News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

Crime and trials feature heavily in this latest crop of popular non-fiction picks. Also included are some powerful real-life stories of human resilience in the face of adversity.

Trial by ambush : the prosecutions of David Bain / Joe Karam.
“This will be an important book for a number of reasons. David Bain’s third trial for the murder of his family took 55 days, and while the media covered the trial extensively, of necessity they presented to the public only a fraction of the evidence the jury heard and saw. Subsequent to the trial, evidence that was held to be inadmissible by the court and either suppressed or not heard by the jury has been given wide media coverage. As a result, on the issue of David Bain’s guilt or innocence, the public remains deeply divided.” – (adapted from Book jacket summary)

Justice and the enemy : from the Nuremberg trials to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed / William Shawcross.
“Since the Nuremberg Trials of 1945, lawful nations have struggled to impose justice around the world, especially when confronted by tyrannical and genocidal regimes. But in Cambodia, the USSR, China, Bosnia, Rwanda, and beyond, justice has been served haltingly if at all in the face of colossal inhumanity. International Courts are not recognized worldwide. There is not a global consensus on how to punish transgressors. (In this book), the bestselling author–son of a lead prosecutor at Nuremberg–considers the issues surrounding the pending trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and asks: How does society deal lawfully with the lawless?” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Trafficked : the terrifying true story of a British girl forced into the sex trade / Sophie Hayes.
“When Sophie Hayes was 24, she went to Italy to visit the man who had become her best friend. They spent an idyllic weekend together and Sophie began to realise that she had found a man she might be able to love and trust. But as she got ready to fly back to England, everything changed…” – (adapted from Book jacket summary)

The Napoleon of crime : the life and times of Adam Worth, the real Moriarty / Ben Macintyre.
“Adam Worth started his career as a professional deserter during the American Civil War…. His most audacious coup – the theft of the world’s most valuable painting – was an act which cemented his notoriety around the world and earned him an enduring place in fiction, as the model for Conan Doyle’s evil genius Professor Moriarty.” – (adapted from Book jacket summary)

Abandoned women : Scottish convicts exiled beyond the seas / Lucy Frost.
“From the crowded tenements of Edinburgh to the Female Factory nestling in the shadow of Mt Wellington, dozens of Scottish women convicts were exiled to Van Diemen’s Land with their young children. This is a rich and evocative account of the lives of women at the bottom of society two hundred years ago.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A child called ‘it’ / Dave Pelzer.A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive
“Originally published: Omaha, Neb.: Omaha Press, 1993.” (Syndetics summary) “As a child Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother, a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave: no longer a boy but an ‘it’” – (adapted from Book jacket summary)