Books To Read if You Love The Devil in the White City

Erik Larson’s latest book brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times). Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink — a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off, dying under mysterious circumstances … Killers of the Flower Moon is a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history — from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z.

A “riveting” (The Atlantic) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte. A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar and violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist.

The masterfully told story of twelve volatile days in Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder transfixed and roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.

In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: The decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells — taken without her knowledge — became one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait — the bestselling author of River of the Gods brings us the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

An incredible true story of murder, romance, and a fateful search for utopia in the Galápagos — from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park. Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia — and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed.

Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.

A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter — from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times.

Truman Capote’s intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.

The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it — an urgent work of literary journalism. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systemic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing.

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon. In the ensuing manhunt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and brought to trial. Yet even after the guilty verdict and the death sentence, what we didn’t know was why. Journalist Masha Gessen reconstructs the brothers’ struggle between assimilation and alienation, which incubated a deadly sense of mission. And she traces how such a split in identity can fuel the metamorphosis into a new breed of homegrown terrorist, with feet on American soil but sense of self elsewhere.

With a thrilling, fast-paced narrative, award-winning journalist Douglas Perry vividly captures the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal — and gave Chicago its most famous story. The Girls of Murder City recounts two scandalous, sex-fueled murder cases and how an intrepid “girl reporter” named Maurine Watkins turned the beautiful, media-savvy suspects into the talk of the town. Fueled by rich period detail and a cast of characters who seemed destined for the stage, The Girls of Murder City is a crackling tale that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the Jazz Age and its sober repercussions.

Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this true-crime book has become a modern classic.

In John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, “the master of the legal thriller” (Associated Press) teams up with Jim McCloskey, “the godfather of the innocence movement” (Texas Monthly), to share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Impeccably researched and told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of winning freedom when the battle already seems lost and the deck is stacked against you.

A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic.

A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea’s ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il’s reign. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world’s most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men Suki calls “soldiers and slaves.”

In 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, what is now Georgetown University. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion.

This extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history — and the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. With a cast of characters that includes John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., William Howard Taft, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott’s colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our nation’s hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots. Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of America’s journey from Victorian-era propriety to twentieth-century modernity.

The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake — many of which remain unsolved to this day. “Maureen Callahan’s deft reporting and stylish writing have created one of the all-time-great serial-killer books: Sensitive, chilling, and completely impossible to put down” (Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead).