Theme
Crime & Justice
Courts, cartels, cons, and the long gap between what the law says and what it does.
24 books
newest read first
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind · 2003 · read Jul 2026Fortune journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's definitive account of Enron's rise and collapse — growing out of McLean's…
The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
Jeffrey Toobin · 1996 · read Jun 2026Jeffrey Toobin's definitive contemporaneous account of the O.J.
True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump
Jeffrey Toobin · 2020 · read Jun 2026Jeffrey Toobin's account of the Mueller investigation and the first Trump impeachment, framed as a legal thriller about why a…
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
Tom Wright, Bradley Hope · 2018 · read Jun 2026Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope's investigation of Jho Low — the Malaysian financier who orchestrated…
End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America
Chris Jennings · 2026 · read Apr 2026Chris Jennings's 2025 reconstruction of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff — Randy Weaver, the ATF firearms charges, the…
Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department
Carol Leonnig · 2025 · read Feb 2026Carol Leonnig's 2007 investigation (republished in updated form, given the topic's renewed relevance) of the Bush-era…
Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story
Julie K. Brown · 2021 · read Feb 2026Miami Herald reporter Julie K.
Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
David Enrich · 2025 · read Jan 2026NYT editor David Enrich's 2025 investigation of the coordinated legal campaign to weaken NYT v.
When the Night Comes Falling: The Definitive True Crime Investigation into the Idaho Student Murders
Howard Blum · 2024 · read Jan 2026Veteran investigative journalist Howard Blum's account of the November 2022 University of Idaho student murders and the…
The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces
Seth Harp · 2025 · read Nov 2025Rolling Stone reporter Seth Harp's investigation of a pattern of drug-trafficking and homicide cases involving active-duty…
The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy (James Patterson True Crime, 3)
James Patterson · 2025 · read Aug 2025James Patterson and Vicky Ward's true-crime account of the November 2022 University of Idaho student murders — Bryan Kohberger,…
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
Zeke Faux · 2023 · read Aug 2025Bloomberg's Zeke Faux on the 2021-22 crypto bubble and collapse — Tether's mysterious backing, Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX rise and…
Madoff: The Final Word
Richard Behar · 2024 · read Mar 2025Veteran financial journalist Richard Behar's biography of Bernie Madoff — the longest-running, largest-dollar Ponzi scheme in…
The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
Valerie Bauerlein · 2024 · read Mar 2025WSJ reporter Valerie Bauerlein's narrative of Alex Murdaugh — fourth-generation South Carolina legal-dynasty heir, prolific…
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
John Grisham · 2024 · read Jan 2025John Grisham and Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey's collection of ten wrongful-conviction case studies — false…
Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
Ben Westhoff · 2019 · read Dec 2024Ben Westhoff's investigative journalism on the fentanyl supply chain — Chinese chemists synthesizing analogues, dark-web…
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
James B. Comey · 2018 · read Aug 2024James Comey's memoir spanning his career — Mafia prosecution, the Stellar Wind hospital-bed confrontation with the Bush…
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2021 · read Jun 2024Patrick Radden Keefe's investigative history of the Sackler family — from Arthur Sackler's mid-20th-century pharmaceutical…
Sandy Hook
Elizabeth Williamson · 2022 · read Jun 2024NYT writer Elizabeth Williamson's account of the Sandy Hook massacre, the conspiracy theorists who claimed it was staged, and the…
American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
John Temple · 2015 · read Aug 2023John Temple's narrative of the Chris and Jeff George brothers' South Florida pill-mill operation — among the largest in the…
Trump / Russia: A Definitive History
Seth Hettena · 2018 · read Aug 2023Seth Hettena's account — written before the Mueller Report — of the Trump organization's decades-long entanglement with Russian…
Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
Andy Greenberg · 2022 · read Jun 2023Wired's Andy Greenberg on the rise of blockchain forensics — Chainalysis, federal investigators, academic cryptographers — and…
Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice
David Enrich · 2022 · read Apr 2023NYT business editor David Enrich's investigation of Jones Day — and Big Law more broadly — and its role in normalizing and…
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
Nick Bilton · 2017 · read Dec 2022The story of Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road darknet marketplace — its libertarian-utopian founding, its multi-million-dollar…