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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, i.e., the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America's national security.

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.

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma’s Indian Country, these tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land. Journalist and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County.

My world was built on lies and secrets, eating away at the good parts of me. When knowing too much incriminating information could get you killed, your only choices are to adapt or die. There are things about me others would never understand. Yet, one knowing look from her and I realize that my world just got more complicated. She could be my sanctuary in more ways than one. Or she might just be the siren leading me to my demise.

An American King unfolds during a violent rash of crime in Whicher's hometown. Working for the Abilene US Marshals Office, Whicher investigates a baffling murder, part of an outbreak of lawlessness that threatens to escalate out of control. Assigned a new partner to help work a case unlike any he's known, what starts in shadow soon burns a path across the city, ever closer to home.

Reminiscent of Goodfellas, American Trash is a gritty tale of organized crime. Only in this story, it is not the Italian mafia; it is the largest crime organization in the state of Missouri. Running their operation out of Funland - a stationary carnival outside Branson - these violent criminals are carnies by day, killers by night.

Sam Melville was both reviled and admired as one of the most feared radicals in post-World War II history. His importance in the 1960s is widely recognized by historians and scholars as epitomizing the controversies, the promise, and the problems of the New Left. This memoir by Melville’s son opens a window into the personal life of a legend, revealing the universal and all-too-human foibles motivating those driven to make change through violence.

Known for deep dives into true crime, extremist ideologies and fringe subcultures, journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward American New Age culture. Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere — from Instagram and TikTok, sold at upscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Sottile investigates how the recent surge of interest in New Age ideas speaks to a culture that is woven into the very fabric of America, and how self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha have built devout followings because of it.