Theme
Crime & Justice
Courts, cartels, cons, and the long gap between what the law says and what it does.
27 books
most recent read first
Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
Kashmir Hill · 2023 · read Sep 2026Google and Facebook developed similar technology and held it back.
The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
Joe Conason · 2024 · read Sep 2026Conason's case is that Trump isn't where conservative grift began, only its largest example.
Den of Thieves
James B. Stewart · 1991 · read Sep 2026If you've ever wondered how the 1980s takeover boom made so many people so rich so fast, the answer is stolen information.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind · 2003 · read Jul 2026Enron's business was largely an illusion, and a lot of smart people were paid well not to look closely.
The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
Jeffrey Toobin · 1996 · read Jun 2026When Simpson's defense decided to put detective Mark Fuhrman on trial, Toobin reported the plan in The New Yorker in July 1994.
True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump
Jeffrey Toobin · 2020 · read Jun 2026Mueller's evidence didn't establish a criminal conspiracy with Russia.
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
Tom Wright, Bradley Hope · 2018 · read Jun 2026How do you take roughly $4.5 billion out of a sovereign wealth fund in plain sight?
End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America
Chris Jennings · 2026 · read Apr 2026Ruby Ridge usually gets told as a botched federal raid.
Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department
Carol Leonnig · 2025 · read Feb 2026The Justice Department's independence was never written into law.
Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story
Julie K. Brown · 2021 · read Feb 2026About 13 months in county jail, under a plea deal his victims never heard about: that was Jeffrey Epstein's first reckoning.
Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
David Enrich · 2025 · read Jan 2026If you run a small newsroom, a libel suit doesn't need to win to kill a story, since defending even a meritless one can ruin you.
When the Night Comes Falling: The Definitive True Crime Investigation into the Idaho Student Murders
Howard Blum · 2024 · read Jan 2026Blum's account of the 2022 University of Idaho murders is about how investigators actually got to Bryan Kohberger, missteps…
The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
Seth Harp · 2025 · read Nov 2025It starts with two bodies near Fort Bragg in December 2020, a Delta Force master sergeant and a warrant officer who smuggled…
The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy (James Patterson True Crime, 3)
James Patterson · 2025 · read Aug 2025Four University of Idaho students were killed in an off-campus house in Moscow on November 13, 2022, and investigators started…
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
Zeke Faux · 2023 · read Aug 2025Crypto prices rose because people bought, and people bought because prices rose.
Madoff: The Final Word
Richard Behar · 2024 · read Mar 2025Behar's argument is that Bernie Madoff's fraud began decades before the date Madoff confessed to, and that it couldn't have run…
The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
Valerie Bauerlein · 2024 · read Mar 2025For most of a century, from 1920 to 2006, a Murdaugh held the local prosecutor's office in South Carolina's Lowcountry.
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
John Grisham · 2024 · read Jan 2025Pick almost any of these ten murder cases and the same failures turn up: tunnel vision, coached witnesses, jailhouse informants,…
Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
Ben Westhoff · 2019 · read Dec 2024Fifty times stronger than heroin, cheap to make in Chinese labs and sold online for Bitcoin: fentanyl is where the overdose…
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
James B. Comey · 2018 · read Aug 2024Your loyalty belongs to lasting values like justice and truth, not to any one person.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2021 · read Jun 2024The Sackler name hung on museum galleries until institutions started taking it down.
Sandy Hook
Elizabeth Williamson · 2022 · read Jun 2024For the families of the twenty first-graders and six educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012, the shooting was…
American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
John Temple · 2015 · read Aug 2023A young ex-felon and his partners turned a South Florida pain clinic into the largest pill mill in the United States.
Trump / Russia: A Definitive History
Seth Hettena · 2018 · read Aug 2023Start with the collapse of Donald Trump's casino empire and follow his dealings with Russian money and power all the way to the…
Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
Andy Greenberg · 2022 · read Jun 2023Cryptocurrency was never as anonymous as the criminals using it believed.
Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice
David Enrich · 2022 · read Apr 2023Enrich's case is that giant corporate law firms now help powerful clients, Donald Trump among them, escape accountability.
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
Nick Bilton · 2017 · read Dec 2022A San Francisco library, 2013, and the FBI finally has the man behind the Silk Road.