Browse · 8 books
True Crime books
True crime books including serial killer stories, cold cases, forensic investigations, and crime documentaries. Narrow it by mood, length or era, or let us pull one off the shelf.
All 8 true crime books
American Predator
Maureen Callahan
4.4(9.4k)304 pages · 2019True-crime readers who want a procedural, psychologically focused account of one little-known killer and the FBI's effort to understand him, rather than a tidy whodunit or a celebrity-style murder story.
DarkTense
The Friday Afternoon Club
Griffin Dunne
4.4(6.4k)400 pages · 2024Readers who want Hollywood-insider storytelling anchored in genuine literary lineage and real stakes — admirers of Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne, and readers of true-crime-adjacent memoirs who want the trial material to be substantial rather than incidental.
DarkFunny
The Many Lives of Mama Love
Lara Love Hardin
4.6(21k)320 pages · 2023Readers who want a fast, emotionally open memoir of addiction and jail, and who prioritize the family-custody story over a detailed account of drug use.
DarkUplifting
Mindhunter
John Douglas, Mark Olshaker
4.6(17k)448 pages · 1995True-crime readers who want Douglas's own first-person telling of how criminal profiling took shape inside the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, including viewers of the Netflix series curious about its source.
DarkTense
Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann
4.4(83k)416 pages · 2017Readers drawn to narrative nonfiction that fuses true crime with suppressed American history — particularly those interested in Indigenous rights, systemic injustice, and how institutions both built and betrayed public trust.
DarkTense
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
4.5(27k)343 pages · 1966Readers who want to understand the literary and moral architecture of true crime — particularly those interested in how narrative journalism can probe psychology, community, and the ethics of storytelling itself.
DarkTense
If You Tell
Gregg Olsen
4.2(187k)429 pages · 2019Readers who want survivor-centered narrative true crime, built around the sisters' bond and their own accounts rather than the investigation, and who can handle sustained, graphic abuse on the page.
DarkHopeful
A Plague upon Humanity
Daniel Barenblatt
4.6(56)304 pages · 2004Readers with a serious interest in World War II history, war crimes accountability, or the intersection of science and state violence who want an unflinching, evidence-rich English-language account of Unit 731 and the postwar American cover-up that shielded its perpetrators.
Every true crime book, A to Z8 titles
- A Plague upon Humanity · Daniel Barenblatt
- American Predator · Maureen Callahan
- If You Tell · Gregg Olsen
- In Cold Blood · Truman Capote
- Killers of the Flower Moon · David Grann
- Mindhunter · John Douglas, Mark Olshaker
- The Friday Afternoon Club · Griffin Dunne
- The Many Lives of Mama Love · Lara Love Hardin