In 1912, a prosperous Illinois farm familyCharles; his wife, Mathilda; their fifteen-year-old daughter, Blanche; and boarding schoolteacher Emma Kaempenwere brutally murdered, the crime concealed by arson, and the familys surviving son, handsome Ray Pfanschmidt, arrested. He was convicted by the press long before trial. In Lies Told Under Oath, author Beth Lane retells the story of the murders, the trial, the verdict, and the aftermath.Using information culled from actual ...

Three Sisters: A Quest for Mending presents the real life story of a family, their journey through abuse, and how the experience can be transformed to living a successful life. The author through her dramatic story describes the tragedies experienced by the parents, the loss of their son that they cannot save and the abuse the parents mete out to their three daughters. As the story develops, the reader can see the different options the sisters choose to cope with the abuse. The book ends w...

The remarkable true story of a turn-of-the-19th century murder and the trial that ensued—a showdown in which iconic political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr joined forces to make sure justice was served—from bestselling author of the Edgar finalist, Murder of the Century.In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic. Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalist...

AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED!In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the ...

Edgar Award Finalist: The true story of the female Norwegian immigrant who led a secret life as a serial killer in the early twentieth-century Midwest.On the morning of April 27, 1908, the farmhand on a lonely property outside La Porte, Indiana, woke to the smell of smoke. He tried to rouse the lady of the house, the towering Belle Poulsdatter Sorenson Gunness, and he called the names of her three children—but they didn't answer, and the farmhand barely escaped aliv...

From the best-selling author of The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White, a daring reimagining of one of the most tumultuous moments in our nation’s pastStephen L. Carter’s thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Colliers Magazine, and subsequently anthologized in his book Tales of the Jazz Age (occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories). Developed for years by the late Hollywood mogul Ray Stark, the rights and story development were purchased from the Ray Stark Estate and adapted for a 2008 film of the same name directed by David Fincher. Excerpted fr...

Before he could bleed out, his family discovered the bloody, bloody scene, and rescued the beleaguered coal man. He said his only regret is that he didn't kill his meddling mother-in-law, too. This "novelette" length true crime story details the family quarrel that led to the gruesome crime and the delivery of turn-of-the-century justice.

George said that he was taking his mother to a train in the fall of 1883 when they were overcome by two robbers at the end of the lane at the edge of his farm. In the course of the robbery, he claimed, the robbers killed his mother, and buried her in a ravine on George's property. He fetched a shovel for them. George said they threatened his family, so he kept quiet about it for five long weeks. This novelette-length story details the unraveling of George's story and the terrible price he ...

A collection of the last remaining unpublished and uncollected short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the iconic American writer of The Great Gatsby who is more widely read today than ever. “A treasure trove of tales too dark for the magazines of the 1930s. Lucky us” (Newsday). “His best readers will find much to enjoy” (The New York Times Book Review).I’d Die For You, edited by Anne Margaret Daniel, is a collection of F. Scott Fi...

One day in late 1906, seventy-one-year-old Mark Twain attended a meeting on copyright law at the Library of Congress. The arrival of the famous author caused the usual stir—but then Twain took off his overcoat to reveal a "snow-white" tailored suit and scandalized the room. His shocking outfit appalled and delighted his contemporaries, but far more than that, as Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Shelden shows in this wonderful new biography, Twain had brilliantly staged this act of showmansh...

An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, The Man from the Train is an “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal). In this groundbreaking work of historical true crime, legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applies his analytical genius to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history.Between...