Jessica Garrison & Sarah Weinman

On the surface, 58-year-old Jose Martinez didn’t seem evil or even that remarkable — just a regular neighbor, good with cars and devoted to his family. But in between taking his children to Disneyland and visiting his mom, Martinez was also one of the most skilled professional killers police had ever seen. A page-turning, suspenseful story of a drug cartel hit man who got away with murder after murder in California’s Central Valley for three decades, award-winning reporter Jessica Garrison’s The Devil’s Harvest (Hachette) reveals how the criminal justice system fails our most vulnerable immigrant communities.

The appeal of true-crime stories has never been higher. With podcasts like My Favorite Murder and In the Dark, bestsellers like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and Furious Hours, and TV hits like American Crime Story and Wild Wild Country, the cultural appetite for stories of real people doing terrible things is insatiable. In Unspeakable Acts (Ecco), Sarah Weinman, the acclaimed author of The Real Lolita, brings together an exemplary collection of recent true-crime tales. She culls some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today — showcasing writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.

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