Books like Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

In 1893 Chicago, Erik Larson weaves the story of visionary architect Daniel Burnham and the cunning serial killer H.H. Holmes, whose crimes unfolded against the backdrop of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

An engaging exploration of the 1854 London cholera outbreak and how Dr. John Snow’s mapping of the epidemic transformed public health, urban planning, and the science of disease transmission.

A meticulously researched chronicle of Patty Hearst’s 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army and the ensuing legal and cultural storm, revealing the American media frenzy and the emergence of the term “Stockholm syndrome.”

A true‑crime account of Princeton‑educated Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a former U.S. Marine, convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two children in 1970, and the chilling investigation that followed.

Cork O'Connor leaves a taxing police job to become a private investigator in his Minnesota hometown, when an Ojibwe healer requests his help finding a son he fathered years before, leading to a dangerous confrontation.

An award‑winning New York Times journalist chronicles the chilling 2006 murder of ex‑KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, exposing a rare radioactive assassination and its sharp‑edged implications for Russian politics and international security.

For the Thrill of It details the 1924 Chicago murder of a child by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, their arrest, the courtroom battle led by Clarence Darrow, and the social context of the Jazz Age.

Jay Follet’s brief summer trip to care for his ailing father ends in a fatal car crash, leaving behind family to confront the sudden loss.

A detailed biography of Hawley Harvey Crippen, the early 20th‑century London doctor convicted of murdering his wife, examining the case through original research and biographical context.

A detective named Dortmunder is burglarized by a billionaire and must find a lucky ring to clear his name

Mary Pinchot Meyer, former CIA official’s ex‑wife and alleged mistress of President John F. Kennedy, was murdered on a Georgetown towpath in 1964. Nina Burleigh’s biography investigates the unsolved case, its alleged diary, and the ensuing political intrigue.

Old Lincoln Fargo, a notorious local with a rough past, drifts through life alongside his indolent son Grant, who is deep in an affair with their volatile cousin, while Grandmother Pearl quietly cedes their family property to the Almighty.

Reconstructing the 1811 Radcliffe Highway murders, P. D. James partners with historian T. A. Critchley to expose Regency London’s rudimentary police response to serial killings that shocked the nation.

The world at the turn of the 20th century was in the throes of "Marconi-mania" - brought on by an incredible invention that no one could quite explain, and by a dapper and eccentric figure (who would one day win the newly minted Nobel Prize) at the centre of it all. At a time when the telephone, telegraph and electricity made the whole world wonder just what science would think of next, the startling answer had come in 1896 in the form of two mysterious wooden boxes containing a device one Guglielmo Marconi had rigged up to transmit messages "through the ether". It was the birth of the radio, and no scientist in Europe or America, not even Marconi himself, could at first explain how it worked. It just did. And no one knew how far these radio waves could travel, until 1903, when a message from President Theodore Roosevelt to the king of England flashed from Cape Cod to Cornwall clear across the Atlantic. This volume is a rich portrait of the man and his era - and a captivating tale of science and scientists, business and businessmen. There are stories of British blowhards, American con artists - and Marconi himself: a character par excellence, who eventually winds up a virtual prisoner of his worldwide fame and fortune.