True Crime & Legal

Dave Cullen’s nonfiction book, Columbine (2009), chronicles the mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, on April 20, 1999. The perpetrators of the shooting, Columbine High seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed thirteen people—twelve students and one teacher—and injured another two-dozen, before taking their own lives. Cullen’s book moves backward and forward in time, chronicling the lives of the shooters, the victims, the victims’ families, and others both before and after the April 20... Read Columbine Summary

The Constitution of the United States is the oldest national constitution that’s still in use. The idea of founding a government on the basis of a written constitution was revolutionary when the US Constitution was drafted in 1787. The idea had two novel components: first, the document both establishes and limits the power of the government—no figurehead, ruler, or body of legislators stands above the Constitution. Second, it was written by representatives of the governed—55... Read Constitution of United States of America Summary

Steve Bogira’s nonfiction work Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse was published in 2005. Bogira, as a Chicago native and long-time writer for the Chicago Reader, is a social justice advocate and focuses much of his work on poverty and segregation. The work addresses themes of The Injustices of the US Justice System, The Prison-Industrial Complex, and The Influences of Corruption and Politics on Criminal Courts.Content Warning: The source... Read Courtroom 302 Summary

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Dark Places is a 2009 mystery thriller novel by American author Gillian Flynn. The narrative moves between two time periods, 1985 and 2009, as the protagonist, Libby Day, tries to solve her family’s brutal murder. The novel deals with the consequences of the 1980s Satanic Panic and the fallout from the 1970s Farm Boom for a community in the rural Midwest. Flynn is the author of Gone Girl (2012) and other popular mystery thrillers.Dark Places... Read Dark Places Summary

Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States is a memoir originally published in 1993 by Sister Helen Prejean. In the book, Prejean, a Catholic nun with the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Medaille (now the Congregation of Saint Joseph), describes her ministry to death-row inmates Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie in Louisiana in the early 1980s. Her experience with Sonnier, who was ultimately put to death... Read Dead Man Walking Summary

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Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King, subtitled Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, is an account of an important but relatively little-known legal case that paved the way for the advances of the civil rights era. The book begins with the story behind the case: In July 1949, in Groveland, Florida, a 17-year-old girl named Norma Lee Padgett claims a group of four young black men raped her... Read Devil in the Grove Summary

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Published in 2013, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital is a work of nonfiction by American journalist Sheri Fink. The book, which takes place in August 2005, describes the struggle of staff and patients to survive when trapped in New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lacking critical resources, the doctors make a drastic decision that will cause many patients to die via euthanasia. Five Days... Read Five Days at Memorial Summary

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Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep, a staff writer for New Yorker Magazine, is a work of literary nonfiction in the true-crime genre. Furious Hours was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List. Published in 2019, the book is the story of Willie Maxwell, an Alabama preacher whose neighbors suspected him of using voodoo to... Read Furious Hours Summary

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Vincent Bugliosi (1934-2015), the lead prosecutor in the case of the murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers, wrote the book Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders as a detailed account of the trial, evidence, and interviews with the witnesses that eventually put these horrific criminals behind bars. Written with the help of ghostwriter Curt Gentry, the book highlights Bugliosi’s insider’s perspective on the events, with detailed explanations of the gory... Read Helter Skelter Summary

In Hole in My Life, Jack Gantos recounts the story of his time as an idle teenager turned drug smuggler, including his eventual capture by the government and his time spent in Ashford Federal Penitentiary, in Kentucky. The biography serves as much as a lesson to readers in how Gantos turns his own life around as it does the story of how Gantos developed his writing style. The story moves back and forth in time, starting... Read Hole In My Life Summary

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen is narrative nonfiction true crime book published in 2019. It documents the story of Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek, sisters who survived living with their mother, Shelly Knotek, who would ultimately be responsible for the infamous Raymond torture killings in Washington State. Olsen specializes in writing crime-related narratives about people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances... Read If You Tell Summary