The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries

by Mitzi Szereto

Overview

Unsolved Crimes, Cold Cases, and Mysterious Stories

“Haunting and heartbreaking, The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries lives up to its title, and is a must-read for true crime aficionados...”—Alex Finlay, author of Every Last Fear and The Night Shift

#1 New Release in Medical Forensic Psychology

This collection of cold cases examines crimes that are dark, scary, mysterious, and still waiting to be solved.

Unsolved crimes, unanswered questions. Crimes are meant to be solved. But what happens when they’re not? For the individuals involved—from the victims and their families to police investigators—this is the most frustrating part of all. For them there’s no resolution, no justice, no tidy boxes in which to pack away all the bits and pieces of a puzzle that finally links together. Instead, they are only left with questions that may never get answered. 

Chilling cold cases & unexplained mysteries. The Best New True Crime Stories examines a fascinating assortment of unsolved murders, unsolved crimes, serial killers, and mysterious stories from around the world, from the past to the contemporary. Like the previous anthologies in The Best New True Crime Stories series, this volume contains all-new and original nonfiction accounts penned by international writers from across the literary spectrum, from true crime and crime fiction to journalism. Contributors include Dean Jobb, Joan Renner, Cathy Pickens, Lindsey Danis, Anya Wassenberg, and many others.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A varied assortment of unsolved crimes and mysterious murders
• Murder cases to solve, told by writers from around the world
• France’s “Valley of Hell” mystery and the story of Austria’s most wanted

If you like books about murder cases or liked The Book of Cold Cases, If You Tell, or Unmasked, you’ll love The Best New True Crime Stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642509410
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Series:	The Best New True Crime Stories
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mitzi Szereto is an internationally acclaimed author and anthology editor of fiction and nonfiction books spanning multiple genres. She has written numerous novels within her The Best True Crime Stories series. She's also written crime fiction, gothic fiction, horror, cozy mystery, satire, sci-fi/fantasy, and general fiction and nonfiction. Her anthology, Erotic Travel Tales 2, is the first anthology of erotic fiction to feature a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Mitzi's Web TV channel "Mitzi TV" has attracted an international audience. The Web series segments have ranged from chats with Tiff Needell, Jimmy Choo, and her ursine sidekick, Teddy Tedaloo. Other on-screen credits include Mitzi portraying herself in the pseudo-documentary British film, "Lint: The Movie." She maintains a blog of personal essays at "Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto's Weblog." To learn more about Mitzi follow her on Twitter and Instagram @mitziszereto or visit her website at mitziszereto.com.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from “In a Field Outside of Edmonton” by Janel Comeau

It was the afternoon of August 3, 1997, and Kathy King couldn’t find her daughter.

Kathy, a registered social worker, had a regular weekly routine with her twenty-two-year-old daughter Caralyn, who preferred to go by “Cara.” Once a week, the pair would meet up at their usual spot, and Kathy would take her daughter out for a meal before buying her groceries and taking her clothes shopping. Cara had gotten off to a rough start in adulthood, and this was Kathy’s way of making sure her daughter always had the things she needed.

But on this particular day, Cara never turned up.

At first, Kathy didn’t worry. Like many young people her age, Cara struggled with time management and often keeping track of time. This was the late 1990s before there was a cellphone in every hand and an internet connection in every home—it simply wasn’t unusual to be out of contact with loved ones for hours, days, or even weeks on end. Kathy simply assumed their meeting had slipped her daughter’s mind.

But when Cara missed a scheduled court appearance two days later, Kathy began to worry. And when a friend of Cara’s reached out, saying she hadn’t seen or heard from Cara in several days, Kathy knew something was terribly wrong. She spent the next few days tracking down Cara’s friends and acquaintances to see if anyone knew where she was, but no one had heard from her since August 2.

On August 9, Kathy King walked into a police station to report her daughter missing.

To her surprise, police refused to take her report. Cara was a known sex worker who struggled with a cocaine addiction. At the time of her disappearance, she had been staying at a local women’s shelter. The outgoing, happy-go-lucky attitude that made Cara the light of her mother’s life had also led her to take some dangerous risks as a teenager, and she quickly fell in with the wrong crowd. She’d left home at eighteen and had begun working in the sex trade shortly afterward to feed her burgeoning addiction. By age twenty-two, she was bouncing between friends’ couches and beds in local women’s shelters, punctuated with occasional stays in psychiatric facilities to address mental health issues and drug-induced psychotic episodes. Her mother was sometimes able to secure apartments for her, but Cara’s ongoing struggles meant she was quickly evicted and back out on the streets.

To Kathy King, Cara was a beloved daughter experiencing some personal struggles, and her disappearance was an immediate cause for alarm. The police, who were familiar with Cara after arresting her twice for solicitation, did not treat her disappearance with nearly the same urgency. Kathy was told to check hospitals and jail cells, and turned away without a report being filed.

Two days later, Kathy was back. She had done as they asked, but had found no trace of Cara. Once again, however, police turned her away without taking a report. Although it had now been nine days since anyone had seen or spoken with Cara, police still believed there was no cause for concern. Without concrete evidence of foul play, they felt there was no need for the police to be involved.

Desperate, Kathy King began to investigate her daughter’s disappearance on her own. She took to the downtown streets her daughter was known to frequent, passing out homemade missing persons flyers and putting up posters with her daughter’s picture. No one came forward with information about Cara’s whereabouts.

Kathy returned to the police station. On August 23, she was finally given a file number for her daughter’s official missing persons case. She asked the officer who took the report about the next steps police would take in trying to locate her daughter.

“Now we wait for a body to turn up.”

Kathy asked if he was joking.

He wasn’t.

And as it turned out, they didn’t have to wait long.

Editorial Reviews

...The sixth in the long running series presented by master editor Mitzi Szereto.... The Best New True Crime Stories Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries is for those of us who love this genre.”
—Midwest Book Review

"Great book, highly recommended for all fans of crime stories, true or otherwise." 
—Readers' Favorite

“Haunting and heartbreaking, The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries lives up to its title, and is a must-read for true crime aficionados. It’s an ambitious collection of unsolved mysteries, spanning the globe and time—from France in the Roaring Twenties to Los Angeles in the 1960s to the Appalachian Trail in the 1990s, and beyond. The authors skillfully shed new light on long-forgotten murders, chronical a baffling and brazen art heist, and lay bare the systemic and societal failures in each case. But most of all, the authors honor the victims. Because maybe, just maybe, these renewed accounts will spawn new clues that will provide answers to grieving families, and perhaps even justice. I can’t stop thinking about these stories, and I highly recommend.”
—Alex Finlay, author of Every Last Fear and The Night Shift

“Ever since reading Megan Abbott’s The Song Is You, I can’t get enough of Jean Spangler, so I was thrilled to see the bizarre 1949 disappearance of the Hollywood bit actress turn up in Mitzi Szereto’s latest collection of unsolved true crimes. If you love history and mystery, you’ll love this book.”
—David Bushman, author of Murder at Teal’s Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks

“An unusually moving read. I was struck by the compassion and sensitivity with which the murders were described, as each of the authors felt a personal sympathy with and even a connection to the case.”
—Linda Stratmann, author of thirty true crime and crime fiction books, including her new series featuring a young Sherlock Holmes

“Quality literature always leaps from the pages when professional true crime writers dip quills into ink. This book is no exception. A great compilation of gut-wrenching cases giving ‘reader involvement and participation:’ the authors ‘talk to the reader’ not ‘at the reader,’ which is a style I encourage and thoroughly endorse. Well laid out. Dedicated research. This is a must-read book for all those interested in true crime.”
—Christopher Berry-Dee, criminologist; christopherberrydee.com

“Author and editor extraordinaire Mitzi Szereto has assembled an outstanding group of leading authors from throughout the world for this incredible collection—The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries. A truly fantastic anthology!”
—Dan Zupansky, author and host of True Murder

“People can’t seem to get enough of true crime stories these days, and I’m one of them. The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries, the sixth installment of Mitzi Szereto’s franchise, features award-winning writers Dean Jobb, Joan Renner, Cathy Pickens, Lindsey Danis, Janel Comeau, Anya Wassenberg, David Breakspear, Mitzi Szereto, and many others; the book features true crime stories from around the world.”
—Horror Fuel

“There are a lot of books about true crime and unsolved mysteries. However, this one has something I covet and not always find: the right tone…. The stories in Szereto’s book all run in perfect pace, are all very well-written, and all hit the right tone. All authors connect to their story and their victims. It will leave you thinking and that’s the hallmark of a great book. Highly recommended reading!”
—Defrosting Cold Cases

“Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries, edited by Mitzi Szereto, the sixth in the excellent The Best New True Crime Stories series.”
—Choice Magazine UK

“Do you just want to read something quickly before going to bed? This is your book. Do you want to binge-read some crime mysteries, but not necessarily have to be in it for the long haul? This is your book…. If you are into true crime and mysteries in any form, this is really a great book for you. The writing is good and, because it is a compilation book, there are lots of different styles of writers and lots of different stories to choose from.”
—Reading For Sanity Book Reviews

From the Publisher