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 escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. 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.

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Heartland, Neal Wooten traces five decades of his dirt-poor, Alabama mountain family as the years and secrets coalesce.

It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado—until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment camp" for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece.

On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.

In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

In 1911 two British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, read a brochure about a revolutionary fasting treatment that promised a lifetime of good health. The sanatorium in the village of Olalla, west of Seattle, was surrounded by a beautiful forest, sparkling waters and fresh air. The sisters agreed it sounded perfect and exactly the restorative holiday they needed. But within a month of arriving, under the supervision of Doctor Linda Burfield Hazzard, Claire and Dora began to realise the frightening truth – they were not patients but prisoners at the isolated sanitorium.

In the most extraordinary journey Ann Rule has ever undertaken, America's master of true crime has spent more than two decades researching the story of the Green River Killer, who murdered more than 49 young women. Green River, Running Red is a harrowing account of a modern monster, a killer who walked among us undetected. It is also the story of his quarry -- of who these young women were and who they might have become.

After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Sharon Marshall was a brilliant and beautiful student whose future was filled with promise—until her murderous, fugitive father drew her into a lifetime of deception that became one of the most baffling cases in the annals of American true crime.

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, 13-year-old Sarah and 11-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.

The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.

Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down.

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

A real-estate lawyer in Connecticut's moneyed seaside communities, Beth Ann Carpenter, 30, had beauty, brains, and success. But she wanted more - namely guardianship of her two-year-old niece, Rebecca, daughter of Beth's estranged sister, Kim.

In the lovely town of Pleasant Valley in upstate New York, the maple trees were ablaze with fall's blood-red color. The air was crisp. And a woman named Susan Fassett left her weekly choir practice at a church - when a killer emerged from the shadows and mercilessly gunned her down.

A ship's pilot legendary for guiding mammoth freighters through the narrows of Puget Sound, Rolf Neslund was a proud Norwegian, a ladies' man, and a beloved resident of Washington State's idyllic Lopez Island. Virtually indestructible even into his golden years, he made electrifying headlines more than once: after a ship he was helming crashed into the soaring West Seattle Bridge, causing millions in damages; and following his inexplicable disappearance at age 80. Was he a suicide, a man broken by one costly misstep? Had he run off with a lifelong love? Or did a trail of gruesome evidence lead to the home Rolf shared with his wife, Ruth?

This riveting inside story of the intense search for the Salt Lake City teenager who was kidnapped from her bed reveals never-before-told details of the largest investigation in Utah state history. Paced like a thriller, this true account moves between the parallel stories of the searchers and the abductor. Going beyond a mere eyewitness account, the book includes information culled from interviews with more than 150 people involved in the search and investigation, notes from family meetings, and memos from law enforcement officials.

Ann Rule, who shared her own nerve-jangling account of unknowingly befriending sadistic sociopath Ted Bundy in The Stranger Beside Me, chronicles other fateful encounters with the hidden predators among us in this riveting collection, fifteenth in the best-selling series drawn from her personal files. First in line is a stunning case that spanned thirty years and took a determined detective to four states - ending, finally, in Alaska - where he unraveled not one but two murders.

Rachel Newhouse disappeared on the night of November 12, 1998. Only months later, in the same town, Aundria Crawford lost her life in an act of unimaginable violence. As authorities worked to find clues, parole officer David Zaragoza paid a routine visit to one of his charges - Rex Allan Krebs, a violent serial rapist who'd served only 10 years of a 20-year sentence. After sending Krebs back to jail for violating his parole, Zaragoza found a key chain belonging to one of the victims. An intensive search led to the gruesome discovery of buried remains near Krebs' secluded cabin.

To all appearances, Dennis Rader was a model citizen in the small town of Park City, Kansas, where he had lived with his family almost his entire life. He was a town compliance officer, a former Boy Scout leader, the president of his church congregation, and a seemingly ordinary father and husband. But Rader's average life belied the existence of his dark, sadistic other self: he was the BTK serial killer.

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within 24 hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation's imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching. In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene.

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, 13-year-old Sarah and 11-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.

As an exotic dancer at The Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage, Mechele Hughes Linehan knew how to captivate men. Three of them were convinced she was engaged to them. Then one spring morning in 1996, one man, Kent Leppink, was found in the snow, shot in the head....Days before his death, Kent had removed Mechele's name from his million-dollar life insurance policy. He wrote a letter to his family stating that, should he meet foul play, Mechele would likely be among those involved. But she wasn't charged with Kent's death. She married a doctor, moved to Olympia, Washington, and began a new life.

Thirty-year-old Barbara Weaver was content to live as the Amish have for centuries - without modern convenience - but her husband, Eli, wanted a life beyond horses and buggies. Soon he gave in to the temptation of technology and found ways to go Online and meet women. When Barbara was found dead, shot in the chest at close range, all eyes were on Eli... and his mistress, a conservative Mennonite named Barb Raber. Barb drove Eli to appointments in her car. She gave him everything he asked for: a laptop, rides to his favorite fishing and hunting spots, and sex.

The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.

Whether dueling with new forensics or the local old boys' network, irreverent defense attorney Andy Carpenter always leaves them awed with his biting wit and winning fourth-quarter game plan. But the fun stops the day Andy's dad, Paterson, New Jersey's legendary ex-DA, drops dead in front of him at a game in Yankee Stadium.

This number-one New York Times best seller is an unflinching look at what the television cameras could not show: behind-the-scenes meetings, the deteriorating relationships between the defense and prosecution teams, the taunting, baiting, and pushing matches between Darden and Simpson, the intimate relationship between Darden and Marcia Clark, and the candid factors behind Darden's controversial decision for Simpson to try on the infamous glove, and much more.

Over a three-decade span, more than 20 women - many teenagers - died mysteriously in the small towns bordering Interstate 45, a 50-mile stretch of highway running from Houston to Galveston. The victims were strangled, shot, or savagely beaten.