First Serial Killer

In Michelle Chouinard’s clever mystery The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco, the granddaughter of a serial killer shows readers another side of the beloved city. Welcome to San Francisco, a city with killer charm. The chill of a San Francisco summer can be deadly. No one knows this better...

"Pulpy, peppery and sinister, served up in a comic deadpan...This scorpion-tailed little thriller leaves a response, and a sting, you will remember."--NEW YORK TIMES "The wittiest and most fun murder party you've ever been invited to."--MARIE CLAIRE WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR...

This book is for listeners of true crime podcasts and audiences of both fiction and true-crime nonfiction. It's the true story of first-generation Irish-American nurse Jane Toppan, born as Honora Kelley. Jane Toppan was absolutely a monster, but she did not start out that way. When Jane was a young child, her father abandoned her and her sister to the Boston Female Asylum. From there, Jane was indentured to a wealthy family who changed her name, never adopted her, and wrote her out of the will.

A sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885 In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin...

A thrilling edge-of-your-seat, compelling lesbian romance thriller written by FMP's 2nd best selling author, Chanel Ivy. Ruby Johnson is a rich young woman who made her fortune getting in on the cryptocurrency trend early. New money might not be the best thing for someone with mental issues, but Ruby has no one to tell her no. She doesn't deny herself any desire, no matter how expensive or risky. Ruby, who dresses in her signature men's black suit with a white dress shirt and brilliant red tie to meet women, finds herself embroiled in a battle with her internal demons thanks to a blushing ...

Two hundred bodies. A gas chamber in the basement. Acid vats. A torture maze built to catch tourists at the 1893 World's Fair. You have read the stories. You have watched the documentaries. You have heard the body count climb on every new podcast. Almost none of it is true. The real Herman Webster Mudgett, the New Hampshire farm boy who took the name H. H. Holmes, killed perhaps nine people. The Murder Castle on Sixty Third Street was a swindler's headquarters with an oversized furnace, not a Bluebeard's slaughterhouse. The famous Hearst confession was paid fiction, written in a ...

We tend to think of serial killers as a modern phenomenon. They are not. The first known serial killers in the United States were the Harpe brothers. Active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Harpe brothers spread a path of terror across more than half a dozen American states. Along their way, they murdered between 39 and 50 men, women, and children. Their crimes, which often included grotesque mutilations, were so vicious that they made other murderers cringe with disgust. This is a true story, and it is as gruesome as any horror tale ever told. This fully documented story ...

Imagine a killer who thinks, "What is the worst thing anyone has ever done?"--and then goes far beyond it. Now imagine four women --a police detective, an assistant DA, a reporter, and a medical examiner --who join forces as they sidestep their bosses to track down criminals. Known as the...

Hollywood's make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can't hold a candle to real-life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.

Sometimes the darkest mysteries are homegrown. When Zephyr Nelson returns home to look after her ailing mother, she discovers that her younger brother, Cotter, has become obsessed with a malevolent influencer on a mysterious voice app. Just as a series of puzzling deaths begin plaguing their small town of Sugarland. With the help of her college best friend and occasional lover, Teddy, Zephyr unravels truths about Sugarland that are impossible for her to accept ...

A dark, forbidden romance between a criminal psychologist and her serial killer patient, for those that like their love stories a little devilish. My patient is stalking me … and he’s a psychopath. I’ve dedicated my life to understanding the darkest corners of the human psyche, but nothing...

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without...

Now the subject of the Lifetime original movie An Amish Murder Sworn to Silence is the first in Linda Castillo's New York Times bestselling Kate Burkholder series. A killer is preying on sacred ground.... In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and "English" residents have...

Herman Webster Mudgett was born in 1861 in a small New Hampshire hill town, and he was dead before he turned 35. In the years between, operating under a name he had constructed to replace his own, he built a hotel in Chicago designed to kill its guests, committed a number of murders whose exact count remains in dispute, and earned the distinction of being among the first Americans to whom the word “serial killer”—a term that did not yet exist in his lifetime—could reasonably be applied.

🕯 He couldn’t stop history’s first serial killer… but he might finally save himself. 🕯 On the brink of relapse, a broken man wanders into a decaying amusement park exhibit on Chicago’s lakefront. Moments after taking a long-feared hit of heroin, he finds himself not dead — but transported to the glittering horror of the 1893 World’s Fair. There, amid marvels of invention and carnival excess, he meets a charming doctor named H.H. Holmes. What begins as a surreal hallucination turns into a waking nightmare as the man realizes he’s inside the past… and inside the orbit of...

Have you ever wondered why so many rock stars met their untimely demise at the very height of their careers? Was it merely coincidence — or were darker forces at play, involving the Devil, the record industry, and the CIA? Hollow Skai now unveils the truth: it was the work of Samuel Hieronymus Hellborn, a deranged serial killer who haunted the music industry for seventy-five years, dispatching our greatest idols before they could grow into dreary old bores.

The deaths look like accidents. Every one of them is a correction. By day, Elliot Marsh drives a delivery van through the Ontario backcountry. By the calculus he inherited from his engineer father, he is an actuary of consequences — staging flawless, untraceable accidents for the people whose negligence killed others and who walked away clean. Three bodies in one frozen winter. No witness, no weapon, no pattern any investigator is paid to see. The insurance models flag the anomaly and bury it. Only one constable, Naya Kaur, writes the word that will haunt the next four years: pattern. ...

"A taut, psychological thriller with deeply relatable characters. Patch’s brilliantly created plot will keep readers turning pages until they reach the shocking conclusion. I highly recommend it!” —Nancy Mehl, author of the Quantico Files series When a cold-case serial killer returns, FBI...

Genius programmer Angela Hoot has always been at the top of her class, but now she's at the bottom of the FBI food chain—until her first case threatens everyone around her. ​ Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's...

An actress murdered on the beach. A wellness cult with deadly secrets. And a wedding day that might never come. Emmy-nominated actress Emilia Cruz leaves the Screen Actors Guild Awards in a couture gown and a limousine. Hours later, her mutilated body is found in the sand near the breaking Pacific waves. Detective Kaitlyn Carr is called to the scene of the most high-profile murder of her career. The press is watching. The studio is demanding answers. And the clock is ticking. Two suspects emerge: Emilia's obsessive high school boyfriend who flew in from Iowa, and the enigmatic leader of a ...