A sexual sadist, his pleasure was torture and murder. His first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead on a lover’s lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill again. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed thirty-seven. The real toll may have reached fifty. He was never caught.“After Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there is only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysteri...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Zodiac, Auto Focus, and Black Fire.SO CLOSE TO SHORE,SO FAR FROM FORTUNE.WITH THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD, THEY CAME. San Francisco, 1849. Some arrived by land, but most came by sea. From packet to clipper, the first steamers, and even a stolen paddlewheeler, ships of every kind poured in through the Golden Gate. Packed to the gills with passengers ...

Marli Renfro was Janet Leigh's body double in the Hitchcock classic Psycho. When she disappeared, it was believed she was the victim of a serial killer. It was a mystery that took decades to solve-and a crime that could only have happened in Hollywood.

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (a friend of Mark Twain during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain s...

Rita Hayworth dancing by candlelight; Elizabeth Taylor tenderly wrapping him in her Pashmina scarf; streaking for Sir Laurence Olivier in a drafty English castle; terrifying a dozing Jackie Onassis; carrying an unconscious Montgomery Clift to safety on a dark New York street...Captured forever in a unique memoir, Frank Langella's myriad encounters with some of the past century's most famous human beings are profoundly affecting, funny, wicked, sometimes shocking, and utterly irresi...

Continuing the success of the nationally acclaimed Haunted America , a further investigation into historical ghosts from across all fifty states and Canada.Historic Haunted America is an engrossing investigation into North American ghost legends, a comprehensive compendium documenting yesterday and today's most shocking hauntings in the United States and Canada.From the ghost-ridden forts in Old Tucson to...

The legendary movie star's revelatory memoir is "a mesmerizing account of his Candide-like journey through Hollywood" ( The New York Times Book Review ).National BestsellerIn 1950, at the end of Hollywood's Golden Age, a remarkably handsome young boy, still a teenager, gets "discovered" by a big-time movie agent. The boy's name was Tab Hunter—a true Hollywood product, a movie star created from a st...

The acclaimed author of Emily, Alone and Henry, Himself brings all his narrative gifts to bear on this gripping account of tragedy and heroism—the great Hartford circus fire of 1944.It was a midsummer afternoon, halfway through a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus performance, when the big top caught fire. The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control. More than 8,000 peopl...

Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. Now James Kaplan brings deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable voice, from Sinatra’s humble beginning in Hoboken to his fall from grace and Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here at last is the biographer who...

Trapped miners from cave-ins long ago still calling for help.Ghostly women lurking in the shadows of city streets.Spectral holy men and outlaws from America's Spanish past making appearances in our modern age.They are all citizens of Haunted America, and this isHAUNTED HOMELAND.From a haunted castle in the wilds of Alaska to phantom clergymen in the Southwest and mysterious bouncing lights on the East Coast, this latest volume covers the places, the peopl...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning film critics offers up more reviews of horrible films.Roger Ebert awards at least two out of four stars to most of the more than 150 movies he reviews each year. But when the noted film critic does pan a movie, the result is a humorous, scathing critique far more entertaining than the movie itself.I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie is a collection of more than 200 of Ebert's most biting and entertaining reviews of fi...

During the 1920s, in more than a dozen cities, over four years, and across two continents, women were being butchered. Eyewitneses claim the perpetrator was a hulking Bible-carrying brute who lumbered on all fours, and laughed maniacally with each new slaughter.The crimes haunted San Francisco Police Captain Charles Dullea, the last honest cop in one of the most notoriously corrupt departments in the country. But nothing could have prepared Dullea for where the case- and the truth-...