In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

In the gold rush era of Virginia City, Montana, crime was afoot and justice shaky. Lawlessness ran amok in the form of gamblers, saloonkeepers, miners, dance hall girls, and road agents - outlaws who ambushed travelers on the road for a chance to steal precious gold. Of all the road agents, Henry Plummer was their king and elected sheriff. Plummer’s notorious road-agent band terrorized the highways until a group of ordinary citizens resolved to take the responsibility of social governance into their hands.

The heart-pounding true story of the plot to kill the most powerful man in America. In 1892, America was on the verge of another civil war, this one over industrial slavery. It was the era of robber barons, and none was more reviled for his harsh treatment of workers than industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The deadly Homestead Steel Strike that summer had left Frick with blood on his hands, and two young, impassioned radicals thought he should pay for his crimes.

The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going - one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors, and officially sanctioned killers.

When his picture appeared on the cover of Texas Monthly, Joaquin Jackson became the icon of the modern Texas Rangers. Nick Nolte modeled his character on him in the movie Extreme Prejudice. Jackson even had a speaking part of his own in The Good Old Boys with Tommy Lee Jones. But the role that Jackson has always played the best is that of the man who wears the silver badge cut from a Mexican cinco peso coin, a working Texas Ranger.

In 1850, following a divorce and a number of encounters with the law, Boone Helm headed "Out West" to chase the Californian Gold Rush with his cousin. When his cousin pulled out at the last minute, Helm was incensed, and brutally stabbed him to death. Helm was detained in an asylum for the mentally disturbed but managed to escape. Helm continued his journey west with renewed vigour, where he opportunistically killed and consumed the flesh of adversaries and travelling companions, earning him the nickname "The Kentucky Cannibal"....

In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....

On August 14, 1975, eight daring thieves ransacked 148 massive safe-deposit boxes at a secret bank used by organized crime, La Cosa Nostra, and its associates in Providence, Rhode Island. The crooks fled with duffel bags crammed full of cash, gold, silver, stamps, coins, jewels, and high-end jewelry. The true value of the loot has always been kept secret, partly because it was ill-gotten to begin with, and partly because there was plenty of incentive to keep its true worth out of the limelight.

Escape from Dannemora examines the strange case of Joyce Mitchell, the long-time prison employee who had a sexual relationship with at least one of the killers, and who smuggled them tools and aided in the escape, while they cooked up a plan to kill her husband. In the end, Benson looks closely at conditions at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, a crumbling Gothic pile now under investigation for charges of drug trafficking and brutality.

Some of the legendary gunmen of the Old West were lawmen, but more, like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, were outlaws. Tom Horn (1860-1903) was both. Lawman, soldier, hired gunman, detective, outlaw, and assassin, this darkly enigmatic figure has fascinated Americans ever since his death by hanging the day before his 43rd birthday. In this masterful historical biography, Larry Ball, a distinguished historian of western lawmen and outlaws, presents the definitive account of Horn’s career.

The salacious and scandalous murders of a series of couples on Texarkana's "lovers' lanes" created a media maelstrom and cast a pall of fear over an entire region. What is even more surprising is that the case has remained cold for decades. Combining archival research and investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian James Presley reveals evidence that provides crucial keys to unlocking this decades-old puzzle.

In the winter of 1873, a small band of prospectors lost their way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name: "the Man-Eater."

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West's most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women offers a glimpse into the Western women's experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late 1800s, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boomtowns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory.

A true crime thriller - the first book for teens to tell the nearly unknown tale of the brazen attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's body! The action begins in October of 1875, as Secret Service agents raid the workshop of master counterfeiter Ben Boyd. Soon after Boyd is arrested, members of his counterfeiting ring gather to discuss how to spring their ringleader. Their plan: grab Lincoln's body from its Springfield tomb, stash it in the sand dunes near Lake Michigan, and demand, as a ransom, the release of Ben Boyd - and $200,000 in cash.

More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through an insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter. From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this audio is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation, from arson to gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings.