The Library

Children under Fire

John Woodrow Cox

In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection—both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique. In the past decade, 15,000 children have been killed from gunfire, though that number does not account for the kids who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims but have nevertheless been irreparably harmed by gun violence. In Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms as well as efforts to manage children’s trauma in the wake of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres, from Columbine to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Through deep reporting, Cox addresses how we can effect change now, and help children like Ava and Tyshaun. He explores their stories and more, including a couple in South Carolina whose eleven-year-old son shot himself, a Republican politician fighting for gun safety laws, and the charlatans infiltrating the school safety business. In a moment when the country is desperate to better understand and address gun violence, Children Under Fire offers a way to do just that, weaving wrenching personal stories into a critical call for the United States to embrace practical reforms that would save thousands of young lives.

Killer fiction

G. J. Schaefer

The perverse, violent stories, poetry, and fantastic scribblings of a man convicted in 1972 of murdering two women chart the killer's extreme pathology. Includes a foreword by a woman who once dated him.

Unauthorized entry

Howard Margolian

"In Unauthorized Entry, Howard Margolian absolves a succession of postwar governments of active complicity in the admission of ex-Nazis. Charges that Ottawa was indifferent to the problem are similarly discounted. In a departure from the conspiracy theories and the culture of historical victimization so prevalent nowadays, Margolian lays the blame where it belongs - on the war criminals themselves. Most, he points out, were Nazi collaborators who had escaped from eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, where evidence of their crimes remained inaccessible for almost fifty years. With no means to verify the statements given by these fraudulent refugee claimants, Canadian immigration authorities had to rely on their professional judgment and their instincts."--BOOK JACKET.

The Falcon Thief

Joshua Hammer

"A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs--and the wildlife detective determined to stop him"-- On May 3, 2010, Irish national Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. Hammer follows the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions, and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom's National Wildlife Crime Unit, who is hell bent on protecting the world's birds of prey. It's a story that's part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure-- and wholly unputdownable. -- adapted from jacket

Standoff

Jamie Thompson

"On July 7, 2016, hundreds of protesters gathered in Dallas after the shooting of two black men--Philando Castile and Alton Sterling--by white policemen. One hundred Dallas police officers stood guard. At around nine p.m., a gunman opened fire into the line of officers from behind. Five were killed and a dozen more injured. Senior Cpl. Larry Gordon, a black twenty-one year department veteran, managed to keep the shooter talking, in part by bonding with him, to buy the SWAT officers enough time to come up with a strategy to take him out--one that was extremely controversial and unprecedented on American soil. Thompson's intimate portrait of the lives of the shooter and the hostage negotiator, as well as the officers, the black surgeon who operated on them, and their families, gets to the heart of the deeply pressing issue of race and policing in our country. In the aftermath of the shooting, police forces and white and black communities all over the country were left grappling with questions of who our police force protects, what constitutes a threat, and who is entitled to physical safety or self-defense in this country"--

Smuggler's blues

Richard Stratton

"Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot's outlaw years. Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler's Blues tells Stratton's adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler's Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot's cultural history."-- "The unlikeliest of kingpins, Richard Stratton, a clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler's Blues tells Stratton's adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall, while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices"--

Bald Knobbers :

Vincent S. Anderson

"A collection of true stories about the Ozarks' Bald Knobbers, a band of local vigilantes bringing justice to the lawlessness of the times"-- "Collection of articles about the Knobbers and comments from the author"--

Wicked mortals

Aaron Mahnke

"Some monsters are figments of our imagination. Others are as real as flesh and blood: humans who may look like us, who may walk among us, often unnoticed, occasionally even admired—but whose evil deeds and secret lives, once revealed, mark them as something utterly wicked. In this illustrated volume from the host of the hit podcast Lore, you'll find tales of infamous characters whose veins ran with ice water and whose crimes remind us that truth can be more terrifying than fiction. Aaron Mahnke introduces us to William Brodie, a renowned Scottish cabinetmaker who used his professional expertise to prey on the citizens of Edinburgh and whose rampant criminality behind a veneer of social respectability inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then there’s H. H. Holmes, a relentless and elusive con artist who became best known as the terror of Chicago's 1893 World's Fair when unwitting guests were welcomed into his 'hotel' of horrors...never to be seen again. And no rogues' gallery could leave out Bela Kiss, the Hungarian tinsmith with a taste for the occult and a collection of gasoline drums with women's bodies inside. Brimming with accounts of history's most heinous real-life fiends, this riveting best-of-the-worst roundup will haunt your thoughts, chill your bones, and leave you wondering if there are mortal monsters lurking even closer than you think"--Dust jacket flap.

God'll cut you down

John Safran

"An unlikely journalist, a murder case in Mississippi, and a fascinating literary true crime story about race, money, sex, and power in the modern American South"--

Renowned prosecuting attorney Robert K. Tanenbaum provides the first insider's account of the historic Wylie-Hoffert case: the 1963 rape and murder of two young women in their Manhattan apartment, dubbed the "Career Girls Murders" by the media. From the shocking crime to the wrenching interrogation, confession, and incarceration of an innocent young black man with an IQ of less than 70, this is a gripping chronicle of the case that led to the Miranda Rights -- and of the courageous stand by a young Assistant District Attorney who risked everything to unravel a disgraceful injustice and forever reformed the American justice system.