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Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession
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About This Book
A brilliant anthology of modern true-crime writing that illustrates the appeal of this powerful and popular genre, edited and curated by Sarah Weinman, the award-winning author of The Real Lolita. The appeal of true-crime stories has never been higher. With podcasts like My Favorite Murder and In the Dark, bestsellers like I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Furious Hours, and TV hits like American Crime Story and Wild Wild Country, the cultural appetite for stories of real people doing terrible things is insatiable. Acclaimed author of The Real Lolita and editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin), Sarah Weinman brings together an exemplary collection of recent true crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. Michelle Dean's "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick" went viral when it first published and is the basis for the TV show The Act and Pamela Colloff's "The Reckoning," is the gold standard for forensic journalism. There are 13 pieces in all and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.
Reviews
"Weinman...has carefully curated a collection of tales about murder, mayhem, and other misdeeds that will transfix voracious true crime consumers ...As a whole, these tales reflect on and seek to understand society's insatiable appetite for crime stories."
"Those looking for titillating, gruesome chronicles of human depravity will find much to like here — and those who want great, smart writing and outstanding research that unveils things we would rather not look at under a microscope will be equally satisfied ..."
"Weinman...provides a worthy successor to the Best American Crime Reporting annual series in this thoughtful and wide-ranging true crime anthology ..."
"In this collection, women are at least as likely to be perpetrators of crime as victims, and the contributors are hyperaware, sometimes to a fault, of their inherent fallibility in reporting the truth of the events they're consideringe writing featured in magazines today ..."
"Our fascination with true crime disturbs some—after all, aren't we exploiting victims by enjoying the stories of their deaths?"
"These stories are all great reads—they have enough detail, human interest and forensic insight to delight even the most discriminating true crime connoisseur—but Weinman has done more than create entertainment."
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