Mystery Biography

In November 1912, popular and pretty 18-year-old Ella Barham was raped, murdered, and dismembered in broad daylight near her home in rural Boone County, Arkansas. The brutal crime sent shock waves through the Ozarks and made national news. Authorities swiftly charged a neighbor, Odus Davidson, with the crime. Locals were determined that he be convicted. This examination of the murder of Ella Barham and the trial of her alleged killer opens a window into the meaning of community and due process during a time when politicians and judges sought to professionalize justice.

At 27, Melissa Keaster’s life with her loving husband and two-year-old son seems divinely blessed. But after their daughter is born, several episodes of anaphylaxis leave her wondering if she will even live to raise her kids. Melissa begins to have severe allergic reactions to everything—food, fragrances, even the cold. The doctors are mystified as to the cause of her illness, and she becomes a shut-in to protect herself. As the disease steals one blessing after another, Melissa faces a choice: shake a fist at the heavens, or open her hands to everything God has for her.

On October 8th, 2009, Bobby Jamison, his wife Sherilynn, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson, set off for a drive from their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma, to the nearby Sans Bois Mountains. They didn't return that day, or the next. A week later, their truck was found abandoned on a mountain road. Inside was their dog, malnourished but alive, the family's cell phones, wallets, and $32,000 in cash.

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

Dig. The Demon Dog gets down with a new book of scenes from America’s capital of kink: Los Angeles. Fourteen pieces, some fiction, some nonfiction, all true enough to be admissible as state’s evidence, and half of it in print for the first time. And every one of them bearing the James Ellroy brand of mayhem, machismo, and hollow-nose prose.

Early in the morning of Monday, July 8, 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbors, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate.

Let’s face it, the last thing a nature lover expects to find in the beautiful deep woods is a human corpse. But if one mystery isn’t enough, nothing explains the awkward way bodies have been positioned, the mysterious carvings in their flesh, and sometimes, the eerie feeling of being watched.

Something unimaginable occurred from 1764 to 1767 in the remote highlands of south-central France. For three years, a real-life monster, or monsters, ravaged the region, slaughtering by some accounts more than 100 people, mostly women and children, and inflicting severe injuries upon many others.

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and “faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. In the case of Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church cult following, commonly referred to as “Zionites” or “Dowieites”, both money and power were gained.

Kim Philby, the so-called Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring, was the Cold War's most infamous traitor, a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence. Philby joined Britain's secret service MI6 during the war and went on to head the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies before becoming the service's chief liaison officer with the CIA. He betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.

Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’ fiction drew from his life - a fact he acknowledged.

How much do you really know about the FBI? Do you know who the FBI is? Do you know what the FBI does? This manual debunks FBI myths and misconceptions for those who read, watch, and write crime dramas about the FBI or have always wanted to be a Special Agent. Like most people, you've probably learned about the FBI from popular culture - reading books and watching TV shows and movies, along with, of course, the news. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of what you've been reading and watching is inaccurate.

Step into the shadowy world of true crime with UNSOLVED: THE MOST BAFFLING TRUE CRIME CASES, a gripping exploration of some of the most perplexing, unsolved mysteries in criminal history. From high-profile cases like the Zodiac Killer and the tragic disappearance of Flight MH370 to the haunting story of the Sodder children and the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, this book uncovers the chilling details and unanswered questions that continue to baffle investigators and captivate the public.

For thousands of years, the notion of dragons has struck fear in the hearts of men and women all over the world. The ancient Egyptians believed there was a dragon of darkness that attacked the sun god each day, and in Norway people thought that a dragon gnawed at the roots of the tree that sustained all life on Earth. Around the globe, dragons have been depicted as everything from massive, winged, fire-breathing creatures to beasts sporting a camel’s head, deer’s horns, rabbit’s eyes, and eagle’s claws! Dragons might hoard treasure in caves, or they might be responsible for floods and the death of livestock.

A tour de force of storytelling years in the making: a dual biography of two of the greatest songwriters, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, that is also a murder mystery and a history of labor relations and socialism, big business and greed in 20th-century America - woven together in one epic saga that holds meaning for all working Americans today.

Sixteen-year-old Patricia Columbo began working for pharmacist Frank DeLuca, a married father of five, in the 1970s, and the two soon entered into a sexual relationship. Against her father's wishes, Patricia and Frank moved in together. Then, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Patricia's father was brutally murdered, along with her mother and 13-year-old brother. Police were suspicious of Patricia's strange behavior after the bodies were discovered, and following their investigation, they arrested both Patricia and Frank.

Bowart's Operation Mind Control: The Cryptocracy's Plan to Psychocivilize You is a classic in the annals of conspiracy research. It is a disturbing account of the secret use of mind control technology, by a secret government (or "cryptocracy"), with an aim to pacifying whole populations and furthering private global-investment strategies. Meticulously researched and well-written, it remains - even today - one of the best books on the topic.

In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than 40 years. Was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?

In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner's jury, of strychnine poisoning.

Chief Warrant Officer Gary O'Neal is no ordinary soldier. For nearly 40 years, he has fought America's enemies, becoming one of the greatest Warriors this nation has ever known. Part Native American, O'Neal was trained in both military combat and the ways of his Native people, combining his commitment to freedom with his respect for the enemy, his technical fighting skills with his fierce warrior spirit.