True Time

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy, which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man.

"If you aim your children at anything less than greatness, you'll set them up to miss the whole point of their lives," says author Tim Kimmel. In Raising Kids for True Greatness, Kimmel turns the definition of success on its head and guides you in preparing your child for a life that will easily eclipse the goals of those who are merely successful.

For 20 years, gang unit detectives Tim Brennan and Robert Ladd patrolled the streets of Compton. They witnessed the birth and rise of gangsta rap with acts they knew personally, such as N.W.A and D.J. Quik; dealt firsthand with the chaos of the L.A. riots, its aftermath, and the gang truce that followed; were involved in the investigations of the murders of hip-hop stars Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., and were major players in an all-out tug-of-war with City Hall that ultimately resulted in the permanent shut-down of the Compton Police Department.

Former Golf Digest editor Don Wade has collected literally hundreds of anecdotes from some of the greatest names in the sport and delivers those stories in a series of captivating volumes. This particular collection assembles not only golf legends like Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Amy Alcott, Lee Trevino, and Jack Nicklaus, but other notables such as Bing Crosby and Jack Lemmon—not to mention Howard Hughes and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client.

Why do we sleep? Do animals dream? Where is the oldest bed in the world? In this compendium of five-minute really true stories, you will travel to ancient Egypt to explore the five beds of Tutankhamun, jet off into space to discover how astronauts get ready for bed, and plunge underwater to learn how hibernating turtles breathe through their bottoms. With up-to-the-minute, expert information that is beautifully read by British actress Joanna Lumley, this audiobook is the ultimate brainy bedtime companion for young children.

Iowa housewife Tracey Pittman Roberts seemed to have it all: natural beauty, three loving children, and a fairy-tale second marriage to a wealthy, handsome businessman. But beneath the happy façade was a woman who used lies, manipulation, sex, ugly allegations, blackmail - and even murder - to serve her own selfish ends. In 2001, police rushed to Tracey's home after a shooting left her vulnerable young neighbor dead. Tracey claimed it was an act of self-defense. Nine gunshot wounds - and a decades-long trail of extortion and fraud - said otherwise.

In 2018, after nearly a decade's hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, only brought to a halt by a global pandemic. Award-winning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering them both locally for the Nashville Scene alt-weekly and nationally for The Appeal.

For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman have featured a recurring character—an alter ego of sorts, a shape-shifting, time-travelling elemental being named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Though we have glimpsed her across the years, and on countless canvases, it is finally time to hear her story, in her own words. And, in doing so, to hear the whole history of Turtle Island anew.

Bloodstains is the startling tale of one man’s search for the truth after inheriting the personal diaries belonging to his great-great-grandfather who, he discovers, was America’s first and most notorious serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett. Better known by his alias H.H. Holmes, Mudgett was the mass murderer who struck terror in the nation by being the proprietor of the infamous Murder Castle and stalking the streets of Chicago during the 1893 World’s Fair.

Three-Time World Champ tells the electric story of how Ted became the master of the run-and-gun smuggling business around the Caribbean islands, hustling in hundreds of millions of dollars in weed under the noses of cops and Coast Guard patrols—until a dubious traffic stop starts the unraveling of everything. What began as easy money became a ringside seat to kidnapping, murder, police double-crosses, and a harrowing turn in prison.

On a dangerous mission for the British army, young Major Washington had no idea that one day he would lead an army of fellow colonials in a bitter battle for independence against Great Britain herself, the most powerful empire in the world. In each new crisis, the young United States sought out George Washington. As commander in chief of the Continental army, chairman of the Constitutional Convention, and first president, this indispensable American served the struggling nation when its survival and form hung in the balance.

On August 14, 1975, eight daring thieves ransacked 148 massive safe-deposit boxes at a secret bank used by organized crime, La Cosa Nostra, and its associates in Providence, Rhode Island. The crooks fled with duffel bags crammed full of cash, gold, silver, stamps, coins, jewels, and high-end jewelry. The true value of the loot has always been kept secret, partly because it was ill-gotten to begin with, and partly because there was plenty of incentive to keep its true worth out of the limelight.

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber tells the hilarious and improbable true story of Attila Ambrus, the Robin Hood of Eastern Europe. He's the onetime pelt smugger, goaltender (possibly the worst in the history of pro hockey), pen salesman, Zamboni driver, gravedigger, church painter, roulette addict, building superintendent, whiskey drinker, and native of Transylvania who's decided that the best thing to do with his time is to rob as many banks as possible.

A rising number of people today are troubled by a phenomenon for which they don't know there's a name. This condition is called emotional inflammation - a state not unlike post-traumatic stress, but one that stems from simply living in today's tumultuous world. If you've suffered from sleep problems, hyperreactivity, persistent grief, or inescapable worry about the future - especially triggered by the nonstop news cycle - then you're probably dealing with emotional inflammation. The good news is: there's something you can do about it.

Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For two and a half years at the end of the 1950s, as a Lt. Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service, he smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, as well as 160 rolls of microfilm, out from behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1961, he abandoned his wife and children and made a dramatic defection across divided Berlin with his East German mistress to the safety of American territory.

This program is read by the author. When detective Ron Stallworth, the first Black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a PO box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a White man.

In January 1923, 20-year-old Fritzie Mann left home for a remote cottage by the sea to meet a man whose identity she had revealed to no one. The next morning, the barely clad body of the beautiful and bewitching dancer washed up on lonely Torrey Pines beach, her party dress and possessions strewn about on the sand.

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute - men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.

Women are notorious over-preparers and underestimators when it comes to their own readiness to try something new. But as Emma teaches, what most often holds us back are our own fears, excuses, and doubts. With her revolutionary manifesto, Winging It, Emma shares a rallying cry for all women to “do the things that scare you, build your wealth, make an impact, fail lots, and get up and try again”.