In his forthcoming work, The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father’s Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism (Citadel Press, 2022), author Bill Shaffer recounts the riveting true tale that captured the attention of American newspaper readers from coast to coast during the final decade of the nineteenth …
The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan
Hugh Ryan’s new social history, The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, is one of the most important books published this year. Equal parts true crime, queer artifact, American history, and societal critique, The Women’s House of Detention (Bold Type Books 2022) is a must-read. Ryan’s book details the history …
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Trailed by Kathryn Miles
Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders (Algonquin Books 2022) by Kathryn Miles details the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, who were killed in Virginia’s Shenandoah national park while on a hiking trip in 1996. The case has long since been cold, although the FBI and rangers from the National Park …
Unmasked by Paul Holes
As one of the most anticipated true crime releases of 2022, Paul Holes’ new true crime memoir, Unmasked, is an unflinching look inside the career of one of the most well-known figures in true crime and popular culture. Holes’ memoir recounts some of the most famous and harrowing moments in his career alongside events in …
Duped by Saul Kassin
Saul Kassin’s Duped: Why Innocent People Confess and Why We Believe Their Confessions (Prometheus Books, 2022) is a part of the growing body of literature that discusses false confessions, the psychology behind false accusations, and the injustice that is baked into the American judicial system. What I think this book is doing differently is explaining why false …
Murder by the Book by Claire Harman
Both true crime enthusiasts and Victorian literature lovers alike will want to read Claire Harman’s Murder by the Book: The Crime that Shocked Dickens’s London (Knopf, 2019), which provides equal helpings of salacious criminals and well-known literary figures. Centered around the murder of aged statesman Lord William Russell in May 1840, Harman traces the criminal …
Bone Deep by Charles Bosworth Jr. & Joel J. Schwartz 
Charles Bosworth Jr. and Joel J. Schwartz’s Bone Deep: Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case (Kensington 2022) is a classic true crime tale of murder, intrigue, suspicion, and wrongful conviction. The book is fast-paced, and the case is shocking: Betsy Faria was brutally murdered in her home and discovered by her husband, Russ. Russ is suspected of …
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Snake Eyes by Bitty Martin
Snake Eyes: Murder in a Southern Town by Bitty Martin (Rowan & Littlefield 2022) is a straightforward and classic example of true crime that focuses on a little-known case, beginning in 1960s Arkansas, and the complex people and events that led to its resolution years later. Martin’s book begins with the sudden and shocking death …
Death in the Air by Kate Winkler Dawson
In Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, The Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City (Hachette Books, 2018), Kate Winkler Dawson draws attention to two killers that gripped the attention of London and the world in the early 1950s. In February 1952, King George VI died at the age of …
Boys Enter the House by David Nelson
In David Nelson’s 2021 book Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives they Left Behind (Chicago Review Press) the text begins with an illuminating author’s note, one wherein Nelson explains the terms he uses throughout the book, the way the interviews were conducted and complied, and most importantly, what his intentions …
True Crime Index 