Pocket Shop

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student from St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless parasite. This murder he also commits to test Raskolnikov's hypothesis that some people are naturally able to and also have the right to murder. Several times throughout the novel, Raskolnikov also justifies his actions by connecting himself mentally with Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose, only to find out he "... is not a Napoleon." (non illustrated)

“Larson is a marvelous writer...superb at creating characters with a few short strokes.”—New York Times Book Review
  
Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the bestselling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.
 
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
 
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.
 
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the listener into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this audiobook the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.

Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

To find out more about this audiobook, go to http://www.DevilInTheWhiteCity.com.

LA Police Officer Stephanie Lazarus became the center of national attention in a sensational trial in Los Angeles in March 2012 as the accused murderer of Sherri Rasmussen, her ex-lover's new wife of only three months. What had once seemed unthinkable, had suddenly become a reality. Nels Rasmussen, the victim's father, had, some twenty years prior, pleaded with LAPD to take a look at Lazarus as a possible suspect. His daughter had said that Lazarus had been "stalking" her, but Rasmussen was summarily dismissed by police and told that he should "Stop watching so much television." After five years, he simply gave up.

The story here begins on the night of February 24, 1986 and involves three people, certainly one of them innocent; the victim--Sherri Rae Rasmussen--was bludgeoned, bitten, beaten, and then shot to death in what was made to look like a botched robbery. Yet the only thing missing from the scene was a marriage certificate.

In 2009, the Cold Case squad in the same building as Officer Lazarus re-opened the Rasmussen case and examined the DNA swabbing from the bite-marks on Rasmussen’s arm. They discovered that the saliva could only have come from a woman. Then, they started to investigate Lazarus based on Rasmussen’s suspicions on record in the file.

This is a book that one wishes were fiction. It is written point-of-fact, with all of the details of the case laid out neatly before the reader in police procedural style. The reader becomes the jury. The most shocking part of the story is the identity of the killer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In true crime, Paul Alexander is the bestselling author of the Kindle Singles Murdered, Accused and Homicidal. A leading journalist for many years, Alexander has published eight widely praised books—among them Rough Magic, a biography of Sylvia Plath; the bestseller Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean; and Salinger: A Life—and over one hundred major articles for publications ranging from The New York Times to Rolling Stone.

The third volume of the classic adventures and misadventures of the young vet, James Herriot, in the Yorkshire Dales from 1937 onwards.

Curbchek is the story of a damaged cop, Zach Fortier. Fortier worked in the police department for the city where he grew up. One foot in the world of the cops, courts and legal system. The other in the world of gangs, drugs, thugs and street violence. Where the laws and rules are made by the strongest, the schemers and most brutal. Read about the transformation of Fortier from a green rookie to a damaged paranoid veteran seeing danger in every situation. Follow along as he walks this tight rope. Trying to make difference, breaking the laws he promised to enforce. This is a story of law and order uncensored.

When Jaycee Dugard was eleven years old, she was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. She was missing for more than eighteen years, held captive by Phillip Craig and Nancy Garrido, and gave birth to two daughters during her imprisonment. On August 26, 2009, Garrido showed up for a meeting with his parole officer; he brought Jaycee, her daughters, and his wife Nancy with him. Their unusual behavior raised suspicions and an investigation revealed the tent behind the Garridos’ home where Jaycee had been living for nearly two decades.

A Stolen Life was written by Jaycee herself and covers the period from the time of her abduction in 1991 up until the present. In her stark, compelling narrative, she opens up about what she experienced—and offers an extraordinary account of courage and resilience.

"(A 69-page True Crime Short with photographs) H. H. Holmes was a central character in Erik Larson’s hugely successful The Devil in the White City, which is planned as a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Holmes is commonly viewed as a real-life Hannibal Lecter, a devious and cunning serial killer without equal. Holmes used the persona of a successful doctor and entrepreneur to draw untold numbers of young women to his three-story Chicago hotel to experiment on before killing them. Not one to waste, he’d often deflesh the corpses to sell the skeletons to medical schools. He enjoyed trying out methods of murder and watching his victims die. Scientists from his era believed Holmes’ brain would unlock the secret of his perversity, but he denied them the chance to find out. Today, we can figure him out without access to his brain. We know more today about the neuroscience of sadistic psychopaths and we can better understand what his brain – if dissected – would reveal. For the first time, we can look to research findings about killers to decode Holmes’s vile behavior.

From Psychopath:

“After the girls died, he’d enjoy viewing ‘their blackened and distorted faces’ before he dug a shallow grave, removed their clothing, and dumped them into it with ‘fiendish delight.’ Holmes considered that ‘for eight years before their deaths I had been almost as much a father to them as though they had been my own children.’

“It is precisely this behavior that most puzzles the ordinary person and draws the researcher’s attention: how can a man torture and asphyxiate children, or burn them and view it as entertainment? How can he ‘befriend’ them for years, knowing the whole time that he will end their lives? How can he describe it as pleasurable? This is the reason the psychopath holds our fascination. It’s why researchers even during Holmes’s era tried extracting criminal brains post-mortem for study. They hoped to locate the seat of disturbed moral consciousness.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at Pennsylvania's DeSales University, is unique in having extensive experience in researching and writing about crime and the vampire subculture. She holds graduate degrees in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, philosophy and criminal justice. Dr. Ramsland has written over 1,000 articles and thirty-eight books on forensics, serial killers, mass murderers and the popular vampire culture.

ABOUT THE SERIES

From the best true crime authors in the business, many of whom have seen their books made into major motion pictures, comes Crimescape™ — a new collection of compelling short nonfiction crime eBooks from leading independent eBook publisher RosettaBooks. Taking readers into the dark minds of criminals and the tense hunt to bring perpetrators to justice, Crimescape authors stand apart from other true crime writers because they have personal experience in crime investigations, whether as police detectives, investigative reporters, forensics professionals or criminal psychologists. As riveting storytellers, Crimescape’s writers give readers all the information they need to understand relevant clues and the interwoven influences in each criminal case.

“What makes for a good true-crime story? Interesting characters, an engrossing plot, situations that often teeter between life and death. But here’s the MacGuffin about true crime: What you’re reading actually happened. Sometimes truth really is more compelling than fiction. And that’s why you will enjoy reading Crimescape’s true crime series.”
—Paul Alexander, # 1 bestselling author of the Kindle Singles Accused, Murdered and Homicidal"