The beautiful, ruthless Internet Predator wanted my recently-widowed 85 year-old father's millions. I had to stop their imminent marriage or KILL MOM. A true story about a son's efforts to keep his father from becoming another victim of a Charming Evil Opportunitst. Five months after my mother passed away, my father went on the Internet to find companionship. He quickly arranged a luncheon date with Carolyn, an attractive divorcee whose picture he saw on "A.O.L. In Love." Carolyn had learned my father was a retired business executive living in an expensive home over-looking San Diego Bay. Due to Carolyn's intense pressure, they were engaged in six weeks. Carolyn was a violent, dangerous gold digger with a criminal record who used the Internet, news papers and retirement homes to prey on wealthy seniors. According to neighbors, she may have already killed for money. When Carolyn realized we learned her background and motive, she dug in her heels. She had finally found her $10 million pay day and was not about to be stopped by "greedy children." Dad ignored the evidence, saying "only she makes me happy." Lawyers said there was nothing we could do to stop their marriage. Elder Financial Abuse is a serious epidemic. Learn how you can stop predators from ending up with your senior's hard-earned assets.

A brother and sister cope with loss and trauma—and fight to keep what’s left of their family together—in a “compelling” novel by a Newbery Honor Medal winner. Jenna and Jeremy knew their parents’ marriage was in trouble. That was pretty obvious. But no one who knew the family could have predicted what would come next. One afternoon, Jenna and Jeremy are pulled from class and given horrifying news: their father, a college psychologist, has just shot their mother to death on a public street. Now, Mom is dead, Dad is in jail, and a fifth-grade boy and his fourteen-year-old sister have a lot to reconcile. Not only grief, anger, confusion, and guilt—but their dad’s motive, the secrets in their mother’s diary, and shifting loyalties that are driving Jenna and Jeremy even further apart. With their fragile new lives in free fall, and their father about to stand trial, they’re now going to have to confront the unimaginable. From an author who has been a finalist for the National Book Award, among numerous other honors, this is “a compelling story suffused with raw and honest emotion” (Kirkus Reviews) and “a taut psychological mystery” (Publishers Weekly).

A Son's Worst Fears. . . When Jerry Heimann's son arrived at his father's home in Everett, Washington, he found his grandmother, an Alzheimer's patient, alone in the house, starving and dehydrated. His father was missing. The furniture was gone. Within hours, police realized that Jerry's live-in housekeeper, Barbara Opel, had robbed him and fled. But where was Jerry? A Mother's Worst Crime. . . The next morning, Barbara Opel's 11-year-old son led police to Jerry's body. Soon, stunned detectives were getting confessions from a rag-tag group of teens and pre-teens. At Barbara Opel's command, they had set upon Jerry Heimann with knives, fists, and baseball bats--and battered him to death... A True Story Of Teen Killers. . . From 13-year-old Heather, who frantically stabbed Jerry after having sex with her boyfriend, to 7-year-old Tiffany, who helped clean up the blood, this is the horrifying story of how a mother turned her children and their friends into stone-cold killers--and then rewarded them for their crime... Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos Burl Barer is an Edgar Award winner and two-time Anthony Award nominee who has won praise for his true crime and fiction. His books have been translated into seven languages, and he is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows. A native of Washington State, he now lives in Los Angeles, California.

In September, 2008, Roanoke, Texas, police discovered a house of horrors: poisoned pudding, a bathtub set up for electrocution, a bloody butcher knife, and a hank of chopped-off hair. The worst was yet to come… Days before, seventeen-year-old Jennifer Bailey, her thirteen-year-old brother David, and their friends Paul Henson and Merrilee White had made a gruesome pact: they’d kill their parents, steal their cars and credit cards, and flee to Canada. Paul and Merrilee’s parents thwarted their fates, but Jennifer and David’s mother Susan Bailey wasn’t so lucky. When the devoted mother returned home from work, her two children and their friend Paul took turns stabbing her and slicing her throat. When they were done, they fled in Susan’s car. They made it as far as South Dakota before being arrested. What really led them to make such a despicable pact? The answers would cast a disturbing new light on the way we see the all-American family, our neighbors, our children—and the society that nurtured them. Now an Investigation Discovery TV Special

Memoir, biography, and outrageous comedy make for a perfect blend in the debut book from acclaimed writer Steve Burgess. Telling the tale of his mother's life and death, and along the way laying bare his own life and struggles, Burgess renders a memorable and deeply moving meditation on life and family. The author's mother, Joan, barely survived her thirteenth birthday: a rare disorder had made it almost impossible for her to swallow food. Her battle to survive this illness was the first in a lifelong sequence of courageous confrontations with her upbringing. As she raised her five children, Joan revealed herself to be a strong and remarkably complex woman. This is her story, but it's also the story of her husband, a charming United Church minister, and their children-including the alarmingly delinquent Steve, who spent much of his adolescence and beyond dropping acid, drinking to excess, and getting in trouble with the law. Which leads him to wonder: was he responsible for his mother's ills and perhaps even her death? Whether he's relating how an ice cream product saved him from a gruesome death on the Trans-Canada, or sizing up the rebranding efforts of a woeful Manitoba motel, or depicting daily life

An inside look into patterns and potential prevention plans for one of the most hotly sensationalized crimes A special kind of horror is reserved for mothers who kill their children. Cases such as those of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by driving her car into a lake, and Melissa Drexler, who disposed of her newborn baby in a restroom at her prom, become media sensations. Unfortunately, in addition to these high-profile cases, hundreds of mothers kill their children in the United States each year. The question most often asked is, why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child? Those who work with such cases, whether in clinical psychology, social services, law enforcement or academia, often lack basic understandings about the types of circumstances and patterns which might lead to these tragic deaths, and the social constructions of motherhood which may affect women's actions. These mothers oftentimes defy the myths and media exploitation of them as evil, insane, or lacking moral principles, and they are not a homogenous group. In obvious ways, intervention strategies should differ for a teenager who denies her pregnancy and then kills her newborn and a mother who kills her two toddlers out of mental illness or to further a relationship. A typology is needed to help us to understand the different cases that commonly occur and the patterns they follow in order to make possible more effective prevention plans. Mothers Who Kill Their Children draws on extensive research to identify clear patterns among the cases of women who kill their children, shedding light on why some women commit these acts. The characteristics the authors establish will be helpful in creating more meaningful policies, more targeted intervention strategies, and more knowledgeable evaluations of these cases when they arise.

Granata was a thousand miles from home when he received shocking news that his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Granata was also consumed by the act itself, so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in a seemingly idyllic middle-class family. He decides to examine the disease that irrecoverably changed his family's destiny and piece together his brother's story. In the painstaking process of recovering the image of his remarkable mother and salvaging the love for his brother as Tim faces trial for their mother's murder, Granata provides a powerful and reaffirming portrait of loss and forgiveness. -- adapted from jacket