Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden's long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. In The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, the veteran reporter revisits some of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern technology on the journalistic process. From a story of a campus rape in 1983, to three cold cases solved by the inimitable private detective Ken Brennan, an LAPD investigation that unearths a murderer within its own ranks and the darkest corners of internet chatrooms, this collection contains all the best the genre has to offer. Gripping true crime from 'an old pro' ( Wall Street Journal).

The #1 New York Times–bestselling “master of narrative journalism” and author of Black Hawk Down presents a compelling collection of true crime stories (The New York Times). Acclaimed investigative reporter Mark Bowden has ferreted out unbelievable-yet-true stories of wrongdoing, murder and mayhem for decades. His illustrious body of work has won him a lifetime achievement award from the International Thriller Writers organization, and a reputation as “a Woodward that outdoes even Woodward” (Malcom Gladwell, The New Yorker). The Case of the Vanishing Blonde collects six of Bowden’s most riveting stories—accounts spanning four decades of fascinating characters and unsettling tales to illustrate all manner of crimes and the ways technology has progressively altered criminal investigation. From a 1983 story of a University of Pennsylvania campus rape that sparked a national debate over the nature of consent, to three cold cases featuring the inimitable Long Island private detective Ken Brennan and a startling investigation into a murderer deep within the LAPD’s ranks—shielded for twenty six years by officers keen to protect one of their own—these stories are the work of a masterful narrative journalist.

The true story of a cold case, a compulsive liar, and five determined detectives, from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author and “master journalist” (The Wall Street Journal). On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages ten and twelve, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware. The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind. “One of our best writers of muscular nonfiction.” —The Denver Post “Deeply unsettling . . . Bowden displays his tenacity as a reporter in his meticulous documentation of the case. But in the story of an unimaginably horrific crime, it’s the detectives’ unwavering determination to bring Welch to justice that offers a glimmer of hope on a long, dark journey.” —Time

"A gripping and powerful read. It is what we call edge-of-your-seat, rollercoaster of a thriller. You will not be able to put it down before you finish it."—The Washington Book Review Winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, Joanna Schaffhausen’s accomplished debut, The Vanishing Season, will grip readers from the opening page to the stunning conclusion. Ellery Hathaway knows about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only one who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday—the day she was kidnapped so long ago—Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer’s closet all those years ago.

“Painstakingly reported stories about losers, oddballs and con men” from the #1 New York Times–bestselling journalist and author of Black Hawk Down (The New York Times Book Review). This riveting anthology collects the most diverse and far-reaching of Mark Bowden’s award-winning nonfiction—“with fascinating features on Norman Mailer, the war against terror, and even a Philadelphia Zoo gorilla, Bowden’s range is broad” (Entertainment Weekly). Whether traveling to Rhode Island where one of the largest cocaine rings in history is uncovered, or to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia where anti-poachers fight to save the black rhino, Bowden takes us down rough roads previously off-limits: the top-secret world of Guantanamo Bay; Saddam Hussein’s post 9/11 days on the run; a pimp’s inside track on police corruption in Philadelphia; and Al Sharpton’s campaign trail. Bowden also invites readers along to meet a small-town high school football team, farmers who make bras for cows, the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia, and to see Disney World with a wide-eyed group of terminally ill children. In Road Work, Mark Bowden “fashion[s] prose that reads like good fiction, with the bonus that his stories are true” (The New York Times Book Review). “Astute character reading and solid research combine with ingenious and stylish prose: a superior portfolio from a journalist who stays at the top of his game.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Bowden is unlike any other journalist . . . Superb reporting, a fine mind conceiving the story line, and a compelling writing style lead to something approaching immortality.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The discovery of the body of Beth Barnard in her Phillip Island farmhouse in 1986, began a homicide investigation that rocked a peaceful community.It also created an enduring mystery, for no one was ever brought to trial for her brutal death, and the main suspect disappeared - never to be seen again.Beth Barnard, a popular and attractive 23-year-old, had been having an affair with a local married man.On the night of her brutal murder, a car belonging to Vivienne Cameron - wife of Beth's lover - was found abandoned near the bridge that connects the famous tourist island to the mainland.No trace of Vivienne was ever found, and her disappearance has never been adequately explained.Nevertheless, a Coroner's Court found that Vivienne had killed her rival then jumped to her death into the waters of Westernport Bay. The case was closed but not forgotten.Ever since their first edition of The Phillip Island Murder, in 1993, Vikki Petraitis and Paul Daley have been regularly contacted by people wanting to know more; people who, like the authors, let the case get under their skin.More than three decades later the mystery, rumours and arm-chair solutions continue.