Crime has formed the basis of countless plots in music theater and opera. Several famous composers were murder victims or believed to be murdered, and one of the greatest Renaissance composers slaughtered his wife and her lover. In Musical Mysteries, renowned true crime historian Albert Borowitz turns his attention to the long and complex history of music and crime. The book is divided into two parts. The first addresses three aspects of musical crime:...

"Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty. In supposedly dispassionate courts of law, attractive women have long avoided punishment, based largely on their looks, for cold-blooded crimes. The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial gathers the true stories of some of the most infamous femmes fatales in criminal history, collected by attorney and true crime historian Laura James. With cases from 1850 to 1997, these 32 examples span more...

"Discord and domestic violence end in murder Albin Ludwig was furious. He had caught his wife, Cecilia, with other men before; now, after secretly following Cecilia one evening in 1906, Albin was overcome with suspicion. Albin and Cecilia quarreled that night and again the next day. Prosecutors later claimed that the final quarrel ended when Albin knocked Cecilia unconscious with a wooden potato masher, doused her with a flammable liquid, lit her...

"After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he'd attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but-to the astonishment of their neighbors-kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story. This decision would come back to haunt them. While picking strawberries...

The encyclopedia of crime & justice not only discusses many different kinds of crime--from perjury to terrorism--but also looks at law enforcement, legal procedures and penalties and the social causes and wide-ranging impact of crimes on society. The articles reflect issues dominating the news and entertainment media--topics that are frequently discussed or assigned in both high school and college curricula. What is perjury? How do copyright laws...

"Winner of the 2012 Outstanding Publication Award, International Association for the Study of Organized Crime" Federico Varese is professor of criminology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Russian Mafia and editor of Organized Crime. "A compelling read and an impeccable work of reference."-John le Carré Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will....

Can crime make our world safer? Crimes are the worst of humanity's wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes "trigger" improvement in our lives. Crimes That Changed Our World explores some of the most important trigger cases of the past century, revealing much about how change comes to our modern world. The exact nature of the crime-outrage-reform dynamic can take many forms, and Paul and Sarah Robinson explore those differences in the cases they present....

"This history of crime and punishment spans 3000 years and multiple continents to reveal the larger patterns in how the state has maintained order and enforced law over the centuries"--

A fascinating pop-history dive into the stories behind the incredibly impactful crimes--both infamous and little-known--that have shaped the legal system as we know it. When asked why true crime is so in vogue, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Amber Hunt always has the same answer: it's no hotter than it's always been. Crimes and trials have captured American consciousness since the Salem Witch Trials in the...