Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in Murder

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.

On a rainy winter night, James Bowden Jr. left his mother’s house in Roxbury after a visit. As he guided his Buick out of his parking spot, an unmarked police car suddenly blocked his path. Two undercover officers sprang out, running toward his car. Shots were fired, and Bowden slumped over the wheel. Moments later, he was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.

Long before his arrest for the murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in 1975, journalists, neighbors, and relatives had plenty of reason to suspect Michael Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy. Murder in Greenwich is just one of the books that investigated this high-profile case.

Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect—Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At the entrance of Sydney Harbor, the cliffs rise fourteen stories above the Pacific, like a gigantic skirt made of sandstone. North Head, one of the most memorable cliffs, is a gorgeous place to watch the sunrise. But it's an unforgiving place to lose your footing. When Steve Johnson's younger brother Scott went over the edge in 1988, he hit an outcrop on the way down and exploded on the rocks below. The police deemed it a suicide. But Steve Johnson never believed his brother would take his own life.

True crime, as an entertainment genre, has always prioritized clear narrative arcs: victims wronged, police detectives in pursuit, suspects apprehended, justice delivered. But what stories have been ignored? In Evidence of Things Seen, fourteen of the most innovative crime writers working today cast a light on the cases that give crucial insight into our society.

Here I am: tall and broad, shaved head, had my nose broken three times fighting. Black suit, white shirt, the big-city homicide detective. I've led investigations into serial killings, child abductions, organized crime hits and domestic murders. But beneath the suit, I've got an Om symbol in the shape of a Buddha tattooed on my right bicep. It balances the tattoo on my left ribs: Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. That's how I choose to live my life. As a cop, I got paid to catch killers. They tell you not to let a case get personal, but I think it has to.

In the haunting tradition of Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision and Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery nature of truth.

For Yves Trudeau, the blood was all business. An assassin for the Hells Angels in the ’70s and ’80s, Trudeau was known as Apache, the Mad Bumper and the Mad Bomber. As a contract killer, he did his job so well that the bikers sometimes lent him out to other organized-crime empires in Montreal, including the east-end French gangs led by the deadly Dubois brothers and the upstart Irish Mafia in the west end. Yves Trudeau remains one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers.

Dulcie Bodsworth was the unlikeliest serial killer. She was loved everywhere she went, and the townsfolk of Wilcannia, which she called home in the late 1950s, thought of her as kind and caring. The officers at the local police station found Dulcie witty and charming, and looked forward to the scones and cakes she generously baked and delivered for their morning tea. That was one side of her. Only her daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie. And what she saw terrified her.

In this remarkable memoir, a harrowing true story of family, violence, guilt, and atonement, a journalist reflects on his own journey to come to terms with his brother’s terrible crimes - and to find justice for the young girl he killed.

In October 2002, Susan Polk was arrested for the murder of her husband, Felix, kicking off what would become one of the most captivating murder trials in recent memory. Now, former judge and current Court TV host Catherine Crier turns an analytical eye to Susan's story, delving into her past and examining how over twenty years of marriage culminated in murder. Dark, psychological, and terrifying, Final Analysis is a harrowing look at the recesses of the human mind and the trauma that reveals them.

Acclaimed author of The Real Lolita and editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin), Sarah Weinman brings together an exemplary collection of recent true-crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today.

In the long-awaited return to his bestselling true crime series on life behind bars, James Phelps has finally turned his attention to HM Prison Pentridge—the bluestone behemoth that was home to Victoria's worst criminals for more than a century. Beginning with a gang of guards and a handful of convicts, for more than 145 years Pentridge housed a who's who of Australian criminals and Melbourne's underworld including Ned Kelly and Mark 'Chopper' Read. This is gritty true crime storytelling, on steroids—about what life was really like behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs and egregious human rights violations. They razed and burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers and Indigenous tribes from their lands, and treated their farmhands as slaves—all with impunity.

Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held a series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes during the Bosnian War. In My War Criminal, Jessica Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader.

Everyone Is a Suspect has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the publisher.

When she was sixteen, Elle Johnson lived in Queens with her family; she dreamed of being best friends with her cool cousin Karen from the Bronx. Coming from a family of black law enforcement officers, Elle felt that Karen would understand her in a way no one else could. Elle’s father was a highly protective parole officer; her uncle, Karen’s dad, was a homicide detective. One night, Karen was shot and killed in a robbery gone wrong. The NYPD and FBI launched a manhunt to find the killers, and the subsequent trials and media circus marked the end of Elle's childhood innocence.

Melbourne's gangland war was an era dominated by murders, stings, hits, drug busts, corruption and greed - inspiring best-selling books and even a popular TV series, Underbelly. It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and their accomplices.

Home of the Happy has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.