Two true-crime tales relate the stories of a couple who were tortured and left for dead after a home invasion, and a double homicide in Omaha, Nebraska.

MURDER, INTERRUPTED. Rich, cheating financier Frank Howard wants his wife dead, and he's willing to pay Billie Earl Johnson whatever it takes, to the tune of $750,000. When his bullet misses the mark, Billie Earl and Frank will turn on each other in a fight for their lives...MOTHER OF ALL MURDERS. Dee Dee Blancharde is a local celebrity. Television reports praise her as a single mother who tirelessly cares for her wheelchair-bound, chronically ill...

Television journalist Velez-Mitchell asks a disturbing question: Are killers like Scott Peterson and Andrea Yates all that different from the rest of us? When journalists break the story of a kidnapping, a brutal rape, or a family slaughtered, we ask: What kind of monster would do this? This book exposes the hidden motivations behind 21 recent crimes. People lie to protect secrets, big and small--but leading a double life can land you in prison, and...

"In 1977, in an Ohio Amish community, pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman perished during a barn fire. The coroner's report: natural causes. Ida's husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. But when he eventually rejected the faith and took his son, Danny, with him, murder followed. What really happened to Ida? The dubious circumstances of the tragic blaze were willfully ignored and Eli's shifting narratives disregarded. Could Eli's subsequent...

A woman begins to suspect that her husband isn't actually who he says he is, and a teenager has her life upended during the hunt for a missing girl, in two true-crime stories. "Til Murder Do Us Part: Kathi Spiars can't believe she's found such a good man to marry as Stephen Marcum. But twelve years later, she starts to suspect that he isn't who he says he is. As she digs into his past, she doesn't realize that learning the truth will lead to a lifetime...

Beginning in the summer of 1903 the children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators' only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The tabloid press heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Joseph Petrosino, a dogged and ingenious detective, and the all-Italian...