The New York Times bestselling author of Love Her to Death shares the true-crime story of a small-town Midwestern teenager murdered by her own friends.
Sixteen-year-old Adrianne Reynolds couldn't unravel the twisted tangles of jealousy and domination complicating her new life in East Moline, Illinois. What began as a fresh start after a troubled home life in Texas ended with Adrianne's body charred, stuffed into garbage bags, and scattered. It seemed the work of hardened criminals, but the truth was far more astonishing: her own “best friends” choked Adrianne to death and cut her up. Now, master crime writer M. William Phelps recounts this horrific saga of teen lust and violence in every gripping detail.
Praise for Too Young to Kill
“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.” —Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Tell No Lies
Includes sixteen pages of revealing photos

Crazy Kills
"The worst I've ever seen" - that's how Sheriff Cecil Reed described the July 7, 1995 slayings of Carolyn Headrick, 44, and her mother Dora Ann Dalton, 62. The two were found in their home in rural DeKalb County, Alabama, where they'd been shot, stabbed and then even speared by a Native American style lance. Randy Headrick, Carolyn's husband, was the beneficiary of $325,000 in insurance money. But he swore he'd been at work when the murders were committed--and the police couldn't break his alibi.
Bad News
Headrick was a troublemaker who'd spent four years in a Texas prison for possession of a pipe bomb. More recently, he'd had an affair with a married woman--which his second wife Carolyn had discovered. The woman had later been harassed and her house had mysteriously burned down. The police knew Headrick was bad news but they just couldn't nail him on these murders. There was only one person who knew for sure if Headrick was the killer . . .

“An in-depth look at the 1971 trial of a serial killer who’s been mostly forgotten—except to those who were forever impacted” (The Seattle Times).
In 1969, the body of a young woman was discovered in the woods of Renton, Washington, rocking the communities along Puget Sound. Three more brutal murders followed, drawing the attention of multiple police agencies as they tried to piece together the meager clues left behind. The seemingly unrelated cases challenged detectives, who struggled to realize they were all connected to one man: Gary Gene Grant. Before the term “serial killer” was even coined, Grant stalked his prey, destroying lives and families while walking unseen among the masses. Decades later, his crimes have all but been forgotten.
Join author and homicide investigator Cloyd Steiger as he uncovers the story of the murderer who slipped through the cracks of history.

True crime that “will appeal to readers interested in gaining an insight into the lives of women accused of murder in the mid 19th century” (Essex Family Historian).
 
For a few years in the 1840s, Essex was notorious in the minds of Victorians as a place where women stalked the winding country lanes looking for their next victim to poison with arsenic. Though that terrible image may not have much basis in truth, it was a symptom of an anxiety-filled time . . .
 
The 1840s were also known as the “hungry ’40s,” when crop failures pushed up food prices and there was popular unrest across Europe. The decade culminated in a cholera epidemic in which tens of thousands of people in the British Isles died. It is perhaps no surprise that people living through that troubled decade were captivated by the stories of the “poisoners”: that death was down to “white powder” and the evil intentions of the human heart.
 
Sarah Chesham, Mary May, and Hannah Southgate are the protagonists of this tale of how rural Essex, in a country saturated with arsenic, was touched by the tumultuous 1840s.
 
“Barrell’s meticulous research and eye for detail recreate lurking threats, and these scandalous true stories are as compelling as any crime fiction.” —History of War
 
“An intriguing read that brings a forgotten history to light and reveals past attitudes to women—and a national fear that gripped Victorian Britain.” —Family Tree Magazine
 
“This book will fascinate not only historians of true crime and those with an interest in genealogy but any reader seeking a story that would make Agatha Christie proud.” —All About History

This memoir about a friend’s murder—and the mystery surrounding her daughter’s role in it—is “a true-crime work that digs deeper” (Foreword Reviews).
On October 20, 1999, thirty-eight-year-old Nell Crowley Davis was bludgeoned, strangled, and stabbed to death in her backyard in Bluffton, South Carolina, near Hilton Head Island. In this blend of true crime and memoir, Rosalyn Rossignol tells the story of how Davis’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Sarah Nickel, along with two teenage boys, came to be charged in the case. Since no physical evidence tied Nickel to the murder, she was convicted of armed robbery and given the same sentence as the boys—thirty years. In the months that followed, Nickel vehemently insisted she was innocent.
Torn by Nickel’s pleas, Rossignol, a childhood friend of the murder victim, committed herself to answering the question that perhaps the police detectives, press, and courts had not: whether Sarah Nickel was indeed guilty of this crime.
During five years of research, Rossignol read case files and transcripts, examined evidence from the crime scene, listened to the 911 call, and watched videotaped statements made by the accused in the hours following their arrests. She also interviewed family members, detectives, the lawyer who prosecuted the case and those who represented the defendants, and the judge who presided over the trial—as well as Nickel herself.
What Rossignol uncovers is a fascinating maze of twists and turns, replete with a memorable cast of characters including a shotgun-toting grandma, a self-avowed nihilist and Satan-worshipper, and a former Rice Queen of Savannah, Georgia. Unlike all previous investigators, Rossignol has uncovered the truth about what happened, and the reasons why, on that fateful October day.

A North Carolina Sheriff’s Detective recounts a shocking case of domestic deception and brutal murder in this true crime chronicle.
In 1993, single mom Kay Weden endured a series of senseless attacks on her family. Her son was nearly killed by a shot fired through their house. Then her elderly mother was murdered by an unknown intruder. Beyond this, Kay’s new boyfriend, Viktor Gunnarsson, had just disappeared without warning. The handsome Swede was in the U.S. seeking political asylum after being charged with the 1986 assassination of Sweden’s Prime Minister.
With nowhere else to turn, Kay reconnected with her ex-fiancé L.C. Underwood, a police officer adept at criminal investigations. L.C. assured Kay he would get to the bottom of her terrible nightmare. But then Viktor’s nude body was found two hours away in the Appalachian Mountains. When local Sheriff’s Detective Paula May started investigating, she began to unravel a hair-raising case of stalking, assault, and murder.