Visiting journalists regularly misinterpret California. Outside politicians twist it into bizarre caricatures. I know because I have worked as a journalist in all parts of the state. I covered crime for the LA Herald Examiner, spent 27 years at the LA Times, was a columnist and editorial page editor at the Sacramento Bee and, finally, was senior editor of the nonprofit news organization, CalMatters. I’ve covered governors, wildfires, a major earthquake, politics, mass incarceration, mass shootings, an execution, and all manner of policy. There are many great nonfiction books about California, including Jim Newton’s biographies of Earl Warren and Jerry Brown, Randy Shilts’s The Mayor of Castro Street, and Gladwin Hill’s Dancing Bear.
In The Devil’s Harvest, Jessica Garrison uses California’s Central Valley as an essential character in this fast-paced, thrilling, and chilling tale. Although she describes a prolific contract killer, Jessica Garrison has written much more than a meticulously researched true crime book. Readers will gain important insights into the nature of justice and California.
This suspenseful true story of a drug cartel hitman who got away with murder after murder in California's Central Valley over three decades reveals how the criminal justice system fails our most vulnerable immigrant communities.
On the surface, fifty-eight-year-old Jose Martinez didn't seem evil or even that remarkable—just a regular neighbor, good with cars and devoted to his family. But in between taking his children to Disneyland and visiting his mom, Martinez was also one of the most skilled professional killers police had ever seen.
He tracked one victim to one of the wealthiest corners of America, a horse ranch…
I love to write stories of historical injustice, so this is mainly the genre I read. In recent years, many new novels merely rehashed the same theme, such as the horror show known as Auschwitz or the other camps. Although those are worthy of the people who died there, I’m always on the hunt for a fresh story that has never been told about those tragic years.
I loved learning about what happened in Italy when the Germans occupied it. In this story, a wealthy Italian family becomes too close to the Germans by inviting them to search the secret ruins behind their villa for antiquities. This relationship has deadly consequences years later as members of the family are killed. The book goes back and forth between 1943 and 1955 until we learn why someone is seeking revenge.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany.
1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Eighteen-year-old Cristina spends her days swimming in the pool, playing with her young niece and nephew, and wandering aimlessly amid the estate’s gardens and olive groves. But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive at the villa…
Among other things, I'm an existentialist. A well-constructed mystery novel is an existential puzzle given to the reader to solve at his/her leisure, and the noir sub-genre has the further subtext that the protagonist—and the reader—are doomed in some way even if the solution is nailed. Romance novels are drivel and have no basis in reality, but noir and other types of mystery fiction reflect the way that the world works: you may solve this puzzle problem, but then you are left to a vast world that is rife with puzzles but without a coherent plot. The detective trudges on, achieves a kind of satisfaction, and then is thrust into the next crisis.
Watching
bad people self-destruct is hard work, but author Cain makes sure that the bad
people get what they deserve. A drifter takes a job at a roadside diner that is
run by an old man and his beautiful and unhappy wife; the two youngsters begin
a dangerous affair and then plot to kill the husband so that the girl inherits
the property. But matters do not turn out as they planned. The novel has been
adapted for film at least seven times, with the favorite being the 1946 movie
starring Lana Turner.
'Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler' Tom Wolfe
'It is no accident that movies based on three [of Cain's novels] helped to define the genre known as film noir' NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
'The most starkly elemental thing that has been written for years' EVENING STANDARD
The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and…
I write horror and crime thrillers grounded in my unusual lived experience as an author and attorney who has also overcome poverty, incarceration, and violent crime. I feel most fulfilled when I read a book that both entertains and expands me in meaningful ways, immersing me in lives, cultures, and history I might not otherwise know. So I love Social Horror novels, which feature characters who face significant human adversity beyond my own experience and leave me questioning what was worse, the human or the supernatural.
Grayson Hale claims that the devil made him commit a gruesome murder. This brilliant page-turner kept me guessing whether the blame should fall on the devil or untreated mental illness, given Grayson’s upbringing within a fundamentalist Christian household where he was viewed as evil.
I love psychological horror, so this book was right up my alley as I turned the pages to see whether the murder had a human or supernatural cause. The book beautifully unfolds the story of Grayson’s trauma, shame, and self-loathing as an isolated and marginalized person.
I will say no more about that to avoid spoilers, but I loved how this book kept me guessing and entertained while it provided me with a new understanding and compassion.
This “disorienting, creepy, paranoia-inducing reimagining of the devil-made-me-do-it tale” (Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World) follows the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student arrested for murder.
Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil’s Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it.
When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted…
I’ve been heavily immersed in the fantasy and sci-fi world since the age of nine, across fiction novels, role-playing games, tabletop miniature gaming, and movies. My first love was fantasy, and that’s one of the reasons why the post-apocalyptic genre particularly appeals to me when it comes to sci-fi. It plays in that dark, gritty place between futuristic, sci-fi, technology, and dark-age style fantasy. In addition, I’ve always felt socially conscious and value writing that highlights themes that are relevant today. This is another place that the post-apocalyptic genre slides comfortably into. And, of course, there’s the zombies. Another fantasy element that works beautifully in post-apocalyptic, sci-fi settings.
I loved this book for its combination of fantasy and sci-fi, the gritty and grim world Lawrence has created, and the high-energy and higher-stakes action sequences that fill the book.
I loved that it was unexpected. Lawrence's post-apocalyptic world concept was unique and fresh, compellingly combining the technology of a dying world with supernatural themes. I certainly did not expect the convent setting and nun-in-training protagonist in a sci-fi storyline, and yet that’s what I got in his main character, Nona Grey.
I love the tension and suspense created in the frequent action sequences Nona finds herself in, which left me wanting more and more. This leads to the last thing I really loved about this book: that it continued across two more books: Grey Sister and Holy Sister.
It's not until you're broken that you find your sharpest edge.
"I was born for killing - the gods made me to ruin."
At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices' skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist.
But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought…
I am a quiet horror and apocalyptic fiction author with a love for all Horror, but I started with zombies. I have eight published books (three of which are zombie apocalypse novels) and short stories in a handful of zombie anthologies. My favorite movies (Dawn of the Dead remake, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Rammbock: Berlin Undead) populate the zombie subgenre. I’ve participated in several zombie walks, written a zombie song and made a music video for it, and done zombie wound special effects makeup. Several of my plague short stories have won awards, including one about Norwegian sea zombies and another about a child-stealing plague.
Possibly one of the best plague books I’ve read, Infected introduces us to an extraterrestrial-created epidemic that soon spreads worldwide. Amazing points of view including scientists with the CDC trying real-time to figure it all out as bodies dissolve in front of them and a pro footballer who is determined to survive even if it means he loses some flesh in the process. Gruesome descriptions, tense action. Thank goodness it’s a trilogy because you’ll want more after the first book.
Scott Sigler is the voice in modern horror - and the INFECTED trilogy is a terrifying, menacing series that will leave you sleepless.
The alien intelligence that unleashed two horrific assaults on humanity has been destroyed. But before it was brought down in flames, it launched one last payload - a tiny soda-can-sized canister filled with germs engineered to wreak new forms of havoc on the human race. That harmless-looking canister has languished under thousands of feet of water for years, undisturbed and impotent . . . until now.
Days after the new disease is unleashed, a quarter of the…
One thing C.J. Leede is able to do to right off the bat is make you uncomfortable in a way that makes you want to know more about this strange young woman you’re reading about.
Leede pulls you into the warped worldview of Maeve, a certifiable sociopath who is a Disney Princess performer by day and a weirdly obsessed menace to society by night. This novel has been hailed as a female version of American Psycho, but Leede’s voice is all her own and not a feminized take on Brett Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman.
While Maeve is a morally deranged person and the plot contains disturbing situations, what intrigues me about this novel is its surprising feminist manifesto: why can’t women be seen as dangerous and as monstrous as men are in the same violent context? Overall, this novel is one hell of a rollercoaster ride that anyone with…
A provocative, blood-soaked slasher about unsung villainesses - a nightmarish blend of Eric la Rocca meets American Psycho.
By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child's favorite ice princess.
By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes.
But when Gideon Green - her best friend's brother - moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet.
When writing about true crime it is important for me to write about the victim’s lives before, during, and even after the crime happened. Unlike the rest of us, after the trial ends, their life continues dealing with the after-effects including parole hearings for the murderer. I've written 12 true crime books and I am the host and producer of the popular true crime history radio show House of Mystery on NBC news talk radio network throughout the U.S. & Canada. I am autistic and I have a master’s degree in Music from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a bachelor of Arts in Criminology from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.
This is a relatively new book, but not only does it take you through the case of serial killer Don Miller it explains how difficult it can be for the survivors to move on with their lives. In general, most people think that once the trial is over that everyone can move on with their lives, but that’s not always the case. Killers like don Miller come up for parole, and that’s when the second part of the journey continues for these survivors. It becomes really hard to move forward with their lives when they have to relive the murders at every parole hearing until either the killer is released or dies.
"Rod Sadler takes us through the twisted world of a serial killer, in a labor of love that pays respect to those lives the monster destroyed and reminding us why they should never be forgotten and he should never be free." - Dave Schrader, host of Darkness Radio and True Crime Tuesday, and host of The Travel Channel's 'The Holzer Files'
Will A Serial Killer Soon Walk The Streets Again?
Don Miller was quiet and reserved. As a former youth pastor, he seemed a devout Christian. No one would have ever suspected that the recent graduate of the Michigan State…
Claudia Keenan is a historian of education whose interest in American culture was awakened during her doctoral studies, when she researched the lives of mid-twentieth-century educators. Growing up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., she developed a strong affinity with place and time among the beautiful old homes and avenues lined with elms, set against a backdrop of racial strife and ethnic politics. She continues to reconstruct and interpret American lives on her blog, and has recently finished a book about Henry Collins Brown, founder of the Museum of the City of New York. Claudia received a BA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from New York University.
This unlikely thriller of a book explores a seemingly bland subject: the network of interstate highways built by the Federal Government after World War II. In fact, these highways transformed American culture, not only spelling the demise of many country roads and small towns but replacing the friendly hitchhiker with the terrifying “killer on the road.” Further, the highways led to the creation of rest stops and shadowy neighborhoods that came to harbor predators, while the interstates aided the criminals’ flight. Killer on the Roadkeeps you on the edge of your seat, unfolding into horror, mystery, and victimization.
Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet's largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them-the highway killer. He went by many names: the "Hitcher," the "Freeway Killer," the "Killer on the Road," the "I-5 Strangler," and the "Beltway Sniper." Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation's murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time.
I picked up my first book about Jack the Ripper the summer after college and never looked back. Since then my collection of true crime has grown to overflow my office bookshelves and I’ve written a PhD dissertation and multiple books about true crime, focusing on serial killers. The genre is so much more than Bundy, Gacy, and Dahmer and I love talking with people about the less mainstream cases that interest them, and the newer victim-centered approaches that—fingers crossed—mark a change in how we talk about criminals and victims.
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb set out to commit the perfect crime and ended up in newspapers as the perpetrators of “the crime of the century.” They kidnapped and murdered a teenage boy in Chicago in 1924, but both Leopold and Loeb were still considered boys themselves at the time. Clarence Darrow defended them at trial, arguing that they were guilty but that the situation had extenuating circumstances. Baatz’s book explores how two college students from good families ended up in prison for murder. Leopold’s family even came from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near where I currently live, so even though the case is almost 100 years old, it’s not as distant as it might seem.
It was a crime that shocked the nation: the brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. When they were apprehended, state's attorney Robert Crowe was certain that no defense could save the ruthless killers from the gallows. But the families of the confessed murderers hired Clarence Darrow, entrusting the lives of their sons to the most famous lawyer in America in what would be one of the most…
