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Readers' Advisory: True Crime

This LibGuide helps librarians and library patrons quickly connect with popular and relevant books and eBooks by genre, theme, medium, or language.

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Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings

If you'd like to browse our circulating stacks on-site, the following Call Number ranges may help you find a good read:

H. Social sciences
⮑ HV. Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
⮑ HV1-9960. Social pathology. Social and public welfare.
⮑ HV6001-7220.5. Criminology
⮑ HV6251-6773.55. Crimes and offenses

City of omens : a search for the missing women of the borderlands / Dan Werb

For decades, American hungers sustained Tijuana. In this scientific detective story, a public health expert reveals what happens when a border city's lifeline is brutally severed. Despite its reputation as a carnival of vice, Tijuana was, until recently, no more or less violent than neighboring San Diego, its sister city across the border wall. But then something changed. Over the past ten years, Mexico's third-largest city became one of the world's most dangerous. Tijuana's murder rate skyrocketed and produced a staggering number of female victims. Hundreds of women are now found dead in the city each year, or bound and mutilated along the highway that lines the Baja coast. When Dan Werb began to study these murders in 2013, rather than viewing them in isolation, he discovered that they could only be understood as one symptom among many.  #BatteredWomen #DomesticViolence #Epidemiology #SexWork 

The Fishermen and the dragon : fear, greed, and a fight for justice on the Gulf Coast / Kirk Wallace Johnson

A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster - a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman's relentless battle for environmental justice. #FBI #FishingIndustry #Immigration #VietnamesRefugees#Texas  #WhiteSupremacy #Xenophobia #eBook

The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes and Mysteries

"Unsolved crimes unanswered questions. Crimes are meant to be solved. But what happens when theyre not? For the individuals involved from the victims and their families to police investigators this is the most frustrating part of all. For them theres no resolution, no justice, no tidy boxes in which to pack away all the bits and pieces of a puzzle that finally links together. Instead they are only left with questions that may never get answered. Chilling cold cases & unexplained mysteries. The Best New True Crime Stories examines a fascinating assortment of unsolved murders, unsolved crimes, serial killers, and mysterious stories from around the world from the past to the contemporary."  #ForensicPsychology #WhiteCollarCrime

Poisoned : Chicago 1907, a corrupt System, an accused killer, and the crusade to save him / Steve Shukis

A gripping tale of murder, sorcery, and criminal justice in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Poisoned is the fascinating true story (1907) ofa mysterious Bohemian fortune teller charged with murdering a half-dozen peopleby slowly poisoning them with arsenic. Poisoned details the horrific murders, and the incredible events that followed HermanBillik'sconviction: last second reprieves; legal battles carried all the way to the Supreme Court; frenzied mass demonstrations; corpses secretly exhumed in the middle of the night; and the revelation that key witnesses lied under oath. The case affected political campaigns, involved a Chicago Mayor, and featured an eventual showdown in the race for Governor of Illinois between two of the story's central figures. Indeed, if it were not true, no one would ever believe it. #Corruption #Murder #eBook

True Crime Philadelphia: from America's first bank robbery to the real-life killers who inspired Boardwalk empire

"A tour through Philadelphia that highlights the locations within each neighborhood where crime occurred." #History #Pennsylvania #Phildaelphia 

In search of Sacco and Vanzetti : double lives, troubled times, and the Massachusetts murder case that shook the world / Susan Tejada

It was a bold and brutal crime—robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti, and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist. #Biographies #CaseStudies #MurderInvestigations #eBook

Coming SOON.GIF

The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this book shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history.

True Crime Parallels to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie

Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, the works of Agatha Christie stand as some of the most celebrated crime fiction of our era. This book takes ten of her most famous works and shows their relationship to ten of crime history's most famous and sensational cases--cases whose notoriety still resounds to this day. #AgathaChristie #FictionalizedTrueCrime

Vanished : the life and disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa / William Hryb

Nearly forty years after Jimmy Hoffa vanished from the face of the earth his disappearance still remains one of the biggest mysteries in crime history. At his zenith, Hoffa was reputed to be the most powerful figures in North America. The labor boss was never seen again after July 30, 1975 marking one of the most unexplainable cold cases ever. In his new book titled Vanished: The Life and Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, freelance journalist William Hryb attempts to unravel the five-decade long riddle. The author painstakingly takes the reader behind the scenes of the man who made the Teamsters the most formidable labor union in the United States. Alleged to have close ties with organized crime, Hoffa became the target of sensational congressional hearings into organized crime spearheaded by Robert Kennedy. #Gangsters #LaborUnions #TheMafia #Teamsters #eBook

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