Alcatraz, that most famous of American correctional facilities, has been a national park longer than it was a Federal prison. It housed Federal inmates from 1933 to 1963, a mere 30 years. The island’s history goes back much further. Its name comes from the Spanish for Island of the Pelicans, though the birds no longer nest there. It was reserved as a military installation in 1850 and served as a military prison from the Civil War until 1946.
“The Rock” was for the worst of the worst in the Federal Prison system. The waters of San Francisco Bay separated escapees from freedom. There were two well-known escape attempts; in 1946, prisoners overpowered guards and took them as hostages, in what would be later the Battle of Alcatraz. This was immortalized in 1947’s Brute Force, starring Burt Lancaster, a film very violent and gritty for its day. It’s also highly fictionalized, but worth hunting down. The more famous escape was fictionalized in the Clint Eastwood vehicle, Escape from Alcatraz, and it was recently proved, using tide tables and by tracking the currents, that the three men who took rafts into the bay might have survived. There were reported sightings of the escapees, particularly at the funeral of one prisoner’s mother, that give credence to the idea. And with the San Francisco skyline so tantalizingly close across the water, inmates were bound to have dreams of freedom on their minds.
The story seems familiar enough. We’ve all seen the wealthy kid who learns that happiness can’t be bought; the sibling who doesn’t want to enter the family business; the abusive marriage that seemed so perfect for a brief moment way back when; the feuding apartment neighbors who argue over small problems; the unhappy suburban wife who takes her own life; the severed limbs found floating in trash bags in the water; the body found murdered, execution-style; the lying criminal without a glimpse of true remorse; the still-missing wife who just happened to fight with her husband the night she disappeared. But line all these recognizable stories up next to each other and link them all with the same man, and well, that’s a bit different. Welcome to The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst – it’s a story that spans four decades, three murders, and one disturbingly wealthy man still freely walking the streets today.
A Root Awakening by Kate Collins is the 16th cozy in the Flower Shop Mystery Series featuring shop owner Abby Knight and her new husband Marco (available February 3, 2015).
In Among Thieves, a standalone thriller by John Clarkson, a group of Brooklyn ex-cons rally together to take down a corrupt brokerage firm where millions of dollars are on the line (available February 3, 2015).
If you're looking for the perfect gift to add to the cupboards of the whacky foodie in your life that has a thing for both ketchup and crime—or want to add it to your own—we might have the perfect thing: The Condiment Gun!
Who says bad guys don't have a heart? It seems a guilty conscience prompted some thieves who stole a cargo trailer and camping gear from a Montana Boy Scout troop to return the stolen equipment back to them. How nice. 
Welcome back, indeed. This was the most coherent and compelling episode of Gotham to date. Not only did we get the usual surface fun—Oswald and Mama Kapelput, Fish being gleefully defiant—but the story reached far deeper in simultaneously giving Jim and victory and a defeat.
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey is the 18th humorous escapade of Florida serial killer Serge Storm, and this time, after binging on a collection of legal films, he's ready to try his own hand at upholding the law (available January 27, 2015).
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Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita, Ada, or Ardor) is not what one would call a traditional mystery story. You won’t find it among the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Father Brown, or Phillip Marlowe in the mystery section of your local bookstore. Instead it’s shelved in the classics section with Ulysses, The Adventures of Augie March, Mrs. Dalloway, and other noted literary titles (Pale Fire came in at #53 on the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels). And, yet, I can’t think of a greater mystery.
Crazy for You by Michael Fleeman is the true story of the murder of a husband and father from Atlanta and the secrets that spilled out in the wake of his death (available February 3, 2015).
