Books To Read if You Love True Crime

The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it — an urgent work of literary journalism. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing.

John Grisham is known for his bestselling novels, but it’s his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system. These 10 true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty. Impeccably researched and told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of winning freedom when the battle already seems lost and the deck is stacked against you.

From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe comes a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican-American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country — as he races to save his own life.

The astonishing true story of “one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their yearslong plunder of an American city.

The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story. In a hypnotic interplay between uncovered facts and vivid recall, Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner, set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback — and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith.

From the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street: A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, cold war espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican – and “the Ratline,” the Nazi escape route to Peron’s Argentina.

The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.

Truman Capote’s intensively researched narrative follows the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959.

A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter — from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times.

The true tale of the 1893 World’s Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death.

The investigation behind one of the most frightening and enigmatic serial killers in modern American history, and into the ranks of a singular American police force: the Anchorage PD.

This haunting true-life murder mystery uncovers why the death toll rose so rapidly in the 1920s for the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, revealing one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

The uproarious, bestselling true story of the world’s most sought-after con man, immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio in DreamWorks’ feature film of the same name, from the author of Scam Me If You Can.

Internationally bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author Kate Summerscale follows a ghost hunter in 1938 London in a case that illuminates changing social attitudes toward psychoanalysis, sexuality, and the supernatural.

On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a 15-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live — to survive, to grow, to change — and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.

Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? John Berendt’s sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like an engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. A sublime and seductive reading experience, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men bound and drugged them, then abducted Denise. Warned not to call the police or Denise would be killed. Aaron agonized about what to do. Finally he put his trust in law enforcement and dialed 911. But instead of searching for Denise, the police accused Aaron of her murder. His story, they told him, was just unbelievable. When Denise was released alive, the police turned their fire on her, dubbing her the “real-life ‘Gone Girl’” who had faked her own kidnapping.

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. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, Michael Finkel gives us one of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of our times, a riveting story of art, theft, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man’s relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief, is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.

A gripping historical true crime narrative that “reads like the best of Conan Doyle himself” (Karen Abbott, author of The Ghosts of Eden Park), American Sherlock recounts the riveting true story of the birth of modern criminal investigation.

At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of the hidden world of oceans.

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the one-time multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes — now the subject of the HBO documentary The Inventor — by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end.

Who founded America’s first detective agency? Which cold case victims were named thanks to advances in DNA technology? What are the early warning signs of a serial killer? This activity book pairs engaging puzzles and fascinating trivia with the intriguing world of true crime.