Category: New Books

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Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling

In this exceptional true crime account, Franscell (The Darkest Night) tells the fascinating story of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit’s early days and the very first psychological profile used to catch a killer … Franscell’s portrait of rural Montana will remind many of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and the way he weaves together the threads of the different killings is spellbinding. This is a must for Mindhunter fans. Read more

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Out There by Kate Folk

…tightly constructed and spectacularly mind-bending stories that ingeniously pair everyday challenges and outlandish predicaments, ranging from hilarious to terrifying. Folk writes with unnerving matter-of-factness as she veers into Poe- and Shirley Jackson-like horror or turns to the poignantly fantastic in the mode of George Saunders or Kelly Link … Folk’s shocking, grim, funny, and tender stories deliver astringently incisive perceptions of human longing and contradictions. Read more

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Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier

Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, historian Jonusas debuts with an impressive and deeply unsettling account of the Benders, a family of German immigrants who killed at least 10 people after they settled in Kansas’s Labette County in 1870 … Radiant prose enhances the page-turning narrative. The combination of true crime and a vivid depiction of frontier life earn this a spot on the shelf next to David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Read more

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The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

Done right, the combination of two archetypal genre stories into something new can work brilliantly … The Paradox Hotel offers a memorable case study in how to bridge two genres in a way that satisfies readers of both … Throughout The Paradox Hotel Hart creates a sense of a place on the cusp of being irrevocably changed—and of a style of living that may have exceeded its viability … In the end, The Paradox Hotel succeeds as both a mystery and as a story involving time travel. Read more

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How a Death-Row Inmate’s Embrace of Conservatism Led to His Release

In 1957, Edgar Smith, a 23-year-old former Marine who was both a husband and a new father, confessed to the bludgeoning murder of 15-year-old Vickie Zielinski in New Jersey. After deliberating for two hours, a jury convicted him. The judge sentenced him to death and he was sent to Trenton State Prison. What interests Weinman, who writes the Crime column for The New York Times Book Review, is not the murder but what transpired in its wake. Through a confluence of events, William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review and one of the architects of the 20th-century conservative movement, learned that Smith was a fan of his publication. Flattered, Buckley began to mail the inmate the latest issues. These communications initiated a relationship that would add up to nine years and 1,500 pages of correspondence — and, ultimately, Smith’s release from prison. Read more

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Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

This book’s playful title announces both its subject and its tone … This may sound like dry stuff, but the narrative both sparkles with geeky wit…and shines with an infectious enthusiasm … Duncan brings his chronicle into the digital present before closing with not one, but two indexes: a machine-generated one and a human-compiled one, by Paula Clarke Bain, member of the Society of Indexers, whose wit matches the author’s and underscores his passionate appreciation of the art … Always erudite, frequently funny, and often surprising—a treat for lovers of the book qua book. Read more

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“Jawbone” by Mónica Ojeda

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear. Read more

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He risked his life to become a founding father of civil rights. Why was he forgotten?

Mention Walter White and it will likely conjure an image of Bryan Cranston from “Breaking Bad,” playing the man who snarled, “I am the danger.” But there’s a real-life Walter White who deserves to be a household name — a Black man who faced unfathomable danger in pursuit of truth and justice as he did battle with the American way. White should rank alongside Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as a founding father of the civil rights era. Yet he is all but forgotten today. Read more

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