A thrilling account of a hundred years of sensational and sinister deeds that marked and shaped one southern town. Crimes that captivated attention in the Charlotte area over the years run the gamut from missing people to the wrongly accused. This collection of headline stories features violent motorcycle gangs, crusading mothers, a fraudster who claimed a president was poisoned by his wife, a serial killer who broke all the rules and even a man who made Bigfoot. With a mystery novelist's ear for a good tale, Cathy Pickens presents more than a century of sensational sinister deeds that marked this diverse and dynamic city.

Crimes that captivated attention in the Charlotte area over the years run the gamut from missing people to the wrongly accused. This collection of headline stories features violent motorcycle gangs, crusading mothers, a fraudster who claimed a president was poisoned by his wife, a serial killer who broke all the rules and even a man who made Bigfoot. With a mystery novelist's ear for a good tale, Cathy Pickens presents more than a century of sensational sinister deeds that marked this diverse and dynamic city.

Avery Andres has just been downsized from her job in a law office in a North Carolina city and has returned to her small home town to lick her wounds and consider, with hesitation, trying to set up a law practice there. She quickly gets a client or two, and immediately the company building owned by one is destroyed by arson, and the body found inside was quite probably murdered. Meanwhile, an old high-school classmate has told the entire county that he is hopelessly in love with Avery and makes several attempts at spectacular suicides, each one of them carefully set up not to work. All in all, Avery finds that small-town life is not nearly so dull as she feared. And sometimes wishes it were.

Serial murderers generate an abundance of public interest, media coverage, and law enforcement attention, yet after decades of studies, serial murder researchers have been unable to answer the most important question: Why? Providing a unique and comprehensive exploration, Creating Cultural Monsters: Serial Murder in America explains connections bet

USING FORGERIES and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox-one of the most ingenious con men in history-bilked America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list, and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and the Secret Service on a three year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices.Cox has been declared "one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time," by CNBC's American Greed. Bloomberg Businessweek called him "the mortgage industry's worst nightmare," while Dateline NBC described Cox as "a gifted forger and silver tongued liar." Playboy magazine proclaimed, "His scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best."Shark in the Housing Pool is Cox's exhilarating, first-person account, of his stranger-than-fiction story.

Let this book be your guide as you explore twenty-four haunted spots in the Holy City, including the Old Exchange, St. Philip s, the Market and the heart of the historic district. Walk in the footsteps of marauders, murderers and pirates; venture into graveyards where the tombstones tell more than just the names of the dead; and ponder all of Charleston s strangest unsolved mysteries in this shiveringly addictive history and guide book."

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

North Carolina's Triangle region is known for universities, research facilities and politics, but even in such a prosperous, diverse, modern environment, crime helps define the edges. These cases cover several decades of murder, fraud and betrayal. Read about the nation's largest prison escape and a couple of North Carolina's poisoners. From a civil rights-era clash of Old South and New and a suspected Cold War spy to new-tech sleuths and tales of diligent as well as discredited investigators, these stories will keep you entertained and aghast at the dark side of daily life. Crime writer Cathy Pickens explores a collection of headline-grabbing tales that shows the sinister side of the Triangle's cities.