True Crime Women

A tanker steaming through the deep Northwest Providence Channel of the Bahamas comes across a shocking sight: a lone dinghy carrying Captain Julian Harvey and the body of a young girl. They are all that remain of the ketch Bluebelle, a handsome sixty-foot sailing yacht chartered by the Duperrault family of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down. The Calabrian Mafia - known as the ’Ndrangheta - is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals - supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists - and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the EU.

The extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary, who in 1974 became the only woman to pull off a major art heist, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer is Rose Dugdale’s story, from her idyllic upbringing in Devonshire and her presentation to Elizabeth II as a debutante to her university years and her eventual radical lifestyle.

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.

Carmen Aguirre has lived many lives, all of them to the fullest. At age six she was a Chilean refugee adjusting to life as a Latina in North America. At 18 she was a revolutionary dissident. In her early 20s she fought to find her voice as an actor and to break away from the stereotypical roles thrust upon her - Housekeeper, Hotel Maid, Mexican Hooker #1.

The lush, green hills that mark the border of North and South Carolina are home to a close-knit community. When the savaged remains of high-spirited Heather Catterton and sweet-natured Randi Saldana were found and a local man was linked to their murders, residents were forced to face an evil in their midst. The killer was one of their own….

Legendary outlaw Belle Starr has been written about and portrayed in various media for well over one hundred years. Born Myra Maybelle Shirley in Missouri in 1848, Belle lived most of her life in Texas. She became notorious after living with and hanging out with members of the James and Younger gangs. Belle was a crack shot who rode side saddle while engaging in horse thievery, cattle rustling, and holdups. In between these activities, Belle bore two children and was involved with (though not necessarily married to) several men, including Sam Starr.

Skating on Thin Ice exposes the culture of toxic masculinity in professional hockey and suggests how sport and society can change the narrative on sexual assault and violence.

Chicago, 1924. There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper".

It's a case reminiscent of the explosive story of Susan Smith, convicted in the drownings of her two young sons in South Carolina. But in The Unforgiven, three young children are in the back seat of a car driven by Amanda Hamm's boyfriend as it slips into an Illinois lake. Amanda and her boyfriend survive. Her three children do not.

In 2006, Mary Turner Thomson’s world shattered when she discovered her husband Will was a bigamist, con man and convicted sex offender. Unbeknownst to her, this would be the start of a bold new chapter in her life, fighting to protect other women from his heartless gaslighting campaigns—and putting a stop to his endless deception. Mary thought her story would end with the revelation that Will in fact had several families—and numerous children. But when she discovered that he had continued to prey on new victims, she vowed to turn his betrayal into a force for good.

Having worked for 16 years in a high security women’s prison dealing with the likes of Rosemary West and Myra Hindley, Vanessa Frake thought she’d seen just about everything. That was until she was transferred to the notorious Wormwood Scrubs as head of security and operations. Thrust into a ‘man’s world’, her no nonsense approach and fearless attitude saw her rise through the ranks, as she engaged in daily battles of the wits with both inmates and staff.

When Notes on a Silencing hit bookstores in the summer of 2020, even amidst a global pandemic, it sent shockwaves through the country. Not only did this intimate investigative memoir usher in a media storm of coverage, but it also prompted the elite St. Paul's School to issue a formal apology to the author, Lacy Crawford, for its handling of her report of sexual assault by two fellow students nearly 30 years ago.

"Elle est la plus dangereuse de toutes les espionnes alliées. Nous devons la trouver et la détruire." 1942, la Gestapo lance un message d'alerte. Leur cible ? Virginia Hall. Une jeune femme, recrutée par les services secrets britanniques pour mener d'importantes missions d'espionnage en France occupée. Pourtant, rien ne prédestinait cette jeune américaine, issue d'une riche famille de Baltimore, à devenir cette combattante héroïque de la Résistance française. Amputée d'une jambe à la suite d'un grave accident, elle doit très jeune renoncer à son rêve de diplomatie.

Canadian women judges and criminal lawyers tell of cases that they have found particularly challenging in this fourth book of the Durvile True Cases series. Some were disquieting and perplexing or had surprising turns, many are high-profile, and many continue to have interesting social or personal effect.

Every mother's worst fear became Sharon Rocha's reality. On Christmas Eve 2002, she received a phone call from her son-in-law saying that her daughter, Laci, was missing. In the hours, days, and eventually months that followed, Sharon struggled to avoid accepting what no parent should ever have to face: the certain knowledge that her child is never coming home.

Ten years ago, Katy, a promising young journalist, left her desk and was never seen again. Someone knows what happened to her. The controlling boyfriend? The inappropriate professor? The clingy colleague? When Katy went missing, it wasn’t just her devastated mother, Grace, whose life was ruined. Now, a new documentary delving into the missing person case threatens to open old wounds. As Grace gets closer to the truth, she discovers just how far people are willing to go to keep the past hidden.

When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.

When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone.

The shocking first true account from one of the young girls who lived through and survived the Rotherham sex abuse scandal. In the summer of 2014, the Rotherham sex abuse scandal sent shockwaves through the nation. A report revealed that since the 1990s, up to 1,400 young girls in the town had been regularly abused by sex gangs, predominantly comprised of Pakistani men.