Nonfiction-true Crime/esp

Stéphane Bréitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time.

He pulled off more than 200 heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight.

His girlfriend served as his accomplice.

His collection was worth an estimated $2 billion.

He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom.

He felt like a king.

Until everything came to a shocking end.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, Michael Finkel gives us one of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of our times, a riveting story of art, theft, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

The highly anticipated inside look at the collapse of the Murdaugh dynasty by the celebrated investigative journalist and creator of the #1 hit Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Mandy Matney.

Years before the name Alex Murdaugh was splashed across every major media outlet in America, local South Carolina journalist Mandy Matney had an instinct that something wasn't right in the Lowcountry. The powerful Murdaugh dynasty had dominated rural South Carolina for generations. No one dared to cross them.

When Mandy and her reporting partner Liz Farrell looked closer at a fatal boat crash involving the storied family's teenage son Paul, they began to uncover a web of mysteries surrounding the deaths of the Murdaughs' long-time housekeeper and a young man found slain years earlier on a backcountry road. Just as their investigations were unfolding, the brutal double murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh rocketed Alex Murdaugh onto the international stage.

From the newsroom to the courtroom, to the kitchen-table studio where Mandy recorded her #1 Murdaugh Murders Podcast, Blood on Their Hands is a propulsive true crime saga, an empathetic work of investigative journalism, and an excoriation of the "good old boy" systems that enabled a network of criminals.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Look for David Grann's latest bestselling book, The Wager!

From Michael Quinlan, staff member of the Louisville Courier-Journal and the only journalist to interview all the parties involved, Little Lost Angel meticulously recounts the shocking 1992 murder of twelve-year-old Shanda Sharer in Indiana. Lured by a group of teenage girls, Shanda was subjected to unimaginable torture and violence in one of the Midwest's most notorious murder cases.

Quinlan's powerful account explores the dynamics of teenage cruelty, revenge, and obsession that spiraled into a horrific act of violence, forever marking the history of true crime in America. Both harrowing and unforgettable, this book remains a chilling examination of youth violence, LGBTQ+ identity, and the dark side of human nature.

A unique and unexpected set of circumstances caused former FBI agent Mike Campi to finally step forward and reveal himself. The result is this tour de force, which details his years operating deeply in the trenches to devastate the mafia. You will learn how he took down a staggering array of mob bosses, underbosses, consiglieri, capos, soldiers, and other legends from all five New York crime families. He takes you inside his investigative, critical, make-or-break moments, which he navigated to achieve astonishing success. Along the way, he provides you with insight into the external and internal forces often working to undermine him. And he lifts the curtain to reveal the untold treachery and hypocrisy underlying the real American mafia, as illustrated by the words of one crime boss who was recorded by Mike describing his underlings: "They're suckers--we just use them."

Mafia Takedown, to be released on the anniversary of the infamous November 14, 1957, Apalachin meeting of top mafia leaders from the US and Italy, is chock-filled with an array of stunning facts and truths. A sample includes: the Catholic priest who fled America to save his life from the mob; mafia members recorded describing in their own words their innermost secrets; how Mike and federal prosecutors obtained the boss of all bosses Vincent "the Chin" Gigante's courthouse confession that his legendary crazy act was a fraud all along; what the Chin said when America was attacked on September 11, 2001; and the explosive, dark secret that almost undermined one of the most important undercover operations in the history of law enforcement.

You'll learn so much more: such as how and why the most important undercover mafioso in history wanted to work with Mike, and only with Mike; and how the Chin was only months away from escaping justice entirely. For fans of organized crime, of true crime, or simply of engaging and enjoyable stories--this book is an absolute must read.

"An absorbing, often heart-rending exploration of the human mind."--Cosmopolitan

Billy Milligan can be anyone he wants to be . . . except himself.

Billy Milligan was a man tormented by twenty-four distinct personalities battling for supremacy over his body--a battle that culminated when he awoke in jail, arrested for the kidnap and rape of three women. In a landmark trial, Billy was acquitted of his crimes by reason of insanity caused by multiple personality--the first such court decision in history--bringing to public light the most remarkable and harrowing case of multiple personality ever recorded.

Twenty-four people live inside Billy Milligan.

Philip, a petty criminal; Kevin, who dealt drugs and masterminded a drugstore robbery; April, whose only ambition was to kill Billy's stepfather; Adalana, the shy, lonely, affection-starved lesbian who "used" Billy's body in the rapes that led to his arrest; David, the eight-year-old "keeper of pain"; and all of the others, including men, women, several children, both boys and girls, and the Teacher, the only one who can put them all together. You will meet each in this often shocking true story. And you will be drawn deeply into the mind of this tortured young man and his splintered, terrifying world.

On a cool fall night in 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green crept out of her house, retrieved a backpack from its hiding place, and ran for her life. She was escaping not just the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult operating out of the New Mexico desert, but also the punishments and cruelty of the cult's leader--her mother, Deborah.

In The Oracle's Daughter, Harrison Hill traces the fascinating beginnings and violent end of ACMTC, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture to its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse. This is the story of three women--Deborah, the group's founder and self-proclaimed oracle; Maura, one of its first members; and Sarah, Deborah's daughter--bound together by a punitive, baroque set of radical beliefs and practices, including exorcism, kidnapping, and the horrific mistreatment of those who fell out of the leaders' favor. With a dramatic, deeply researched narrative tracing the strange twists and turns of the country's religious development, The Oracle's Daughter illuminates the porous boundary between the fringe and the mainstream--and shows how much more vulnerable we are to extremism than we might like to think.

America's first bank robbery was pulled off here in 1798. The country's first kidnapping for ransom came off without a hitch in 1874. A South Philadelphia man hatched the largest mass murder plot in U.S. history in the 1930s. His partners in crime were unhappy housewives.

Catholics and Protestants aimed cannon at each other in city streets in 1844. Civil rights hero Octavius V. Catto was gunned down on South Street in 1871.

Take a walk with us through city history. Would you pass Eastern State Penitentiary on April 3, 1945, just as famed bank robber Willie Sutton popped out of an escape tunnel in broad daylight? Or you might have been one of the invited guests at H.H. Holmes' hanging at Moyamensing Prison on a gray morning in May 1896. It still ranks as one of the most bizarre executions in city history. Or, if you walked down Washington Lane on July 1, 1874, would you have been alert enough to stop the two men who lured little blond Charley Ross away with candy? You might have stopped America's first kidnapping for ransom, the one that gave rise to the admonition, "Never take candy from a stranger." The case inspired the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping.

Then there was the bank robber whose funeral drew thousands of spectators and the burglary defendant so alluring that conversation would stop whenever she entered the courtroom.

Mix in murderous maids, bumbling burglars, and unflinching local heroes and you have True Crime Philadelphia.