The Murder Bag


Book Description

The gripping first novel in an explosive new crime series by Tony Parsons, bestselling author of Man and Boy. If you like crime-novels by Ian Rankin and Peter James, you will love this. Twenty years ago seven rich, privileged students became friends at their exclusive private school, Potter's Field. Now they have started dying in the most violent way imaginable. Detective Max Wolfe has recently arrived in the Homicide division of London's West End Central, 27 Savile Row. Soon he is following the bloody trail from the backstreets and bright lights of the city, to the darkest corners of the internet and all the way to the corridors of power. As the bodies pile up, Max finds the killer's reach getting closer to everything - and everyone - he loves. Soon he is fighting not only for justice, but for his own life ...




The Thin Man


Book Description

The Thin Man (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, made famouos by the series of movies based on it starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. The story is set in New York City during the Christmas season of 1932, in the last days of Prohibition in the United States. Nick Charles, a retired private detective, and Nora, his socialite wife, become embroiled in a mystery.




The Man Who Died Twice


Book Description

An instant New York Times bestseller! The second gripping novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Murder Club series, soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment “It’s taken a mere two books for Richard Osman to vault into the upper leagues of crime writers. . . The Man Who Died Twice. . . dives right into joyous fun." —The New York Times Book Review Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim—the Thursday Murder Club—are still riding high off their recent real-life murder case and are looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet at Cooper’s Chase, their posh retirement village. But they are out of luck. An unexpected visitor—an old pal of Elizabeth’s (or perhaps more than just a pal?)—arrives, desperate for her help. He has been accused of stealing diamonds worth millions from the wrong men and he’s seriously on the lam. Then, as night follows day, the first body is found. But not the last. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim are up against a ruthless murderer who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can our four friends catch the killer before the killer catches them? And if they find the diamonds, too? Well, wouldn’t that be a bonus? You should never put anything beyond the Thursday Murder Club. Richard Osman is back with everyone’s favorite mystery-solving quartet, and the second installment of the Thursday Murder Club series is just as clever and warm as the first—an unputdownable, laugh-out-loud pleasure of a read.




The Innocent Man


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES • “Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime masterpiece that tells the story of small town justice gone terribly awry. In the Major League draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the state of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a twenty-one-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you. Don’t miss Framed, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, co-authored with Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey.




The Man in the Brown Suit


Book Description

After her father’s death, young Anne Beddingfeld moves to London with her meagre inheritance, hopeful and ready to meet adventure. She witnesses a fatal accident at a Tube station and picks up a cryptic note dropped by the anonymous doctor who appeared on the scene. When Anne learns of a murder at the estate that the dead man was on his way to visit, it confirms her suspicion that the man in the brown suit who lost the note was not a real doctor. With her clue in hand she gains a commission from the newspaper leading the search for the “man in the brown suit,” and her investigation leads her to take passage on a South Africa–bound ocean liner. On board, she meets a famous socialite, a fake missionary, a possible secret service agent, and the M.P. at whose estate the second murder occurred. She learns about a secretive criminal mastermind known only as the Colonel and of stolen diamonds connected to it all. During the voyage, she evades an attempt on her life, and in South Africa she escapes from a kidnapping and barely survives another attack on her at Victoria Falls. She falls in love, finds the diamonds, and discovers the truth about the two deaths in London that started it all. Finally, she confronts the mysterious criminal mastermind, the Colonel. Published in 1924 by the Bodley Head, The Man in the Brown Suit is Agatha Christie’s fourth novel. Unlike the classic murder mysteries that made her famous, The Man in the Brown Suit, like her second novel The Secret Adversary, is an international crime thriller. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.




The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures


Book Description

One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022 A “spellbinding, thriller-like” (Shelf Awareness) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history. In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a “passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince…unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama” (The New York Times Book Review). This “fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.




The Bonny Earl of Murray


Book Description

The murder of the popular Earle of Moray in 1592 near Edinburgh was the stuff of which legends are made. This inviting volume explores that legend, relates details of the Huntly-Moray (Catholic-Protestant) feud, and traces the ballad of the slain ''Bonny Earl'' through its four centuries of growth and change.''A romp! A fine book that will be welcomed by literature students, folklorists, and those interested in Scottish history.'' -- Roger D. Abrahams, author of Singing the Master: The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South''A graceful and gripping account by a scholar whose love of scholarship, music, and teaching is obvious throughout.'' -- Marta Weigle, coeditor of The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad




Murder and the Reasonable Man


Book Description

Demonstrates how social norms and beliefs influence the outcomes in certain criminal cases.




The Thursday Murder Club


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture “Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining.” —Wall Street Journal “Don’t trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman’s own laugh-out-loud whodunit.” —Parade Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?




The Journalist and the Murderer


Book Description

A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.