True Crime Books With Historic Cases

I’ve really enjoyed all of Lydia Kang‘s novels and am so glad she has a new release. It’s a historical mystery set in 1942 Brooklyn, and follows brother and sister Maggie and Will Scripps. They find a mysterious woman hiding beneath their back stairs but with the war raging in Europe, the first atomic bomb being created, and the mystery woman’s obsession with poisons, should Maggie and Will fear this woman?

I inhaled this audiobook, which has an excellent narration by Inés del Castillo and Yareli Arizmendi. In present day, Cassie Bowman has a true crime blog but wants to finally stop struggling to pay the bills. She decides to write a true crime book on a case from the ’80s by interviewing the woman at the center: Lore Rivera was married in Laredo, Texas to one man and in Mexico City to another until one husband was arrested for murdering the other.

This book tackles a lot (the ethics of true crime journalism, the effects of economic crisis, motherhood, marriage, family, one foot in two countries, what we owe others, can we ever really know a person…) while keeping the reader hooked not only in each woman’s life now and then, but also in their tug and pull with each other and their families.

(TW domestic abuse/ maternal mortality / mentions miscarriages, infertility/ ableism/ earthquake that killed many/ alcoholism)