A True-Crime Chronology

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

Honor Thy Father by Gay Tales (1971)

The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh (1973)

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi (1974)

The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes (1976)

Blood and Money by Thomas Thompson (1976)

A Death in Canaan by Joan Barthel (1978)

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1979)

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule (1980)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1981)

The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes (1981)

Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss (1983)

Missing Beauty by Teresa Carpenter (1987)

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1990)

Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore (1994)

The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin (1996)

The Mad, the Bad and the Innocent: The Criminal Mind on Trial  by Barbara Kirwin (1997)

Cries Unheard (The Story of Mary Bell) by Gitta Sereny (1998)

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham (2006)

Through the Window by Diane Fanning (2007)

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (2011)

The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder by Charles Graeber (2013)

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (2013)

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017)

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (2017)

Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder by Piu Eatwell

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018)

Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race and Justice Lost and Found by Gilbert King (2018)

My Haphazard Spring Reading List

Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of  Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein
(the story of how New York City went broke in 1975 and the fallout that ensued...)

The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh
(Hersh's controversial and eyebrow-raising expose of the sordid underbelly of the Kennedy presidency....JFK's private persona does not at all match his public image...Ugh...)

Havana Nocturne by T. J. English
(Interesting fast-paced narrative about the Mob's control of Havana - focusing on Meyer Lansky, Santo Traficante, Fulgencio Batista, and Fidel Castro)

The Age of Eisenhower by William Hitchcock

(a well-written, generally positive reappraisal of the Eisenhower years...)

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot

(A grand tour of San Francisco history - episodically focusing on various decades and colorful personalities - with emphasis on the 60's and 70's)

Typhoon by Joseph Conrad

(Ordinary guy, not one for introspection, heads straight into the storm, leaving his boat mates mystified...)

Double Play: The San Francisco City Hall Killings by Mike Weiss
[A gripping, character-driven account of the 1978 murders of City Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone... ]

Compelling Euro Crime Dramas

Bron/Broen (The Bridge) - > Sweden/Denmark

Happy Valley - > Britain

Hraunio (The Lava Field) - > Iceland

La Treve (The Break) - > Belgium

Line of Duty - > Britain

The Missing - > Britain/France

Bla Ogon (Blue Eyes) - > Sweden

Ofaero (Trapped) - > Iceland

Wallander - > Sweden

Hinterland - > Wales

The Fall - > Northern Ireland

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) -> Denmark

The Missing - > Sweden

Svartsjon (Black Lake) - > Sweden/Denmark/Norway

Valkyrien - > Norway

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My Haphazard Summer Reading List

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Fire Engine that Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Scandinavians: In search of the soul of the North by Robert Ferguson

Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum

The Go-Between by L.P Hartley

Death in Florence: The Medici, Savanarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City by Paul Stathern

The Borgias: the Hidden History by G.J. Meyer

An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli by Niccolo Capponi

The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior by Paul Strathern

The Jurguthine War and the Catiline Conspiracy by Sallust

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

"In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.” 
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

Selected Short Stories for 9th Graders

 "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs - "The Beginning of Grief" by Larry Woiwode -
"Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe - "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov - "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson - "In Another Country" by Ernest Hemingway - "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter - "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield - "Old Mother Savage" by Guy de Maupassant -  "The Black Sheep" by Italo Calvino - "The Secret Lion" by Alberto Alvaro Rios - "Day of the Butterfly" by Alice Munro "The Child by Tiger" by Thomas Wolfe - "The Prisoner Wore Glasses" by Bessie Head - "Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer - "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner - "The Three Strangers"by Thomas Hardy - "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson - "The Destructors" by Graham Greene