The Last Stone

A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation

In the vein of classics like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and modern hits like Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness and Beverly Lowry's Who Killed These Girls? (Knopf 2016), The Last Stone is a riveting work of true crime that provides insights into the nature of American violence and the shortcomings of the US criminal justice system. It's much more than an enthralling account of devastating murder—it's also a captivating portrait of the incredible tactics that a cold case team used to coax a pathologically lying criminal into confessing to a forty-year-old crime.

Mark first reported on the Lyons Sisters when he was assigned the story as a 23-year-old journalist for a small Baltimore-area paper. Mark's passion for and history with this case is palpable on the page.

This is Bowden's first true crime book in almost two decades, and it couldn't have come at a better moment, as interest in true crime has been skyrocketing in recent years. The story of the Lyons sisters and the discovery of Lloyd Welch's crimes is reminiscent of hit true crime podcasts like AMP's In the Dark, NPR's Serial, and Sword and Scale which have had over 7 million, 19 million, and 1 million downloads respectively.

Bowden is currently pitching a documentary series to accompany The Last Stone to several networks. Given the success of similar series, such as Netflix's documentary on Amanda Knox or Making a Murderer, a series based on The Last Stone is promising.

Mark Bowden's 2017 book Hue 1968 was a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Indie bestseller. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History. Longlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in nonfiction. Named by the Wall Street Journal and Publishers Lunch as one of the top 10 nonfiction books of 2017, an Amazon top 100 book of the year, one of the Washington Post's 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2017, one of the Christian Science Monitor's best 30 books of 2017, an ALA notable book of the year, and a Kirkus Reviews and Hudson Booksellers best book of the year in nonfiction. A GoodReads Choice Award Best History First Round pick. A Military Times and Chicago Public Library best book of the year. And selected for a Kindle Daily Deal in January 2018 (selling 3,913 copies the week of the deal).

Bowden, a leading feature writer for the Atlantic and Vanity Fair, has regularly hit the New York Times bestseller list since Black Hawk Down (Grove, 1999). The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden debuted on the list at #7. His most recent book, a collection of pieces called The Three Battles of Wanat, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month in nonfiction.

Black Hawk Down was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction; Killing Pablo won the Overseas Press Club’s 2001 Cornelius Ryan Award as the book of the year; and Guests of the Ayatollah was listed by Newsweek as one of “The 50 Best Books for Our Times.”

Bowden’s books continue to backlist strongly for us. We have another collection of pieces, focused on Bowden’s crime reporting, under contract, to be published in 2020 that will follow this nicely.