“The Killer Next Door is even better [than The Wicked Girls]. Scary as hell. Great characters.” —Stephen King Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be renting rooms in a sketchy South London building for cash—no credit check, no lease. It’s the kind of place you end up when you you’ve run out of other options. The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don’t know is that one of them is a killer. He’s already chosen his next victim, and he’ll do anything to protect his secret. Alex Marwood’s debut novel The Wicked Girls earned her lavish praise from the likes of Elizabeth Haynes, Laura Lippman, and Erin Kelly and received the Edgar Award. Now, Marwood’s back with a brilliant, tightly paced thriller that will keep you up at night and make you ask yourself: just how well do you know your neighbors? “Taut, assured and reminiscent of Ruth Rendell's psychological novels, Marwood's second book more than lives up to the promise shown in her splendid debut, The Wicked Girls.” —The Guardian

The true story of the Sydney River McDonald’s massacre, a botched robbery that would become the most sensational murder case in Canadian history. It started with a broken conveyor belt. When the mechanical malfunction brought eighteen-year-old McDonald’s employee Derek Wood into the restaurant’s back room, he saw the safe and got a dangerous idea. It would be so easy to prop the back door open, allowing two friends to sneak inside and steal the money. Wood assumed there was at least $200,000 in the cashbox—an incredible haul for just a few minutes’ work—but things would not go according to plan. The robbery went wrong from the start, and within minutes, a fast-food restaurant in the wilds of Nova Scotia was turned into a bloodbath. Wood and his accomplices attacked the employees, killing three instantly and leaving the fourth for dead. In the safe, where they had expected to find a fortune, there was barely $2,000. They fled the scene, instigating a manhunt that would captivate the nation. In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Onion Field, this stunning work of true crime tells the story of the small-town murder that shocked a nation. Phonse Jessome brings a trained journalist’s eye to the case, which remains one of the most horrifying incidents of suburban violence in recent history.

As acclaimed psychological researcher and author David Buss writes, "People are mesmerized by murder. It commands our attention like no other human phenomenon, and those touched by its ugly tendrils never forget." Though we may like to believe that murderers are pathological misfits and hardened criminals, the vast majority of murders are committed by people who, until the day they kill, would seem to be perfectly normal. David Buss's pioneering work has made major national news in the past, and this provocative book is sure to generate a storm of attention. The Murderer Next Door is a riveting look into the dark underworld of the human psyche—an astonishing exploration of when and why we kill and what might push any one of us over the edge. A leader in the innovative field of evolutionary psychology, Buss conducted an unprecedented set of studies investigating the underlying motives and circumstances of murders, from the bizarre outlier cases of serial killers to those of the friendly next-door neighbor who one day kills his wife. Reporting on findings that are often startling and counterintuitive—the younger woman involved in a love triangle is at a high risk of being killed—he puts forth a bold new general theory of homicide, arguing that the human psyche has evolved specialized adaptations whose function is to kill. Taking readers through the surprising twists and turns of the evolutionary logic of murder, he explains exactly when each of us is most at risk, both of being murdered and of becoming a murderer. His findings about the high-risk situations alone will be news making. Featuring gripping storytelling about specific murder cases—including a never used FBI file of more than 400,000 murders and a highly detailed study of 400 murders conducted by Buss in collaboration with a forensic psychiatrist, and a pioneering investigation of homicidal fantasies in which Buss found that 91 percent of men and 84 percent of women have had at least one such vivid fantasy—The Murderer Next Door will be necessary reading for those who have been fascinated by books on profiling, lovers of true crime and murder mysteries, as well as readers intrigued by the inner workings of the human mind.

Respected television news journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell asks a probing, disturbing question: Are killers like Scott Peterson and Andrea Yates all that different from the rest of us? What kind of monster would do this? When journalists break the story of a child who's been kidnapped, a young woman who's been brutally raped, or a family who's been slaughtered, that's the question most of us ask. Secrets Can Be Murder exposes the hidden motivations behind the most sinister acts of recent times, with a behind-closed-doors look at these sensational crimes that will astound you. After weighing in on high-profile cases for CNN, Fox News, Court TV, and MSNBC, author Jane Velez-Mitchell helps us understand these infamous crimes by unmasking the deceptions that turned toxic, exploding in rage and violence. People lie every day to protect secrets, big and small. From desperate Hollywood personalities covering up their eccentric lifestyles to Bible Belt mothers who take the lives of their own children, Secrets Can Be Murder probes twenty-one separate cases. Each illustrates how leading a double life can land you in prison, and how failing to spot liars can get you killed. Secrets Can Be Murder offers the inside story on each horrific case, unlocking the jaw-dropping secrets of the accused and revealing the common, innocent mistakes of the victims. After all, many of us have gone out alone late at night like Imette St. Guillen, or partied while on vacation like George Smith and Natalee Holloway. From Dan Horowitz, the high-profile lawyer whose wife was brutally murdered by a teenage neighbor while Horowitz was defending a housewife accused of murder, to Neil Entwistle, the British husband who ran out of funds for an extravagant American lifestyle, Velez-Mitchell shows how each of these crimes has its own secrets to spill. Many of us possess the same trusting nature as victims and carry around the same secrets as criminals -- whether it's debt, infidelity, or fetishes. With fascinating new insights from investigators and psychologists plus the friends and family of both the victims and the perpetrators, Secrets Can Be Murder illustrates just how little separates our so-called normal lives from that of a sociopath -- and how you can stay out of harm's way.

Reveals the warning signs that the authorities overlooked by profiling nine brutal murderers, including Henry Lee Lucas, who went on a cross-country killing spree after pleading with his psychologists not to let him out of jail.

Baptist deacon, family man, pillar of his Florida community . . . and serial killer of prostitutes: chilling true crime from the author of Lobster Boy. By day, Sam Smithers was the deacon of his Baptist church in Plant City, Florida, a respected neighbor to many, and a devoted husband and father. But after the sun set, he became something else: a violent attacker—and killer—of prostitutes. Smithers’s twisted double life came to light when a local woman who had hired him to take care of her property found him in her garage, cleaning an ax—and then discovered a puddle of blood. Through exclusive interviews with Smithers’s wife, who described her spouse as nothing but a doting husband and father, author Fred Rosen learned why this man of God, raised in an intensely religious Tennessee home, was the last person anyone would suspect of committing these savage crimes. Rosen reveals the details behind the deaths of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach after Smithers picked them up in Tampa—and the fate of a man who seemed holier than thou, but was actually guilty as sin.

September 11, 2001, focused America's attention on the terrorist threat from abroad, but as the World Trade Center towers collapsed, domestic right-wing hate groups were celebrating in the United States. "Hallelu-Yahweh! May the WAR be started! DEATH to His enemies, may the World Trade Center BURN TO THE GROUND!" announced August Kreis of the paramilitary group, the Posse Comitatus. "We can blame no others than ourselves for our problems due to the fact that we allow ...Satan's children, called jews (sic) today, to have dominion over our lives." The Terrorist Next Door reveals the men behind far right groups like the Posse Comitatus - Latin for "power of the county" -- and the ideas that inspired their attempts to bring about a racist revolution in the United States. Timothy McVeigh was executed for killing 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, but The Terrorist Next Door goes well beyond the destruction in Oklahoma City and takes readers deeper and more broadly inside the Posse and other groups that comprise the paramilitary right. From the emergence of white supremacist groups following the Civil War, through the segregationist violence of the civil rights era, the right-wing tax protest movement of the 1970s, the farm crisis of the 1980s and the militia movement of the 1990s, the book details the roots of the radical right. It also tells the story of men like William Potter Gale, a retired Army officer and the founder of the Posse Comitatus whose hate-filled sermons and calls to armed insurrection have fueled generations of tax protesters, militiamen and other anti-government zealots since the 1960s. Written by Daniel Levitas, a national expert on the origins and activities of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, The Terrorist Next Door is painstakingly researched and includes rich detail from official documents (including the FBI), private archives and confidential sources never before disclosed. In detailing these and other developments, The Terrorist Next Door will prove to be the most definitive history of the roots of the American militia movement and the rural radical right ever written.

Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Over the past thirty years, serial killers have become iconic figures in America, the subject of made-for-TV movies and mass-market paperbacks alike. But why do we find such luridly transgressive and horrific individuals so fascinating? What compels us to look more closely at these figures when we really want to look away? Natural Born Celebrities considers how serial killers have become lionized in American culture and explores the consequences of their fame. David Schmid provides a historical account of how serial killers became famous and how that fame has been used in popular media and the corridors of the FBI alike. Ranging from H. H. Holmes, whose killing spree during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair inspired The Devil in the White City, right up to Aileen Wuornos, the lesbian prostitute whose vicious murder of seven men would serve as the basis for the hit film Monster, Schmid unveils a new understanding of serial killers by emphasizing both the social dimensions of their crimes and their susceptibility to multiple interpretations and uses. He also explores why serial killers have become endemic in popular culture, from their depiction in The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files to their becoming the stuff of trading cards and even Web sites where you can buy their hair and nail clippings. Bringing his fascinating history right up to the present, Schmid ultimately argues that America needs the perversely familiar figure of the serial killer now more than ever to manage the fear posed by Osama bin Laden since September 11. "This is a persuasively argued, meticulously researched, and compelling examination of the media phenomenon of the 'celebrity criminal' in American culture. It is highly readable as well."—Joyce Carol Oates

A faculty lead for LAPD's student police in police sciences, criminal investigation and the legal system who is also a screenwriter and former humorist for The Onion reveals the strange stories of how seemingly ordinary people become criminals and serial murderers.

For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK"—for "bind them, torture them, kill them"—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor . . . a devoted husband . . . a helpful Boy Scout dad . . . the respected president of his church. Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.