Central Kansas Library System

"Is Liam Berne a loving son-or a murderer? The second book in the Ozark Mountain Trilogy, Only by Death is a thought-provoking suspense story of a man who loses everything and learns he must die to find life. After much agonizing, Liam Berne takes his mother, who has Alzheimer's, to the Sure Foot River and drowns her. A mercy killing, he tells himself, to spare her years in a nursing home . And getting his inheritance early isn't a bad thing either....

"In September, 2008, Roanoke, Texas, police discovered a house of horrors: poisoned pudding, a bathtub set up for electrocution, a bloody butcher knife, and a hank of chopped-off hair. The worst was yet to come... Days before, seventeen-year-old Jennifer Bailey, her thirteen-year-old brother David, and their friends Paul Henson and Merrilee White had made a gruesome pact: they'd kill their parents, steal their cars and credit cards, and flee to Canada....

On June 22, 1954, teenage friends Juliet Hulme-- better known as bestselling mystery writer Anne Perry-- and Pauline Parker went for a walk in a New Zealand park with Pauline's mother, Honorah. When Honorah Parker was found in a pool of blood with the brick used to bludgeon her to death close at hand, Juliet and Pauline confessed to the killing. Their motive: a plan to escape to the United States to become writers, and Honorah's determination to keep...

A handsome, married young father and former deputy sheriff, Gabriel Morris looked like the picture of respectability. When his mother and her boyfriend were found brutally murdered in their pleasant Oregon seaside home, authorities were shocked to find a trail leading to him. Soon, police in several states were caught up in a riveting chase as Gabriel, with family in tow, went on a cross-country crime spree. No one knew if his wife, Jessica, was a...

Leaving Edinburgh for Africa after a murder trial, a young woman's security begins to crumble as she discovers old secrets may again be resurrected.

The author "tells the story of computer businessman David Brown, . . .who manipulated his 14-year-old daughter, Cinnamon, into murdering his 23-year-old wife in Orange Country, California in 1985. . . . Despite her 'confession,' prosecuting investigator Jay Newell felt uneasy about Cinnamon's alleged vague and trivial motives. He continued to pursue the case and in 1990 Brown was convicted of masterminding his wife's murder."

"Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received shocking news that would change his life-his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia,...

Early on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents. Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. He then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, "We're free." The murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents. And it required each of the two survivors-one a convicted murderer,...

n December, 1968, Mary Bell, aged eleven, appeared before a criminal court in England, accused of murdering, Martin Brown, aged four, and Brian Howe, aged three. Mary was found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and was sentenced to 'detention' for life. What would induce a young child to murder two other young children? In this short book, Sylvia Perrini, looks at Mary's tragic life, her years in prison and life since prison....