Nonviolent True Crime

Updated June 6, 2026
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
This is your list in printable form. Simply print this page using your browser's print command.

Nonviolent True Crime

Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The art thief : a true story of love, crime, and a dangerous obsession
Finkel, Michael
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century * "The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."--The New Yorker A...
Rogues : true stories of grifters, killers, rebels and crooks
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the award-winning author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing--and one of the most decorated journalists of our time--twelve enthralling true stories of skulduggery and intrigue "An excellent collection of Keefe's detective...
The dinosaur artist : obsession, betrayal, and the quest for Earth's ultimate trophy
Williams, Paige
Ebook
In this 2018 New York Times Notable Book,Paige Williams "does for fossils what Susan Orlean did for orchids" (Book Riot) in her account of one Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia--a story "steeped in natural history, human nature, commerce, crime, science...
The feather thief : beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century
Johnson, Kirk W.
Paper Book
As heard on NPR's This American Life "Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air "One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime...
Empire of pain : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty
Keefe, Patrick Radden
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From...
Little bosses everywhere : how the pyramid scheme shaped America
Read, Bridget
Paper Book
A "gripping" (The Washington Post) work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing- a massive money-making scam and radical political conspiracy that has remade American society. "Reads like a thriller . . . masterfully...
Bad blood : secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup
Carreyrou, John
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos--one of the biggest corporate frauds in history--a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword.
The orchid thief
Orlean, Susan.
Paper Book
The story of orchid thief and obsessive, John Laroche, and the bizarre world of the orchid fanciers of Florida. The world of the orchid hunters, breeders and showmen, their rivalries, vendettas and crimes, smuggling, thefts and worse provide the backdrop to an exploration of one of the byways of...
Unmask Alice : LSD, satanic panic, and the imposter behind the world's most notorious diaries
Emerson, Rick
Paper Book
Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson goes a long way to showing what investigative journalism could be in the right hands ... this book is undeniably buzzworthy.' -- Portland Book Review. 'An absorbing and unnerving read ... this book demands to be finished in one sitting.' -- Booklist. Two teens. Two...
Billion dollar whale : the man who fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the world
Wright, Tom (Wall Street Journal reporter)
Ebook
Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios). Now a #1...
The woman who fooled the world : Belle Gibson's cancer con, and the darkness at the heart of the wellness industry
Donelly, Beau
Ebook
The King of Diamonds : the search for the elusive Texas jewel thief
Pederson, Rena
Paper Book
The thrilling story of a brazen, uncatchable jewel thief who roamed the homes of Dallas high society--and a window into the dark secrets lurking beneath the surface of the Swinging Sixties. As a string of high profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the...
American heiress the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trial of Patty Hearst
Toobin, Jeffrey.
Paper Book
From New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of The Nine and The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson, the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history   On February 4, 1974, Patty...
The less people know about us : a mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and stolen identity
Betz-Hamilton, Axton
Paper Book
AN EDGAR AWARDS 2020 WINNER AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER In this powerful true crime memoir, an award-winning identity theft expert tells the shocking story of the duplicity and betrayal that inspired her career and nearly destroyed her family. ...
A gentleman and a thief : the daring jewel heists of a Jazz Age rogue
Jobb, Dean
Paper Book
A captivating Jazz Age true-crime caper about "the greatest jewel thief who ever lived" (Life Magazine), Arthur Barry, who charmed everyone from Rockefellers to members of the royal family while simultaneously planning and executing the most audacious and lucrative heists of the...
The man who loved books too much : the true story of a thief, a detective, and a world of literary obsession
Bartlett, Allison Hoover.
Audiobook
John Charles Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch...
All that glitters a story of friendship, fraud, and fine art
Whitfield, Orlando
Paper Book
A NEW YORKER, ECONOMIST, AND TOWN & COUNTRY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A dazzling insider's account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his friend and fellow dealer ...
American fire : love, arson, and life in a vanishing land
Hesse, Monica
Paper Book
The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn't stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at first with compassion, and later suspicion. Vigilante groups sprang up, patrolling the rural...
Heist : the oddball crew behind the $17 million Loomis Fargo theft
Diamant, Jeff
Paper Book
The 1997 Loomis Fargo theft in Charlotte, NC was the second-largest theft in U.S. history. Currently a staff writer for The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, Diamant covered the crime for the Charlotte Observer. Here, Diamant combines information from interviews, trial testimony, field trips, FBI documents...
The Gardner heist : the true story of the world's largest unsolved art theft
Boser, Ulrich.
Ebook
The true story of one museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld: "Boser cracks the cold case of the art world's greatest unsolved mystery." -- Vanity Fair Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and...
The falcon thief : a true tale of adventure, treachery, and the hunt for the perfect bird
Hammer, Joshua
Paper Book
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs--and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious...
Empire of deception : the incredible story of a master swindler who seduced a city and captivated the nation
Jobb, Dean
Ebook
It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Enter a slick, smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer named Leo Koretz, who enticed hundreds of people to invest as much as $30 million--upward of $400 million today--in phantom...
Gator country : deception, danger, and alligators in the Everglades
Renner, Rebecca
Paper Book
A New York Times Editors' Choice "Delivers everything its title promises and much more." - NPR "Remarkable... Every species, and every person who fights for its continued existence, deserves a book like this." -- The New York Times
Easy money : cryptocurrency, casino capitalism, and the golden age of fraud
McKenzie, Benjamin
Paper Book
At the height of the pandemic, TV star Ben McKenzie (The O.C., Gotham) was the perfect mark for cryptocurrency: a dad stuck at home with some cash in his pocket, worried about his family, armed with only the vague notion that people were making heaps of money on something he-despite...
Confident women : swindlers, grifters, and shapeshifters of the feminine persuasion
Telfer, Tori
Paper Book
A thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of history's notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous scams--by the acclaimed author of Lady Killers. From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious...
Master thieves : the Boston gangsters who pulled off the world's greatest art heist
Kurkjian, Stephen A.
Paper Book
The definitive story of the greatest art theft in history. In a secret meeting in 1981, a low-level Boston thief gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was a big score waiting to happen. Though its collections included...
Hype : how scammers, grifters, and con artists are taking over the internet--and why we're following
Bluestone, Gabrielle
Ebook
"Hype is the best kind of nonfiction: juicy, sharp, savage and wildly entertaining, with a celebrity behaving badly on every page. What more could you want?" -Cat Marnell, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life From former Vice...
The confidence men : how two prisoners of war engineered the most remarkable escape in history
Fox, Margalit
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time. FINALIST FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post,<...
The key man : the true story of how the global elite was duped by a capitalist fairy tale
Clark, Simon
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF 2021 In this compelling story of lies, greed and tarnished idealism, two Wall Street Journal reporters investigate a man who Bill Gates, Western governments, and other...
The woman who stole Vermeer : the true story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House art heist
Amore, Anthony M.
Paper Book
The extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary Rose Dugdale, who in 1974 became the only woman to pull off a major art heist. In the world of crime, there exists an unusual commonality between those who steal art and those who repeatedly kill: they are almost...
The art of the con : the most notorious fakes, frauds, and forgeries in the art world
Amore, Anthony M.
Ebook
The rescue artist : a true story of art, thieves, and the hunt for a missing masterpiece
Dolnick, Edward
Ebook
Edgar Award Winner for Best Fact Crime. "An entertaining account of the eternal struggle between high art and low cunning." -- Time In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the...
Con/artist : the life and crimes of the world's greatest art forger
Tetro, Tony
Paper Book
The world's most renowned art forger reveals the secrets behind his decades of painting like the masters--exposing an art world that is far more corrupt than we ever knew while providing an art history lesson wrapped in sex, drugs, and Caravaggio. The art world is a...
Gentleman bandit : the true story of Black Bart, the Old West's most infamous stagecoach robber
Boessenecker, John
Paper Book
As seen on Netflix's Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War New York Times bestselling author and award-winning historian John Boessenecker separates fact from fiction in the first new biography in decades of Black Bart, the Wild West's most mysterious gentleman...
Hoax : a history of deception : 5,000 years of fakes, forgeries, and fallacies
Tattersall, Ian
Ebook
An entertaining collection of the most audacious and underhanded deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial schemes to fake art, music, and identities. World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for them. Ian Tattersall, a...
Devil's coin : my battle to take down the notorious OneCoin cryptoqueen
McAdam, Jennifer
Paper Book
*A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK FOR AUGUST 2023* "[An] exhilarating mix of memoir and true crime. . ." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) The astonishing true story of the coal miner's daughter who took on the creators of the world's biggest financial fraud and...
Can you ever forgive me? : memoirs of a literary forger
Israel, Lee
Audiobook
Satellite boy : the international manhunt for a master thief that launched the modern communication age
Amelinckx, Andrew
Paper Book
Spanning the underworld haunts of Montreal to Havana and Miami in the early days of the Cold War, Satellite Boy reveals the unlikely connection between an audacious bank heist and the "other Space Race" that gave birth to the modern communication age On April 6, 1965,...
Stealing Rembrandts : the untold stories of notorious art heists
Amore, Anthony M.
Audiobook
Blessed are the bank robbers : the true adventures of an evangelical outlaw
Smith, Chas
Paper Book
Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma's favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome,...
Swindled : the dark history of food fraud, from poisoned candy to counterfeit coffee
Wilson, Bee.
Ebook
Bad food has a history. Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of...
The unusual suspect : the rise and fall of a modern-day outlaw
Machell, Ben
Paper Book
The remarkable true story of a modern-day Robin Hood: a British college student who started robbing banks as the financial crisis unfolded. "Completely fascinating . . . [The Unusual Suspect] reads like a deep psychological thriller, but it's real. Is truth...
The last job : the "bad grandpas" and the Hatton Garden heist
Bilefsky, Dan
Paper Book
The definitive account of one of the most brazen jewel heists in history. Over Easter weekend 2015, a motley crew of six English thieves, several in their sixties and seventies, couldn't resist coming out of retirement for one last career-topping heist. Their target: the Hatton...
American animals : a true crime memoir
Borsuk, Eric
Ebook
The thieves of Threadneedle Street : the incredible true story of the American forgers who nearly broke the Bank of England
Booth, Nicholas
Ebook
The greatest untold crime saga of the Victorian Era: the extraordinary true story of four American forgers who tried to steal five million dollars from the Bank of England. In the summer of 1873, four American forgers went on trial at the Old Bailey for the greatest fraud the...
The great pearl heist : London's greatest thief and Scotland Yard's hunt for the world's most valuable necklace
Crosby, Molly Caldwell.
Paper Book
Molly Caldwell Crosby, author of The American Plague and Asleep, once again brings forgotten history to vivid life in an absorbing account of crime and deduction in the early days of the twentieth century. . . . In the summer of 1913, under the cover of London’s...
Never saw me coming : how I outsmarted the FBI and the entire banking system--and pocketed $40 million
Smith, Tanya
Paper Book
A riveting true story of an unsuspecting woman who creates an ingeniously clever white-collar scheme that manipulates the Federal banking system out of millions--who eventually loses everything that is most important to her.   In Never Saw Me Coming,...
The spy who couldn't spell : a dyslexic traitor, an unbreakable code, and the FBI's hunt for America's stolen secrets
Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit
Paper Book
Before Edward Snowden's infamous data breach, the largest theft of government secrets was committed by an ingenious traitor whose intricate espionage scheme and complex system of coded messages were made even more baffling by his apparent dyslexia. In this fast-paced, true-life spy thriller,...
Find this list online

https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/882.1246/list/8084

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.