Mississippi

When the white supremacist Richard Barrett was murdered, “a young black man, Vincent McGee, was accused and convicted of the killing. Supposed motive: Mr. McGee’s anger at being underpaid for maintenance work Mr. Barrett had hired him to do. But the situation was so full of unanswered questions that it brought out Mr. Safran’s inner Truman Capote.”

Missouri

Michael W. Cuneo, “Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption”

In an area of the Ozarks blighted by poverty and crime, a local Vietnam vet went on a killing spree. Cuneo decided to find out why.

Montana

“Krakauer looks at the University of Montana, the local police and the prosecutor’s office through the eyes of five women who reported rapes or attempted rapes between 2010 and 2012.”

Nebraska

Gregg Olsen, “Abandoned Prayers: The Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession and Amish Secrets”

Eli Stutzman was a respected Amish farmer. He was also, as it turns out, a murderer.

Nevada

“Viewed in the proper perspective, Pileggi’s story is a morality tale about two men who tried to begin their lives anew by moving to Las Vegas, that ‘city with no memory,’ Pileggi calls it, ‘the nation’s only morality car wash.’ One of the men was brains, the other muscle, but each left his lasting mark on America’s gambling capital.”

New Hampshire

Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff, “ Judgment Ridge

“The murders of Half and Susanne Zantop, popular professors at Dartmouth, stunned the residents of somnolent Hanover, N.H., where only four murders had been committed in the last century.”

New Jersey

“In 2003, the world discovered what a night nurse named Charles Cullen had been doing during the preceding 16 years. He had killed a judge, a priest and an unknown but large number of other people. He may have been the most prolific serial killer in history.”

New Mexico

“Two buddies on a camping trip wound up stranded in the desert. They became so desperate that Raffi Kodikian stabbed David Coughlin in the heart, purportedly as an act of mercy killing. The setting was Rattlesnake Canyon in New Mexico, described here as a crack in the landscape and ‘a moral fracture as well.’”