Myth Crime

The evidence was never hidden. That is what makes these stories so hard to shake. A wooden automaton beat Napoleon at chess by throwing open its doors and inviting the room to look inside. A truck that could only roll downhill was briefly worth more than Ford. A single drop of blood at a pharmacy counter told a healthy woman she was losing her child, while the nine-billion-dollar company behind the test said nothing. Two twelve-year-old girls walked into the woods to kill their best friend for a monster a bored man had invented in one evening on a forum. True stories of fraud, forgery and ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Cotton Malone adventure involving a flaw in the United States Constitution, a mystery about Abraham Lincoln, and a political issue that’s as explosive as it is timely—not only in Malone’s world, but in ours September 1861: All is not as it seems. With...

On a chilly Monday morning in 1935, a young maid opened the garage door of a Southern California seaside villa onto a grim scene. Her employer, a popular motion picture comedienne, lay dead in the front seat of her expensive automobile. Within hours, the news of Thelma Todd’s death was making headlines throughout the nation. Was it murder, suicide, or accident? Cast against the background of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the film industry and the growing metropolis, her death baffled both the public and the investigating authorities. After numerous attempts to solve the mystery over the last...

When Roland Barthes's groundbreaking Mythologies first appeared in English in 1972, it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant works in French theory - yet nearly half of the essays from the original work were missing. This new edition of Mythologies is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic. It includes the brilliant "Astrology", never published in English before.

A killer who hid in plain sight. A city that never saw him coming. And the vulnerable women society looked past—until it was too late. In the brutal heart of 1990s Baltimore, where homelessness, addiction, and violence collided beneath abandoned bridges and in forgotten industrial zones, Joe Metheny preyed on women living at the margins—women whose disappearances went unnoticed for far too long. THE BEAST OF BALTIMORE is a chilling, meticulously researched investigation into one of America’s most disturbing and misunderstood killers. From his fractured childhood and deepening ...

A Finalist for The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award An examination of those who vanish in the wilderness without a trace, and the eccentric, determined characters who try to find them. Perfect for readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston. "A compassionate, sympathetic, and haunting book...

"Between the three of them, author Alex Michaelides and narrators Louise Brealey and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith cast a spell that will have listeners glued to this suspenseful novel every chance they get." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner "The audiobook is narrated primarily by actor...

An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals. The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to 5% of the global population, the United States...

Black masses. Human sacrifices. Secret cults hidden in the woods. For decades, stories about Satanic crimes have fascinated, terrified and divided public opinion. But how much of what we think we know is actually supported by evidence? Satanic Crime for Beginners explores the complex world of alleged ritual crimes, occult-inspired violence, moral panics and criminal investigations through the lens of criminology. From the Satanic Panic of the 1980s to real homicide cases involving occult symbolism, this book separates documented facts from urban legends, media hysteria and conspiracy ...

A thrilling and emotional mystery that spans over a century, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Fate. In Chapter Four of the Bible, Cain kills Abel. It is the world's most famous murder. But the Bible is silent about one key detail: the weapon Cain used to kill his...

The history of Nazi medical experiments is built on a post-war rationalization. The perpetrators claimed they were advancing science, but the typewritten ledgers in the archives speak the language of sociopathic accounting and biological theft. In The Red Harvest: Exsanguination and the Myth of Nazi Medicine, Laurence Blake delivers a hard-hitting, visceral investigation into the darkest corners of World War II history. Through a customized investigative framework, Blake proves that the medical blocks of the concentration camps functioned as a macro-parasite. The doctors in crisp white ...

In this Very Short Introduction, Robert Segal introduces the array of approaches used to understand the study of myth. These approaches hail from disciplines as varied as anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, philosophy, science, and religious studies. Including ideas from theorists as varied as Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss, Albert Camus, and Roland Barthes, Segal uses the famous ancient myth of Adonis to analyze their individual approaches and theories.

Trapped in the clutches of a Zombie apocalypse, the City of Chicago, the murder capital of the U.S., unleashes the ultimate weapon, capitalism, by paying $1,000 for every Re-Killed Zombie brought to city hall, ushering in "The Great Zombie Gold Rush". Zombies never have a chance in a world where people realize 75 Zombies pays off their student loans, 40 Zombies buys them a Tesla, 5 Zombies wipes out their Visa debt...

In 1986, the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York began an investigation into Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert, and its High Yield and Convertible Bond Department, a department Michael created and was head of. Michael was the most successful and innovative financier of his time. Drexel, an upstart investment bank was also the most successful securities firm on Wall Street, thanks to Michael.

A small town filled with secrets, a family with more than a few secrets of their own, a challenging and suspense-filled escape from unexpected danger, and a love that survives it all. Welcome to Rome Legend’s world. She’s not overly happy with it at the moment, however captivating and intriguing it might be. And she can easily count the reasons for it on one hand…namely her brothers and her father. She’s not the slightest bit thrilled with any of them and doesn’t expect that to change anytime soon. She hasn’t decided about Jackson yet. His magic might actually be stronger than ...

A chilling, lavishly illustrated who’s who of the most despicable people ever to walk the earth, featuring stories from the Lore podcast—now a streaming television series—including “Black Stockings,” “Half-Hanged,” and “The Castle,” as well as rare material. Some monsters are...

He was a soldier, policeman, civil servant, union representative, cinephile, composer, dog lover and self-styled intellectual. He was also a predator, manipulator, necrophilic fantasist and one of Britain’s most disturbing serial killers. Between 1978 and 1983, Dennis Nilsen murdered vulnerable men and boys in North London, keeping their bodies for company before destroying their remains in fires, drains and boiling pots. For years, he moved unnoticed through ordinary life while the men he targeted, the homeless, hungry, drunk, gay, unemployed, estranged or simply unlucky—vanished into ...

Australia has a unique place in the history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. From the clubs' beginnings in the swinging '60s, their entry into the amphetamine market in the 1970s, through to the 1984 Milperra Massacre that made world headlines, to the Sydney airport brawl between the Hell's Angels and Comancheros and the brutal murder of Anthony Zervas, Outlaw Bikers in Australia tells how these 'one per cent deviants' grew to dominate the recreational drug market and became major players in the international outlaw biker scene.

In this hilarious sequel to How to Summon a Fairy Godmother, Theodosia’s already survived being the evil stepsister in one fairy tale, but surviving fae bargains, fairy rings, and being turned into a hedgehog will be a whole new challenge. Theodosia Balfour is in a panic—she has no clue how...

A deadly Cold War political game. A cursed Egyptian artifact. Two sisters: one the treasure's guardian, the other its thief. Egyptologist Noura Marquette has spent her life piecing together remnants of the past, but nothing prepares her for the day her sister resurfaces in Cairo. Estranged for...