Vigilante Crime

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

With money and hope in short supply, newly minted attorney Brigham Theodore decides it’s time to lower his standards. He joins a seedy fly-by-night firm in Salt Lake City out of desperation. After he loses his first case - a speeding ticket - he’s convinced his career is over. But to his shock, his boss hands him a slightly more complex case: capital murder.

Dave Robicheaux returns in another Bayou adventure, this one more gruesome and gut-wrenching than any that have come before. Hurricane Katrina has ravaged New Orleans, leaving the streets and buildings flooded and the city awash with opportunists, looters, and vicious criminals. There is no order, no law. Police are shooting randomly at innocent people, prison guards have abandoned their posts, and bodies float through the streets and hang from trees.

Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep - a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. - is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones....

In a parched Southern California of the near future, Luz, once the poster child for the country's conservation movement, and Ray, an army deserter turned surfer, are squatting in a starlet's abandoned mansion. Most "Mojavs", prevented by armed vigilantes from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to encampments in the east. Holdouts like Ray and Luz subsist on rationed cola and water and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.

Swan Peak finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcell have retreated to stay at an old friend's ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from the harsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina.

In this important and revealing book, Jamie Bartlett takes us deep into the digital underworld and presents an extraordinary look at the Internet we don't know. Beginning with the rise of the Internet and the conflicts and battles that defined its early years, Bartlett reports on trolls, pornographers, drug dealers, hackers, political extremists, Bitcoin programmers, and vigilantes - and puts a human face on those who have many reasons to stay anonymous.

After Mafia pressure destroyed his family, ace sniper Mack Bolan left the jungles of Southeast Asia to declare a new war on the home front. A one-man army, he wiped out the mob in his Massachusetts hometown. That was just the beginning. Hunted by the police, tracked by the FBI, and carrying a price on his head, Bolan is on the move. After crossing paths with an old war buddy in Los Angeles, the Executioner devises a plan. He's going to round up the best sharpshooters, scouts, demo experts, and hardcore killers and clean up the West Coast.

Fellow orphans, amateur vigilantes, and members of the Santitos, Loup Garron-the fugitive daughter of a genetically engineered "wolf-man"-and Pilar Ecchevarria spent their entire lives under military occupation in a cordoned off Texas no-man's-land that used to be called Santa Olivia, now known as Outpost 12.But now they're free, and they want to help the rest of the Santitos escape.

A little more than a year after the Fixer killings, Detective Mort Grant of the Seattle PD once again has his hands full. In the last four months, seven men have been murdered in seedy pay-by-the-hour motels: first strangled, then tied with rope and set on a bed of crushed mothballs, with a red lipstick kiss planted on their foreheads. Speculation abounds that the killer is a prostitute who's turning her tricks into dead men. The press has taken to calling her Trixie.

An ugly childhood and devastating betrayal have left 25-year-old Cain Jensen scarred inside and out. Protecting himself means keeping everyone at arm's length and protecting others means never getting emotionally involved. But nothing he's ever experienced has prepared the cold-hearted and very straight Cain for who he finds on that mountain...or the intense need to suddenly offer more than just protection. Will two men who've vowed never to let someone close again let down their guard long enough to find each other, or will they let their pasts determine their future?

There is no match for the Sisterhood - the seven friends who have taken vigilante justice to a new level - not even the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Although the women foiled former FBI director Mitch Riley's plot to frame their friends, Judge Nellie Easter and lawyer Lizzie Fox, now they must remain in exile or risk capture.

When the body of an anonymous young Hispanic woman dressed as Queen Marie Antoinette is dredged from the Detroit River, the Detroit Police Department wants the case closed out fast. Wayne County coroner Dr. Bobby Falconi gives the woman’s photo to his old pal August Snow, insisting August show it around his native Mexicantown. August’s good friend Elena recognizes the woman immediately. Her story is one the authorities don’t want getting around - and she’s not the only young woman to have disappeared during an ICE raid only to turn up dead a few weeks later.

Theo Potiris is a grocer and a comedian who never repeats his jokes. After 15 years of open mics, he's still waiting for his break - bicycling to the comedy club at night, stacking plums at his family's grand and ramshackle supermarket by day. His girlfriend is halfway around the world, searching for enlightenment with a patron who happens to be the richest man on Earth, and when two other loved-ones get struck by bolts from the blue, Theo decides he can't keep chasing his old dreams any longer. He resolves to trade his wishes in, pursuing a bigger score.

Flora Dane is a victim. Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora was kidnapped while on spring break. For 472 days, Flora learned just how much one person can endure. Flora Dane is a survivor. Miraculously alive after her ordeal, Flora has spent the past five years reacquainting herself with the rhythms of normal life, working with her FBI victim advocate, Samuel Keynes. She has a mother who's never stopped loving her, a brother who is scared of the person she's become, and a bedroom wall covered with photos of other girls who've never made it home.

Seattle Chief of Detectives Mort Grant cannot reconcile the memories of his vibrant, headstrong young daughter with the cold, deadly woman she has become. The head of one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world, Allie Grant seized power by wrenching it away from her lover, a notorious Russian gangster. Only two other people know the truth about Allie: the vigilante known as The Fixer, and Mort's best friend, Larry, who's undergoing a crisis of his own. Someone close to Larry has been slain in a mass murder at a sweat lodge deep in the woods....

It's hard to be consumed by revenge when my heart feels like it's breaking in two. A part of me is still in love with Miles. I think I always will be. He embodies everything I thought my life could be. Every hope and dream and wish. But I'm not the girl he remembers. And I'd be lying if I said I haven't started to fall for the New York City vigilante. He's the only other person who knows what it's like to live behind a mask. There's a darkness in him that mirrors my own. He embraces my broken soul.

Robert McCall is a former covert operations officer for the CIA who tries to atone for past sins by offering, free of charge, his services as a protector, an investigator, and a troubleshooter—often literally. Aided by a group of sometimes-mysterious contacts, some of whom date back to his spying days, McCall traverses the streets of New York City, visiting justice upon those who prey upon the weak. A woman finds herself the target of a Chechen nightclub owner. The club is actually a front for an elite assassination service—run by an old enemy of McCall’s.

It’s been a year and a half since the women of the Sisterhood received their presidential pardons, but the freedom they craved has come at a high price. The impossibly lucrative positions handed out to them by the mysterious Global Securities company have turned out to be golden handcuffs - scattering them around the world, cutting off communication, and leaving them in miserable isolation. But a happy homecoming at the old Virginia farmhouse is marred by the hijacking of Nikki and Kathryn’s private jet.

In The Murders That Made Us, the story of the San Francisco Bay Area unfolds through its most violent and depraved acts. From the city's earliest days, where vigilantes hung perps from buildings and newspaper publishers shot it out on Market Street, to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the Zodiac Killer, crime has made the people of San Francisco who they are. Murder and mayhem are intertwined with the city's art, music, and politics.