Last Updated: February 7, 2025
Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. She was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster. But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines. When a robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder, Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus.
The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of the Southern Dynasty
by Valerie Bauerlein
Power, privilege, and blood–this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.
The Secret History of the Rape Kit: a True Crime Story
by Pagan Kennedy
A thrilling, novelistic work of journalism that uncovers the remarkable and hidden story of Marty Goddard, the woman who invented the rape kit, changed the course of how we treat sexual assault forever, and then vanished from the record.
Postmortem: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders
by Courtney Lund O’Neil
On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O’Neil’s mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. That night Rob became Gacy’s final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim’s testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy’s house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who assaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys. Postmortem transforms Courtney and Kim’s personal journey into a powerful exploration of the ever-widening ripples generated by Gacy’s crimes. From the 1970s to the present day, his shadow extends beyond the victims’ families and friends — it encompasses the Des Plaines neighborhood forever marked by his horrific murders, generations of the victims’ families and friends, those who helped arrest and convict him, fandom communities, and many others.
From true-crime legend T. J. English, the epic, behind-the-scenes saga of “Los Muchachos,” one of the most successful cocaine trafficking organizations in American history–a story of glitz, glamour, and organized crime set against 1980’s Miami.
A powerful work of reportage and American history in the vein of Caste and How the Word Is Passed that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the ’90s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land over a century later.