Books for the Armchair Detective in Your Life

Name: The Rise & Fall of Nashville Lawyer Tommy Osborn
Brand: William L. Tabac
SKU: 9781467138048
Price: 23.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Inside some of the mildest people we know is a penchant for reading dark stories of small-town murders, or chilling serial killers. Why not arm the armchair detective in your life with true crime books from every dark corner of the American dream? Here are fascinating stories of unsolved cases, organized crime, historical murders, detective memoirs, epic manhunts, and everyday small-town murder. For the true crime fan in your life, we offer these gripping cases served hot, cold, strange, and straight – so go ahead, throw the book at them!

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The Rise & Fall of Nashville Lawyer Tommy Osborn

Paperback

$23.99

Central Florida's Most Notorious Gangsters

Miami's Criminal Past

The Half Way House Murders of Lake County, Indiana

Historic Tales of Colorado's Grand Valley

Paperback

$21.99

Wicked Columbus, Ohio

Paperback

$21.99

Prohibition in Columbus, Ohio

Wicked Washtenaw County

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The Rise & Fall of Nashville Lawyer Tommy Osborn

9781467138048

$23.99

Author William L. Tabac describes the extraordinary legal proceeding with the twists and turns of a modern television drama and the fall of a prominent attorney.

Tommy Osborn's star was rising. The young Nashville lawyer led a band of Tennessee reformers to victory in a landmark Supreme Court case. Hailed by Chief Justice Earl Warren as the most important of his career, Baker v. Carr's one man, one vote mandate revolutionized how Americans chose their representatives. Osborn was hired by Jimmy Hoffa to take on Bobby Kennedy for the fourth time. Unfortunately, the young lawyer met his match in Walter Sheridan, Kennedy's top aide and brilliant spymaster.

Central Florida's Most Notorious Gangsters

9781596294141

$21.99

Blazing gun battles, bank heists and high-speed escapes: this is the story of Alva Hunt and Hugh Gant—central Florida's own Dillinger and Capone.

Alva Hunt and Hugh Gant began their infamous careers fencing automobile parts as the Florida land boom became a bust. After doing hard time in state jails, they emerged as bank robbers and embarked on a crime spree across the Deep South. In the end they were captured and served time in Leavenworth, Alcatraz and other penitentiaries. Their reign was one of terror for Florida and many Southern states. Their story reflects an intriguing period in Florida's own history—the Depression era and the desperate days when Southern gangsters were armed, notorious and deadly.

Wicked Springfield

9781596299016

$21.99

In the twenty-four years that Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield, the city saw its share of crime, corruption and scandal, much of it at the hands of Lincoln's law clients and acquaintances. Erika Holst sheds light on these shady characters, from the man being sued for divorce who claimed that he caught his venereal disease from an outhouse to Governor William Bissell, whose near duel with Jefferson Davis almost made him ineligible to hold office. Learn what prompted a congressional candidate- in an election clerked by Lincoln- to shout down his accuser as some 'spindle-shanked, toad-eating, man-granny, who feeds the depraved appetites of his patrons with gossip and slander.' Read the true stories that fed those depraved appetites, drawn from the newspapers Lincoln read and the docket where he practiced law. In these pages, discover the wicked side of Lincoln's Springfield.

Wicked Mohawk Valley

9781609493905

$21.99

Would a decorated lawman risk his career for garden fresh vegetables? What crime family terrorized chickens in two counties? What dastardly murder happened on Potato Hill Road? And why would anyone dare guzzle the creeping death? Be prepared to have these questions answered, and discover a dossier of some of the most notorious and unbelievable criminal cases in the history of the Mohawk Valley. From bootlegging to brothels to racketeering, local author Dennis Webster has collected the most thrilling stories of deception and mayhem within the Mohawk Valley.

Miami's Criminal Past

9781596293885

$21.99

From Scarface to Miami Vice, Hollywood has created indelible images of Miami's criminal underworld. Yet beyond the lurid depictions exists a fascinating history of dramatic true-life crimes—tales of vigilante justice, family tragedies, politically motivated homicides and rampageous cross-country killers. And of course, the inevitable stories of celebrities behaving badly—as when Jim Morrison allegedly exposed himself during a 1969 Doors concert—along with accounts of celebrity murders, such as the shocking 1997 slaying of fashion designer Gianni Versace. Edgy and compulsively readable, Miami's Criminal Past presents the dark acts that have marred Florida's most alluring metropolis.

Wicked Bridgeport

9781609493790

$21.99

Join Bielawa as he navigates a precarious path through the unforgettably macabre and scandalous misdeeds of Bridgeport.

Beneath the smokestacks of the gritty cityscape of Bridgeport, Connecticut is the shocking criminal underbelly of this New England community. Sin and vice have long had a home on the shores of the Long Island Sound, and Bridgeport's sinister past is littered with tales of pirates, mobsters, bizarre Victorian murders, and even rumors of a doctor's attempts to reanimate the dead. Historian Michael J. Bielawa investigates such bizarre crimes as the unsolved murder of philanthropist James Beardsley, and the grisly discovery in Yellow Mill Pond during the 19th century, which helped legitimize forensic science. Join Bielawa as he navigates a precarious path through the unforgettably macabre and scandalous misdeeds of Bridgeport.

Seattle Prohibition

9781467140201

$21.99

Prohibition consumed Seattle, igniting a war that lasted nearly twenty years and played out in the streets, waterways and even town hall. Roy Olmstead, formerly a Seattle police officer, became the King of the Seattle Bootleggers, and Johnny Schnarr, running liquor down from Canada, revolutionized the speedboat industry. Frank Gatt, a south Seattle restaurateur, started the state’s biggest moonshining operation. Skirting around the law, the Coast Guard and the zealous assistant director of the Seattle Prohibition Bureau, William Whitney, was no simple feat, but many rose to the challenge. Author Brad Holden tells the spectacular story of Seattle in the time of Prohibition.

Historic Tales of Colorado's Grand Valley

9781467136297

$21.99

Colorado's Grand Valley has an extensive geological and human history going back millennia. Franciscan priests worked in tandem with the native Ute people to plot passage through the territory, opening the valley to unprecedented settlement. The region became the playground of enterprising visionaries, murderous outlaws, hooligans and harlots alike. From the gruesome Meeker massacre and its tragic consequences for the Ute nation to the mysterious murder of Sam McMullin and a showdown with the Ku Klux Klan in 1925, uncover the engrossing stories of an unyielding land. Author Kate Ruland-Thorne recounts many of the defining and damning moments throughout Grand Valley history.

Wicked Columbus, Ohio

9781626199224

$21.99

Ohio's capital city once teemed with crime bosses, rampant corruption and unpunished perversion. The Bad Lands of Columbus was a nationally recognized slum controlled by Smoky Hobbs. Columbus native Dr. Samuel B. Hartman, the world's most successful snake oil salesman, was almost single-handedly responsible for the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Local gambler Pat Murnan had an unlikely love affair with Grace Backenstoe, the madam of the most popular brothel in town. The two were a symbol of the area's salaciousness. Authors David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker explore the heyday of Columbus's most notorious fiends, corrupt politicians and con men.

Prohibition in Columbus, Ohio

9781467137218

$21.99

The Prohibition era often conjures up images of Tommy guns and speakeasies, but prohibition in Columbus added up to more than a crime stat sheet. It continued to dramatically shape the city far beyond its conclusion in 1933. The story begins with the temperance agitators who fought for decades for the elimination of alcohol. It is also the story of the families who made the alcohol, along with the neighborhood they built and then rebuilt in the Noble Experiment's aftermath. Alex Tebben relates how both temperance groups and the brewers adapted to the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment and the permanent mark it made on the city's heritage.

Murder in Visalia

9781625859808

$21.99

“Recounts all the twists and turns of the case . . . two jury trials, a surprising appellate court ruling . . . and, decades later, a shocking development” (Visalia Times Delta).

One October morning in 1979, a stamp and coin dealer was gunned down in his Visalia shop. There were no witnesses. Persistent police efforts across jurisdictional lines connected it to another death. Two months earlier, the body of a Fresno coin dealer was found locked in the trunk of his car. The trail of evidence led to a most unlikely suspect.

Author Ronn M. Couillard, retired judge and former Visalia district attorney, lays out the facts in this compelling case from the investigation to the court proceedings and the surprise that almost derailed the conviction.

The Ultimate Ponzi

9781455617869

$26.00

This true crime expos details the exploits of a Florida lawyer and master con artist who stole more than a billion dollars before getting caught.

In what became one of the most ruthless Ponzi schemes in United States history, Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein stole $1.4 billion to finance his opulent lifestyle. It�s a story of corruption, murder, sex, and suicide in which no one is innocent. From Rothstein�s humble beginnings in the Bronx through his sudden rise to become one of the most powerful men in Florida, the full story is revealed in The Ultimate Ponzi.

An employment lawyer of flamboyant charm and seemingly endless wealth, Rothstein infiltrated South Florida society by posing as a philanthropist. All the while, he was using criminal kingpin methods to corrupt one prominent businessman after another. But in late 2009, South Florida learned that Rothstein was far from generous�he was a destructive con artist who plundered investor accounts to build his own fortune.

With photographs and input from community members and psychologists, The Ultimate Ponzi reveals the man behind the scam that deceived hundreds. Despite Rothstein�s lavish lifestyle, he was unable to escape judgment both from the law and from the society he used to manipulate.

Wicked Washtenaw County

9781596299122

$21.99

Washtenaw County has a dark and sordid history, filled with unexplained murders and vicious crimes. Venture into the dead of night with medical students from the University of Michigan as they snatch bodies from fresh graves. Discover how Irene Walling Smith, born and raised in Ypsilanti, became known as the Bandit Queen of the despicable Kozak Gang. Head back to Ann Arbor in 1878, when Howard Williams was found dead in his home with an empty bottle of morphine by his sidewas it murder, suicide or overdose? Revisit the puzzling details of the unsolved 1913 murder of seventy-three-year-old Elizabeth Stapish, something of an eccentric in Chelsea, who was strangled and buried under a pile of cornhusks in her barn. Join local history author and columnist James Mann as he reveals the enigmatic history of this Michigan county.

Murders in Monmouth

9781596293489

$21.99

Why do people kill? In the case of the young and mentally unstable Frank Zastera, the rationale was as simple as the act was brutal: he wanted William Sheppard's money. In other homicides, such as the still-unsolved 1913 murder of George Harris, the motive for committing the ultimate crime remains obscured for eternity. In Murders in Monmouth, author George Joynson unflinchingly assembles the who, what, when, where and why surrounding twelve high-profile killings perpetrated by various individuals in early twentieth-century Monmouth County.