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.

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story - they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

In Race Against Time, Mitchell takes listeners on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the Civil Rights Movement, decades after the fact. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, and the Mississippi Burning case. Mitchell reveals how he unearthed secret documents and found long-lost suspects and witnesses, building up evidence strong enough to take on the Klan.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

October 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Volstead Act, which put the enforcement teeth into Prohibition. But the law didn't stop George Remus from cornering the boozy, illegal liquor marketplace and amassing a fortune that eclipsed $200 million (the equivalent of $4.75 billion today). As eminent documentarian Ken Burns proclaimed, "Remus was to bootlegging what Rockefeller was to oil." Author Bob Batchelor has unearthed a treasure trove of untapped historical archives to cover the life, times, and crimes of the man who ran the largest bootlegging operation in America.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

Billy the Kid - a.k.a. Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney - was a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue, and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single-handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, New Mexico, deputies, killed during the Kid's brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on April 28, 1881.

In this critically acclaimed true crime tale of "welfare queen" Linda Taylor, a Slate editor reveals a "wild, only-in-America story" of political manipulation and murder (Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning author). Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an exposé of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day.

Art T. Burton sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late 19th-century America - and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Fluent in Creek and other Southern native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Bass Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws, and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....

In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women.

On a hot June morning in 1975, a fatal shoot-out took place between FBI agents and American Indians on a remote property near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in which an Indian and two federal agents were killed. Eventually, four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges in the deaths of the two agents. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book.

From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national - and even global - infamy. Here, writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother "40 whacks", where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation.

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: The country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment.

Was Billy the Kid really shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett on a July night in 1881? At the midpoint of the last century, an old man comes forth seeking a pardon for crimes committed. He says that he wants to die a free man - and that he is Billy the Kid. The incident leads to this examination of new facts, new interpretations, and new contradictions. It is the story of "Brushy" Bill Roberts, a man who laid claim to a legend. Originally published in 1955 by University of New Mexico Press.

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.

1921, Oklahoma. Dépossédés de leurs terres, les Indiens Osages ont été parqués dans une réserve aride. Mais sous leurs pieds coule un océan de pétrole. De quoi rameuter, en quelques mois, les vautours blancs assoiffés d'or noir. Bientôt, les membres les plus riches de la tribu disparaissent, l'un après l'autre. Balle dans la tête, empoisonnement, incendie...

Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.

During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration - from 1848 to 1943 - San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history - and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped.

A girl's quest to find her father leads her to an extended family of magical fighting booksellers who police the mythical Old World of England when it intrudes on the modern world.

The other orphans say Margot is lucky. Lucky to survive the horrible accident that killed her family. Lucky to have her own room because she wakes up screaming every night. And finally, lucky to be chosen by a prestigious family to live at their remote country estate.

In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people - even those she loves and trusts most - don’t want that to happen.

From its founding in 1966 to contemporary attempts to censure its history and revise its significance, the Black Panther party has aroused fear, hope, pride, vilification, and government-sponsored oppression. This is the first and only collection of the most vital, representative writings of the party. Here are Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and Fred Hampton; Kathleen Cleaver and other Panther women; the party's court battles and acquittals; its positions on black separatism, the power structure, the police, violence, education, and more.

Henry Worsley spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the 19th-century polar explorer who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape and life-threatening physical exhaustion. He soon felt compelled to go back. In 2015, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities - beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books - sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least 2,000 cases in his 40-year career. Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes", Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest - and first - forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Since 1929, Hollywood’s brightest stars have flocked to the Chateau Marmont as if it were a second home. An apartment building-turned-hotel, the Chateau has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: where director Nicholas Ray slept with his 16-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose; and Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months. Much of what has happened inside the Chateau’s walls has eluded the public eye - until now.

The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.

As a successful social media journalist with half a million followers, 17-year-old Cal is used to sharing his life online. But when his pilot father is selected for a highly publicized NASA mission to Mars, Cal and his family relocate from Brooklyn to Houston and are thrust into a media circus. Amidst the chaos, Cal meets sensitive and mysterious Leon, another "Astrokid", and finds himself falling head over heels - fast. As the frenzy around the mission grows, so does their connection.

Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great con men, and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. Born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, Sobhraj grew up deprived of a sense of identity, moving to France before being imprisoned and stripped of his multiple nationalities.

In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early 16th century.