True Crime Real-Life Stories of Abduction, Addiction, Obsession, Murder, Grave-robbing, and More

The real-life stories collected here reflect not only the myriad ways in which a law can be broken, but also the countless ways in which crime — whether in the news or close to home — can be experienced. In these diverse and compelling narratives, award-winning journalists investigate the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and the unsolved lynching of Claude Neal; an identity thief finds herself confronted by one of her victims; a triple homicide rattles a high school swim team; a young adventurer supports her travels by smuggling Peruvian pre-Columbian artifacts; a woman struggles to live free of the ex-boyfriend who kidnapped and tortured her; and more. While appealing to true crime audiences, this unique mix of personal essays and award-winning long form newspaper narratives will also appeal to creative writing and journalism programs, as well as to readers of memoir and crime fiction.

Over the past 25 years, editor Lee Gutkind has written 15 books, including Truckin’ with Sam, Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather, and Almost Human: Making Robots Think. The founder and editor of the magazine Creative Nonfiction, the first literary journal devoted exclusively to the genre, he lives in Pittsburgh.