The Chatham School Affair
by Thomas H. Cook
from Bantam
In 1926 Henry Griswald was a kid, a student of the lovely and unusual Elizabeth Channing, who had recently arrived in his coastal Massachusetts village to teach art at a private school run by his father. Decades later, the people of Henry's village are still racked by guilt and troubled by uncertainty--who, or what, drove Miss Channing to madness and murder? Henry Griswald, narrator of The Chatham School Affair, holds the key. Using the same dark, brooding tone that permeated Breakheart Hill, Thomas Cook has crafted a disturbing yet entertaining psychological thriller.
Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy. Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible...and inevitable. "Thomas Cook's night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting," raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair will cement this superb writer's position as one of crime fiction's most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected ending.
The Best American Crime Reporting 2007
by Linda Fairstein
from Harper Perennial
Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2007 brings together the murderers and muscle men, the masterminds, and the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Linda Fairstein, the bestselling crime novelist and former chief prosecutor of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office's pioneering Special Victims' Unit.
The Best American Crime Writing 2006 (Best American Crime Reporting)
by Mark Bowden
from Harper Perennial
A sterling collection of the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, the 2006 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers fascinating vicarious journeys into a world of felons and their felonious acts. This thrilling compendium includes:
Jeffrey Toobin's eye-opening exposé in The New Yorker about a famous prosecutor who may have put the wrong man on death row
Skip Hollandsworth's amazing but true tale of an old cowboy bank robber who turned out to be a "classic good-hearted Texas woman"
Jimmy Breslin's stellar piece about the end of the Mob as we know it
The Best American Crime Writing 2005 (Best American Crime Reporting)
by James Ellroy
from Harper Perennial
The 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from The New Yorker by Stephen J. Dubner (the coauthor of Freakanomics) about a high-society silver thief, and an extraordinarily memorable "ode to bar fights" written by Jonathan Miles for Men's Journal after he punched an editor at a staff party. But this year's edition includes a bonus -- an original essay by James Ellroy detailing his fascination with Joseph Wambaugh and how it fed his obsession with crime -- even to the point of selling his own blood to buy Wambaugh's books. Smart, entertaining, and controversial, The Best American Crime Writing is an essential edition to any crime enthusiast's bookshelf.
The 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including Peter Landesman's article about female sex slaves (the most requested and widely read New York Times story of 2004), a piece from The New Yorker by Stephen J. Dubner (the coauthor of Freakanomics) about a high-society silver thief, and an extraordinarily memorable "ode to bar fights" written by Jonathan Miles for Men's Journal after he punched an editor at a staff party. But this year's edition includes a bonus -- an original essay by James Ellroy detailing his fascination with Joseph Wambaugh and how it fed his obsession with crime -- even to the point of selling his own blood to buy Wambaugh's books. Smart, entertaining, and controversial, The Best American Crime Writing is an essential edition to any crime enthusiast's bookshelf.
The Best American Crime Writing: 2003 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting
from Vintage
This year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute, in short, the best crime journalism. Scouring hundreds of publications, Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook have created a remarkable compilation containing the best examples of the most current and vibrant of our literary traditions: crime reporting.
Included in this volume are Maximillian Potter’s “The Body Farm” from GQ, a portrait of Murray Marks, who collects dead bodies and strews them around two acres of the University of Tennessee campus to study their decomposition in order to help solve crime; Jay Kirk’s
“My Undertaker, My Pimp,” from Harper’s, in which Mack Moore and his wife, Angel, switch from run-ning crooked funeral parlors to establishing a brothel; Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared” from Texas Monthly, about the sudden disappearence of a teenager and the strange place she turned up; Lawrence Wright’s “The Counterterrorist” from The New Yorker, the story of John O’Neill, the FBI agent who tracked Osama bin Laden for a decade—until he was killed when the World Trade Center collapsed. Intriguing, entertaining, and compelling reading, Best American Crime Writing has established itself as a much-anticipated annual.
The Best American Crime Writing: 2004 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting
by Otto Penzler
from Vintage
A year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute…
“Ciudad de la Muerte” by Cecilia Balli, from Texas Monthly
“Code of Dishonor” by Clara Bingham, from Vanity Fair
“Lord of the Drug Ring” by Charles Bowden, from GQ
“The Dark Art of Interrogation” by Mark Bowden, from The Atlantic Monthly
“Possessed” by Luke Dittrich, from Atlanta magazine
“Night of the Bullies” by Robert Draper, from GQ
“Stephanie” by James Ellroy, from GQ
“Who Is the Boy in the Box?” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, from Philadelphia magazine
“Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?” by James Fallows, from The Atlantic Monthly
“The Professor and the Porn” by Elisabeth Franck, from New York magazine
“The Old Man and the Gun” by David Grann, from The New Yorker
“CSC: Crime Scene Cleanup” by Pat Jordan, from Playboy
“A Miscarriage of Justice” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from The Atlantic Monthly
“Watching the Detectives” by Jay Kirk, from Harper’s Magazine
“For the Love of God” by Jon Krakauer, from GQ
“Chief Bratton Takes on LA” by Heather Mac Donald, from City Journal
“Not Guilty by Reason of Afghanistan” by John H. Richardson, from Esquire
“Megan’s Law and Me” by Brendan Riley, from Details
“Unfortunate Con” by Mark Schone, from The Oxford American
“To Kill or Not to Kill” by Scott Turow, from The New Yorker
The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 (Best American Crime Reporting)
+++
