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Reading recommendations for fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks across all reading levels.
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"On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship...
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Catch Me If You Can is the true story of Frank W. Abagnale—alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo—one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters, and escape artists in history.
In his brief but notorious criminal career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and copiloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as the supervising resident of a hospital, practiced law without a license, passed himself off as a sociology
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Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion through a fraud that lasted for decades. Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story-until now.In The...
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Without Lou Pearlman, there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no *NSYNC, and possibly no Justin Timberlake. In the late 1990s, Pearlman's boy bands ushered out guitar-and-angst-driven grunge music, and *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys began to dominate the television and radio airwaves. At the core of this squeaky-clean pop revolution was a sinister international fraud conceived by Pearlman, a husky huckster who first honed his crooked business skills...
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Nobody can know them all, certainly not Rudy Kurniawan, who never set eyes on Burgundy. In the end, it was his imprecise knowledge of a particular domaine's history that tripped him up. It happened amid extreme merriment, one spring evening, in New York. The mistakes that he made, minuscule and highly arcane, upended his life. Also upended would be the practices and pleasures of seekers after rare old wine.
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You’ve heard of the scheme. Now comes the man behind it. In Mitchell Zuckoff's exhilarating book, the first nonfiction account of Charles Ponzi, we meet the charismatic rogue who launched the most famous and extraordinary scam in the annals of American finance.
It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920,...
It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920,...
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"The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings....
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Two Pulitzer-finalist Wall Street Journal reporters document the true story of how a young social climber orchestrated one of history's biggest financial heists, exposing the secret nexus of elite wealth, banking, Hollywood and politics. 75,000 first printing.
"What does it take to steal $5 billion? In 2009, with the dust yet to settle on the financial crisis, a mild-mannered Wharton grad set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one...
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"A sardonic chronicle of how conservatism turned into a racketeering enterprise - and why Donald Trump became the living emblem of the American right's moral decay. The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential...
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"She might be one of the greatest con artists of all time. Cassie Chadwick conned millions of dollars out of banks by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. It was a simple but brilliant con that reflects the ethos and the high-flying greed of the Gilded Age."-- Provided by publisher.
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The first insider account straight from Trump University, by one of its principal instructors. While the President of the United States seems to be able to shock with each new tweet, and no depth seems too low for him to sink to, we've yet to hear from someone who was at the heart of one of his signature outrages--Trump University, the infamous and elaborate scheme to con hundreds of earnest citizens out of their hard-earned dollars. Until now. Stephen...
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Atria Books
Pub. Date
2024.
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"Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class. We've all heard of Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and LuLaRoe, but few know the nefarious way they and countless other multilevel marketing (MLM) companies prey on desperate Americans struggling to make ends meet. When factories...
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"When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer...
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Publisher
Grand Central
Pub. Date
2024
Description
"There is no Ethan" catalogs Akbari's experiences as both victim and investigator of a catfishing scheme to emotionally con women. She joins with two other women to track down the perpetrator and explores what it means to live in a world where technology mediates relationships and truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms.
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Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Pub. Date
[2019]
Description
"In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only 5 percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream. Imagine Kremen’s surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had...
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Publisher
Crown
Pub. Date
[2018]
Description
"The spellbinding tale of hustler Edgar Laplante--the king of Jazz Age con artists--who becomes the victim of his own dangerous game. Edgar Laplante was a smalltime grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White...