John Woodrow Cox’s Children Under Fire: An American Crisis (Ecco, 2021) is an unflinching look at gun violence in the United States. Cox, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his Washington Post series Children Under Fire presents a detailed account of two elementary school children—Ava from South Carolina and Tyshaun from Washington, D.C.—and explores how they have both been affected …
Midnight in Peking by Paul French
In Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin, 2013) author Paul French takes the reader back to January 1937 and sheds light upon the gruesome murder of Pamela Werner. The case was never solved and has been largely forgotten for more than half a …
Summary Judgement by Donald Cameron Clark, Jr.
A thorough and unmitigated view of one death row case in Alabama from a defense attorney’s perspective, Summary Judgement: A Lawyer’s Memoir by Donald Cameron Clark, Jr. (Girl Friday Productions 2021) is a startling look at just how far the justice system in the United States has to go in reforming prisons, court proceedings, and …
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The Violence Project by Jillian Peterson and James Densley
There are many books that discuss mass shootings and their causes, and I have read a few. What I have not seen in most of these books are solutions to prevent mass shootings. Jillian Peterson’s and James Densley’s The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic (Abrams Press, 2021) is that book—it is the book …
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Details are Unprintable by Allan Levine
One could not possibly ask for a more thorough, suspenseful, and fascinating true crime story than Allan Levine’s Details are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder (Lyons Press 2020). A consummate historian and writer, Levine provides a compelling account of one of the most brutal transnational murder cases of the mid-twentieth century. …
The Irish Assassins by Julie Kavanagh
Inspired by the discovery of notebooks belonging to her late father, in The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders That Stunned Victorian England (Grove Press, 2021), Julie Kavanagh digs deeper into the historical record to fully reveal the brutal slaying of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke in Dublin’s Phoenix Park by …
Murder in the Family by Jeff Blackstock
I first became interested in Jeff Blackstock’s Murder in the Family: How the Search for my Mother’s Killer Led to my Father (Penguin 2020) after I picked up the book in a bookstore and read the first line of the prologue: “I think that my father murdered my mother” (1). It was equal parts tragic and intriguing …
“Strange Piece of Paradise” by Terri Jentz
In 1977, the summer after her sophomore year at Yale University, Terri Jentz and her friend (whom she refers to by the alias Shayna Weiss) set off on the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a 4,200-mile route established the year before in celebration of America’s Bicentennial. Just seven days into their trip, they stopped to rest at …
Golden Boy by John Glatt
Prolific true crime author John Glatt’s latest book, Golden Boy: Murder Among the Manhattan Elite (St. Martin’s Press 2021) is a thorough and harrowing journey through a story of wealth, mental illness, and murder. Golden Boy details the consequences of a culture of privilege that led to a son’s untreated illness and a father’s tragic …
Black River Road by Debra Komar
In her book Black River Road: An Unthinkable Crime, an Unlikely Suspect, and the Question of Character (Goose Lane, 2016), Debra Komar brings a new perspective to the Maggie Vail murder case of 1869. Passed down in local folklore for generations, the story of Maggie Vail, her child Ella May, and their murderer, upstanding architect …
