Free from the author via KDP Select @
Amazon: (linkage for the lot)
Against Her Will: The Senseless Murder of Kelly Ann Tinyes by Ronald J. Watkins (
Wikipedia), a true crime account originally published by Kensington's Pinnacle imprint in 1995 and reprinted straight up until 2011.
Richard and Victoria Tinyes feared the worst when their thirteen year old daughter Kelly Ann vanished from their quiet suburban community of Valley Stream, New York, on March 3, 1999. But the nightmare to come was worse than they could ever imagine. Only five doors away, in the home of John and Elizabeth Golub, police found Kelly Ann's body stuffed in a plastic garbage bag. She'd been brutally beaten, stabbed, strangled, and mutilated. After weeks of intense investigation, police arrested the Golubs twenty-one-year-old son, Robert - a reclusive young man obsessed with bodybuilding and given to fits of rage. The sensational trial and subsequent conviction of Robert Golub shocked the nation and tore the once peaceful community apart. Neighbors took sides. So did the media. And no one who lived on Horton Road would ever be the same.
Unknown Seas: The Portuguese Captains and the Passage to India, a repeat of his nautical trade history, originally out from John Murray in 2003, which won some sort of maritime writing prize, IIRC.
In the fifteenth century, the world beyond Europe began to emerge from myth and legend, and it was the Portuguese who led the way. They founded an empire that stretched from China to Brazil, and the peak of their achievement was Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to India. Still today, landmarks, coastlines and currents around the world bear Portuguese names, and the oceans of the world are one vast watery grave for Portuguese seamen. For those who sailed beyond the known world life was harsh beyond measure. Yet the discoverers were not lured only by gold, precious stones and spices -- they were driven to colonise, to enslave, to bring their religion to the unconverted. Reconstructing journeys from contemporary logs and papers, this absorbing and wonderfully vivid account brings to life the captains driving their small ships, the ordinary seamen and the far-off, not always friendly traders they met.
Evil Intentions: How an Act of Kindness Led to Senseless Murder, a repeat of his true crime account originally out from HarperCollins' William Morrow imprint in 1992.
On January 29, 1981 young Suzanne Rossetti locked herself out of her car in Phoenix on the way to meeting her parents. Two drifters offered to help her out. One was an escaped convict, the other had just been released from prison. Within minutes they had abducted Suzanne who they then subjected to a night of rape and terror before brutally murdering her in Arizona's Superstition Mountains. This is an account of murder, told from all sides, such as you've never read before.
Watkins also offers some self-published mystery/thriller tales, if you're interested.