Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated with true crime since a serial killer operated in my hometown when I was a kid. I’m now an expert on criminal psychology, which I teach at DeSales University. I’ve appeared in more than 200 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on Murder House Flip (my idea) and A&E’s Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK. I’ve published more than 72 books, and over the past 12 years, I’ve penned a blog on the dark side of the human psyche for Psychology Today. Currently, I’m writing a fiction series based on a female forensic psychologist who runs a PI agency and consults on unique death investigations. 


I wrote

The Serial Killer's Apprentice: The True Story of How Houston’s Deadliest Murderer Turned a Kid into a Killing Machine

By Katherine Ramsland, Tracy Ullman,

Book cover of The Serial Killer's Apprentice: The True Story of How Houston’s Deadliest Murderer Turned a Kid into a Killing Machine

What is my book about?

Elmer Wayne Henley Junior is the only accomplice to a serial killer who ended the horror by killing the predator.…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science

Katherine Ramsland Why did I love this book?

I was so excited to see a book that featured an innovative French pathologist, Alexandre Lacassagne, who invented the criminal autobiography during the 1890s.

Starr delves into the French records to show the insights Lacassagne derived about the criminal mind, which altered many notions in criminology. Starr also tells a compelling tale about an early serial killer, the French Ripper, who openly discussed his life history and even helped police find his victims.

During the age of Jack the Ripper, when the first behavioral profiles were used for linking crimes and understanding motives, the French Ripper demonstrated just how deranged a lust killer can be. This book expanded my awareness of early criminal psychology.   

By Douglas Starr,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Killer of Little Shepherds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Gold Dagger Award

A fascinating true crime story that details the rise of modern forensics and the development of modern criminal investigation.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher terrorized the French countryside, eluding authorities for years, and murdering twice as many victims as Jack The Ripper. Here, Douglas Starr revisits Vacher's infamous crime wave, interweaving the story of the two men who eventually stopped him—prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era's most renowned criminologist. In dramatic detail, Starr shows how Lacassagne and his colleagues were developing forensic science as we…


Book cover of Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men

Katherine Ramsland Why did I love this book?

For over a century, there’s been a mystery about the identity of one of the most notorious female serial killers of the twentieth century, Belle Gunness. Did she die in a fire, or did she fake her death and escape?

Schechter’s book-length study leaves no stone unturned. If anyone could fully address this mystery, I knew he could. He’s a foremost authority on true crime. For me, any book he writes is a must-read.

Although I knew this story well, Schechter brought more to it than I’d seen before. I was fascinated with the details of the reports from mental health experts, including criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso. He spotted Belle’s “super intelligence for doing evil,” making her “more terrible than any male criminal.” I found this page-turner to be both meticulous and gripping.

By Harold Schechter,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Hell's Princess as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Hell's Princess takes its place among Schechter's other true-crime classics as the definitive rendering of one of the most beguiling and brutal of all female serial killers. His gruesome page-turner, grounded in meticulous historical research, confirms his reputation as one of the top true-crime writers of our time." -Psychology Today

The chilling true account of one of the twentieth century's most prolific female serial killers. Now an Amazon Charts bestseller.

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly…


Book cover of Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

Katherine Ramsland Why did I love this book?

Most people don’t know the surprising story of the first FBI profile, but I think it’s one of the best examples of how the method works.

I love that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit’s founders, Howard Teten and Patrick Mullaney, get their due since they’ve been eclipsed by other profilers’ books.

For the first time, we get the full story of a deadly kidnapping in Montana, told by someone who grew up in the area. I find Ron Franscell’s true crime books to have literary qualities that others lack while also delivering a solid story. In addition, the kidnapper turned out to be a truly shocking individual.

By Ron Franscell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shadowman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare." (Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling)

The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit created a psychological profile to catch a serial killer.

On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana campground where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of their tent and snatched her from under their noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished…


Book cover of Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod

Katherine Ramsland Why did I love this book?

I like crime journalism, especially when it breaks new ground or reveals a shocking story.

It’s hard to believe we aren’t well-versed in this Cape Cod serial killer, Tony Costa, since this 1969 case of multiple murders inspired two major writing talents, Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, to compete for a scoop. 

Sherman, who happened to stumble upon the story, brings out these authors’ personality quirks and describes the strange things they’d do for a shot at publication. At the same time, we learn about Costa’s predatory maneuvers and the way the investigation was handled.

I found this book to be a terrific addition to the historic true crime genre. 

By Casey Sherman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Helltown as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Before Charles Manson, there was Tony Costa-the serial killer of Cape Cod

1969: The hippie scene is vibrant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Long-haired teenagers roam the streets, strumming guitars and preaching about peace and love... and Tony Costa is at the center of it all. To a certain group of smitten young women, he is known as Sire-the leader of their counter-culture movement, the charming man who speaks eloquently and hands out hallucinogenic drugs like candy. But beneath his benign persona lies a twisted and uncontrollable rage that threatens to break loose at any moment. Tony Costa is the most dangerous…


Book cover of In Cold Blood

Katherine Ramsland Why did I love this book?

I think this book is the classic true crime to show the power of using fictional devices for fact-based narratives.

Truman Capote explored the psyches of a killing team, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, as he reported on the 1959 quadruple homicide of the Herb Clutter family in Holcombe, Kansas. He wasn’t a journalist, but he adopted the role, hedging his work as “narrative nonfiction.” I learned a lot about this technique for my own work.

With him was his childhood companion, Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), and she helped Capote gain access to the inside story. He extensively interviewed Perry Smith, giving readers a sense of how and why this convict got involved in the terrible mass murder of a family. 

By Truman Capote,

Why should I read it?

19 authors picked In Cold Blood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly…


Explore my book 😀

The Serial Killer's Apprentice: The True Story of How Houston’s Deadliest Murderer Turned a Kid into a Killing Machine

By Katherine Ramsland, Tracy Ullman,

Book cover of The Serial Killer's Apprentice: The True Story of How Houston’s Deadliest Murderer Turned a Kid into a Killing Machine

What is my book about?

Elmer Wayne Henley Junior is the only accomplice to a serial killer who ended the horror by killing the predator. Targeted for recruitment when he was 15, Henley describes how he was groomed into a killer’s companion. After his arrest for shooting Dean Corll, “the Candy Man,” Henley led police to three burial areas that turned up 27 victims.

His story relies on our current knowledge of the role of the teenage brain in making kids vulnerable to predators who are seeking partners. The book culminates in a guide for parents and counselors about the subtle signals of predators with the intent to recruit and of kids already caught in a trap.

Book cover of The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science
Book cover of Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men
Book cover of Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

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Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

By Kathleen DuVal,

Book cover of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

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Kathleen DuVal Author Of Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution

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Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.

Kathleen's book list on the American Revolution beyond the Founding Fathers

What is my book about?

A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today

Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

By Kathleen DuVal,

What is this book about?

Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.

A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…


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