LibraryAware March 2025

Recent Releases

Blood and the badge
by Michael Cannell

Uncovers the shocking story of NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who secretly served as mafia informants and hitmen for over a decade, revealing corruption that crippled investigations and led to multiple mob hits.

Wiseguys in the White House
by Eric Dezenhall

Explores the intricate and often hidden connections between organized crime and U.S. presidents. Highlighting key historical moments, the book reveals how mobsters have influenced political power, from FDR's dealings with Lucky Luciano to Trump's ties with gambling cartels, illustrating the complex interplay of crime and governance.

Borgata : clash of titans : a history of the American Mafia
by Louis Ferrante

This epic three-volume history of the mafia continues with Borgata: Clash of Titans, covering 1960 to 1985, as the mob comes into conflict with the American political elite—and confronts internal wars that will shake the organization to its foundations.

The Killing Fields of East New York : The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood
by Stacy Horn

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields. This book deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.

Black Tunnel White Magic : A Murder, a Detective's Obsession, and '90s Los Angeles at the Brink
by Rick Jackson

Retired detective Rick Jackson recounts the chilling true story of the brutal murder of UCLA student Ronald Baker in 1990, revealing betrayal, racial tensions and the lingering grip of Satanic Panic on modern life.

The secret history of the rape kit
by Pagan Kennedy

A thrilling, novelistic work of journalism that uncovers the remarkable and hidden story of Marty Goddard, the woman who invented the rape kit, changed the course of how we treat sexual assault forever, and then vanished from the record.

No human involved : the serial murder of Black women and girls and the deadly cost of police indifference
by Cheryl L. Neely

Highlights the lives of Black women and girls who were victims of targeted killings, and uses personal interviews, court records, media reports, and analytical data to determine why Black women are disproportionately more likely than white women to die from homicide.

Scout Camp : Sex, Death, and Secret Societies Inside the Boy Scouts of America
by James Renner

In this timely and deeply personal true crime memoir, acclaimed journalist, author, creator of the True Crime This Week podcast, and former Boy Scout James Renner, explores the dark side of an American institution, its pervasive culture of sexual abuse, and the traumatic—even deadly—repercussions of its long-buried secrets.

There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas : The Rape Trials That Sustained Jim Crow and the People Who Fought It, from Thurgood Marshall to Maya Angelou
by Scott W. Stern

In the early years of the twentieth century, Mississippi County, Arkansas, was the site of two rape trials that made national headlines: an accusation that sent two Black men, almost certainly innocent, to death row; and the case of two white men, almost certainly guilty, who were likewise sentenced to death but who would ultimately face a very different fate. Braiding together these stories, Scott W. Stern examines how the Jim Crow legal system relied on selectively prosecuting rape to uphold the racial, gender, and economic hierarchies of the segregated, unequal South.

The devil's drug : the global emergence of crystal meth
by Teun Voeten

With a combination of thorough investigative journalism, daring fieldwork, and colorful atmospheric sketches, Voeten draws a very detailed and disturbing picture of a drug that is on a rapid international rise.