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  Historical True Crime  
Historical true crime up to the 1950's. Perfect for the armchair sleuth.
The Trial of Lizzie Borden

Cara Robertson - Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardcover

The remarkable new account of an essential piece of American mythology - the trial of Lizzie Borden - based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence.The Trial of Lizzie Borden tells the true story of one of the most sensational murder trials in American history....
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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Kate Summerscale - Walker Books
Format: Hardcover

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically...
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The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Deborah Blum - Penguin Press
Format: Book

Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating,...
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

John Berendt - Random House; 1st edition
Format: Hardcover

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's...
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Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Casey Cep
Format: Book

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's...
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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

David Grann - Doubleday
Format: Book

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage...
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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Erik Larson - Alexandria Library
Format: Hardcover

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's...
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The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz- Age America

Karen Abbott - Crown
Format: Book

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multi-millionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless...
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The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars

Paul Collins

In Long Island, a farmer found a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discovered a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumbled upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a ho
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Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

Paul French - Penguin Books; 1 edition
Format: Hardcover

Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werners body sends a shiver...
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