Frank Carlson Library

Virgil Flowers investigates a miracle ... and a murder ... in the wickedly entertaining new thriller from the master of pulse-pounding thrillers. Pinion, Minnesota: a huge city of all of seven hundred folks who define the phrase 'small town'. Nothing has ever happened in Pinion and nothing ever will ... until the mayor of sorts (campaign promise: `I'll Do What I Can') comes up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. He's heard of a place where a floating...

Gideon and Ishmael Hofstadt, ages sixteen and seventeen, accidentally start a hoax that aliens have landed, turning their town of Lansburg, Pennsylvania, into a circus. Told through narrative, police interviews, text messages, blog posts, and more.-- When one of his science experiments went wrong, Gideon Hofstadt and his older brother Ishmael blamed the resulting explosion on extraterrestrial activity. Their lie was embraced by the town. As the brothers...

History of full of liars. Not just little-white-telling liars, but big-honkin', whopper-telling liars-people who can convince us that even the most improbable, outrageous, nonsensical stories are true. And the worst part is that we'll believe it. Whoppers tells the story of history's greatest liars and the lies they told, providing a mix of narrative profiles of super-famous liars, lies, and/or hoaxes, as well as more obscure episodes. Famous liars...

While visiting Rome, Geronimo and Benjamin are pulled into the investigation of the "ghost" of a gladiator haunting the Colosseum and scaring tourists away.

The definitive account of audacious con woman Cassie Chadwick, the Carnegie Imposter

Queen of the Con tells the true story of Cassie Chadwick, a successful swindler and "one of the top 10 imposters of all time," according to Timemagazine. Born Betsy Bigley in 1857 in Canada, she first operated as Madame Devere, a European clairvoyant, and in 1890 was arrested for defrauding a Toledo bank of $20,000. In the mid-1890s, while

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A new look at some gruesome and riveting murders

In this grisly and gripping collection of essays—some revised and updated, some never before published, but all new to American audiences—prize-winning English crime historian Jonathan Goodman turns his attention to a variety of British and American crimes from the 1820s to the 1980s, some high profile and others not. With the author as detective, each of Goodman's essays examines a

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"In this memoir that spans dozens of countries worldwide, a young girl and her family adopt one new identity after another and run from both the law and the secrets that will eventually catch up to all of them"-- By the age of nine, Diamond had lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. She didn't know that she was born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest international law enforcement agencies,...

The #1 Wall Street Journal ebook bestseller about the murder that shocked Savannah society and inspired the blockbuster film. As a premier antiques dealer in Savannah, Jim Williams had it all: style, culture, charisma, and sophistication. But three decades of hard work came crashing down the night he shot Danny Hansford, his wild young lover. Jim Williams stood trial four times over the next decade for premeditated murder. While Clint Eastwood's movie-starring...

"Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended...

When Vonlee "Nicole" Titlow and her aunt, Billie Jean Rogers, came home from a night of gambling in a casino near Detroit, they told police they found Billie's husband unconscious on the floor of the Rogers' mansion. Just another of his alcoholic benders, they assumed. But this time, Donald Rogers didn't wake up. The investigation would reveal the sordid story behind the death of a self-made millionaire--including transgender adventures in Chicago...