Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
A Killing in Iowa - A Daughter's Story of Love and Murder - cover

We are sorry! The publisher (or author) gave us the instruction to take down this book from our catalog. But please don't worry, you still have more than 500,000 other books you can enjoy!

A Killing in Iowa - A Daughter's Story of Love and Murder

Rachel Corbett

Publisher: Byliner

  • 0
  • 2
  • 0

Summary

Rachel Corbett was eight years old when the man she had come to regard as a father killed his girlfriend and then himself on May 13, 1993. Over the years Corbett has been haunted by how such a seemingly gentle, loving man could be capable of murder. She's wrestled with how her mother, who had been involved with the man for years, hadn't seen the signs. And she’s wondered what ghosts from Scott Johnson’s past compelled him to pick up that gun.  
“The sudden brutality that gripped the last hours of his life—and eternally came to characterize it—was a mystery I couldn’t put out of my mind,” writes Corbett. “What broke this soft-spoken, achingly vulnerable man and made him so violent? His was a crime no one ever understood, with no apparent motive…. Why didn’t he just kill himself? What debt did Crystal pay? And why didn’t he kill us? After all, he was with us the day he died.” 
"A Killing in Iowa," Corbett’s mesmerizing, beautifully written memoir, reconstructs the tragedy and tries to make sense of a senseless crime in a place where we least expect such violence: the quiet, rural heartland. Both a mystery story and an evocative snapshot of a place and time, "A Killing in Iowa" is a stunning debut by a gifted new writer. 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Rachel Corbett is an arts writer in New York. She is news editor at "Artnet Magazine" and has written for the "New York Times," "The Nation," and the "New York Observer."
Available since: 11/14/2011.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Giant Killer - The incredible true story a 4' 9" 97lb man who achieved the impossible by becoming a Green Beret Captain and war hero - cover

    The Giant Killer - The...

    David Yuzuk

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    At 4' 9" 97lbs Richard Flaherty is believed to be the smallest man to ever serve in the U.S. military. Needing a congressional waiver just to join the Army he achieved the impossible by becoming a Green Beret Captain and a Vietnam vet war hero earning the Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars and 2 Purple Hearts. - 101st Airborne & 3rd Special Forces Group. 
    Author and police officer David Yuzuk befriended Richard J. Flaherty in 1999, when Flaherty was living homeless on the streets of Miami. Flaherty warned Yuzuk that asking too many questions about his secretive life could be bad for Yuzuk’s career and dangerous to his own health. Sure enough, eight hours after Yuzuk made a call to confirm Flaherty’s identity, Flaherty was killed in a hit-and-run and that sets the stage for a bewildering plummet down a rabbit hole of CIA conspiracies, and shadow governments. It would be the last investigation in Yuzuk's twenty-year police career, stretching from the bloody jungles of Vietnam to the dangerous streets of Iraq and Venezuela. 
    In riveting rifle, rucksack style author, David Yuzuk takes you deep into the jungles of Vietnam to walk in the combat boots of America’s smallest soldier, Richard Flaherty. Starting with the bloody Tet Offensive, Flaherty and his units are engaged in harrowing non-stop action. Written with extensive access to surviving members of the 101st Airborne and 3rd Special Forces Group, on-the-ground eye-witness, family members and friends, as well as archival, and declassified military records, Yuzuk has created a gripping narrative of Richard Flaherty’s inspiring life and career. Yuzuk also releases never published information of a covert operation Flaherty worked in order to locate and recover a recently declassified stolen weapon of mass destruction (Project Green Light). 
    #1 New York Times best seller - Author Doug Stanton "Giant Killers are among us-- author David Yuzuk walked with one and returned with this tale.”
    Show book
  • Finders Keepers - The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million - cover

    Finders Keepers - The Story of a...

    Mark Bowden

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The “unexpectedly moving” story of dumb luck and the American Dream set in South Philly from the # 1 New York Times–bestselling author (Entertainment Weekly).   What would you do if you found a million dollars? When Joey Coyle did, he was a twenty-eight-year-old drug-dependent, unemployed longshoreman living with his ailing mother in a tight-knit Philadelphia neighborhood. While cruising the streets just blocks from his home, fate took a turn worthy of a Hollywood caper when he found $1.2 million in unmarked bills—casino money that had fallen off an armored truck. It was virtually untraceable. Coyle? Not so much.   Over the next seven days, fueled by euphoria, methamphetamine, and paranoia, Coyle shared his windfall with everyone from his eight-year-old niece to total strangers to a local mob boss who offered to “clean” it. All the while, Det. Pat Laurenzi and members of the FBI were working around the clock to find it. No one was prepared for how Coyle’s dream-come-true would come tumbling down, or what would happen when it did.   From “a master of narrative journalism” comes the incredible true-life thriller of an ordinary man with an extraordinary dilemma, and the complicity, concern, and betrayal of friends, family, and neighbors that would prove his undoing (The New York Times Book Review).   “A miniature serio-comedy about life in the city.” —The Washington Post   “Masterfully reported and artfully paced.” —Entertainment Weekly   “A taut, fast-paced tale.” —The Baltimore Sun
    Show book
  • Autopsy of a Crime Lab - Exposing the Flaws in Forensics - cover

    Autopsy of a Crime Lab -...

    Brandon L. Garrett

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    This book exposes the dangerously imperfect forensic evidence that we rely on for criminal convictions."That's not my fingerprint, your honor," said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a "100-percent identification." They were wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day: Where are the studies that validate the basic premises of widely accepted techniques such as fingerprinting? How can experts testify with 100 percent certainty about a fingerprint, when there is no such thing as a 100 percent match? Where is the quality control in the laboratories and at the crime scenes? Should we so readily adopt powerful new technologies like facial recognition software and rapid DNA machines? And why have judges been so reluctant to consider the weaknesses of so many long-accepted methods?Taking us into the lives of the wrongfully convicted or nearly convicted, into crime labs rocked by scandal, and onto the front lines of promising reform efforts driven by professionals and researchers alike, Autopsy of a Crime Lab illustrates the persistence and perniciousness of shaky science and its well-meaning practitioners.
    Show book
  • Death Comes Knocking - Policing Roy Grace's Brighton - cover

    Death Comes Knocking - Policing...

    Graham Bartlett, Peter James

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Fans of Peter James and his bestselling Roy Grace series of crime novels know that his books draw on in-depth research into the lives of Brighton and Hove police and are set in a world every bit as gritty as the real thing. His friend Graham Bartlett was a long-serving detective in the city once described as Britain's 'crime capital'. Together, in Death Comes Knocking, they have written a gripping account of the city's most challenging cases, taking the reader from crime scenes and incident rooms to the morgue, and introducing some of the real-life detectives who inspired Peter James's characters.   
    Whether it's the murder of a dodgy nightclub owner and his family in Sussex's worst non-terrorist mass murder or the race to find the abductor of a young girl, tracking down the antique trade's most notorious 'knocker boys' or nailing an audacious ring of forgers, hunting for a cold-blooded killer who executed a surfer or catching a pair who kidnapped a businessman, leaving him severely beaten, to die on a hillside, the authors skilfully evoke the dangerous inside story of policing, the personal toll it takes and the dedication of those who risk their lives to keep the public safe.
    Show book
  • The Autobiography of a Thief - cover

    The Autobiography of a Thief

    Bruce Reynolds

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    On the 8th August 1963 a gang of 15 men stopped a mail train in Buckinghamshire and proceeded to steal sacks of money worth £2.6 million. It was the biggest heist ever carried out in the UK and frontpage news around the world. The mastermind behind this most audacious crime of the twentieth century was Bruce Reynolds.Perhaps the last of the 'gentlemen villains'; Reynolds epitomised that particular breed of sharply dressed, post-war criminals who mixed with royalty and movie stars, and never carried a gun. They thrived on adventure and glamour, and the Great Train Robbery was their last ride.From his childhood and early forays into crime, to planning the robbery and his life on the run, and finally his capture, prison years and growing old with the gang - this is a true crime classic.Widely regarded as a one of the finest memoirs of a life of crime, Autobiography of a Thief is essential listening for anyone interested in true crime.Narrated by his son, Nick Reynolds, who grew up on the run with his father.
    Show book
  • Murder in Wauwatosa - The Mysterious Death of Buddy Schumacher - cover

    Murder in Wauwatosa - The...

    Paul Hoffman

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    “Looks at the twists and turns in the investigation, possible perpetrators . . . as well as some of the good that eventually came out of this tragedy” (Wauwatosa Patch).   In 1925, the peaceful Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa found itself involved in mystery and horror. Eight-year-old Arthur ‘Buddy’ Schumacher Jr. was last seen by three of his friends after they hopped off a freight train they’d jumped to get a ride to a nearby swimming hole. For seven weeks, the community and state searched desperately to find the boy until his body was found just a mile from his house with his clothing torn and a handkerchief shoved down his throat. The police pursued several promising leads, but to no avail.   Includes photos.   “Tosa native Paul Hoffman reconstructs the case . . . and finds it more than cold . . . He conjures up a picture of a much different Wauwatosa than we know today.” —Shepherd Express   “More than 85 years later, the murder of Buddy Schumacher remains unsolved. There were suspects at the time and their stories and the cases against them are included in Murder in Wauwatosa.” —OnMilwaukee  
    Show book