Don't Look Behind You: Ann Rule's Crime Files #15

Description

The fifteenth volume of #1 New York Times bestelling author Ann Rule’s series of true crime paperback originals.

This fifteenth volume in #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule’s series of true crime paperback originals, Don’t Look Behind You, focuses on stories of people in danger, sometimes from strangers and sometimes from the people they know and love. The main story, “North to Alaska,” features a tangled web of two families and some sensational detective work thirty years after a murder. It is, quite literally, a case that begins with “bare bones.”

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In the Still of the Night: The Strange Death of Ronda Reynolds and Her Mother's Unceasing Quest for the Truth

Description

FROM TRUE-CRIME LEGEND ANN RULE comes this riveting story of a young woman whose life ended too soon—and a determined mother’s eleven-year crusade to clear her daughter’s name.

It was nine days before Christmas 1998, and thirty-two-year-old Ronda Reynolds was getting ready to travel from Seattle to Spokane to visit her mother and brother and grandmother before the holidays. Ronda’s second marriage was dissolving after less than a year, her career as a pioneering female Washington State Trooper had ended, but she was optimistic about starting over again. "I’m actually looking forward to getting on with my life," she told her mother earlier the night before. "I just need a few days with you guys." Barb Thompson, Ronda’s mother, who had met her daughter’s second husband only once before, was just happy that Ronda was coming home.

At 6:20 that morning, Ron Reynolds called 911 and told the dispatcher his wife was dead. She had committed suicide, he said, although he hadn’t heard the gunshot and he didn’t know if she had a pulse. EMTs arrived, detectives arrived, the coroner’s deputy arrived, and a postmortem was conducted. Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson, who neither visited the death scene nor attended the autopsy, declared the manner of Ronda’s death as "undetermined." Over the next eleven years, Coroner Wilson would change that manner of death from "undetermined" to "suicide," back to "undetermined"—and then back to "suicide" again.

But Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics expert Marty Hayes or attorney Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda’s friends. For eleven grueling years, through the ups and downs of the legal system and its endless delays, these people and others helped Barb Thompson fight to strike that painful word from her daughter’s death certificate.

On November 9, 2009, a precedent-setting hearing was held to determine whether Coroner Wilson’s office had been derelict in its duty in investigating the death of Ronda Reynolds. Veteran true-crime writer Ann Rule was present at that hearing, hoping to unbraid the tangled strands of conflicting statements and mishandled evidence and present all sides of this haunting case and to determine, perhaps, what happened to Ronda Reynolds, in the chill still of that tragic December night.

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Rules of Engagement

Description

WARNING: Contains graphic language and explicit sex scenes (M/F, anal sex, mild bondage).


LENGTH: Novella (20,400 words)


After being shot three times in the chest and left for dead by his last lover, Jake Duquesne decides the middle of nowhere is a good place to recuperate. And it's perfect, until someone tries to sneak up on him, gun drawn and cocked. Unfortunately for his would-be assailant, Jake is not one to wait around quietly while someone tries to kill him.

Waking up handcuffed to a strange bed is not part of Katarzyna Delaney's plans after being jilted at the altar for the third time. Looking at Jake, however, makes her realize plans should be flexible. With a few simple rules, she can have her long-awaited honeymoon--and without a battery-operated device.

Then people following no rules but their own join in.


EXCERPT

"You don't remember what happened last night?"

Confusion swamped her features. "Last night?"

Jake lifted a sardonic brow. "When you were attempting to enter this cabin," he reminded her dryly. Then, with emphasis, he added, "Illegally."

The confusion didn't disappear.

"As in, without the owner's consent."

"But..." Her voice trailed off as realization dawned. "Oh God." She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath. "That can't be right."

He mentally crossed out amnesia and drawled very sarcastically, "Oh, it's very right. I assure you, Katarzyna Delaney."

Her eyes flew open at his harsh, humorless tone, or maybe it was his pronunciation of her name. KAHT-ah-ZHEE-nah. Perhaps she wasn't used to people who didn't butcher her name on the first attempt. Luckily, he'd had plenty of practice with non-Anglicized names. All part and parcel of his previous job.

"My cabin has the bullet hole and the bullet from your weapon to prove it." Even with the faint Southern accent softening his words, they still had bite.

Expand "See all Editorial Reviews" or go to annbruce.net/books/RulesOfEngagement.php for complete excerpt.

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Dead by Sunset

Description

Newly reissued, the chilling true story of Bradly Morris Cunningham, the handsome and successful entrepreneur adored by five beautiful and brilliant women who gave him everything he ever wanted—including their very lives.

When attorney Cheryl Keeton’s brutally bludgeoned body was found in her van in the fast lane of an Oregon freeway, her husband, Brad Cunningham, was the likely suspect. But there was no solid evidence linking him to the crime. He married again, for the fifth time, and his stunning new wife, a physician named Sara, adopted his three sons. They all settled down to family life on a luxurious estate. But gradually, their marriage became a nightmare....

     In this gripping account of Cheryl’s murder, Ann Rule takes us from Brad’s troubled boyhood to one of the most bizarre trials in legal history, uncovering multiple marriages, financial manipulations, infidelities, and monstrous acts of harassment and revenge along the way. “A perceptive character analysis of a malignant, self-centered, charismatic con artist,” (Publishers Weekly) this is a fascinating and haunting tale.

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Another chilling and creepy book from the reigning queen of true-crime, Ann Rule, who also penned the riveting bestseller Small Sacrifices. Here, we encounter a charismatic con-artist accused of brutally bludgeoning his wife and follow his case through to its strangely redemptive end.

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Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal

Description

A charming and briliant dentist,
tied to two murders nearly two decades apart....
A twisting case in which past and present colide....

Go inside one of the most compelling double homicide investigations of our time with Ann Rule, who was given exclusive access inside the case of Bart Corbin, the "handsome twin" responsible for murder times two.

Bart Corbin appeared to share an idyllic life with his pretty wife, Jennifer: a home in an upscale Atlanta suburb, two adorable young sons. But there were secrets below the surface -- including an affair of Bart's that drove Jenn to look for love on the Internet -- that would prove deadly on the December morning Jenn was found with a single gunshot wound to her head. Police suspected suicide, but her disbelieving family knew Jenn had been excited to move on from Bart with someone she had met online. As disturbing clues emerged, a relentless county investigator dredged up a shattering revelation: fourteen years earlier, Bart Corbin's former girlfriend, lovely dental student Dolly Hearn, also died -- a gunshot wound to her head that was ruled a suicide. It was a chilling link in the chain that would ensnare the remorseless killer behind both tragic deaths: Bart Corbin.

And if you think you know everything about this outright shocking case, discover the truth behind the headlines -- and one incredible irony on which the entire case turned -- in

Too Late to Say Goodbye

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But I Trusted You: Ann Rule's Crime Files #14

Description

THE MOST FATAL MISTAKE?

Trust. It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each bloodsoaked account. Whether driven to extreme violence by greed or jealousy, passion or rage, these calculating sociopaths targeted those closest to them -- unwitting victims whose last disbelieving words could well have been "but I trusted you...." Headlining this page-turning anthology is the case of middle-school counselor Chuck Leonard, found shot to death outside his Washington State home on an icy February morning. A complicated mix of family man and wild man, Chuck played hard and loved many...but who crossed the line by murdering him in cold blood? And why? The revelation is as stunning as the shattering crime itself, powerfully illuminating how those we think we know can ingeniously hide their destructive and homicidal designs. Along with other shattering cases, immaculately detailed and sharply analyzed by America's #1 true-crime writer, this fourteenth Crime Files volume is essential reading for getting inside the mind of the hidden killers among us.

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