Regular price: $24.95
When 11-year-old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighborhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession led James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011 James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New Hampshire in 2004.
Jack Felter, a history teacher, returns home to bucolic Franklin Mills, Ohio, to care for his father, a retired pilot who suffers from dementia and is quickly losing his memory. Jack would love to forget about Franklin Mills and about Sam, the girl he fell in love with, who ran off with his best friend, Tony. Except Tony has gone missing. Soon Jack is pulled into the search for Tony, but the only one who seems to know anything is Tony's last patient, a paranoid boy named Cole.
On a warm Florida evening, Karen Gregory saw a familiar face at her door. What the beautiful young woman could not know was that she was staring into the eyes of her killer - a savage monster who would rape her, stab her to death, and leave her battered body on the floor outside the bedroom. Detectives frantically sifting through the evidence were tormented by one disturbing question after another....
In Washington Township, Michigan, on Valentine's Day, 2007, Stephen Grant filed a missing persons report on his beloved wife, Tara. The stay-at-home father of two was beside himself with despair. Why would Tara abandon him and their family? Was she involved with another man? Stephen's frantic, emotional search for Tara made national headlines, and the case was featured on Dateline among other television shows and news outlets. But key elements in Stephen's story still weren't adding up....
The author of Predator traces the story of George Russell, Jr., a bright, young, popular black man whose thirty-year psychological unraveling led to a shocking killing spree.
The tragic story of Susan Powell and her murdered boys, Charlie and Braden, is the only case that rivals the Jon Benet Ramsey saga in the annals of true crime. When the pretty, blonde Utah mother went missing in December of 2009 the media was swept up in the story - with lenses and microphones trained on Susan's husband, Josh. He said he had no idea what happened to his young wife, and that he and the boys had been camping in the middle of a snowstorm.
When 11-year-old James Renner fell in love with Amy Mihaljevic, the missing girl seen on posters all over his neighborhood, it was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession led James to a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave him PTSD. In 2011 James began researching the strange disappearance of Maura Murray, a UMass student who went missing after wrecking her car in rural New Hampshire in 2004.
Jack Felter, a history teacher, returns home to bucolic Franklin Mills, Ohio, to care for his father, a retired pilot who suffers from dementia and is quickly losing his memory. Jack would love to forget about Franklin Mills and about Sam, the girl he fell in love with, who ran off with his best friend, Tony. Except Tony has gone missing. Soon Jack is pulled into the search for Tony, but the only one who seems to know anything is Tony's last patient, a paranoid boy named Cole.
On a warm Florida evening, Karen Gregory saw a familiar face at her door. What the beautiful young woman could not know was that she was staring into the eyes of her killer - a savage monster who would rape her, stab her to death, and leave her battered body on the floor outside the bedroom. Detectives frantically sifting through the evidence were tormented by one disturbing question after another....
In Washington Township, Michigan, on Valentine's Day, 2007, Stephen Grant filed a missing persons report on his beloved wife, Tara. The stay-at-home father of two was beside himself with despair. Why would Tara abandon him and their family? Was she involved with another man? Stephen's frantic, emotional search for Tara made national headlines, and the case was featured on Dateline among other television shows and news outlets. But key elements in Stephen's story still weren't adding up....
The author of Predator traces the story of George Russell, Jr., a bright, young, popular black man whose thirty-year psychological unraveling led to a shocking killing spree.
The tragic story of Susan Powell and her murdered boys, Charlie and Braden, is the only case that rivals the Jon Benet Ramsey saga in the annals of true crime. When the pretty, blonde Utah mother went missing in December of 2009 the media was swept up in the story - with lenses and microphones trained on Susan's husband, Josh. He said he had no idea what happened to his young wife, and that he and the boys had been camping in the middle of a snowstorm.
One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a scene. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan's.
The Colonial Parkway Murders - the name given eight murders that took place in the Tidewater region in the late 1980s, two of which were on the historic Colonial Parkway, the nation’s narrowest National Park. Young people in the prime of their lives were the targets. But the pattern that stitched this special kind of evil together was more like a spider web of theory, intrigue, and mathematics. Then, mysteriously, the killing spree stopped. Now, father-daughter true crime authors Blaine Pardoe and Victoria Hester blow the dust off of these cases.
When her missing boyfriend is found murdered, his body encased in cement inside a watering trough and dumped in a cattle field, a local sheriff's deputy is arrested and charged with his murder. But as New York Times best-selling author and investigative journalist M. William Phelps digs in, the truth leads to questions about her guilt. In his first full-length, original true-crime audiobook for WildBlue Press, Phelps delivers a hard-hitting, unique experience, immersing listeners in the life of the first female deputy in Oglethorpe County, Georgia.
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
A personal look at a crime of passion describes an FBI agent's successful career, family life, and extramarital affair that ended in murder, and the guilt that drove him to confess in spite of his impenetrable government shield. In a true story of crime, guilt, and conscience, a model agent's illicit involvement with an informant leads him to commit a crime that reveals all the workings of the human heart - and the dark side of the FBI.
In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listeners. But Serial did not tell the whole story.
As a young man, Randall Woodfield had it all; he was a star athlete with good looks and an award-winning student. Working in the swinging West Coast bar scene, he had more than his share of women. But he wanted more than just sex. An appetite for unspeakable violent acts led him to cruise the I-5 highway through California to Washington, leaving a trail of victims along the way. As the list of the dead grew, the police mobilized to stop a twisted killer who had 44 known deaths to his name.
An insider exposes the shocking facts deliberately left out of the hit Netflix series Making a Murderer - and argues persuasively that Steven Avery was rightfully convicted in the 2005 killing of Teresa Halbach.
In the summer of 1985, in his exclusive Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, Robert Bierenbaum, a prominent surgeon and certified genius, strangled his wife Gail to death. He then drove her body to an airstrip in Caldwell, N.J., and dumped it into the Atlantic Ocean from a single-engine private plane. The next day he reported her missing.
When Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth began their romance, they unknowingly set in motion a diabolical plot that would end with them murdered in their own home, Hayworth holding their mercifully unharmed infant. Chris was a CIA agent who was concerned about Jenelle. Seeing the cyberbullying she had endured, and worried for her safety, Chris got in touch with Jenelle's protective parents and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Payne and Hayworth were a danger to Jenelle.
David loved Cindy and was loved in return. Or so he thought. The troubled young man clung to his new love and dreamed of their future together. So begins the chain of events that was to evolve into a horror of terrifying proportions. Jack Olsen, best-selling author of Son, now reveals the details of a true-life romance gone hideously awry.
When young women begin mysteriously disappearing in Oregon, Police Lieutenant James Stovall leads a relentless search for a killer. With little evidence available, and the public screaming for answers, he must find a remorseless, brutal killer whose identity will shock them all....
A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.
Four years later, David Neff is a broken man. The best-selling author of a true-crime book about an Ohio serial killer, Neff went into exile after his wife’s inexplicable suicide. That is, until an unexpected visit from an old friend introduces him to the strange mystery of “the man with a thousand mittens.” Soon Neff finds himself drawn back into a world he thought he had left behind forever. But the closer he gets to uncovering the true identity of the Man from Primrose Lane, the more he begins to understand the dangerous power of his own obsessions and how they may be connected to the deaths of both his beloved wife and the old hermit.
With a deft and singular blend of suspense, literature, and horror, James Renner's The Man from Primrose Lane boasts as many twists and turns as a roller coaster. It’s a spellbinding journey of redemption and a reflection on the roles of fate, destiny, and obsession when it comes to matters of the heart.
I never fully settled into this book because I was looking forward to a 'cold crime mystery' read, not a detour into the twilight zone. That said, the writer is clearly talented and while the sci fi angle never quite gelled for me, I was entertained and would try another of the authors efforts.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
This was a very convoluted book which may have been easier to follow in print.
Through NO fault of the narrator--he was excellent--it was often difficult for me to understand immediately in which time period the story was taking place. There were flashbacks and changes in POV and time travel and an evil cat. There were different versions of the same character. Alternate universes.
Those with weak stomachs be aware that several descrptions of bodily functions were a bit too graphic and detailed. It is ok to say that some character vomits, but I do not really need to know all the contents of it.
I did get to the end of the book after several starts and stops and going back over chapters. As I said, maybe it would have been better to get the print version.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Would you try another book from James Renner and/or L. J. Ganser?
Maybe.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The most interesting was the mystery aspect about the strange man who wore mittens all of the time.The least interesting was pretty much everything else,which dragged.
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
It was alright.No dislikes.
Do you think The Man from Primrose Lane needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
It does need a follow-up to explain who the man was and why he turned out the way he did.
Any additional comments?
No.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The book starts out as a pretty compelling crime drama then takes a wild left turn into the land of science fiction. It really feels like the author painted himself into a corner with the story and then used the sci-fi twist to get out of it. I wish he would've just stuck with the crime novel.
Would you be willing to try another book from James Renner? Why or why not?
I would. The writing is really good and he tells a compelling story. It's just not the story I thought I was getting/buying.
What didn’t you like about L. J. Ganser’s performance?
As a native of Northeast Ohio, it really bothered me when the reader mispronounced several names. For example, there's an exhibition hall in Cleveland called the International Exposition Center. We call it the I-X (
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
It's pronounced muh-die-nuh. I hope that doesn't ruin this otherwise great book for anyone. It's an even more special treat for folks from NE Ohio.
Interestingly convoluted story that is part detective, part sci fi, and part a study in obsession. It is written in a way that is as engaging as it is easy to follow. I even bought it for my kindle so I could keep reading at work.
The narrator was totally amazing taking on so many characters. I wasn't crazy about the time travel concepts but still could not stop listening. If I were reading the book, I would not have put the book down. Very grabbing!
loved it... quite complicated toward the end but we'll thought out. LOVE Renner and his stories
I was so into it, then they started with the science fiction and time travel element and ruined what was a truly extraordinary book
It takes a second to get going but then I could hardly keep up. What a great read.