True Crime Fiction

With makeup and an affected Elvis pout, Tucson’s Charlie Schmid was a crude parody of a bad-boy heartthrob. In 1964, he still had a hold on girls who’d follow him anywhere. He murdered three of them. It was the dawn of the free-love movement - perfect for a magnetic madman who’d also foreshadow its end a few years later in the malignant charisma of Charles Manson. The inspiration for a classic story by Joyce Carol Oates, Schmid, the most bizarre serial killer of any era, was the epitome of a narcissist flattered into believing he could get away with murder.

Included in THE TIMES Best Historical Fiction Books of 2025: 'A lively new perspective on a grimly familiar tale' Audiobook included in THE SUNDAY POST 'Books of the Week' The world's most famous unsolved serial killer mystery, told from the perspective of a gang of women. 'A fresh and...

On the heels of a divorce, a mid-list mystery writer returns to his hometown in Central Connecticut and is dragged back into a decades-old unsolved case involving former missing classmates to expose the horrific secrets of a quaint, idyllic New England town. Fusing the modern domestic psychological thriller with popular unsolved mysteries (Girl on the Train meets In Cold Blood), this meta blend of true crime and fiction plays with expectations and perspective before its mind-blowing conclusion.

If not for the bodies discovered in the woods behind their new home, Garrick and Olivia Lockwood couldn't have afforded to buy number 25 The Avenue. It's the fresh start they and their two children badly need. Soon, these terrible crimes will be solved, they tell themselves, and once Garrick has remodeled, he's confident they'll sell the house for a profit. But the darkest secrets can reside on quiet, ordinary streets like this - behind the doors of well-kept houses and neighbors' friendly faces....

Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel. Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies. Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer.

Sie sind ein eingespieltes Team, teilen als beste Freunde alles miteinander und können sich ihr Leben ohne einander nicht vorstellen. Doch eines Morgens ist Joy verschwunden, ihr Ehemann auch. Die Polizei findet immer mehr Hinweise auf einen einzigen Verdächtigen: Benny. Dieser wirkt verzweifelt in seiner Suche nach Joy, hält aber Aufzeichnungen von Joy vor den Ermittlern geheim. Die erzählen von gefährlichen Geheimnissen und einer großen Liebe – und enden abrupt.

Four years in, Stevie and Nate’s true-crime podcast, All the Gory Details, is forced onto hiatus when their conclusions in their first-ever episode, about the unsolved murder of teenager Lauren in their hometown seventeen years ago, are proven wrong. Their mistake ruined a life, and Stevie and Nate are still reeling from the consequences. Still, when a fresh murder frighteningly similar to Lauren’s is brought to their attention, Nate is adamant that they should resurrect the podcast.

Sommer 1924. Die beiden Freunde Ludwig und Theo sind gerade auf einer Fahrradtour unterwegs, als Theo plötzlich verschwindet. Hat etwa der Serienmörder, der gerade in Hannover sein Unwesen treibt, etwas damit zu tun? Der Verdacht erhärtet sich, als ein menschlicher Schädel am Ufer der Leine gefunden wird... Wer wird dem Werwolf von Hannover als nächstes zum Opfer fallen?

Dr Nell Ward is delighted when her childhood friend Percy announces she's engaged to handsome businessman Hawke McAnstruther - and rashly offers to host the wedding at Finchmere, her family's estate. But she hadn't anticipated Percy's parents' fiery disapproval of the groom. The ceremony is barely over before Hawke's shady personal and professional life starts to unravel, and tension ripples through the assembled guests.

Erika Sifrit was once a high school basketball star and an honors student. Then she married Navy SEAL Benjamin Sifrit. Some say Erika was abused by "B.J." Some say she pulled his strings. But by the time they reached Ocean City, MD, Erika was packing a gun in her Coach bag and was caught in the grips of a new American death ride.

When strange frequencies interrupt Wes and Cynthia Lumin's latest podcast recording at exactly 3: 33 AM, they dismiss it as technical interference. But as the disturbances escalate and their five sons begin exhibiting synchronized behaviors, the couple realizes something far more sinister is at work beneath their quiet town of Johnson. An ancient presence stirs beneath their Victorian home—something that has waited in darkness for generations.

When well-known true crime YouTuber Natalie Baker, host of For Crime's Sake, is found dead, her sister Rebecca has a lot of questions for the local Sheriff. Questions he doesn't want to answer. Did she get too close to her cold case? The Sheriff insists her sister died in a double suicide, but why was it no one had ever seen her with the man she was supposed to love? At least not until their bodies were found on the floor of her home.

Calls We Don’t Forget is a powerful collection of fictionalized stories inspired by the real experiences of police officers and 911 dispatchers. Each chapter offers a raw, stand-alone glimpse into the haunting world of emergency response—from welfare checks that end in heartbreak to roadside rescues, unresolved 911 calls, mental health crises, and the quiet moments of humanity that never make the headlines.

“A thrilling page-turner.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train “Breathtaking . . . As shocking as it is satisfying.” —The New York Times Book Review A riveting and sophisticated page-turner inspired by one of the most shocking true crimes in 20th century Britain: the...

A Narc’s Tale is a four-book series that is a first-hand account of stories, written like a memoir or personal diary, which gives you an inside glimpse of what it is like working six years deep undercover in the dangerous drug world as a city cop (Vol. 1), county vice and narcotics investigator (Vol. 2 and 3), and special agent with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (Vol. 4). Most undercover books only show this from one perspective, but you will get three here - city, county and federal - and realize the differences among them.

La cocaina: la merce più usata, trafficata, desiderata del nostro tempo. Le infinite vie del narcotraffico, dal Messico alle spiagge di Miami, dalla Colombia alla Russia, dall'Africa alle strade di Milano, New York, Parigi. Il viaggio di un grande scrittore nei gironi infernali del mondo contemporaneo, dove la ferocia dilaga incontrastata ma i boss hanno imparato tutte le regole più sofisticate del business. Uno straordinario romanzo-verità.

Everyone eventually loses their childhood dreams. It's a fact of life, an indelible element of growing up. You get wiser, older, more jaded, and realize that all the things you wanted when you were young are impractical. Difficult. Impossible, maybe. This is the story of a man who never gave up on his childhood dream: to become an actor. But when the television and film markets proved a tough nut to crack, he took his acting skills to the streets and used them as a con man.

In the gold mining town of Greymouth, where drunks fell asleep smoking and burned down their houses, the town was constantly inundated with floods, and 57 hotels had sprung up in a year to accommodate the hordes of miners and gold thieves, Inspector William Henry James was tasked with keeping the town safe with a small force of troopers. In 1888, forced into retirement by government cuts, James walks home beside the Whanganui River remembering his association with a series of murders by the notorious Burgess gang: back in 1866 he had forced the gang to leave Greymouth.

Poppy Fields, Hollywood IT girl extraordinaire, accompanies her A-list mother to Paris, and why not? It's Paris! What her mother doesn't know is Poppy's on assignment. Her mission? To help bankrupt a drug cartel. To do that, she must access encrypted account numbers, evade a drug lord with a grudge, dodge a Russian oligarch, and align herself with a man who looks like a Norse god. Oh, and there's that plot - the one to launch a massive attack on the City of Lights.

On a hot rainy summer night in Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1943, someone murdered Sir Harry Oakes, one of the richest men in the world, as he slept. When police found him the next morning, there were four wounds to his skull. His corpse had been abused, covered ritualistically with feathers and set on fire. The murder was perverse, horrific, and jaded by anyone’s standards. A few evenings later in New York City, the phone rang in the home of Alan Hynd, identified in that era by the NY Times as America’s highest paid true crime reporter.