When Delia Balmer entered into a relationship with the attentive John Sweeney, she had no idea he was a serial killer. At first he was caring but over the course of their relationship he became violent and controlling. On more than one occasion he held Delia hostage and tortured her. Chillingly, he also confessed to the murder of his previous girlfriend. After one serious assault, Sweeney was released on bail, and left her in the utmost fear knowing that he would return to finish her off. After a final frenzied attack leaving Delia on the brink of death, Sweeney went on the run. Astonishingly, it would take the police six years to capture and convict Sweeney of multiple murders. This is her compelling memoir.

One of Cosmopolitan's Best Romance Novels Ever Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn't exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she's used to suspecting the worst. PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years. It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he's clearly up to something). It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

"I was a greedy, ravenous individual, determined to rise from the bottom to the top . . . It wasn't me!"--Jack Unterweger's final words to his jury Serial killers rarely travel internationally. So in the early 1990s, when detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department began to find bodies of women strangled with their own bras, it didn't occur to them at first to make a connection with the bodies being uncovered in the woods outside of Vienna, Austria. The LAPD waited for the killer to strike again. Meanwhile, in Austria, the police followed what few clues they had. The case intrigued many reporters, but few as keenly as Jack Unterweger, a local celebrity. He cut a striking figure, this little man in expensive white suits. His expertise on Vienna's criminal underworld was hard-earned. He had been sentenced to life in jail as a young man. But while incarcerated, he began to write—and his work earned him the glowing attention of the literary elite. The intelligentsia lobbied for his release and by 1990, Jack was free again. He continued writing, nurturing his career as a journalist. But though he now traveled in the highest circles, he had a secret life. He was killing again, and in the greatest of ironies, reporting on the very crimes he had committed. With unprecedented access to Jack's diaries and letters, John Leake peels back the layers of deception to reveal the life and crimes of Jack Unterweger, and in unnerving detail, exposes the thrilling twists—both in the United States and Europe—that led to Jack's capture and Austria's "trial of the century."

This book presents an in-depth psychological analysis of the development of the serial killer personality that will fascinate all readers, from the experienced criminology student to the casual true-crime reader. Real-Life Monsters: A Psychological Examination of the Serial Murderer takes a different approach than most titles on a similar topic: the author develops and proposes an original psychological explanation, rather than simply repeating some of the long-held theories for these criminals' heinous actions. The work addresses current issues, presents detailed commentary and personal observation, and contains photographs that will fascinate general readers interested in the subjects of true crime, serial killers, and psychopathology. The first part of the book carefully examines the research past and present regarding clinical, psychological, societal, and biological bases for violent behavior, specific to the serial murderer. Part two establishes a novel theory of the pattern of violence and then explores this hypothesis through eight case studies, interviews with serial killers, and elemental analysis. The work also contains a chapter based on conversations between the author and a convicted serial murderer.

John Wayne Cheever keeps his obsession with serial killers in check by a set of rigid rules that he lives by, hoping to the prevent himself from committing murder, but when a body turns up at a laundromat, must confront a danger outside himself.

Explore the mind and motivations of a serial killer

In this provocative cultural study, the serial killer emerges as a central figure in what Mark Seltzer calls 'America's wound culture'. From the traumas displayed by talk show guests and political candidates, to the violent entertainment of Crash or The Alienist, to the latest terrible report of mass murder, we are surrounded by the accident from which we cannot avert our eyes. Bringing depth and shadow to our collective portrait of what a serial killer must be, Mark Seltzer draws upon popular sources, scholarly analyses, and the language of psychoanalysis to explore the genesis of this uniquely modern phenomenon. Revealed is a fascination with machines and technological reproduction, with the singular and the mass, with definitions of self, other, and intimacy. What emerges is a disturbing picture of how contemporary culture is haunted by technology and the instability of identity.