Books about Serial Killers (Nonfiction)
Last updated: November 12, 2024
Here we've listed all our true crime books about serial killers that have been recommended on Five Books. The concept of a serial killer is so terrifying, it has inspired dozens of novels but these books are about real serial killers. Or, in the case of The Five, it's about the victims, who are often ignored as the greater notoriety of the perpetrators gets more attention.
“This is another horrifying tale, this time of a serial killer leading a seemingly ordinary life in a terraced house in West London. As in her other books, what Summerscale does so well is bring to life the era in which the events are happening, in this case the 1950s. The lives of the murdered women, of the tabloid journalist who covers the crimes, of the perpetrator and his wife, of the hapless neighbour who is executed by mistake, all feel very real.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction Books of Fall 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“It tells two intertwined narratives: one is this really horrific serial killing in 19th-century France; it also tells you about the origins of forensic science and policing.” Read more...
The best books on Forensic Science
Jim Fraser, Medical Scientist
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
by Hallie Rubenhold
🏆 Winner of the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction
“Hallie Rubenhold, the author of The Five, has researched the lives of these five women absolutely brilliantly. It’s a great piece of detective work into some very obscure sources…She really disproves what the ‘Ripperologist’ literature says about the victims and recovers these women’s lives with a good deal of sympathy. It’s a moving book. It’s humane, it’s scholarly, and it challenges, from a feminist position, a whole library of books on Jack the Ripper.” Read more...
The Best History Books: the 2020 Wolfson Prize shortlist
Richard Evans, Historian
“It is an astonishing story about one of the earliest known and most infamous serial killers in the United States—a guy calling himself Doctor Holmes. It takes place during the 1890s and there are these two parallel stories woven together. One is the construction of the Chicago Fair of 1893—this great World Fair, and all the marvel and wonder and engineering and ingenuity and innocence involving the construction. But there is also this really brutal psychopathic serial killer plotting and using the Fair to lure young women to this house of horror, this chamber that he has built in the basement of a Bates’ Motel type place. It is a classic story of good and evil playing out side by side.” Read more...
David Grann, Journalist
“Alison really opens up what might be in the mind of Napper. And we can only speculate, but it’s a very dark place, a very strange world, where there’s this connection between sex and horrific violence and humiliation and torture. It’s pretty horrible.” Read more...
The best books on Forensic Science
Jim Fraser, Medical Scientist
The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
by Eileen Horne & Gwen Adshead
The Devil You Know is a series of 12 encounters with a range of offenders: serial killers, arsonists, stalkers, and other people who are usually seen as ‘monsters’.
