True Crime

Without Lou Pearlman, there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no *NSYNC, and possibly no Justin Timberlake. In the late 1990s, Pearlman's boy bands ushered out guitar-and-angst-driven grunge music, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys began to dominate the television and radio airwaves. At the core of this squeaky-clean pop revolution was a sinister international fraud conceived by Pearlman, a husky huckster who first honed his crooked business skills as a teenage math nerd and blimp enthusiast in Flushing, Queens. From there in the mid 1980s and from his Orlando, Florida, base in the early 1990s through 2007, he cheated hundreds of investors out of nearly $500 million. When they finally caught on to him and started demanding he return their money, the “Sixth Backstreet Boy” had already fled to Germany and then to Indonesia, where he was eventually nabbed by authorities and charged with a historic federal fraud. Tyler Gray (the only journalist to speak with Pearlman while he was in jail) weaves together the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of the greed and desperation of this boy-band mogul and monumental scam artist. Gray unravels Pearlman's twenty-year long Ponzi scheme and explores persistent rumors about alleged inappropriate behavior by Pearlman toward members of the boy bands and other young men. Along the way, former friends, family members, Pearlman business associates, and band members themselves reveal detailed accounts of everything from the heyday of their stardom to Pearlman's more troubled times. The Hit Charade starts with Pearlman's awkward youth and follows along as his juggling act becomes increasingly complex, then builds to the heartbreaking moments when investors—retirees, relatives, and friends—and government authorities discover that the man they had trusted had been cheating them all along. How did this chubby boy from middle-class Queens, who pioneered some of the music industry's most lucrative pop e more...

Price: $19.99

Dr. Anthony Pignataro was a cosmetic surgeon and a famed medical researcher whose flashy red Lamborghini and flamboyant lifestyle in western New York State suggested a highly successful career. But appearances, as this shocking insider account of Pignataro's tailspin from physician to prisoner proves, can be deceiving - and, for the doctor's wife, very nearly deadly. No one was safe if they got in his way. With scalpel, drugs, and arsenic, he betrayed every oath a physician makes - until his own schemes backfired. more...

Price: $7.99

In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Florence, Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more. This is the true story of their search for-and identification of-the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster Of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta. more...

Price: $18.99

Using the popular CBS prime-time TV crime series Numb3rs as a springboard, Keith Devlin (known to millions of NPR listeners as “the Math Guy” on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon) and Gary Lorden (the principal math advisor to Numb3rs) explain real-life mathematical techniques used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to catch and convict criminals. From forensics to counterterrorism, the Riemann hypothesis to image enhancement, solving murders to beating casinos, Devlin and Lorden present compelling cases that illustrate how advanced mathematics can be used in state-of-the-art criminal investigations. more...

Price: $14.00

The bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace presents his most hard-hitting book to date—a sweeping, authoritative, and fearless account of the failures of America’s intelligence agencies and the Bush administration’s calculated efforts to sell a war to the American people. more...

Price: $15.95