. Bandit queens, gun molls, mothers, and widows (often self-made)- this array of real-life women who murdered makes for fascinating reading. Thoroughly researched, with archival photos and illustrations.

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  The Rape Scandal that Puts You...

  Linda Fairstein

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  A harrowing investigation into law enforcement’s failure to process hundreds of thousands of rape kits across America—allowing many rapists to walk free. In 2011, advocacy groups estimated that up to 250,000 rape kits sat untested in police storage across the country. These kits, some from crimes dating as far back as the mid-1990s, represent a disturbing breakdown in law enforcement that has allowed many violent criminals to remain on the streets. In some cases, rape victims are kept in the dark about the investigations into the crimes committed against them. Legal expert Linda Fairstein illustrates this injustice with the story of a Los Angeles woman whose experience, Fairstein writes, “is a tragic example of the outrageous backlog of untested rape kits that has existed nationwide for more than a decade.” In The Rape Scandal that Puts You at Risk, Fairstein lays bare these failures of law enforcement and issues a rallying cry for women everywhere to demand change. Originally published in Cosmopolitan, this essay is now available in digital format for the first time and features a new introduction by the author.

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