The Murderer S Son

Twenty years ago: a farmer and his wife are cut to pieces by a ruthless serial killer. Now: a woman is viciously stabbed to death in the upmarket kitchen of her beautiful house on the edge of the marshes. Then a man called Daniel Kinder walks into Saltern police station and confesses to the murder. But DI Rowan Jackman and DS Marie Evans of the Fenland Constabulary soon discover that there is a lot more to Daniel than meets the eye. He has no memory of the first five years of his life and is obsessed with who his real mother is. With no evidence to hold him, Jackman and Evans are forced to let him go, and in a matter of days the lonely Lincolnshire Fens become the stage for more killings and Daniel has disappeared. In a breathtaking finale, the truth about Daniel?s mother comes to light and DI Jackman and DS Evans race against time to stop more lives being destroyed.

An intimate look at the internet killer featured in the Netflix true crime documentary Don’t F**k with Cats—written with the murderer’s mother. In 2012, male escort and porn actor Luka Magnotta found a gruesome path to fame. He videotaped himself murdering and dismembering Chinese student Jun Lin before posting the video online. After mailing Jun’s hands and feet to elementary schools, Luca led Interpol on a manhunt that ended in Berlin. They arrested him at an Internet café where he was reading news stories about himself. Now with a legion of twisted fans, Magnotta was brought back to Canada, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to prison. During this time, Anna Yourkin, his estranged mother, troubled by Magnotta’s abused childhood and her role in it, reconnected with her killer son. With exclusive interviews, Magnotta has given award-winning journalist Brian Whitney an intimate look inside the mind of this “social media” killer. Joining Whitney to tell this unique true crime story is Anna Yourkin, who provides exclusive photos.

Over 13 months in 1976-1977, four children were abducted in the Detroit suburbs, each of them held for days before their still-warm bodies were dumped in the snow near public roadsides. The Oakland County Child Murders spawned panic across southeast Michigan, triggering the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history. Yet after less than two years, the task force created to find the killer was shut down without naming a suspect. The case "went cold" for more than 30 years, until a chance discovery by one victim's family pointed to the son of a wealthy General Motors executive: Christopher Brian Busch, a convicted pedophile, was freed weeks before the fourth child disappeared. Veteran Detroit News reporter Marney Rich Keenan takes the reader inside the investigation of the still-unsolved murders--seen through the eyes of the lead detective in the case and the family who cracked it open--revealing evidence of a decades-long coverup of malfeasance and obstruction that denied justice for the victims.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A legal thriller that’s comparable to classics such as Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent . . . tragic and shocking.”—Associated Press NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERIES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • Boston Globe • Kansas City Star Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney for two decades. He is respected. Admired in the courtroom. Happy at home with the loves of his life: his wife, Laurie, and their teenage son, Jacob. Then Andy’s quiet suburb is stunned by a shocking crime: a young boy stabbed to death in a leafy park. And an even greater shock: The accused is Andy’s own son—shy, awkward, mysterious Jacob. Andy believes in Jacob’s innocence. Any parent would. But the pressure mounts. Damning evidence. Doubt. A faltering marriage. The neighbors’ contempt. A murder trial that threatens to obliterate Andy’s family. It is the ultimate test for any parent: How far would you go to protect your child? It is a test of devotion. A test of how well a parent can know a child. For Andy Barber, a man with an iron will and a dark secret, it is a test of guilt and innocence in the deepest sense. How far would you go? Praise for Defending Jacob “A novel like this comes along maybe once a decade . . . a tour de force, a full-blooded legal thriller about a murder trial and the way it shatters a family. With its relentless suspense, its mesmerizing prose, and a shocking twist at the end, it’s every bit as good as Scott Turow’s great Presumed Innocent. But it’s also something more: an indelible domestic drama that calls to mind Ordinary People and We Need to Talk About Kevin. A spellbinding and unforgettable literary crime novel.”—Joseph Finder “Defending Jacob is smart, sophisticated, and suspenseful—capturing both the complexity and stunning fragility of family life.”—Lee Child “Powerful . . . leaves you gasping breathlessly at each shocking revelation.”—Lisa Gardner “Disturbing, complex, and gripping, Defending Jacob is impossible to put down. William Landay is a stunning talent.”—Carla Neggers “Riveting, suspenseful, and emotionally searing.”—Linwood Barclay

In this mystery from an Edgar Award–winning author, sleuth Peter Duluth steps in when his rebellious nephew is charged with murder. Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” Jake Duluth is a man alone. Three years after the suicide of his beloved wife, the wall between Jake and his son, Bill, has only grown higher. Bill’s constant impulsiveness has driven Jake to distraction, while Jake’s constant concern for his publishing business alienates Bill even more. But when Bill is accused of murdering Jake’s business partner after falling in love with the man’s much younger wife, Jake has no choice but to believe his son and call in someone with much more experience in such sinister matters—his brother, Peter. Now, with Bill’s life at stake, Jake and Peter must follow a trail of secrets and twisted loyalties if they are going to uncover a culprit neither could have ever imagined.

Author K.D. Lewis recounts the evolution of the serial killer father he met late in his life. Armed with newly discovered information about his father's past and current debased life, Lewis seeks to explore and understand his own struggles with mental illness that likely plagued both his parents and may have ultimately destroyed him. Son of a Killer has it all- love, loss and liberation of every kind, including the final confrontation of a killer who may have set his son free in unimaginable ways.

Little Artie Shawcross bullied classmates, insulted teachers, started fires, tortured animals, and roved the woods of New York's hardscrabble North Country with imaginary friends, talking in a high squawk. He also scored top grades, excelled in sports and shared his money and toys with the children who ridiculed him. From the second grade on, he was subjected to psychiatric examination, regularly confounding the experts. Years later, while serving in Vietnam, Arthur John Shawcross wrote bloodcurdling letters about his battlefield ordeals, then returned to Watertown to commit a string of arsons and burglaries. He served two years in prison, was paroled to his respectable parents - and murdered a boy and a girl. Back in the penitentiary, he proved as enigmatic as ever. Some counselors saw him as a Frankenstein monster, beyond hope, irredeemable. To others he was a troubled young man who could be saved. No two psychiatrists seemed to agree. Shawcross served fifteen years, then conned a parole board into an early release. He settled in Binghamton, but angry citizens learned of his bloody history and ran him out of town. After two smaller communities turned him away, desperate parole authorities finally smuggled the child-killer into Rochester in the dead of night - neglecting to alert the local police. Soon the corpses started turning up, locked in winter ice, covered by reeds in swamps, floating in streams. The homicidal pedophile had changed his M.O., this time murdering diminutive women. As the body count grew, Rochester streets swarmed with police, and still the serial killer managed to snare his tenth victim, then his eleventh. Amazon.com Accounts of more famous serial killers like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer may have ghoulish entertainment value, but I agree with writer Darcy O'Brien that this meticulously factual study of child sex-murderer Arthur Shawcross "comes closer to capturing the psychology of a serial killer than anything else I've ever read." The strength of this book (semi-finalist for a 1994 Edgar Award) comes first from the quality of the materials--including first-person interviews with the killer's wives, girlfriends, co-workers, police officers, therapists, and even a prostitute who "played dead" for Shawcross--and second, from Olsen's ability to weave the information into a highly readable story that reveals, above all, the ineffectiveness of our system of rehabilitation and parole. From Publishers Weekly An experienced and skilled writer, Olsen ( Predator ) proves himself equal to the formidable task of studying serial killer Arthur Shawcross. Born in 1945 in upstate New York, Shawcross was perceived as different even in childhood (his classmates dubbed him "Oddie," and elementary school officials called for mental health evaluations). In the early '70s he murdered two children and was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison; he served less than 15 years before he was paroled in 1987. He was difficult to place--townspeople drove him out as soon as his past became known. After three such episodes, parole officials sent him surreptitiously to Rochester, N.Y., where he killed at least 11 prostitutes. He was arrested in 1990 and eventually sentenced to 250 years in prison. During the trial, he claimed that he had been physically and sexually abused by his mother (untrue, the authorities concluded) and that he had committed horrible atrocities in Vietnam (probably untrue). He did not fit the classic pattern of the sociopath, nor did he seem either schizophrenic or paranoid. It remained for psychiatrist Richard Kraus to hypothesize that physiology was the basis for Shawcross's behavior--he diagnosed Shawcross as suffering from a metabolic ailment known as pyroluria and an abnormal genetic constitution. Told by Olsen with contributions from others affected by Shawcross's crimes, the story is a triumph of true-crime writing.

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.