Born to Lose: Stanley B. Hoss and the Crime Spree That Gripped a Nation

Haunting, powerful, and compelling, this is Eric Volz's story.

Twenty-five-year-old Eric Volz moved to Nicaragua in 2005 in pursuit of paradise. Drawn to the town of San Juan del Sur for its pristine beaches and economic potential, he quickly fell in love with the country. Eric's life was taking off like a dream.

Then the nightmare began. On November 21, 2006, Eric's ex-girlfriend was tragically murdered in San Juan del Sur. The sleepy town quickly ignited into a volatile, angry mob. The day he helped lay Doris Ivania Jimenez to rest, Eric was arrested for her murder.

Author Michael Glasgow delves into the multilayered story of American Eric Volz. Beginning with Nicaragua's dubious history with and mistrust of the United States, Glasgow leaves no stone unturned in examining the reasons behind the bizarre and tragic circus surrounding Eric Volz's trial and conviction.

Did a collector with a knack for making sensational discoveries really find the first document ever printed in America? Did Adolf Hitler actually pen a revealing multivolume set of diaries? Has Jesus of Nazareth's burial cloth survived the ages? Can the shocking true account of Abraham Lincoln's assassination be found in lost pages from his murderer's diary?

Napoleon famously observed that "history is a set of lies agreed upon," and Edward Steers Jr. investigates six of the most amazing frauds ever to gain wide acceptance in this engrossing book. Hoax examines the legitimacy of the Shroud of Turin, perhaps the most hotly debated relic in all of Christianity, and the fossils purported to confirm humanity's "missing link," the Piltdown Man. Steers also discusses two remarkable forgeries, the Hitler diaries and the "Oath of a Freeman," and famous conspiracy theories alleging that Franklin D. Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor and that the details of Lincoln's assassination are recorded in missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's journal.

The controversies that Steers presents show that there are two major factors involved in the success of a hoax or forgery -- greed and the desire to believe. Though all of the counterfeits and conspiracies featured in Hoax have been scientifically debunked, some remain fixed in many people's minds as truth. As Steers points out, the success of these frauds highlights a disturbing fact: If true history fails to entertain the public, it is likely to be ignored or forgotten.

At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Mafialand is a revelatory and dramatic true-life thriller spanning much of the twentieth century, a page-turning chronicle of an elaborate Mafia plan to 'invade' Europe using 1960s London as a bridgehead.

The capital city of the Swinging Sixties was also a world of gambling, guns and gangsters. Several veterans of the era are astonished that they survived it and some feel protected enough - now that most of the killers are themselves dead - to reveal to bestselling author Douglas Thompson the details and secrets of one of history's greatest criminal conspiracies, and of how world-champion boxer Freddie Mills really died.

Mafialand (previously published as Shadowland) recounts events from the viewpoint of the pawns as well as the kingmakers. Brutal, terrifying and intrigue-packed, it is an account of the Mob's Machiavellian global manipulation of governments and officials. All the big players of Mob history are here, controlled by the gangster genius Meyer Lansky, but so are the hit men, the fixers, the hoodlums and the wiseguys.

In 1988 a troubled young man and his flamboyant mother were arrested for murdering a wealthy widow in her New York City mansion. Suddenly, America was transfixed by a pair of real-life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her twenty-three-year-old son Kenny.

But the most chilling story of all was never told—until now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived forty years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away.

As a child Kent watched his mother destroy his hardworking father, Ed Walker, and then—with Kent's painful collusion—snare what Sante called "my millionaire." When she married seemingly respectable real-estate developer Ken Kimes, it was a match made in hell.

For the next two decades Kent's mother and stepfather indulged in a globetrotting orgy of criminal behaviour.

Kent, their would-be recruit, was privy to the family business—torching houses, defrauding friends, crashing White When Kent's half-brother, Kenny was born, Kent was twelve years old—old enough to know that he was his younger sibling's only protector. Kent tried desperately to save Kenny from his mother's sinister bidding. His failure haunts him to this day.