The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.

An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar in London's Jewish ghetto. When the eccentric and enigmatic Barker takes the case, he must hire an assistant, and out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved", he chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man with a murky past.

England, 1914. Joanna Blalock's keen mind and incredible insight lead her to become a highly skilled nurse, one of the few professions that allow her to use her finely tuned brain. But when she and her 10-year-old son witness a man fall to his death, apparently by suicide, they are visited by the elderly Dr. John Watson and his charming, handsome son, Dr. John Watson Jr. Impressed by her forensic skills, they invite her to become the third member of their investigative team.

Did Lizzie Borden murder her own father and stepmother? Was Jack the Ripper actually the Duke of Clarence? Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? America's foremost expert on criminal profiling and 25-year FBI veteran John Douglas, along with author and filmmaker Mark Olshaker, explores those tantalizing questions and more in this mesmerizing work of detection. With uniquely gripping analysis, the authors reexamine and reinterpret the accepted facts, evidence, and victimology of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime.

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm". Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace.

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

In 2000, Douglas Preston and his family moved to Florence, Italy, fulfilling a long-held dream. They put their children in Italian schools and settled into a 14th century farmhouse in the green hills of Florence, where they devoted themselves to living la dolce vita while Preston wrote his best-selling suspense novels. All that changed when he discovered that the lovely olive grove in front of their house had been the scene of a double-murder.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is Gaston Leroux's masterpiece, and it turned out to be his most successful book during his lifetime. It is one of the classics of early twentieth century detective fiction.

The recent death of one of the descendants of Dr. Watson has brought to light his personal papers. These include a number of stories that Dr. Watson suppressed at the time for various reasons. As all involved are long dead, the inheritor has agreed to the publication of a set of eight of the most interesting adventures.

On November 22, 1963, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, an accomplished surgeon, tried to save John F. Kennedy's life - and then days later, the life of the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. His gripping, firsthand account contradicts the Warren Commission and years of public misperception, and illuminates a chapter in American history long cloaked in conspiracy. Writing with eye-opening immediacy, Dr. Crenshaw takes listeners into the emergency room to share the critical events at Parkland Hospital as he lived them.

From 1910 to 1919, New Orleans suffered at the hands of its very own Jack the Ripper-style killer while two innocent men nearly paid for one of his crimes with their lives. The story has been the subject of websites, short stories, collections of true crime, novels, a graphic novel, and the FX television series American Horror Story. But the real story of the Axeman of New Orleans has never been written - until now.

In Shadows of Death, acclaimed author Katherine Ramsland takes listeners on a tour of New Jersey, New York and Delaware. Home of the Jersey Devil, New Jersey has its share of other devils, from predatory nurses to thrill killers and sadists. The Empire State has witnessed many unique and perverse crimes. Quite a few triggered international headlines. The first documented female serial killer in the US came out of the tiny state of Delaware, as did a "signature killer" who attracted FBI profilers.

Laying out all the evidence in the most comprehensive summary ever written about the Ripper, this book, by a London police officer and crime authority, has subjected every theory - including those that have emerged in recent years-to the same deep scrutiny. The author also examines the mythology surrounding the case and provides some fascinating insights into the portrayal of the Ripper on stage and screen and on the printed page. More seriously, he also examines the horrifying parallel crimes of the Düsseldorf Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper.

Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.