American Crime

A fearless and spirited pilot conquers Hollywood. Now can she survive movie stardom? In 1945 Velva Jean Hart is a bona fide war heroine. After a newsreel film of her triumphant return to America, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promises to make her a star. They give her a new life story and a brand-new name. As "Kit Rogers", she navigates the movie sets, recording sessions, parties, staged romances, and occasional backstabbing that accompany her newfound fame.

Phox Bello is a fearless, headstrong, high-stepping bombshell of a boss who will do just about anything to secure her empire. The thought of having to collaborate or partner with anyone makes Phox itch with contempt. Hades Metellus is a man who reigns supreme. Everything he touches turns to gold or ash if he so desires. Hades controls everything from his mafia throne, and the power feeds his soul. The thought of having to share space at the top is a concept that he could never wrap his head around, but he better be prepared to get spun. What happens when the two bosses link up?

While back on tribal land, Mud Sawpole uncovers an illegal fracking operation underway that threatens the Kiowas’ ancestral homeland. But there’s an even greater threat: a local businessman involved in artifact thefts is murdered and a respected tribe elder faces accusation of the crime. After being roped in by her cousin, Denny, they begin to investigate the death while also pursuing evidence to permanently stop frackers from destroying Kiowa land, water, and livelihoods. When answers evade her, Mud embraces Kiowa tribal customs to find the answers that she seeks.

American Animals is a coming-of-age crime memoir centered around three childhood friends: Warren, Spencer, and Eric. Disillusioned with freshman year of college, and determined to escape from their mundane Middle-American existences, the three hatch a plan to steal millions of dollars' worth of artwork and rare manuscripts from a university museum. The story that unfolds is a gripping adventure of teenage rebellion, from meetings with black-market art dealers in Amsterdam, to the opulent galleries of Christie's auction house in Rockefeller Center.

America has a long and complicated fascination with serial killers. When we think about the most infamous of these killers, we generally think of men like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or John Wayne Gacy. Those names make headlines while there’s the often-repeated myth that suggests there are no female serial killers. After all, most of us couldn’t name a woman on the same scale of infamy at BTK or the elusive Zodiac Killer, can we? As it so often is, the truth is far more complicated. Women kill.

When an enigmatic message uploaded to the dark web turns out to contain an ancient secret giving regular people the power to do impossible things, like levitate cars or make themselves invisible, American government officials panic. They know the demo videos on YouTube and instructions for incantations could turn from fantastical amusement to dangerous weapon at the drop of the hat, and they scramble to keep the information out of the wrong hands. They tap Ben Zolstra, an ex-CIA field operative whose history with the agency is conflicted at best.

Upstanding officer, dedicated daughter, or stone cold killer? She's taking crime to an unspeakable level. At a very young age, Crystal knew that she wanted to be a police officer just like her father. Crystal's dad was nothing less of a superhero in her eyes and she was flabbergasted every time she caught a glimpse of him on television in his superhero uniform. Of course, as she got older she realized that it was just the evening news reporting local crime, but that didn't undercut her admiration for him.

Marshall Grade, ex agente del dipartimento di polizia di New York, è costretto a vivere sotto protezione a Santa Fe, in New Mexico, dopo un'operazione sotto copertura conclusasi tragicamente. Per un cane sciolto come lui, attenersi alle direttive dei federali non è semplice: ossessionato da un feroce passato, Grade è perennemente in cerca di una possibilità di redenzione. Eppure sa di dover mantenere un profilo basso, perché parecchia gente lo vorrebbe morto e sulle sue tracce c'è uno dei sicari più letali sulla piazza, l'Uomo di Dallas.

After being beaten and left for dead, Steven finds himself stranded alongside the 101 in a small Northern California town. When a mysterious stranger named Quinn offers a hand in exchange for help reuniting with his daughter in San Francisco, Steven gets in the car and begins a journey from which there is no return. Quinn has an agenda all his own and he's unleashing vengeance at each stop along his path. With a coked-up sadist ex-cop chasing Quinn, and two mismatched small town cops chasing the ex-cop, Steven is unaware of the violent tempest brewing.

The hood is an addiction. An addiction that pulls as seductively and fiercely as the drugs hustled on its streets. And living in it is a daily exercise in survival. Raised impoverished in the streets of Miami, David Lee Windecher was only 11 years old when he was arrested for shoplifting. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, deciding to take what he believed he deserved. But that was the beginning for David.

On January 20, 2009, a new occupant had moved into the White House. The transition of power from the previous administration had been orderly and uneventful, and on the surface, seemed to move smoothly through the process as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

What millions of Americans couldn't know was that a few years before the new president was born, another man had been offered two lives to live. His choice would change the lives of every man, woman and child on our planet. Many famous assassinations had been left behind in the wake of his ascension. He destroyed many large individual fortunes and the economies of some countries.

There was no shortage of well-known public enemies like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, but none fascinated the American public as much as Bonnie and Clyde. While the duo and their Barrow Gang were no more murderous than other outlaws of the era, the duo's romantic relationship, and the discovery of photographs at one of their hideouts, added a more human dimension to Bonnie and Clyde, even as they were gunning down civilians and cops alike.

On a quiet summer morning, 17-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. She is barefoot, bloodied, and unable to say what has happened to her; Quinn's appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes - the French family with whom she's been staying - have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family's disappearance.

The exotic island city of the Florida Keys is being terrorized by murders committed by a mysterious voodoo assassin. With each new kill, it becomes clear that the skeleton-clad executioner has an ecological agenda. The novel propels us through a complex maze populated by defenders of America's only continental reef, rapacious developers, ruthless scammers, destroyers of marine life, and common people engaged in heroic acts to save their paradise. Everyone dreads being the killer's next victim as the clock counts down to the end of hurricane season and a final dramatic explosion of fear and rage.

America has always preferred heroes who weren't clean cut, an informal ode to the rugged individualism and pioneering spirit that defined the nation in previous centuries. The early 19th century saw the glorification of frontier folk heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. After the Civil War, the outlaws of the West were more popular than the marshals, with Jesse James and Billy the Kid finding their way into dime novels.

Crime in America features selections from a series of six books Paul Brakke wrote on what's wrong with the criminal justice system and how to fix it. These books deal with the police, courts, and prisons, and consider of some of the crises now facing America due to illegal immigration, the opioid crisis, and the growing divide between racial, ethnic, rural-urban, and income groups. This book summarizes the critical insights of these other books in order to reach the widest possible audience, because one of Brakke's reasons for writing this book is to inspire real change.

Billy the Kid once said that he killed 22 men - one for each year that he lived. While it’s more likely that he only killed eight or nine, this young outlaw was clearly deadly. But his brief and brutal life reveals how his tragic existence led him into a life of crime. After growing up in poverty as an Irish immigrant in New York City and losing his father at a young age, Billy the Kid had to endure losing his mother when he was only 15.

On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s 50th birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. The young nation had outlived the men who made it, but could it survive intensifying divisions over the very meaning of the land of the free? American Radicals is a dynamic, timely history of 19th-century activists - free-lovers and socialists, abolitionists and vigilantes - and the social revolution they sparked in the turbulent Civil War era.

Norogachi, Chihuahua. Unas furiosas garras de fuego iluminan el cielo nocturno y abrasan la iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar. Mientras el pueblo trajina inútilmente cubetas de agua para intentar apagar el incendio y todos se preguntan qué sucedió, en la montaña sólo se escuchan los aullidos del Lobo Montejo, un exsacerdote que colgó los hábitos para formar una familia y vivir en comunidad. El incendio ha socavado el último reducto de paz y es la señal definitiva de que el mal pretende asentarse en todas partes.

Jake Carlson, a correspondent for the TV news show American Outrage, inhabits a world of sensational trials and crazed celebrities. One of the nation's top television journalists, he's used to dragging himself through the dirt to get to the truth. When his adopted son, Sam, asks him to use his muckraking talents to find his birth mother, Jake is stunned by the ugly secrets he unearths.