10 of the Best New True Crime Books

Missing Your Annual Dose of Murder and Mayhem?

With so many of our summer traditions on hold this year, we are relying on literature to take us where we want to go. This week, we bring you a virtual CrimeCon! Whether you're looking for fact or fiction, here are some of the best new books exploring the gritty underbelly of humanity.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

These five new true crime books hit on hot button topics and investigate shocking cases of violence, deception, and betrayal.

Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, America's Most Dangerous Cult
This meticulously reported story explores the secretive world of the Word of Faith Fellowship and its diabolical leader, Jane Whaley. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, covertly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Mitch Weiss depicts one family's harrowing descent into darkness and their winding journey back to the light.

Losing Jon: A Teen's Tragic Death, a Police Cover-Up, a Community's Fight for Justice
Bestselling author David Parrish was in disbelief when he heard that nineteen-year-old Jon Bowie's body had been found and the death declared a suicide. Parrish had known Jon and his twin brother since they were boys. And when he learned the grisly details about how Jon's body was found, he felt compelled to dig into the facts behind this incomprehensible tragedy.

Magnetized: Conversations with a Serial Killer
Argentine author Carlos Busqued documents his discussions with murderer Ricardo Melogno more than three decades after his conviction for the cold-blooded murders of four taxi drivers in Buenos Aires. The result is a book at once hypnotic and unnerving, constructed from forensic documents, newspaper clippings, and the killer's own explanation of his crimes.

Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era
Award-winning investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell takes readers along for the ride on his real-life detective work that led to the resolution of four notorious decades-old murder cases. The related killings—which would become known as the "Mississippi Burning" case—were among the most brazen acts of violence during the Civil Rights Movement.

Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
This debut offers a deep examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of redemption. Journalist Sierra Crane Murdoch traces the steps of Lissa Yellow Bird, an unforgettable Arikara woman, as she searches for answers about an unsolved disappearance of an oil worker on her reservation.

Ripped From the Headlines

Here are five novels exploring seedy, dangerous worlds and the intrepid characters inhabiting them.

Blacktop Wasteland
Beauregard "Bug" Montage has left his checkered past as a getaway driver behind for life as an honest mechanic and family man. But as his new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. This debut novel from Shawn A. Cosby offers a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.

Meadowlark
This haunting novel from Melanie Abrams traces the path of Simrin and Arjun, who reconnect years after escaping together from a cult as teens. Arjun has become the charismatic leader of a desert commune and Simrin, now a photojournalist, agrees to document his story. Arriving at the commune, she soon realizes there is something disturbing about Arjun's beliefs.

The Missing American
The first in a new series from bestselling Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey. After her dreams of success in the police department come crashing down, 26-year-old Ghanaian Emma Djan takes a job with a private detective agency investigating missing persons. Soon she finds herself deep in a world of sakawa scams, fetish priests, and people willing to kill to protect their secrets.

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida
In the months before she hanged herself, Miwako abruptly dropped out of college and hid away in a remote mountainside village. But what, or whom, was she running from? Creating a world of social exile, public diary entries, and ghosts among the living, acclaimed author Clarissa Goenawan gradually reveals the dark truth behind a young girl's suicide.

Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder
In the first-ever English-language edition of the sensational collaboration from Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi, this graphic novel follows the adventures of legal advisor Griffu as he uncovers a series of secrets and betrayals. With a sultry blonde, war criminals, assassins, and beaucoup cigarettes, this edition offers a combination of dry humor and classic noir.

We know this doesn't take the place of in-person forensics demonstrations, murder recreations, and dramatic courtroom showdowns, but we hope it gives you a little taste of what you're missing.

Read more by Ashly Moore Sheldon