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Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A “necessary and brilliant” (NPR) exploration of our cultural fascination with true crime told through four “enthralling” (The New York Times Book Review) narratives of obsession.
In Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe links four criminal roles—Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. From a frustrated and brilliant heiress crafting crime-scene dollhouses to a young woman who became part of a Manson victim’s family, from a landscape architect in love with a convicted murderer to a Columbine fangirl who planned her own mass shooting, these women are alternately mesmerizing, horrifying, and sympathetic. A revealing study of women’s complicated relationship with true crime and the fear and desire it can inspire, together these stories provide a window into why many women are drawn to crime narratives—even as they also recoil from them.
Monroe uses these four cases to trace the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. Combining personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the 20th and 21st centuries, Savage Appetites is a “corrective to the genre it interrogates” (The New Statesman), scrupulously exploring empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of crime.
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“She zooms in on characters who fall into those familiar narrative tropes. In doing so, she sketches an unconventional history of some of the twenty-first century’s most notable and horrific crimes.”
— The Nation
Quotes
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“Enthralling…Monroe zeroes in on the aftermath of murder, on the morbid curiosity that draws eager civilians toward the crime scene and catapults them into starring roles.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Monroe explores how a vicarious interest in violent crime transformed the lives of four women—and how our collective interest in such crimes has shaped American culture.”
— Boston Globe -
“A new, necessary, and brilliant book.”
— NPR -
“An engrossing look at a counterintuitive yet well-established phenomenon.”
— Publisher Weekly
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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Esquire pick of the Best Books of Summer
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Amazing Books Coming Out This Summer
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A Literary Hub Pick of Most Anticipated Books of 2019
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About Rachel Monroe
Rachel Monroe is currently a writer and volunteer firefighter living in Marfa, Texas. She’s written about #vanlife for the New Yorker; a romantic con man for the Atlantic, pick-up artists for New York magazine; child abductions on the Navajo Nation for Esquire; and a small-town quilting scandal for Texas Monthly. Her work has appeared in The Best American Travel Writing 2018, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, the Believer, and elsewhere. She is the author of Savage Appetites.
About Jayme Mattler
Gibson Frazier is an audiobook narrator and an actor who has performed with such distinguished off-Broadway theater companies as the Civilians, Les Freres Corbusier, the Vineyard, the Cherry Lane, New Georges, the Foundry, and Clubbed Thumb. He is a founding member of the Los Angeles–based theater company Buffalo Nights. He has been named as one of the Village Voice’s favorite actors.