During that long, hot summer of 1964, Ivan Smith, a mercenary volunteer in the Armée Nationale Congolais, came to witness and understand fear, the law of the jungle and the lust for killing that permeates Africa. A member of 'Mad Mike' Hoare's 5 Commando Group he and his companions were nominally soldiers but there was little in the way of campaigns, tactics and discipline. Of conventional warfare there was none. Loyalty to country or unit did not exist and the fear of death was the only commander. Many more mercenaries died from an accidental discharge, in a drunken shoot-out or from a bullet in the back than were ever killed in action by Simba rebels. Nearly half a century later, Ivan Smith re-lives the nightmare that was the Congo.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE It was the worst two-week killing spree in Ohio's history. On the night of July 21, 1948, Robert Daniels and John West entered John and Nolena Niebel's house with loaded guns. They forced the family including the Niebel's 21-year-old daughter, Phyllis, into their car and drove them to a cornfield just off Fleming Falls Road in Mansfield. The two men instructed the Niebels to remove all of their clothing, and then Robert Daniels shot each of them in the head. The brutal murders caught national attention in the media, but the killing spree didn't stop there. Three more innocent people would lose their lives at the hands of Daniels and West in the coming week. Scott Fields tirelessly researched the killings, the capture and trial of Daniels and even interviewed a surviving member of the Niebel family to weave this tragic story into a must-read novel bringing the reader back to those dark days in the summer of 1948. What led to these brutal killings, and why was the Niebel family singled-out to be savagely murdered? It has been more than sixty years since the tragedy, and, yet, this question still remains unanswered. The killing spree is not only remembered to this day, but is an important and dark part of Mansfield lore.

A baby-faced murderer is leaving a trail of corpses across the Montana territory. A killing machine in boots, Ned Larson has already sent one unlucky lawman to an early grave. And Longarm is next on this bloodthirsty outlaw's death list. Raring to answer Larson's challenge, Longarm fixes to swap hot lead with a cold-blooded killer. But the weak-kneed officials tie his hands ... they want this butcher brought back alive!

"A suspenseful tale, told from the title to the end with wit and warmth by a very talented writer." —Nancy Pickard, award-winning author Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war. Winter, of course, is no better, but remembrance of its frosts and blizzards and winds that begin to suck away your life before you walk a dozen steps has grown faint by the early hours of a Sunday morning in late June. While some try to sleep, and Sheriff English and his ex-wife try sex, the Reverend Peter Simms takes an early walk in the park and encounters someone counting coup. When the Sheriff's part-Cheyenne brother, Mad Dog, arrives to meditate, he finds the Reverend's mutilated corpse. Mad Dog is the obvious suspect and he begins to hang out in the town jail while Sheriff English widens his net. English picks up several suspicious characters, and an increasingly dark history for the Simms family. The case grows stormier, and so does the weather. As a tornado gathers to hurl its fury on the hapless town, the fury of the killer rises to meet it.

Mass Killers investigates those addicted to death. Many killers have become dangerously hooked on the thrill of the kill, driving them to commit even more extreme acts of violence in pursuit of their drug of choice - the suffering of others. This fascinating book is not for the faint hearted. It contains graphic descriptions of murder on a massive scale and looks closely at the lives of the damaged and deranged men and women who have perpetrated history's most horrific crimes Contents: Crimes against Humanity including Vlad the Impaler, Nazi Crimes, Japanese Crimes, Killing Fields of Cambodia Spree Killers including Charles Starkweather, University of Texas, Hungerford, Dunblane, Virginia Tech Serial Killers including Andrei Chikatilo, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Harold Shipman

How would you treat a murderer? If you’re from Hollywood and he’s notorious, you might turn him into a folk hero. Separate the facts from the many legends and revisions that have blossomed around these killers in this frightening look at the bloody real lives of movie’s infamous antiheroes. You’ll find a blood-curdling assortment of the “criminal elite” in American Murder: Criminals, Crime and the Media, a rogue’s gallery of our most famous killings, killers and other scoundrels (and some that ought to be more famous than they are). A collection of high-profile murderers, gangsters, assassins, psychopaths, such as O.J., Amy Fisher, Robert Blake, Susan Smith, Claus Von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bugsy Siegel, Jesse James, John Dillinger, Charles Manson, Albert Fish, T. Cullen Davis, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., Edmund Kemper, Beulah Annan, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, Charlie Starkweather, as well as an assortment of lesser known killers with some incredible tales! With numerous photos and illustrations, this tome is richly illustrated, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. American Murderexplores the legends as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. You’d not want to meet any of them in person – either the real or Hollywood versions!

This book offers a fascinating and insightful overview of seven centuries of murder in Europe. It tells the story of the changing face of violence and documents the long-term decline in the incidence of homicide. From medieval vendettas to stylised duels, from the crime passionel of the modern period right up to recent public anxieties about serial killings and underworld assassinations, the book offers a richly illustrated account of murder’s metamorphoses. In this original and compelling contribution, Spierenburg sheds new light on several important themes. He looks, for example, at the transformation of homicide from a private matter, followed by revenge or reconciliation, into a public crime, always subject to state intervention. Combining statistical data with a cultural approach, he demonstrates the crucial role gender played in the spiritualisation of male honour and the subsequent reduction of male-on-male aggression, as well as offering a comparative view of how different social classes practised and reacted to violence. This authoritative study will be of great value to students and scholars of the history of crime and violence, criminology and the sociology of violence. At a time when murder rates are rising and public fears about violent crime are escalating, this book will also interest the general reader intrigued by how our relationship with murder reached this point.