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The girl in Saskatoon: a meditation on friendship, memory and murder
By Sharon Butala. 2008
In 1962, Alexandra Wiwcharuk was found murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. Nearly 50 years later, her murder…
still haunts Saskatoon residents, especially those who, like Butala, were Alexandra's friends. Compelled by her memories of Alex, Butala returns to that still-unsolved murder, writing an in-depth investigation of the tragic death, a nostalgic coming-of-age story, and an exploration of the nature of good and evil. Some descriptions of sex and violence. 2008.The ballad of Danny Wolfe: life of a modern outlaw
By Joe Friesen. 2016
In 2008, Danny Wolfe, a Winnipeg Aboriginal man, was 31-years-old and awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder in…
at the Regina Correctional Centre. In spite of his young age, Danny had found himself in and out of correctional facilities since his teenage years, sometimes even finding his own way out. Now, fifteen years after his last break out of prison, Danny was orchestrating a bigger escape from a jail where the notion was inconceivable. This biography traces the early years of Daniel Wolfe's life, from his birth in Regina to his mother Susan Creeley, a First Nations woman; to his first brush with the law at the age of four and then his subsequent arrests; to the birth of the Indian Posse--the Aboriginal street gang in Canada that would eventually claim the title of the largest street gang in North America with over 12,000 members (from BC to Ontario, and even Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona) and Danny at the helm; to Danny's death in 2010. Bestseller. 2016.Terror on the seas: true tales of modern-day pirates
By Daniel Sekulich. 2009
Award-winning journalist investigates high-seas piracy, incidents of which occur on a near-daily basis worldwide and can involve detention, robbery, and…
violence. Interviews professional mariners, victims, and even perpetrators themselves to uncover the inner workings of criminal enterprises and gauge international economic and security threats in the early twenty-first century. Some strong language and some descriptions of violence. 2009.One hour in Paris: a true story of rape and recovery
By Karyn L Freedman. 2014
Philosopher Karyn L. Freedman travels back to a Paris night in 1990 when she was twenty-two and, in one violent…
hour, her life was changed forever by a brutal rape. We follow Freedman from an apartment in Paris to a French courtroom, from a trauma centre in Toronto to a rape clinic in Africa. At a time when as many as one in three women in the world have been victims of sexual assault and when many women are still ashamed to come forward, Freedman's book is a moving and essential look at how survivors cope and persevere. Winner of the 2015 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. 2014.Murder without borders: dying for the story in the world's most dangerous places
By Terry Gould. 2009
Over four years, Terry Gould has travelled to Colombia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Russia and Iraq - the countries in which…
journalists are most likely to be murdered on the job. Through conversations with their colleagues, their families and in some cases their murderers, he uncovers the lives of local reporters and broadcasters who stayed on a story to the point of death, and discovers the complex reasons for their bravery. Explicit descriptions of violence. c2009.Dead reckoning: how I came to meet the man who murdered my father
By Carys Cragg. 2017
A powerful and emotional memoir about a woman whose father was brutally murdered at home by an intruder. Twenty years…
later, she decides to contact his murderer in prison, and learns startling new information about the crime. "Dead Reckoning" follows the author’s determination to confront the man who destroyed her world in order to find peace. 2017.Gaddafi's harem: the story of a young woman and the abuses of power in Libya
By Annick Cojean. 2013
Soraya was just fifteen, a schoolgirl in the coastal town of Sirte, when she was given the honour of presenting…
a bouquet of flowers to Colonel Gaddafi on a visit he was making to her school. This one meeting changed Soraya's life forever. Soon afterwards, she was summoned to Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi's palatial compound near Tripoli, where she joined a number of young women who were violently abused, raped and degraded by Gaddafi. Sex and rape remain the highest taboos in Libya, and women like Soraya risk being disowned or even killed by their dishonoured family members. Tragic but ultimately redemptive, Soraya's story is the first of many that are just now beginning to be heard. 2013.Crime seen: from patrol cop to profiler, my stories from behind the yellow tape
By Kate Lines. 2015
A criminal profiler, former Chief Superintendent of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), recounts her remarkable story using pivotal cases she…
worked on during the course of her career. Always taking care not to aggrandize in any way the notorious criminals whose names we know all too well, Kate knows that it is much more important to focus on the courage of the victims and their families. Bestseller. 2015.Business or blood: Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto's last war
By Peter Edwards, Antonio Nicaso. 2015
Until Vito Rizzuto went to prison in 2006 for his role in a decades-old Brooklyn triple murder, he ruled the…
Port of Montreal, the northern gateway to the major American drug markets. A master diplomat, he won the respect of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal business thrived on his turf. His family prospered and his empire grew--until one of North America's true Teflon dons finally lost his veneer. As he watched helplessly from his Colorado prison, the murders of his son and father made international headlines; the killings of his lieutenants and friends filled the pages of Canadian news; and the influence of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, spread across Montreal faster than the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In 2012, Vito Rizzuto emerged from prison, a 66-year-old man who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody revenge and damn the consequences. Bestseller. 2015.After a tour in Vietnam and a stretch in prison, Alex Caine fell into the cloak-and-dagger world of a contracted…
agent or "kite": infiltrating criminal groups that cops across North America and around the globe were unable to penetrate themselves. Over twenty-five years, his assignments ran the gamut from bikers to triad toughs. He describes the toll such a life takes, one that often left Caine wondering who he really was, and whether justice was ever truly served. Descriptions of violence, some strong language, and some descriptions of sex. c2008.The prison book club
By Ann Walmsley. 2015
An attack in London left Ann Walmsley unable to walk alone down the street, and shook her belief in the…
fundamental goodness of people. A few years later, when a friend asked her to participate in a bold new venture in a men's medium security prison, Ann had to weigh her curiosity and desire to be of service against her anxiety and fear. But she signed on, and for eighteen months went to a remote building at Collins Bay, meeting a group of heavily tattooed book club members without the presence of guards or security cameras. There was no wine and cheese, no plush furnishings. But a book club on the inside of a prison proved to be a place to share ideas and regain a sense of humanity. 2015.The bigamist: the true story of a husband's ultimate betrayal
By Mary Turner Thomson. 2007
In April 2006, Mary Turner Thomson received a call that blew her life apart: the woman on the other end…
of the line told her that Will Jordan, Mary's husband and the father of her two younger children, had been married to her for fourteen years and they had five children together. It's a story we all think could never happen to us, but this shameless con man has been doing the same thing to various other women for at least 27 years, spinning a tangled web of lies and deceit to cover his tracks. 2007.Finding me: a decade of darkness, a life reclaimed
By Michelle Knight, Michelle Burford. 2014
Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For…
more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. Bestseller. 2014.My story
By Chris Stewart, Elizabeth Smart. 2013
On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in…
the middle of the night by religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, sexually abused, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life. She tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convince them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Bestseller. 2013.The Marriott cell: an epic journey from Cairo's Scorpion Prison to freedom
By Carol Shaben, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy. 2016
On the night of December 29, 2013, the Egyptian government's anti-terror forces led a dramatic raid on the Marriott Hotel,…
seizing Fahmy, Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief for the independent English Al Jazeera, and two fellow journalists in what quickly became an international cause célèbre condemned as a travesty of justice. Inside the maximum-security Scorpion Prison, Fahmy found himself with some of the most hardened Al Qaeda and ISIS extremists and Muslim Brotherhood leaders: he never stopped being a journalist, taking advantage of his unexpected proximity to "interview" them and gain insight into their goals, into the feuds between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE on the one hand, and Qatar and its allies, including Turkey, on the other, and surfacing shocking details of torture inside military camps. Thrown into the toxic mix was the complex geo-political power brokering of Western governments, which left three men, wrongly convicted of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood and "fabricating news," struggling in a terrifying web. 2016.Dubbed "the Jesse James of Canada," Norman "Red" Ryan was infamous in the 1920s and '30s until he was gunned…
down in an attempted robbery in Sarnia, Ontario. Ernest Hemingway wrote about Ryan's escape from Kingston Penitentiary for the Toronto Star, Morley Callaghan based a novel on him and stories of Ryan and his crimes filled newspapers and airwaves. One of the first Canadians to be granted parole, he was held up by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett as a model of rehabilitation and became a regular guest at Toronto police picnics. All the while, however, Ryan was continuing a crime spree on the side. Jim Brown, filmmaker and CBC Radio host, tells the incredible true story of "Red" Ryan, a larger-than-life criminal whose fame and legend were much encouraged by the media--he was the "Kardashian" of the time--and whose story endures.Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, Albert was behind bars in his early twenties when he was inspired…
to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola prison in Louisiana for armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were immediately accused of the crime and put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016. Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. 2019.The Unexpected Cop: Indian Ernie on a Life of Leadership
By Ernie Louttit. 2019
The cop who blew the whistle on Saskatoon’s notorious “Starlight Tours,” Ernie Louttit is the bestselling author of two previous…
“Indian Ernie” books. He demonstrates in this latest title that being a leader means sticking to your convictions and sometimes standing up to the powers that be. One of the first Indigenous officers hired by the Saskatoon Police, he was an outsider who became an insider, with a difference. A former military man with a passion for the law, he was tough on the beat, but was also a role model for kids on the streets.A CBC Books Work of Canadian Nonfiction to Watch For in Spring 2022An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Biographies…
and MemoirsA Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List in FebruaryA Seattle Times Most Anticipated Book of 2022A Vanity Fair New Book to Read this MonthA Publishers Weekly’s Top Spring 2022 History TitleA Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2022A Town & Country Must-Read Book of Winter 2022A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of February 2022A The Lineup True Crime Book to Be Excited About in 2022A Bookpage Most Anticipated NonfictionA Bookriot 22 Great Books to Read in 2022A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2022 A true-crime masterpiece, this is a story of wrongful exoneration about killer Edgar Smith and the prominent crusaders who fell prey to his charm.Having spent almost half his lifetime in California's state penitentiary system, convicted killer Edgar Smith died in obscurity in 2017 at the age of eighty-three—a miracle, really, as he was meant to be executed nearly six decades earlier. Tried and convicted in the state of New Jersey for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old Victoria Zielinski, Smith was once the most famous convict in America. Scoundrel tells the true, almost-too-bizarre story of a man saved from Death Row by way of an unlikely friendship—developed in nearly 2000 pages of prison correspondence—with National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most famous figures in the neo-conservative movement. Buckley wrote articles, fundraised and hired lawyers to fight for a new trial, eventually enlisting the help of Sophie Wilkins, a book editor with whom Smith would have a torrid epistolary affair. As a result of these friends' advocacy, Smith not only gained his freedom, he vaulted to the highest intellectual echelons as a bestselling author, an expert on prison reform, and a minor celebrity—only to fall, spectacularly, back to earth, when his murderous impulses once more prevailed. Weinman's Scoundrel is a gripping investigation into a case where crime and culture intersect, where recent memory begins to slide into history and where the darkest of violent impulses meet literary ambition, human ego and hunger for fame.The author coined the term "nonfiction novel" for this account of the murder of a Kansas family. He reconstructs the…
crime and the backgrounds and personalities of all the principals, drawing his information from observation, interviews, and official records. Violence and some strong language