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  Four Shocking True Crime Tales -...

  Fred Rosen

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  Four bizarre true crime stories about serial killers, murder sprees, sideshows, and church pulpits in one sensational volume. These grisly true crime books by a former New York Times columnist chronicle four shocking and disturbing cases.  Body Dump: Few people in Poughkeepsie, New York, paid mind when prostitutes started vanishing off the streets. Nor did anyone have hard evidence to link the disappearances to suspect Kendall Francois, a slovenly middle school hall monitor nicknamed Stinky. Then, one woman escaped his house of horrors and led authorities to the ghastly secrets hidden in Francois’s attic.  Flesh Collectors: When social misfit Jeremiah Rodgers and racist devil-worshipper Jonathan Lawrence met in a Florida penal system mental hospital, they discovered a mutual lust for sadism. Then, they were released. What followed was a thrill-killing spree of murder, rape, and cannibalism—the makings of an “unforgettable . . . true crime classic” (Dan Zupansky, host of Blog Talk Radio’s True Murder).  Lobster Boy: With his lobster-claw hands and stunted legs, Grady Stiles Jr. traveled the carnival circuit as Lobster Boy. He was also a violently dangerous husband and father who had been convicted once before of murder. After years of abuse, his wife—a sideshow wonder known as the Electrified Girl—fought back with a murder-for-hire.  Deacon of Death: By day, Sam Smithers, deacon of the Baptist church in Plant City, Florida, was a family man beyond reproach. By night, he was a sex-addicted killer who trolled for prostitutes. When the decomposed bodies of two women were found off a rural road in Tampa, no one suspected the clergyman. Then one day, a local woman saw sweet Mr. Smithers cleaning his bloody axe.

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  Collected Nonfiction - How the...

  Jimmy Breslin

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  Colorful, riveting reportage from a one-of-a-kind Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author.   In his career as a legendary New York City newspaper columnist, Jimmy Breslin “leveled the powerful and elevated the powerless for more than fifty years with brick-hard words and a jagged-glass wit” (The New York Times).  How the Good Guys Finally Won: Following the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, as evidence increasingly mounted against President Richard Nixon, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, led the charge calling for impeachment. In this New York Times bestseller, Breslin’s blow-by-blow, conviction-by-conviction account is a gripping reminder of how O’Neill and his colleagues brought justice to those who abused their power, and revived America after the greatest political scandal in its history.   “Breslin’s reporting is superb and so is his prose, his insights keen and often startling, his wit unceasing.” —Chicago Tribune  The World According to Breslin: In an illustrious career that spanned decades, the seven years that Breslin spent at the New YorkDaily News sparked some of his finest work. When New York City tumbled into economic and social chaos at the end of the 1970s, Breslin was there. In this collection of classic columns, he looks at the city not from the top down but from the bottom up, heralding the heroism of average New Yorkers.   “Superb . . . a master of the tough-talking, thoroughly researched, contentious, street-wise vignette.” —San Francisco Chronicle  The World of Jimmy Breslin: In the 1960s, as the once-proud New York Herald Tribune spiraled into bankruptcy, the brightest light in its pages was an ebullient young columnist named Jimmy Breslin. While ordinary columnists wrote about politics, culture, or the economy, Breslin’s chief topics were the city and himself. He was chummy with cops, arsonists, and thieves, and told their stories with grace, wit, and lightning-quick prose. Whether covering the five boroughs, Vietnam, or the death of John F. Kennedy, Breslin managed to find great characters wherever he went.   “Breslin’s touch is absolutely sure.” —The Washington Post Book World

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  American Justice - A True Crime...

  James Neff

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  Three shocking tales of violence, intrigue, and the search for truth from a two-time Edgar Award finalist and Ann Rule’s “favorite true-crime writer.” In this riveting collection, prize-winning investigative journalist James Neff examines the Dr. Sam Sheppard murder mystery; the terrifying pursuit of a serial rapist in Cleveland, Ohio; and the spectacular rise and fall of Teamster boss Jackie Presser.  The Wrong Man: In 1954, in suburban Cleveland, Dr. Sam Sheppard’s wife, Marilyn, was beaten to death in their home. Investigators, the press, the public, and the courts worked in lockstep to convict Sheppard. Sentenced to life in prison, he served nearly a decade before he was acquitted in a retrial. Culled from DNA evidence, testimony that was never heard in court, prison diaries, and interviews with key players, The Wrong Man makes a convincing case for Sheppard’s innocence and reveals the identity of the true killer. “Gripping and meticulously researched . . . [A] first-degree murder mystery” (People).  Unfinished Murder: From 1983 to 1988, serial rapist Ronnie Shelton preyed on the women of Cleveland. Dubbed the West Side Rapist, he spied on his victims, stalked them, and brutally assaulted them in their homes. Arrested at least fifteen times for other crimes, Shelton slipped through the cracks of the justice system so often it seemed he’d never be caught—until his courageous victims united to put him behind bars. A finalist for the Edgar Award, Unfinished Murder is based on more than 150 interviews with the survivors, the police, psychiatrists, and Shelton himself, who was sentenced to 3,195 years in prison, the longest in Ohio state history.  Mobbed Up: As the president of America’s largest labor union, Jackie Presser navigated a dangerous balancing act with the Teamsters, the Mafia, and the Justice Department. At the same time he was taking orders from New York mob boss Fat Tony Salerno, Presser was serving as the FBI’s top informant on organized crime. Drawing on thousands of pages of classified files, Neff follows the trail of greed and hubris all the way to the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, where Presser was treated as a valued friend. “[A] damning tale . . . A portrait of pervasive corruption that should concern anyone who cares about the way this country works” (Los Angeles Times).

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  American Murder - Three True...

  Darcy O'Brien

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  Three riveting accounts of horrific crimes and the twisted minds behind them by an Edgar Award–winning author, in one volume. A father’s ultimate betrayal, a savage killing spree that terrorized Los Angeles, and the brutal slaying of a rich man’s college-aged daughter. In this heart-stopping true crime collection, New York Times–bestselling author Darcy O’Brien uncovers the dark underside of the American dream.  Murder in Little Egypt: Dr. John Dale Cavaness selflessly attended to the needs of his small, southern Illinois community. But when Cavaness was charged with the murder of his son Sean in December 1984, a radically different portrait of the physician and surgeon emerged. Throughout the three decades he had basked in the admiration and respect of the people of Little Egypt, Cavaness was privately terrorizing his family, abusing his employees, and making disastrous financial investments. In this New York Times bestseller, as more and more grisly details come to light, so too does rural America’s heritage of blood and violence become clear.  The Hillside Stranglers: For weeks, the body count of sexually violated, brutally murdered young women escalated. With increasing alarm, Los Angeles newspapers headlined the deeds of a serial killer they named the Hillside Strangler. But not until January 1979, more than a year later, would the mysterious disappearance of two university students near Seattle lead police to the arrest of a security guard—the handsome, charming, fast-talking Kenny Bianchi—and the discovery that the strangler was not one man but two. The Hillside Stranglers is the disturbing portrait of a city held hostage by fear and a pair of psychopaths whose lust was as insatiable as their hate.  A Dark and Bloody Ground: On a sweltering evening in August 1985, three men breached Roscoe Acker’s alarm and security systems, stabbed his daughter to death, and made off with over $1.9 million in cash. The killers were part of a hillbilly gang led by Sherry Sheets Hodge, a former prison guard, and her husband, lifetime criminal Benny Hodge. The stolen money came in handy shortly afterward, when they used it to lure Kentucky’s most flamboyant lawyer, Lester Burns, into representing them. “The smell of wet, coal-laden earth, white lightning, and cocaine-driven sweat rises from these marvelously atmospheric—and compelling—pages” (Kirkus Reviews).

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  The White Album - Essays

  Joan Didion

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  New York Times Bestseller: An “elegant” mosaic of trenchant observations on the late sixties and seventies from the author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (The New Yorker). In this landmark essay collection, Joan Didion brilliantly interweaves her own “bad dreams” with those of a nation confronting the dark underside of 1960s counterculture.   From a jailhouse visit to Black Panther Party cofounder Huey Newton to witnessing First Lady of California Nancy Reagan pretend to pick flowers for the benefit of news cameras, Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with her signature blend of irony and insight. She takes readers to the “giddily splendid” Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the cool mountains of Bogotá, and the Jordanian Desert, where Bishop James Pike went to walk in Jesus’s footsteps—and died not far from his rented Ford Cortina. She anatomizes the culture of shopping malls—“toy garden cities in which no one lives but everyone consumes”—and exposes the contradictions and compromises of the women’s movement. In the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders—a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one.   Written in “a voice like no other in contemporary journalism,” The White Album is a masterpiece of literary reportage and a fearless work of autobiography by the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times Book Review). Its power to electrify and inform remains undiminished nearly forty years after it was first published.  

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  Here Comes the Sun - The...

  Joshua M. Greene

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  "A fascinating read."–Associated Press 
  Joshua Greene, who studied meditation with the legendary Beatle George Harrison, draws on personal remembrances, recorded conversations, and firsthand accounts to create a moving portrait of Harrison's spiritual life, his profound contribution to the Beatles' music, and previously unpublished anecdotes about his time with music legends Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, and others. 
  "Many well-known artists have touched people's hearts with their music, but few have ever succeeded in touching people's souls. That was George's gift, and his story is described here with affection and taste. A wonderful book."–Mia Farrow

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