Police State

On a chilly November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps off a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling. Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. An Athens native and the daughter of a UGA professor, she knows all its shameful histories, from the skull discovered under the foundations of Baldwin Hall to the hushed-up murder-suicide in Waddel.

Paloma has been watching the Grand Vespertilio Show her entire life. Grand, America’s most beloved horror host showcases classic, low-budget and cult horror movies with a flourish, wearing his black tuxedo and hat, but Paloma has noticed something strange about Grand, stranger than his dark make-up and Gothic television set.

Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire the events of 2020 had clear precursors - and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s strife, America on Fire is also a warning: Rebellions will surely continue until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.

In Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the follow-up to his award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. Indeed, police have been transformed into extensions of the military, towns and cities have become battlefields.

Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.

It's spring in Lake Holly, New York, a time of hope and renewal. But not for immigrants in this picturesque upstate town. Raids and deportations are on the rise, spurring fear throughout the community. Tensions reach the boiling point when the district attorney's beautiful young bride is found hanging in her flooded basement, an apparent victim of suicide. But is she, wonders Vega? If so, where is her undocumented immigrant maid?

On a clear, moonlit night in December, police detective Jimmy Vega races to the scene of a reported home invasion in an upscale New York community. As Vega arrives, he spots a Hispanic man who fits the description of the armed intruder running from the victim's estate. Vega chases him into the woods. When the suspect refuses to surrender - and reaches into his pocket - Vega has only seconds to make a life-or-death decision.

Bureau of Indian Affairs special agent Joe Evers still mourns the death of his wife and, after a bungled investigation, faces a forced early retirement. What he needs is a new career, not another case. But when Congressman Arlen Edgerton's bullet-riddled Lincoln turns up on the Navajo reservation—twenty years after he disappeared during a corruption probe—Joe must resurrect his failing career to solve the mysterious cold case.

The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the center of the conflict and the controversy, Keith Ellison grappled with the means of bringing justice for Floyd and his family. Now, in this riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial, Ellison takes the listener down the path his prosecutors took, offering different breakthroughs and revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.

In the second book of the PATHS CROSSED series, the listener shadows the author as he sheds the uniform of a trooper for the plainclothes of a detective to take a closer look at unsolved crimes. These true cases, ranging from murders, to a serial kidnapper of children, to organized crime, to police shootings, and more, are full of twists and turns that often sound like fiction.

Award-winning author Suzanne Chazin returns with a stirring novel of deadly misdeeds and heartbreaking choices in a seasoned homicide cop's hometown. A split-second decision thrusts Detective Jimmy Vega into the epicenter of a disturbing case when a body is found near a gathering place for immigrants in upscale Lake Holly, New York. The cold-bloodedness of the crime and the innocence of the victim torment Vega. But so does the feeling that he's to blame.

Spanning 160 years, History in Blue is the first book to tell the riveting story of the uphill struggle for respect and recognition sustained by women in the modern police force. Featuring rare photographs and original interviews with pioneering female officers, this fascinating book chronicles the ongoing fight for equality in the world of law enforcement. In this vivid and remarkable history, Allan T. Duffin tells of the extraordinary women who broke down the barriers of gender so that they - and many generations of successors could do the work they loved most.

Five shoot-outs, each more bizarre than the previous, sprinkled with suspenseful interludes, make for a compelling book. The story unfolds in 1957 when a WWII veteran, convicted sexual predator, and parole absconder, picks up a hitchhiker in Maine, who is a drifter with no criminal record. Matched, they embark on an undetected nationwide crime spree until an intuitive Michigan trooper begins to unmask their criminality.

Randall Stevens, at 20 years old in 1966, was a wide-eyed, naive boy still a year away from being able to claim adulthood at that magic age of 21. Having come up with the idea to join one of the best state police organizations in the nation, he began the journey to become a Massachusetts State Police Trooper.

Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States is the untold story of how, through a series of landmark but largely unknown decisions, the Supreme Court has dramatically curtailed the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in service of policing borders. The Border Patrol exercises exceptional powers to conduct warrantless stops and interrogations within one hundred miles of land borders or coastlines, an area that includes nine of the ten largest cities and two thirds of the American population.

Pete Long has it made. As a star high school basketball player, he's just received a full athletic scholarship from Purdue University and is already being scouted by the pro team. But when Pete meets up with a group of street players, something terrible happens. And Pete's life is changed forever.

Virgil Jones has it all: A beautiful wife and family he loves, a job he enjoys, a tight-knit group of friends and coworkers he trusts with his life, and more money than he could ever spend. But one of those friends has a secret, one they've been hiding for over a year.... The governor needs something from Virgil's wife, Sandy. When he tells her what he wants, she finds herself intrigued by the idea. In fact, she's more than intrigued. Sandy thinks she may have found a new purpose in her life, if, that is, Virgil goes along with the idea.... Except there's a problem.

When Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agent Chris Dobson goes after one of Virgil's own, he does so in a horrific manner, one that leaves Virgil and his wife, Sandy, in shock and exiles two of their best friends at a time when they need them the most. Virgil's life is in a state of chaos. He's managing a new family, a bar he owns with his best friends, he’s trying to unload 2,000 acres of inherited farmland in Shelby County without giving up the mineral rights, and he is working both for and against the head of the MCU, Ron Miles. But something else is happening as well.

A young female student has gone missing from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Patty Doyle is a senior with her whole life ahead of her. In the middle of wrapping up her final semester, she disappears without a trace, and what begins as a missing person's case turns into something much more, not just for Patty, but for Virgil as well.... Four months ago, Virgil's best friend and brother, Murton Wheeler, killed the man responsible for viciously attacking Virgil's wife, Sandy, and their unborn son, Wyatt.

Virgil Jones is in for the fight of his life. In recovery after being kidnapped and nearly tortured to death on his previous case, he is addicted to prescription pain killers, his life is spinning out of control and the governor has just fired him from his position as lead detective of the Indiana State Police Major Crimes Unit.