Time: the late nineteenth century. Place: the city of New York, a mecca for the ambitious and the corrupt where the poor barely survive on the wages for their fourteen-hour work day. Crime is at its highest, higher than it will be in all of the city's history. Nevertheless, the burgeoning city is alive with possibilities. This is the setting for a different kind of coming-of-age story. Sixteen-year-old Rivka Lenski, a recent Russian Jewish immigrant and orphan, cannot even read or write English. Her days are spent on survival. When her coworker and friend Frieda Baum is found murdered in a house of assignation on Allen Street, Rivka pledges to find the murderer and bring justice to her friend's devastated family. Rivka's search to find her friend's killer leads Rivka deeper into the diverse and complex world of late nineteenth-century New York, a world rife with corruption, racism, and crime yet filled with colorful characters like the criminal lawyers Hummel and Howe and Mother Mandelbaum, the head of organized crime in the city. Rivka's search brings her face to face with the intertwined worlds of this New York, from the glorious mansions of Grammercy Park to the haunts of ambitious prostitutes and entertainers, into the lives of women who love each other as well as informants and pickpockets while growing stronger and more aware of a world she had never before noticed. Through her unexpected friendship with Mercy, a maid in the house where her friend Frieda died, Rivka learns how to read and write and about the cruelty of racism in her new land. In searching for a murderer, Rivka learns to become a detective and an American.

This fascinating and gripping portrayal is the only book-length account ever written about the illicit career of Clarence Ray Allen, one of the most sinister criminal masterminds and mass murderers in American history. Even hardened detectives were shaken by the scene at Fran's Market in rural Fresno County that night in 1980: four young people lay on the market's concrete floor, bloodily murdered by a killer without mercy or remorse. Then a grim investigation became even grimmer when the evidence led to the prime suspect--a convicted murderer already behind the stone walls of Folsom. A true crime story that reads like an intricately woven mystery, the book depicts the chilling scenes of murder, a dogged investigation, and the true story behind the Fran's Market murders and their psychopathic mastermind. Written by former prosecutor James Ardaiz, who was one of the first investigators on the scene at Fran's Market, ""Hands Through Stone"" provides an insider's view of the tortuous, multiyear investigation that brought a killer to justice.

a history of Street Gangs on the Lower East Side of New York City.

A USA Today bestseller and book club favorite! College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?

"The Rue Morgue Murders" is a pioneering tale in the mystery genre, in which detective Auguste Dupin uses his acute observation and logic to solve a brutal double murder in Paris, revealing a surprising and unusual outcome.

How much do you actually know about New York City? Did you know they tried to anchor Zeppelins at the top of the Empire State Building? Or that the high-rent district of Park Avenue was once so dangerous it was called "Death Avenue"? Lively and comprehensive, Inside the Apple brings to life New York's fascinating past. This narrative history of New York City is the first to offer practical walking tour know-how. Fast-paced but thorough, its bite-size chapters each focus on an event, person, or place of historical significance. Rich in anecdotes and illustrations, it whisks readers from colonial New Amsterdam through Manhattan's past, right up to post-9/11 New York. The book also works as a historical walking-tour guide, with 14 self-guided tours, maps, and step-by-step directions. Easy to carry with you as you explore the city, Inside the Apple allows you to visit the site of every story it tells. This energetic, wide-ranging, and often humorous book covers New York's most important historical moments, but is always anchored in the city of today.

"Scrapped captures the barren roads and fallow fields of Oswego County the way Capote captured Finney County, Kansas in In Cold Blood." -Tom Barbash, New York Times bestselling author of The Dakota Winters Criminal defense lawyer Lisa Peebles was taken aback by a secretly recorded phone call and police interrogation video that surfaced in a 20-year-old kidnapping case. They held the stench of a cover-up. She recruited an investigative reporter to help unearth the truth and exonerate Gary Thibodeau, the man convicted in the 1994 kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Heidi Allen. Scrapped: Justice and a Teen Informant exposes the underbelly of a system built more for finality than justice. It's the true story of Peebles' pursuit of new evidence against three new suspects and her discovery that Heidi had lived a double life: convenience store cashier and undercover informant. The sheriff's office hid the truth after her death as the real killers roamed free. Peebles became a de facto prosecutor to prove their guilt and Gary's innocence. As Heidi's family stood by the sheriff, her remains were likely secreted right under their noses - probably inside a scrapped van and shipped to a car shredder in Canada.