The Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2025 [Paperback]

Bestselling author Douglas Preston selects the best true crime writing from the past year, aided by series editor Pete Crooks, to produce an eclectic collection of intriguing, mysterious, and exciting true tales.

This inaugural edition of what will be a yearly collection offers a fascinating variety of essays and crime reporting, taken from regional, national, and international publications. The stories range from reports of homicide at a Toronto massage parlor to blackmail and murder-for-hire in Austin, Texas to an unusual murder weapon in rural Minnesota. Other stories examine controversial rehabilitation techniques for sexual criminals and explore the phenomenon of victims' relatives appearing as guests at true crime conventions. A must-read for anyone interested in true crime,The Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2025takes the pulse of this increasingly popular genre.Douglas Prestonhas published thirty-six books of both nonfiction and fiction, of which twenty-nine have beenNew York Timesbestsellers. He is the co-author, with Lincoln Child, of the Pendergast series of thrillers. He writes about archaeology and anthropology for theNew Yorker Magazine, and he worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He currently serves as President of the Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest association of authors and journalists.

Otto Penzleris the founder and president of Penzler Publishers, which includes The Mysterious Press, Scarlet, American Mystery Classics, Crime Ink, and MysteriousPress.com. He is also the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on crime, mystery and suspense fiction. He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for theEncyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, andThe Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achie