Books That Every True Crime Obsessive Needs to Read

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I’ve always been fascinated by stories of grisly murders—I remember hiding a copy of Helter Skelter behind a Judy Blume dust jacket in elementary school—and I’ve always felt a twinge of shame about this fascination. Over the years, as I’ve developed deeper grooves in my prefrontal cortex and pop culture has developed a deeper feminist conscience, this twinge has grown into a full-blown ache. Especially since #MeToo, the genre has come under fire for the way it glamorizes male violence, promotes voyeurism, and ignores marginalized victims. These books are different. Read on for the titles that are taking the true crime world by storm.

Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll

The bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive never names the serial killer who lurks through the pages of her latest novel, but it’s not hard to guess whom he’s based on: He bludgeons sorority sisters in their sleep, lures do-gooders to their deaths by feigning injury, and is praised, by the judge who sentenced him, as a “bright young man.” In Knoll’s book, he is identified simply as “The Defendant,” which redirects the focus of the story from the killer to the women whose lives he changed.

Pamela is the comically type-A, fiercely loyal, and quietly brilliant president of one of Florida State’s top sororities—and the only eyewitness to The Defendant’s 1978 rampage. Ruth was grieving the loss of her father when she disappeared from a crowded beach. Tina is an ad hoc, amateur sleuth, determined to get to the bottom of the crime that upended her life. With virtuosic pacing, Knoll flashes between perspectives and timelines, constructing a chorus of women linked by one man’s violence but not defined by it. Though Knoll’s takedown of true crime’s misogyny is always razor-sharp and damning, her tone is never scolding. She directs our attention away from The Defendant not simply because looking at him is wrong—but because he’s actually not that interesting. The women have a far more compelling story to tell, one that is every bit as propulsive (and gruesome) as a Dateline special but infinitely more insightful.

While Idaho Slept, by J. Reuben Appelman

You know the story from the headlines: in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in their off-campus home. The victims were devastatingly young—20 and 21—and notably beautiful. Six weeks later, a student at nearby Washington State University was arrested for the calculated massacre—one who just so happened to be a PhD candidate studying criminology.

In his meticulously researched account, Appelman cuts through the sensationalism and speculation that has surrounded this case to uncover a profoundly human story with far-reaching implications. Having lived in Idaho for nearly a quarter century, the author offers an intimate, insider’s perspective on a case that rocked the globe—and an urgent reckoning with the ways internet sleuthing can impede justice and healing. By drawing from extensive interviews with their family, loved ones, and acquaintances, he captures Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Kaylee Goncalves in empathetic detail, showing us that these lives—complicated, nuanced, and touchingly interconnected—are so much more than their violent ends.

Lay Them to Rest, by Laurah Norton

As the host of the wildly popular and deeply researched true crime podcast The Fall Line, Laurah Norton has come across many cases of Jane and John Does—people whose bodies have been discovered but whose identities have not. Teaming up with biological anthropologist Amy Michael, Norton takes readers along for a real-time investigation of one such case—that of an “Ina Jane Doe,” whose head was discovered in a public park in 1993. In thrilling (and digestible) detail, Norton reveals the cutting-edge science behind “every attempt to connect her to the woman she’d been in life, and to the people who never stopped looking for her.”

While on the hunt for forensic answers in “Ina’s” case, Norton also looks for social and legal answers for how so many human beings become unidentified bodies—roughly 40,000 in the United States alone. Over the course of the book, we are introduced to a number of these so-called “Does”—cases that often get the least coverage even though they need it the most. “if you can construct a story with the pieces that death has left behind,” Norton points out, “someone might recognize the life that preceded them.” Rather than simply scratching a morbid itch, obsessing over these sorts of true crime stories can lead to true justice. A win in anyone’s book.

Penance, by Eliza Clark

From the author of bookfluencer sensation Boy Parts comes a story of a fictional murder that will turn your real world on its axis. After a series of professional humiliations, true crime journalist Alec Z. Carelli catches wind of a case so sickeningly sensational, it might just revitalize his career: that of a British schoolgirl who was tortured and burned alive by three of her classmates. Framed as a republished true crime account—initially pulled from the shelves due to Carelli's reporting techniques—the novel is a collage of blog posts, podcast transcripts, exclusive interviews, and Carelli’s own artistic interpretations of the assailants’ accounts. With the precision of Yellowjackets, Clark marks the vicious intensity pulsing beneath adolescent female friendships and presses it to its most savage conclusions—except these girls have social media accounts and British accents. This novel is certainly not for the faint of heart, but the violence at its core is cut slightly by the fascinating questions about the ethics of true crime at its periphery (not to mention Clark’s hilariously pitch-perfect impersonation of teenaged girls and Tumblr subcultures).

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