An entire world of fascinating historical crime remains unfamiliar to all but devoted scholars of the subject- horrific murders that were, in their day, genuine cultural phenomena, dominating headlines and exerting a powerful grip on the public imagination. Generally these crimes contained some particularly nightmarish element--a taste of "the sublime of horror," as one nineteenth-century journalist put it. Sometimes before fading into obscurity, they inspired literature like Poe's masterpiece The Tell-Tale Heart. In this riveting collection, Harold Schechter reimagines scores of the most sensational murders that in their day shocked the nation. With exacting, chilling detail, Schechter's carefully researched narrative reconstructions bring to vivid life these scandalous crimes. AMERICA'S MOST COLD-BLOODED! In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who's gotten ink for spilling blood, there's a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America's most cold-blooded you'll meet . Robert Irwin, "The Mad Sculptor"- He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved-but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead. . Peter Robinson, "The Tell-Tale Heart Killer"- It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan. . Anton Probst, "The Monster in the Shape of a Man"- The ax-murdering immigrant's systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later. . Edward H. Ruloff, "The Man of Two Lives"- A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to "mastermind." Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers-the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others-span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in "murder ballads" and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows-but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they'll no longer be forgotten.