Michael Benson: 46 books

In The Hands Of A Sadist… First, he bound and beat his girlfriend, a 43-year-old librarian. Then he went after her teenaged daughter-warning her, "Scream and I will kill you both"-before knocking her unconscious. When the teenager awoke, he proceded to rape her. And in a final horrifying...

Thanks to the photographic output of a small squadron of interplanetary spacecraft, we have awakened to the beauty and splendor of the solar system. Since Michael Benson’s masterful book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, new, more powerful cameras in probes with greatly improved maneuverability...

The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke—****“a tremendous explication of a tremendous film….Breathtaking” (The Washington Post). Fifty years ago a...

In Why the Grateful Dead Matter, veteran writer and lifelong Deadhead Michael Benson argues that the Grateful Dead are not simply a successful rock-and-roll band but a phenomenon central to American culture. He defends the proposition that the Grateful Dead are, in fact, a musical movement as transformative...

Enemies On American Soil The shocking agenda of an organization more dangerous to America than any terrorist group. Inspired by FDR, funded by the USA, and safely sheltered on America's hallowed soil, the United Nations was conceived as a neutral, global peacekeeping body. Yet, from...

It was one of the biggest crime stories of the decade—two deadly killers, desperate and on the run. After months of planning, Ricky Matt and David Sweat cut, chopped, coerced, and connived their way out of a maximum-security prison in the wilderness of upstate New York and managed to elude police...

The shocking true story of  the most ruthless and deadly mob boss in the annals of the American Mafia. ** ** In the golden age of organized crime, Carmine “The Snake” Persico was the King of the Streets. The defacto boss of the Colombo Mafia family since the 1970s, he oversaw gang wars, murders,...

The chilling true story of the Spahalski brothers, who looked alike, acted alike—and killed alike . . . Robert Bruce Spahalski and Stephen Spahalski were identical twins. Same hair, same eyes, same thirst for blood. Stephen was the first brother to kill—by viciously bashing in storeowner...

Today you’d call Ballantyne suburban, but back then, at the start of the summer of 1966, it was country — just a cluster of houses, some of them shacks, on or near Ballantyne Road, in the Town of Chili, NY. And while June 25 started like any other day it would end in a nightmare. In The Devil...

In recent years, the lifecourse perspective has become a popular theoretical orientation toward crime. Yet despite its growing importance in the field of criminology, most textbooks give it only cursory treatment. Crime and the Lifecourse: An Introduction by Michael L. Benson provides a comprehensive...

Discover the darker side of Wexford with this collection of spine-chilling tales from across the county. Written by the founder of Wexford Paranormal, this spooky selection takes the reader behind the scenes as the group investigates a variety of haunted locations across the county, explaining the...

"Benson is a master of true crime." --Robert Scott Deadly Dreams Joyce Wishart was living out her life's dream, running her own art gallery in sunny Sarasota, Florida. But that dream ended in nightmare when a deranged drifter named Elton Brutus Murphy walked through the door...

A PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN . . . Denise Amber Lee was a 21-year-old happily married mother of two little boys. She had her whole life ahead of her. . .until an intruder broke into her Florida home. Within a few short hours she was savagely terrorized, murdered, and buried naked in a shallow grave...

In the 1970s, Joe DeLamielleure led a Buffalo Bills offensive line affectionately called the Electric Company, because they turned the power up. A starter from the first game of his rookie season in 1973, DeLamielleure led the way to the first 2,000-yard season in NFL history. After that, the feats...