While walking the new shelves one day, my eyes caught on the new true crime books, so I wanted to highlight some for you all! Below you will find a list of some of the new true crime books that have been added to the collection recently. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
Blood in the Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy by Casey Sherman
Troubled waters hide deadly secrets…
When Nathan Carman, a young man with a complicated past, is miraculously rescued from a lifeboat bobbing in the unforgiving North Atlantic, questions swirl about the fate of his mother, who is presumed to have drowned when their fishing boat sank. Nathan is in remarkably good shape for being lost at sea for a week, and his account of what exactly happened out there on the waves raises questions from family members and law enforcement.
Nathan’s story of a fishing trip gone awry doesn’t quite add up, and suspicion mounts. The mysterious murder of Nathan’s multi-millionaire grandfather a few years before had made Nathan’s mother an extremely wealthy woman. With a seven-million-dollar fortune at stake, did Nathan commit the ultimate betrayal? Or is there more to this tragic tale than meets the eye?
From New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman comes a gripping contemporary true crime narrative for everyone who was fascinated by the Murdaugh murders, and for anyone compelled by the intersection between money, power, and family. – Sourcebooks
L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood by Ann Soon Choi
L.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling.
L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye.
Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s-80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture. – Third State Books
The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York by Elon Green
The first comprehensive book about Michael Stewart, the young Black artist and model who was the victim of a fatal assault by police in 1983, from Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call.
At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.
Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city’s history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.
The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.
Elon Green, the Edgar Award–winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart’s life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980’s New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails. – Celadon Books
Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen
A nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jennifer Dulos and the aftershocks that rattled a wealthy suburb.
Rich Cohen’s Murder in the Dollhouse is the chilling, unputdownable story of Jennifer Dulos, a beautiful, rich suburban mother who dropped her kids off at the New Canaan Country School one morning and vanished. Her body has never been found.
Dulos was in the midst of an ugly divorce—one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The couple, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’s husband and his girlfriend were arrested. He killed himself on the day he was supposed to report to court; she was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. A gripping story of status, wealth, love, and hate, Murder in the Dollhouse peers beneath the sparkling veneer of propriety that surrounded the Duloses to uncover the origins and motivations of a crime that has become a national obsession. – Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Story of a Murder: The Wives, The Mistress, and Dr. Crippen by Hallie Rubenhold
This is the story of a murder, not a murderer . . .
In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, bestselling author of The Five, Hallie Rubenhold, gives voice to those who were never properly heard–the women.
On February 1, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer Belle Elmore suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, medical fraudster Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.
Ethel Le Neve, Crippen’s typist and lover, who fled with Crippen in disguise, has always hidden in the shadows of this tale–was she really just “an innocent young girl” in thrall to a powerful older man? And was there an equally sinister story behind the death of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte?
Brimming with twists and featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, star lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, Story of a Murder offers an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era. – Dutton