True Urban

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

"I have a television so I know what a family is supposed to look like but mine is nothing like that. To begin with, both my parents are dead. Not the kind of dead where you bury them in the ground, say some nice words, cry a lot and then never see them again. Nope, when they died they refused to ‘go into the light’ or whatever it is you’re supposed to do when you die. Instead, they came back home. As ghosts. Have you ever been sent to your room by a parent who has no corporeal form? I have and it sucks..."

When I moved to Prosper Woods, California, a couple of weeks ago, I’d had big plans for a quiet life. Let’s just say, things haven’t exactly turned out the way I expected they would. For one thing, as new sheriff, I hadn’t planned on investigating a murder the day after my arrival. For another thing, no one told me supernatural creatures existed. I didn’t believe it at first, but when Vincent Lasco suddenly smiled at me with a mouth full of fangs, things got interesting.

Twenty-eight year old Kennedy Logan is gorgeous, educated, talented, and in love. Unfortunately, Drake Collins has other ideas about the true state of their relationship. Kennedy hopes to turn him around; Drake just wants to turn her out sexually. Kennedy is also searching for her biological mother, who gave her up at birth. She wants answers, and she has tons of questions. The enormous weight of these predicaments leads to a failed suicide attempt.

My name is Vincent Lasco. I’ve searched a long time to find a new place to settle down. Because of what I am, I need to pull up stakes and start over every 20 years or so - before people realize that I don’t age anymore. Prosper Woods has everything a man like me could ever want. Though there aren’t many humans, it doesn’t really matter. I’m so old, I don’t need to eat very often, and there’s no reason to expose myself to the locals whom I hope to call friends some day.

Elsabet or Elizabeth Bathory's life is notorious and, for the most part, known to history. What she's done since is another story altogether. Haunted by the crimes of her life and by her bloodfather, Vlad Dracula, Elsa seeks a life of her own in the New World. But her past will always catch up to her and she must face her demon.

Peace. That's what Synovi now had and cherished more than anything. Free from all the disturbances his chaotic life once ensued, he wanted nothing more than to keep it that way. With a thriving business and relationship, almost nothing could take him back to that dark place of no love. His Love didn't reside there. His world is still hers, and she is still his. Without warning, Torin inserted herself into Synovi's life and remained. She's the person he can run to when everything begins to fade, but there's a price to pay when you have a good heart.

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer.

In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered.

Journey into the dark recesses of the wilderness with terrifying and true tales of horrific encounters and unexplained phenomena. From bone-chilling run-ins with Bigfoot and elusive cryptozoological creatures, to mind-bending UFO and ghost sightings, and run ins with horrible humans. This collection of first-hand stories from park rangers, police officers, hunters, campers, hikers, and more will leave you wondering what really lurks beyond the safety of civilization.

Zahn believed that magic existed. He even knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that leftover relics of magic existed in the world. He owned a few, after all. But he always considered himself a rational sort of guy. When he went on "relic-dives" to uncover lost magic, he did his research. He didn't believe fanciful myths. He scraped away the garbage and only went after magical items that had a good chance of actually existing.

All Detective Romeo Moon wanted to do was hunt down and capture a mass-murdering demon-god who just so happened to be a member of his family. A man-to-dog shifter himself, he'd usually be up for the task, family or not, especially with the help of his best friend, a mixed-species zombie-human undertaker.... But what is one to do when you discover a conspiracy that includes the mayor, the city police, a robber baron with the most powerful magic of all (money), a Dracula Vampire, and an army of both the living and the dead all involved in a plot to take over the city?

At the end of the 1976 football season, more than forty Harvard athletes went to Boston's Combat Zone to celebrate. In the city's adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. At the end of the night, Italian American star athlete Andy Puopolo, raised in the city's North End, was murdered in a stabbing. Three African American men were accused of the crime. His murder made national news and led to the eventual demise of the city's red-light district.

Headed for some well-deserved shore leave, Shepard is gunned down in the streets of Seattle, a victim of "a mugging gone stupid." He awakens, not in a hospital bed, but in the surreal world of Purgatory. Within seconds of his arrival, he is saved from a gruesome and painful end by his new best friend, Horace. That's Quintus Horatius Flaccus the philosopher, to you Roman history buffs. Horace explains to Shepard the cold, hard rules for surviving in Purgatory. More than just the walls have ears, and he's not sure how long Shepard will last.

My life couldn’t get any better or more bizarre. Ever since moving to small town Prosper Woods, California, and meeting my vampire lover, the oddest things have been happening. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the fact that this whole place has turned out to be one giant melting pot of the strangest paranormal creatures on the planet. Let’s face it, this little place is like the United Nations of weirdos. Not all of them like me.

Surprising, charming, upsetting, enlightening, and ultimately hopeful - driven by the insight and humor of Salzman’s voice and by the intelligence, candor, and strength of his students, whose writing appears throughout the book - True Notebooks is itself a reward of the self-expression Mark Salzman teaches: a revelatory meditation on the process, power, and meaning of writing.

Aurora has spent the past year fighting for survival, freedom, and justice. Now she's about to face the biggest battle of her life. Field agents are turning up dead and everyone is working to stop Jared before he starts a full-blown war between vampires and hunters.

In this Third Edition of our Preparedness Guide, we aim to give the everyday urbanite/suburbanite a starting point to build a buffer of safety and security in the face of a disaster situation. We firmly believe resilience is built through knowledge and preparation. Disaster preparedness is only as complicated as you make it, therefore there is little reason why anyone living in urban environments (including apartments and condos) cannot implement effective measures to mitigate localized disasters.

On the 50th anniversary of her murder, Kevin Cook presents the real Kitty Genovese. She was a vibrant young woman - unbeknownst to most, a lesbian - a bartender working (and dancing) her way through the colorful, fast-changing New York of the ’60s, a cultural kaleidoscope marred by the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, and race riots. Downtown, Greenwich Village teemed with beatniks, folkies, and so-called misfits like Kitty and her lover. Kitty Genovese evokes the Village’s gay and lesbian underground with deep feeling and colorful detail.