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I’ll be doing a few posts for books to read to help you get in the mood for this Halloween season. I’m kicking it off with some true crime books since the scariest thing to me is non-fiction that tells about murders that really happened.  A few I have read in the past year or so are below:

Purchase Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony

Keith Ablow writes some amazing, twisted fiction as well but this is an account of what he thinks of the Casey Anthony case.

Purchase The Mad Sculptor

This is a twisted tale of a charismatic young sculptor, Robert Irwin, who was deeply disturbed.  His obsession with photographer’s model Veronica Gedeon would culminate in the Easter Sunday murders.  The story plays out like a post-Depression era soap opera with an extensive cast of sensationalist characters. Riveting.

Purchase The Misbegotten Son

Arthur Shawcross was known as The Genesee River Killer. He claimed he did atrocious things in Vietnam.  Those stories turned out to be false since he would have never been in the settings he described.  However, he wreaked havoc in the US – he killed 2 children & later went on to prey upon the prostitute population in the Genesee River area. There is a documentary about him that you can watch on YouTube. (It was also on Netflix at one point & might still be now.)

Purchase Darker Than Night

This is actually my hometown murder. My dad owns a house across the street from one of the bars the victims went to that night. I grew up hearing about how these guys murdered someone & fed them to their pigs.  I figured it was an urban legend since if that happened & people knew, those people would be in jail, right? Nope. They were only put on trial years later, after I had moved away.  I believe it’s also unique because it’s the first time someone was put away based only on an eye-witness account.  I don’t think they ever found any physical evidence.

Purchase The Psychopath Test

This one is a bit of a bonus.  It’s not a true crime per se but it’s about the psychology of psychopaths.  It was fascinating & found myself considering who around me could be a psychopath for quite a while after I read it.

I was going to do it all the scary/creepy books I’ve read recently in one post & realized there are too many – the horror genre is one of my favorites & I have read so many, always looking for something that truly scares me! And I’m always willing to try an sub-genre. I will be posting more so stay tuned…