18 books like Dead Center
A Descent Into Hell
Bright, attractive, and both from good families, University of Texas college student Colton Pitonyak and vibrant redhead Jennifer Cave had the world at their beckoning. Cave, an ex-cheerleader, had just landed an exciting new job, while a big-money scholarship to UT's prestigious business school lured Pitonyak to Austin. Yet the former altar boy had a dark, unpredictable streak, one that ensnared…
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Die, My Love
The day before Halloween 2004 was the last day on Earth for respected, well-liked college professor Fred Jablin. That morning, a neighbor discovered his body lying in a pool of blood in the driveway of Jablin's Virginia home. Police immediately turned their attentions to the victim's ex-wife, Piper, a petite, pretty Texas lawyer who had lost a bitter custody battle and would do anything to get…
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Final Analysis
In October 2002, Susan Polk, a housewife and mother of three, was arrested for the murder of her husband, Felix. The arrest in her sleepy northern California town kicked off what would become one of the most captivating murder trials in recent memory, as police, local attorneys, and the national media sought to unravel the complex web of events that sent this seemingly devoted housewife over the…
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A rip in Heaven
It was a headline story in the New York Times and USA Today. It was covered by Court TV and profiled on the Ricki Lake Show. Now, here is the intimate memoir of a shocking crime and its aftermath...one family's immediate and unforgettable story of what victims can suffer long after they should be safe.
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Blind Faith
The Marshalls were the model family of Tom’s River, New Jersey, living the American dream of all that money could buy. Rob Marshall was the big breadwinner, king of the country club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids.
Then one night Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in—until…
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The blooding
Fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann's savagely raped and strangled body is found along a shady footpath near the English village of Narborough. Though a massive 150-man dragnet is launched, the case remains unsolved. Three years later the killer strikes again, raping and strangling teenager Dawn Ashforth only a stone's throw from where Lynda was so brutally murdered. But it will take four years, a…
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Death's Shadow
Victims and survivors, angels and demons, intersect along winding roads to imperfect justice.“Bare light bulbs shone against walls painted with graffiti and dried blood, the rooms reeking of a sweet pungent odour like burnt plastic …” So writes award-winning Hamilton Spectator journalist and author Jon Wells in one of four harrowing murder stories in Death’s Shadow. Wells take readers up close…
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Greentown
Martha Moxley haunts Greenwich, Connecticut. The battered body of the pretty and popular fifteen-year-old girl was discovered on Halloween in 1975 in the exclusive Greenwich neighborhood of Belle Haven, where she lived. She had been bludgeoned to death on the front lawn of her home the night before - known in the town as "Mischief Night." In the days immediately following the murder, rumors flew.…
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Crimes of Passion
The very term "crimes of passion" evokes deep-seated, atavistic responses in everyone's heart. These are the crimes that are born in the emotional core of women and men who are pushed to do the unthinkable. There are never - well, hardly ever - any of the crass considerations of financial gain, no taint of reward; only release. These crimes are direct responses to betrayal, to broken hearts and…
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The private diary of Lyle Menendez
The personal story of Lyle Menendez is based on a four-and-a-half-year intimate correspondence with the author and covers the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez by Lyle and his brother Erik and the court trials that ended in hung juries.
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Deadly Angel
An astonishing true story of bizarre love and lethal obsession in America's last frontier. Mechele Hughes came to Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 4200), looking for a new life and easy money. As an exotic dancer at the Great Alaskan Bush Company in nearby Anchorage, she was soon earning thousands a night—and getting expensive gifts from admiring male clients. Three in particular fell under her spell. Each…
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The Boston stranglers
In the only definitive book on this case, Susan Kelly investigates Albert DeSalvo's false confession to eleven murders committed in New England in the early 1960s -- and exposes the real killers.
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The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid
Hankering for a mostly true tale about the hard-living desperadoes who inhabited America's desert Southwest in the mid-1800s? This biography of the ill-fated gunslinger Billy, the Kid was written by Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy down. Although some historians now question the veracity of some of the self-aggrandizing bluster Garrett and his ghostwriter included in the book, The…
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Last Yakuza
The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before.Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force — the yakuza.Saigo,…
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No way of knowing
Examining "old media" treatment of crime legends: news reports, fictional film and television depictions, and "new media" interactive discussions: versions and discussions circulating in Internet newsgroups and via electronic mail lists, this text examines a social context vastly changed from the height of rumour research in the mid-20th century.
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Brain on fire
The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories…
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Severed
The Black Dahlia murder hit post-War Los Angeles like a bombshell . . . an impenetrable mystery—the haunting crown jewel of LAPD’s “unsolved” murders. Even before her savage death, beautiful 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, an aspiring starlet and nightclub habitué, was known as the Black Dahlia—now a magnetic icon in American pop culture, an almost mythical symbol of noir Hollywood. In this expanded…
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Nutcracker
Nutcracker begins at the ballet but tells the story of a seemingly wholesome all-American family, whose tranquil life's surface erupted in shocking acts of avarice, theft and murder. The victim was Franklin Bradshaw, Mormon self-made millionaire, workaholic. The killer was Bradshaw's grandson, prep school student. The architect of the crime was said to be Frances Schreuder, Bradshaw's daughter,…
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