Showing results for "obsession" in Biographies & Memoirs

Journalist Nicole Madigan was stalked for over three years. The relentless and debilitating experience wreaked havoc in her personal and professional life, leaving her trapped in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Nicole uses her own story as an entry point to examine the psychology behind stalking behaviours and their impact on victim-survivors. Whether by a stranger, acquaintance or former partner, stalking can have a catastrophic effect on a victim-survivor's mental, social and financial wellbeing. At its worst, it can lead to physical violence, even death.

Innocent Blood is the true story of Charles Hatcher and his life of crime - a powerful and blood-chilling glimpse into the darkness between sanity and madness. It also chronicles a justice system gone wrong. Throughout his criminal career, Hatcher was able to fool dozens of psychiatrists, who repeatedly failed to identify him as a multiple murderer. Hatcher's astonishing skill was not just in his ability to murder and escape imprisonment. He became an expert at manipulating the criminal justice system.

Chef and restaurateur Ben Shewry knows obsession well. Whether it's crispy-edged lasagne, saltwater crocodile ribs or the perfect potato, obsession is what motivates him and what makes him tick. It's also what has propelled his Melbourne restaurant Attica into the league of the most innovative, acclaimed dining experiences in the world, and one of the most vital in Australian history.

With an entirely fresh take on presidential history, James Swanson, author of the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award-winning Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, shares the story of his lifelong obsession with the murder of America’s most revered president and the frantic hunt for his assassin. The renowned Lincoln scholar treats listeners to an audible “walking tour” of the people, places, events, and artifacts that tell the story of those horrible days in April 1865.

When she was eleven years old, Serena Kutchinsky’s life changed completely. Her father Paul, who owned the high-end jewellery company the House of Kutchinsky, was seized by a wild idea. He wanted to build the world’s largest jewelled egg to rival any of Fabergé’s. The ambition consumed him.

During his nearly fifteen-year reign of terror, Ronald Lloyd Bailey’s depraved obsession with sexual sadism held communities across southeast Michigan in a shroud of fear. From the early 1970’s to the mid-1980’s, the former patient at one of Michigan’s foremost psychiatric hospitals, abducted as many as fifteen teens and over time became a sadistic serial killer.

She was a beautiful, gifted descendant of Lady Astor. But Elizabeth Haysom was also a spoiled, willful daughter of privilege. He was the brilliant young son of a German diplomat. But his love for Elizabeth would draw Jens Soering into a web of madness and murder. When Elizabeth's parents were found savagely butchered in their elegant Virginia country home, she and Jens fled to Europe - igniting an international manhunt that spanned three continents.

Joyce Aparo seemed to be the perfect single mother. She doted on her sixteen-year-old daughter, Karin, encouraging her musical ability and lavishing affection on her. But behind closed doors, Joyce was a terror. For thirteen years, she beat Karin savagely and demeaned her relentlessly. When Karin met the troubled yet brilliant Dennis Coleman, the two fell head-over-heels. But Joyce disapproved—so she had to die.

On any Sunday morning in the Florida Redlands, Dee Casteel might have served you pancakes at the IHOP. She was a hard-working, cheerful waitress, one of the nicest people you'd ever want to know. She was also a three-bottle-a-day alcoholic, hopelessly in love with the IHOP's manager, Allen Bryant. Bryant wanted his live-in lover, IHOP owner Art Venecia, dead. And Dee Casteel helped him to arrange it.

A Hollywood starlet on a smash-hit sitcom enjoys rising fame, unaware that her greatest fan is hell-bent on meeting his crush. A gameshow winner turns to writing books. When one is given a scathing review, he tracks down the reviewer with bloody results. Men keep turning up at a newlywed's home convinced that she has placed a Craigslist ad for a rough fantasy roleplay. Stalkers takes you into the twisted world of cyberstalking, catfishing, rejected suitors, jealous exes, and celebrity stalkers, and the devastating impact their obsessions can have on their victims.

In 1948, a young Australian mining engineer named Ben Carlin set out to do the impossible: circumnavigate the globe, by land and sea, in a single vehicle. The vehicle in question was an amphibious jeep developed by the U.S. Army, which Carlin christened Half-Safe, after a deodorant slogan. It was a mechanical mongrel that was supposed to move with equal ease across land and water but in practice wasn't much good for either one. Undaunted, Carlin and his wife Elinore set off across the Atlantic Ocean with dreams of fame and fortune, and of carving a small notch in history.

A history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his 'taker' or 'receiver' device for his family on their front lawn. The device is meant to capture 10 to 12 images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world.

Crimes fueled by emotions. When it comes to the emotions, people can react in strange and unexpected ways. Whether it's a heart hurt by unrequited love, or a lover so passionate they'll stop at nothing to get their way - even the most mild-mannered soul can suddenly flip, becoming a vengeful spirit with dark intentions. From the ancient Greek myth of Jason and Medea to Shakespeare's Othello, themes dealing with deeply felt emotions have persisted. But unlike mythology or fiction, The Best New True Crime Stories contains stories from real life.

Author Benjamin Lorr wandered into a yoga studio - and fell down a rabbit hole. Hell-Bent explores a fascinating, often surreal world at the extremes of American yoga. Benjamin Lorr walked into his first yoga studio on a whim, overweight and curious, and quickly found the yoga reinventing his life. He was studying Bikram Yoga (or "hot yoga") when a run-in with a master and competitive yoga champion led him into an obsessive subculture - a group of yogis for whom eight hours of practice a day in 110-degree heat was just the beginning. So begins a journey.

In Capturing Kahanamoku, historian Michael Rossi draws on archival research and firsthand interviews to weave together a truly fascinating narrative—at once an absorbing account of obsession, a cautionary tale about the subjectivity of science and the afterlives of eugenics, a meditation on humanity, and the story of a man whose personhood shunned classification.

Hell-Bent explores a fascinating, often surreal world at the extremes of American yoga. Benjamin Lorr walked into his first yoga studio on a whim, overweight and curious, and quickly found the yoga reinventing his life. He was studying Bikram Yoga (or “hot yoga”) when a run-in with a master and competitive yoga champion led him into an obsessive subculture—a group of yogis for whom eight hours of practice a day in 110- degree heat was just the beginning.

A podcast exploring true crime, the eerie, the bizarre, and unique historic tales.

On June 4, 2008, Travis Victor Alexander was murdered. Jodi Arias, whom Alexander had been dating on and off, was the main suspect. As friends had stated to police, Arias had been stalking him, accessing his Facebook account, and slashing his car tires. In Jodi Arias: A Lethal Obsession, acclaimed journalist Dylan Howard goes into all the gory details of what happened to Alexander and the reasons behind Arias’s heinous act.

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life.

A Family Obsession is the fascinating result of Harry and Jamie sitting round the kitchen table, where they discuss, debate, select and celebrate all aspects of the game that have inspired them. Who are the men who impacted their careers and fired that all-consuming passion for football? This is a deep dive into the matches, the players, the managers and the changes that have spanned their two generations.