by Erik Larson

If You’ve Read: Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag



Try: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson



Who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? As good as the fictional ones often are, this is one particular instance where real life is far stranger and unbelievable than virtually anything you’ll find in a novel. Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City traces one of America’s most notorious serial killers, Dr. H. H. Holmes. Holmes crafted a multi-room torture chamber in his sprawling home set along the grounds of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which unsurprisingly came to be known as the murder castle. Holmes may have claimed as many as twenty-seven victims before being hanged in 1896.