The Asylum Confessions: Till Death Do Us Part by Jack Steen

 

The Asylum Confessions: Till Death Do Us Part by Jack Steen - 226 pages

They arrive alive. They leave dead.
But first, they give me their confessions and this time - it's all about the couples who kill together.

Inside this book are 4 DeathBed Confessions that relate to things these couples did:
Patient 852 is a Preacher with a past.
Patient 1123 shouldn’t be trusted.
Patient 901 are farmers with buried secrets.
Patient 643 has a thing for soil and gardens.

WHO AM I? I think by now you know who I am...Jack Steen and for those who arrive on my 'death' ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I'm the night nurse at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

Most of my patients are serial killers and mass murderers and they know me as the Angel of Death. I offer my patients a deal: in exchange for an easy death, I want their story. Not the one anyone can read about in the papers, I want the real story - the one they haven't told anyone else.

Some of these killers have never confessed to their crimes, some kept certain information to themselves...those are the stories I want. If they give them to me, I'll make their death...easier.

They're already dying, that's why they're now my patients. If they play nice, I can make their death less painful. But only if they play nice and tell me their confessions.

The majority of these killers are expert manipulators. I realize they could be playing me and messing with my head. It's a chance I'm willing to take. And now...they might just be playing with yours too.

Not a bad read, I like the back and forth between Jack and the patient.  Decent stories, some are a bit messed up.  Overall an ok read.

The Obsession by Nora Roberts

 The Obsession by Nora Roberts-453 pages

I don't usually read romances, but I did enjoy reading this one. Naomi Carson (formerly Bowes) followed her seemingly devout Christian father into the woods one night when she was nearly 12. She thought she would find something harmless in the cellar her father went in and out of, but instead she found something horrifying when she went in. She found a young woman, Ashley, chained to the wall, naked and bleeding. Her father was a serial rapist and killer. She found photos of more women who were his victims. She saved Ashley and was a main witness against her father, Thomas David Bowes. Years later, she's trying to forget about the past and not let anyone else know about her blood ties. She's been on the move constantly, not staying anywhere too long. However, she's found a remote home in rural Washington that she falls in love with and wants to renovate. She also meets a local auto mechanic and likes him, might even love him. Can she grapple with her past and make this home? When a serial killer moves into the area and starts raping and killing in a similar manner to her father, who's in prison, her past comes back into focus. I really liked the ending and found this to be a good read. 

A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh

"Anahera Rawiri left New Zealand at twenty-one, fleeing small-town poverty and the ghosts of her childhood with no plans to look back. But eight years later, she returns, seeking familiarity as respite from the shattered remains of her new life. And despite the changes brought on by a bump in tourism--the shiny new welcome sign at the town line and a decidedly less shiny new police presence--Golden Cove appears much as it ever was: a small settlement on the savage West Coast of the South Island, populated by all the remembered faces and set against a backdrop of lush greenery, jagged cliffs, and crashing waves. Detective Will Gallagher knows all about ghosts; his own chased him out of a promising career in Christchurch, landing him as the sole cop in a quaint town where his most pressing concerns are petty theft and the occasional drunk. When Golden Cove resident Miri Hinewai goes out for a run and fails to return, Will finds himself heading up a missing person's search that rapidly escalates into an official investigation after this case is connected with similar ones from the past. As an outsider, Will begins to rely on Anahera's knowledge of the area and its residents to help him delve into Golden Cove's secrets, and to determine whether it shelters something far more dangerous than just an unforgiving landscape"

Furious Hours by Casey Cep

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep --- 314 pages including a map, a Prologue, and Epilogue, Acknowledgments, Notes and Bibliography.

In the 1970s a murder trial in a small Alabama town briefly captured the nation's attention. It had so many titillating details: a series of alleged murders for profit with an obvious and black suspect, but the police were unable to find the hard evidence necessary to convict; a charismatic defense attorney who continued to defend the suspected killer and helped him collect on multiple life insurance policies the suspect held on the victims; and a neighbor driven by grief and fury to exact his own vigilante justice, now on trial for his life.

Sitting in the courtroom taking in the trial, and pursuing the neighbors and acquaintances of the victims and the accused, was the famous writer Harper Lee, who intended to break through the writers block that had plagued her since the publication of her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and write a nonfiction account of this Southern true crime tale.

But after years of effort, Harper Lee either failed or gave up on the book, She gave away all her notes, interviews and transcripts. Cep re-discovered the story and took up the challenge. She gained access to Lee's research and built upon it with research of her own. Facing up to the problem that seemed to have stymied Lee, how to structure her story, Cep divides Furious Hours into three parts, the story of the Reverend Willie Maxwell, the suspected serial murderer; the story of the lawyer, Tom Radney, who defended Maxwell, then defended the man who killed Maxwell; and finally the story of Nelle Harper Lee, the famous writer who tried and tried but never published another book.

Furious Hours is a gripping, empathetic appraisal not just of Harper Lee, but of  the painful evolution of the South from the 1950s through the 1980s — and the still-unsolved crimes of a serial killer never brought to justice at a time when justice was anything but blind.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read the review from National Public Radio.

Click HERE to read a review and interview with author Casey Cep from Southern Living.

The Killer Across the Table by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

The Killer Across the Table: unlocking the secrets of serial killers and predators with the FBI's original Mindhunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker - 340 pages

I've been fascinated by serial killers and their motivations since I was young.   What makes someone step so far out of civilized society and commit such unspeakable crimes?  John Douglas was a pioneer in the FBI's criminal profiling unit and basically helped write the book on profiling serial killers.  In this book he examines four of the most disturbing killers he's faced and delves into how each case furthered his understanding of criminal behavior.  True crime afficiandos will find an insightful depth of knowledge here on both famous and not so famous killers, 

The 10 Worst Serial Killers by Victor McQueen

The 10 Worst Serial Killers by Victor McQueen  192 pages

A gripping analysis of the world's 10 worst serial killers. They have been selected not simply because of their high “body counts:” these killers are the ones who have most terrified the communities on which they preyed, and in some cases changed the history of the nations in which they operated. This collection focuses solely on the true stories behind the very worst real-life serial killers from across the globe: Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos, Eric Edgar Cooke, Peter Kürten, Tsutomu Miyazaki, Robert Pickton, Andrei Chikatilo, John Reginald Christie, Moses Sithole, The Zodiac Killer, and Charles Sobhraj.

Project Cain by Geoffrey Girard

Project Cain by Geoffrey Girard  341 pages

This dark, literary thriller is a story about blood: specifically, the DNA of the world's most notorious serial killers, captured and cloned by the Department of Defense to develop a new "breed" of bio-weapons. The program is now in Stage Three - with dozens of young male clones from age ten to eighteen kept and monitored at a private facility without any realization of who they really are. Some are treated like everyday kids. Others live prescribed lives to replicate the upbringing of their DNA donors. All wonder why they can't remember their lives before age ten.

When security is breached and the most dangerous boys are set free by the now-insane scientist who created them, only one young man can help find the clones before their true genetic nature grows even more horrific than the original models: a fifteen-year-old boy, an every-boy... who has just learned that he is the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer.