4.06 avg rating — 153,671 ratings

"Shows us the seamy underside of the Love generation and takes us through the craziest trial ever. Full of unforgettable characters. "

4.04 avg rating — 4,383 ratings

"Picks one case from the Skyjacking Era and explains why two young people thought kidnapping the defendant in a famous murder case and flying her to North Vietnam was a great idea. Well-drawn characters placed squarely in their historical context."

4.11 avg rating — 247 ratings

"A truly epic story that traces the entire faith-healing movement through the lens of children who died because of their parents' faith. Compassionate, wide-ranging and remarkably non-judgmental."

3.77 avg rating — 505 ratings

"Takes us to a tiny island nation that was founded by criminals and the women they kidnapped to serve them. A grim story of multigenerational sexual violence, remarkably well told."

3.46 avg rating — 96 ratings

"Takes us back to the days when the rich could do almost anything and get away with it, and focuses on a single man who went so far over the line into monstrosity that his name has come down to us today as an archetype of evil. You will be astounded at how much the author was able to learn about the daily life of a man who died in 1440. I came away knowing much more about feudal France than I ever suspected I would."

3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings

"Describes the remarkable concatenation of factors that made it possible for not one, but 3 multiple killers to commit their crimes in one cozy hamlet in California in a short space of time. Makes clear how the social changes of the late 1960s and the population shifts caused by the creation of a new university attracted dangerous people, or in some cases made the people already living there turn dangerous."

3.84 avg rating — 76 ratings

"Takes a series of child murders and places it in the context of the paranoid, red-baiting, tiny-minded 1950s to explain what happened next. Describes the lives this case ruined in wrenching detail."

3.79 avg rating — 53 ratings

"Brilliantly written story of how a man with no ability to understand why he was in trouble with the law had his freedom taken away for crimes he may or may not have committed. A nightmarish picture of how justice may have gone terribly, terribly wrong...but then again maybe not. The needs of an overwhelmed big-city justice system are just as important as the needs of the defendant and his victims in this one."

3.76 avg rating — 38 ratings

"Takes you inside the world of a group of men who were murdered for unclear reasons in a highly-disputed serial-murder case. Walks you through their lives and the life of the defendant. So well written that when I finished this book, I turned to the first page and read it all over again."

4.07 avg rating — 9,643 ratings

"A rare true-crime story that made me laugh all the way through it because the characters involved are just so zany. The murder itself almost gets lost in the sauce of famous names, fabulous settings and crazy events."

4.14 avg rating — 4,514 ratings

"Devastating history of the gay rights movement as experienced, and furthered, by Harvey Milk. The people involved are drawn so well that I felt that I'd lost someone I knew by the end of this story."

3.74 avg rating — 3,081 ratings

"There are son many books on the murder of Stanford White, but this one takes you inside the characters involved and the terrible pressures on Evelyn Nesbit, who was neither the killer nor the murder victim but the motive for the crime. Takes you back to the days when your face was your fortune and your only chance of doing well in life was to catch yourself a good husband. This shows the reader how wrong things can go."

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 867 ratings

"I hope this is a unique story. The author, the only survivor of a family massacre, explains to us what made her mother flee from her family into the arms of the man who would later kill her. Surviving the murders was just the beginning of Carmina Salcido's problems. Unforgettable peek into one of the craziest corners of America."