Quick, readable intro to Shake­speare's life and plays, setting him in the context of the religious and political turmoils of the late Eliz­a­bethan and early Jacobean eras. You can't do justice to Shake­speare in an hour, of course, Most useful if you didn't already know anything about him or his work.

Female sex slaves, Ukrainian oligarchs, an obsessive silver thief, white-collar criminals facing jail time, virus writers, self-de­struc­tive surgeons, and the Madrid bombers, are just some of the stories in this collection of non-fiction writing on crime and criminals, published in various magazines in 2005.

The book is bracketed by two pieces by James Ellroy. In the foreword, he argues that "true-crime writing offers a less ki­neti­cized and more sobering set of thrills [than crime fic­tion]—chiefly couched in human revelation". In the concluding …continue.