In The Defense is Ready, Leslie Abramson, the brilliant and outspoken defense attorney, takes you inside today's courtroom for a stunning firsthand account of how the courage and timidity, wisdom and folly, selflessness and venality of real lawyers, judges, victims and defendants are interwoven into the complex fabric of our often frustrating criminal justice system.

Married for 26 years, Jose and Kitty Menendez appeared to be a happy couple and proud parents. Twenty-one-year-old Lyle Menendez was enrolled at Princeton, where he was a star on the tennis team. Eighteen-year-old Erik Menendez had just graduated from Beverly Hills High and was about to start college at UCLA. The Menendezes appeared to be living the American dream. But it was all a façade.

They were golden boys who killed with sudden savagery. The trial revealed a dark drama too evil to believe. Handsome, rich, bronzed champion athletes, Erik and Lyle Menendez were the stunning symbols of the California dream. The sons of a high-powered Hollywood executive and his beautiful wife, they lived in a pampered world of Beverly Hills mansions, swimming pools, and private tennis coaches. But the dream became a nightmare when police found the butchered bodies of the boys' parents, Jose and Kitty, in the family room of their five-million dollar mansion.

Dozens of books are published each year trying to instruct parents on how to raise good, responsible children, but things still go wrong from time to time. Of course, it’s rare that children turn out like Lyle and Erik Menendez did. For weeks in 1993, Americans were glued to their television, watching as the lurid testimony was given and refuted on Court TV. The Menendez Brothers: The History of the Family Murders that Shocked America looks at one of the most famous true crime cases of the 20th century.

More than two decades after serving as a juror on the high-profile seven-month murder trial, People v. Erik Galen Menendez, Hazel Thornton updates her book, Hung Jury, with a new preface and a postscript essay of observations about the Menendez brothers’ second trial. Includes psychological commentary by Lawrence S. Wrightsman and Amy J. Posey and legal commentary by Alan Scheflin.

Within hours of giving birth to her sixth child, Mary Kay Letourneau had her baby daughter whisked from her arms. She was then shackled and returned to her jail cell. Just years before, the pretty, personable Seattle schoolteacher was living a life many would envy - she had a handsome husband, four beautiful children, and a beloved following of students. Then she was accused of raping one of her students, and her whole world turned upside down.

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit—and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free. Free recounts how Knox survived incarceration, the mistakes she made and misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the as-yet-untold story of her return to Italy and the extraordinary relationship she went on to build with the man who sent her to prison.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?

The Most Bizarre True Crime Stories Ever Told delivers the horrifying, interesting, weird, and disturbing tales that really get true crime connoisseurs excited. Lock your doors, close your blinds, and get ready to hear about some of the strangest, and most bone-chilling true crime cases the world has ever seen.

College student Lauren Spierer was pursuing her dreams, joining her boyfriend at a party school eight hundred miles from home. Social and gregarious, studying fashion and rooming with friends, Lauren embraced her new adventure with the zeal of a young woman who suddenly had everything she desired. But there was a dark side that she and her inner circle kept secret. And one warm June evening, after heading out with friends, she seemingly vanished.

In 1994, Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were brutally murdered at her home in Brentwood, California. O. J. Simpson was tried for the crime, but was ultimately found not guilty of criminal charges. The victims' families brought civil cases against Simpson, in which he was found liable for willfully and wrongfully causing the deaths of Ron and Nicole by committing battery with malice and oppression. The Goldman family views this book as Simpson's confession.

In 1994, an aspiring young cold-case investigator in California’s East Bay, Paul Holes, puts aside trying to solve the Golden State Killer case as he waits for science to catch up. Paul returns to an old file cabinet at the back of the forensic lab to look for another cold case he can work—something with DNA. He finds one. The 1978 murder of a married mother who went for a morning jog in a nearby park. The original investigators believed that a serial killer named Phillip Hughes was responsible; they just couldn’t prove it.

A victim of her mother’s Munchausen by proxy and child abuse survivor, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s unique and controversial case made headlines across the world. Now, she’s finally free to start living her life on her terms—and to tell her own story as only she can.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father - or so he says.

From teenage gang member to $40 million star of the New England Patriots, from All-American college player to drug addict, murderer, dead by suicide in his jail cell at age 27...you think you know the Aaron Hernandez story? You don’t.