Savannah, Georgia in the late 1980s was a southern gothic sitcom waiting to happen. Millionaire antiques dealers, high-end squatters, eccentric former debutantes, would-be poisoners, and marvelous drag queens all held court in their own corner of the city, bracketed by live oaks and Spanish moss. At the heart of this book is an uncomfortably sympathetic murder, and the last vestiges of idiosyncratic society. Though the Savannah Berendt describes no longer exists (in part due to the popularity of this book), it’s still a fantastic read. I often had to remind myself it was non-fiction.

Though many people remember Capote most for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the literati agree his main contribution to literature lies with this story of a horrific murder in small-town Kansas. Unique for the way it tells a non-fiction story in a narrative-forward style, Capote’s account of the senseless and shocking murder of the Clutter family opened the door to the way we talk about true crime today. Sandwiched between the spellbinding prose and meticulous detail, you’ll find an in-depth examination of the most heinous possibilities at our fingertips.

When a young woman and her baby girl were murdered in broad daylight by the woman’s brothers-in-law, it shed a national spotlight on the violent undertones present in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) church. This small religious sect has spawned many gut-wrenching memoirs, but this is one of the few global examinations. ofthe movement. In his account, Krakauer deftly treads the line between writing with brutal honesty about the history of the LDS church without deriding modern Mormons.

As a bestselling thriller writer, Douglas Preston knows a thing or two about spinning a compelling criminal tale. In a surprising twist of fate, when he moved to Italy, Preston discovered by happenstance that one of Italy’s most brutal murders in recent memory happened in his literal back yard. After enlisting local detective Mario Spezi to learn more about the crime, Preston soon found himself the target of the national police’s investigations. Twisty and thrilling, if it weren’t true, this story would be unbelievable.

While Rule cemented her legacy as one of the greatest crime writers of all-time with her firsthand account of her brush with Ted Bundy, I prefer this book. Dr. Debora Green seemingly had it all – three beautiful children, a medical degree, an equally accomplished husband, and a beautiful home in the idyllic Kansas City suburbs. But all that ended one night when the unthinkable happened – and the world discovered just how far Green was willing to go to seek revenge. Filled with complicated details, Rule penned one of the most complete accounts of KC’s worst crime.

The Jungle is a bit of an outlier on this list, because it chronicled events that weren’t yet a crime at the time of its writing. As a muckraker (or salacious investigative journalist) Sinclair constantly hunted down new stories. He hit paydirt in 1904 when he went undercover as a worker in one of Chicago’s meatpacking plants for 7 weeks and exposed its seedy underbelly. Not only was his account of his time there wildly popular, it also led to enormous reforms in both food handling and workers rights laws.

Some true crime books rise to the top because of fascinating prose that delves deep into the human condition. Some because their chronicles are famously detailed. Carreyrou’s account of the rise and fall of Theranos captures both sides. While interviewing Elizabeth Holmes for the Washington Post, Carreyrou was one of the first journalists to smell a rat amidst a field of fawning praise. His eventual exposé chronicles the glamorous rise of Silicon Valley’s first billionaire under 30, and the shocking fall of such a promising technology. Plus, it includes lots of details I haven’t seen elsewhere.

In that funny way the world works, two 20-century literary powerhouses, Harper Lee and Truman Capote, grew up down the street from one another. Lee wrote the meticulous notes for Capote’s project that would become In Cold Blood. After her experience in Kansas, Lee set out to write her own account of the shocking murder at the pulpit of Rev. Willie Maxwell. Though Lee’s manuscript never went to print, her detailed notes helped produce this fantastic account by Casey Cep.

During the 19th century, the Osage were shunted to the most rocky, godforsaken part of Oklahoma. But their fortunes turned miraculously when the soil beneath them turned out to be full of oil. Suddenly, one of the poorest Native tribes in the US was now one of the richest groups in the world. All that wealth soon began attracting greedy white people who’d do anything to get their hands on the Osage’s fortunes – including murder. Thanks to the genre’s penchant for prurience, one rarely encounters a true crime story that so thoroughly excoriates the system itself.

Though one of the most shocking crimes of the 20th century saw wide coverage in the media, through a generational game of telephone, much of the popular imagination of the events of Jonestown, Guyana remains uncorrected. Accounts of cults often include a certain amount of sneering – “I would never end up like them.” Guinn’s thorough account of both Jonestown and its egomaniacal leader dives straight into the heart of just how The People’s Temple became so popular in the first place, and how Jones inextricably linked himself to progressive 20th century political ideology.

A young man stealing rare bird skins and feathers from a small Victorian-era museum in the UK doesn’t exactly sound like the setup for a heart-pounding thriller. Luckily for us, when Kirk Wallace Johnson heard this story in rural New Mexico, his piqued interest resulted in this book. Johnson’s pursuit of the central question of this crime – but why – ended up shooting tendrils of this story into surprising corners of the world. Along the way, Johnson weaves in a beautiful treatise to the importance of protecting and respecting our natural surroundings.

For a touch of meta social commentary with your true crime, may I recommend Savage Appetites? After 20-something years of loving true crime, Rachel Monroe began to ask herself precisely what is so appealing about the macabre. Through the eyes of four different women with four different relationships with four different crimes, Monroe examines the ways these cries often jump from stories to the loci of our lives. Each story is fully encapsulated, but equally as compelling, so it’s like reading four books in one.

Fresh off its discovery, the radioactive substance radium enjoyed immense popularity in the early 20th century as a health tonic. While the vast majority of radium products were hoaxes, it had a genuine use on watch faces, making them glow in the dark for the use of soldiers stuck in trenches during WWI. The women who painted the watch faces enjoyed glamor and prestige, until they started literally falling apart. Full of primary accounts, Moore’s investigation explores the darkest consequences of ignoring workers rights.

Behind the closed doors of the Knotek house in Raymond, Washington, sisters Sami, Tori, and Nikki suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of their mother, Shelly. Shelly’s sphere of influence often expanded into the abuse and manipulation of other adults, leaving the sisters truly powerless. The events in this book truly boggle the imagination, and while all the books on the list deserve a content warning of some kind, this one needs a blaring neon trigger warning.

In the early, tumultuous days of the Troubles, a young mother went missing from tenement housing in Northern Ireland. Radden Keefe’s posthumous investigation into her disappearance decades later uncovered just how deep the conspiracy of violence ran in Northern Ireland – both on the part of the IRA, and the British. Much like life, each figure is a victim and a villain in turn, and Radden Keefe doesn’t flinch from his thorough excavation of the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century.

Light-hearted true crime fare doesn’t exactly dominate the scene, but that’s exactly what you’ll find with Fuzz. In it, one of the best science writers in living memory lends her sharp, funny, self-deprecating voice to studying incidents where animals intersect with the law. From Häagen-dasz loving bears in Aspen, to manhunting leopards in India, Roach’s project took her all over the world. I am not lying when I say I have thought about this book approximately once per day since I read it a few years ago.

Soon to become a true crime classic, Just Mercy reads like Atticus Finch’s memoir. As an idealistic young lawyer working to defend people on death row, Stevenson chronicles his transformation into one of today’s leading advocates for those caught in the throes of the justice system. Through the story of defending wrongfully convicted Walter McMillan, Stevenson recounts the early days of the Equal Initiative, and shines a light on how far the justice system in the US has to go.

Patty Hearst’s saga remains one of the most inexplicable true crime stories of the 20th century. The heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, Patty was kidnapped by the “Sybionese Liberation Army” at only 19 years old. The group’s demands for ransom were unique – they wanted millions of dollars of free food for the Bay Area’s poorest residence. While the Hearsts eagerly acquiesced, the SLA brainwashed Patty into committing acts of domestic terrorism that led to one of the most sensational trials of the last century.