Ann Rule has 33 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 16 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 564 ratings. The most-rated is The Stranger Beside Me.
The Stranger Beside Me
Summary
Ann Rule was working on the biggest story of her career, tracking the trail of victims left by a brutal serial killer. Little did this future best-selling author know that the savage slayer she was hunting was the young man she counted among her closest friends. Everyone's picture of a natural winner, Ted Bundy was a bright, charming, and handsome man with a promising future as an attorney. But on January 24, 1989 Bundy was executed for the murders of three young women - and had confessed to taking the lives of at least thirty-five more women from coast to coast. Ann Rule, who kept in constant contact with Bundy throughout the investigation, tells his story as no other person can, capturing the essence of his magnetic power, unholy compulsion, and demonic double life. Available for the first time on audio, this shocking true story is an unforgettable listening experience. In an emotional reading, Rule tells us about Ted Bundy - the man she thought she really knew...the stranger beside her.
©2008 Ann Rule (P)2012 Simon & Schuster
The Practice
Summary
From the best-selling author of Linchpin, Tribes, and The Dip comes an elegant little book that will inspire artists, writers, and entrepreneurs to stretch and commit to putting their best work out into the world. Creative work doesn't come with a guarantee. But there is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn't. And engaging in the consistent practice of its pursuit is the best way forward. Based on the breakthrough Akimbo workshop pioneered by legendary author Seth Godin, The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that writer's block is a myth, that consistency is far more important than authenticity, and that experiencing the imposter syndrome is a sign that you're a well-adjusted human. Most of all, he shows you what it takes to turn your passion from a private distraction to a productive contribution, the one you've been seeking to share all along. With this book as your guide, you'll learn to dance with your fear. To take the risks worth taking. And to embrace the empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy.
©2020 Seth Godin (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Green River, Running Red
Summary
In the most extraordinary journey Ann Rule has ever undertaken, America's master of true crime has spent more than two decades researching the story of the Green River Killer, who murdered more than 49 young women. Green River, Running Red is a harrowing account of a modern monster, a killer who walked among us undetected. It is also the story of his quarry - of who these young women were and who they might have become. A chilling look at the darkest side of human nature, this is the most important and most personal audiobook of Ann Rule's long career.
©2011 Simon & Schuster Audio (P)2004 Ann Rule
The I-5 Killer
Summary
As a young man, Randall Woodfield had it all; he was a star athlete with good looks and was an award-winning student. Working in the swinging West Coast bar scene, he had more than his share of women. But he wanted more than just sex. An appetite for unspeakable violent acts led him to cruise the I-5 highway through California to Washington, leaving a trail of victims along the way. As the list of the dead grew, the police mobilized to stop a twisted killer who had 44 known deaths to his name.
©2014 Ann Rule (P)2017 Tantor
Bitter Harvest
Summary
This New York Times best seller and shocking “tour de force from America’s best true crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews) - which formed the basis for the Lifetime movie event A House on Fire - follows a woman whose seemingly perfect life hides a destructive madness. In this harrowing New York Times best seller, Ann Rule is at her masterful best as she winnows horrific truths from the ashes of what seemed like paradise in Prairie Village, Kansas. Rule probes the case of Debora Green, a doctor and a loving mother who seemed to epitomize the dreams of the American heartland. A small-town girl with a genius IQ, she achieved an enviable life: her own medical practice, a handsome physician husband, three perfect children, and an opulent home in an exclusive Kansas City suburb. But when a raging fire destroyed that home and took two lives, the trail of clues led investigators to a stunning conclusion. Piece by piece, Ann Rule digs beneath this placid Midwestern facade to unveil a disturbing portrait of strangely troubled marriages, infidelity, desperation, suicide, and escalating acts of revenge that forever changed dozens of lives.
©2000 Ann Rule. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Dead by Sunset
Summary
The shocking tale from true crime queen Ann Rule. Who is Brad Cunningham? How could five beautiful, intelligent, and successful women believe he was their dream come true? Ask any women who ever longed for "the perfect man". Loni Ann, Cynthia, Lauren, Cheryl, and Sara seemed to have it all - beauty, wealth, children, and a husband who they believed to be this perfect man - Brad Cunningham. He was handsome, charismatic, and mysterious. They adored him and tried to give him all he wanted. But he wanted everything: sex, money, and it seemed, their very lives. How long would it take before he finally got what he deserved? This question haunts Dead by Sunset, Ann Rule's riveting and impeccably researched study of the destructive relationships, multiple marriages, financial manipulations, and monstrous acts of harassment and revenge that surrounded Brad Cunningham and his wives. It is also a penetrating - and ultimately shocking - recreation of Cheryl's murder and the eight years it took to bring her killer to justice. Dead by Sunset is a chilling look at the evil that lurks behind the most charming of facades and a fascinating homage to the kind of courage and brilliance it takes to combat it.
©2008 Ann Rule (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
Lust Killer
Summary
When young women begin mysteriously disappearing in Oregon, Police Lieutenant James Stovall leads a relentless search for a killer. With little evidence available, and the public screaming for answers, he must find a remorseless, brutal killer whose identity will shock them all....
©2014 Ann Rule (P)2017 Tantor
Empty Promises
Summary
In this unnerving collection drawn from her personal crime files, "America's best true-crime writer" (Kirkus Reviews) Ann Rule brilliantly dissects the convoluted love affairs that all too often end in violence. Expertly analyzing a shocking, headline-making case, Rule unmasks the deadly motives inside a seemingly idyllic marriage: a beautiful young wife, a rising star in America's top-ranked computer corporation, and a prosperous husband, the scion of a family building business. With an adorable son and a gorgeous home, the couple seemed to have it all. But a furtive evil permeated their days and nights, dragging them into a murky world of drugs, sordid sex, and con operations. In this realm, one of them would prove to be a virtual innocent, the other a manipulator with no conscience. Sudden, violent death brought their charade of a fairy-tale romance to a tragic end - with a brutal crime that might never have come to light were it not for the stubborn detectives and prosecutors whose fight for justice spanned an entire decade. Empty Promises recounts several other cases where the search for love brought only lies and betrayal - a cautionary primer, perhaps, for those who trust too much too soon. Powerful because they strike so close to home, the cases in Empty Promises will leave listeners shaken by the realities of love gone terribly - and fatally - wrong.
©2001 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Want Ad Killer
Summary
After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death - using want ads to lure his young female victims. And time after time, justice was thwarted by a killer whose twisted legal genius was matched only by his sick savagery. Here, complete with the testimony of women who suffered his unspeakable sexual abuses and barely escaped with their lives and of the police who at last put him behind bars, is one of the most shattering and thought-provoking true-crime stories of our time.
©2012 Ann Rule (P)2016 Tantor
Mortal Danger
Summary
From trust to terror...from security to survival...
Only Ann Rule, who unknowingly worked alongside the smart and charming Ted Bundy - America's most notorious serial killer - could lend her razor-sharp insight into these cases of the spouse, lover, family member, or helpful stranger who is totally trusted but whose lethally violent nature, though masterfully disguised, can and will kill. Featured here is the case of a Southern California family man who appeared to be the picture of healthy living with his expertise in naturopathic healing. Luring a beautiful flight attendant into a passionate affair, he swept her away to a secluded home on the Oregon coast where his jealous rages escalated, ultimately leading to a brutal sex attack in which she believed she would die. How this brave victim survived, never knowing her tormentor's whereabouts, and how he resurfaced, forcing a tragic end for all involved, makes this one of Ann Rule's most compelling narratives.
Other cases include that of the woman who masterminded her husband's murder to gain his inheritance... the monstrous sadist whose prison release damaged a presidential candidate's campaign and ended in a bitter double tragedy in a quiet neighborhood three thousand miles away...the shocking DNA link between a cold-blooded crime and a cold case... and inside the horrific case of the man who crossed an ocean and several countries to stalk the Eurasian beauty who had fled from him in desperation.
©2008 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder - and Other True Cases
Summary
Real-life murder. Real-life mystery. In some murder cases, the truth behind the most tragic of crimes crystallizes with relative ease. Not so with these fascinating accounts drawn from the personal files of Ann Rule, America's #1 best-selling true-crime writer. What happens when the case itself becomes an intractable puzzle, when clues are shrouded in smoke and mirrors, and when criminals skillfully evade law enforcement in a maddening cat-and-mouse chase? Even the most devoted true-crime listener won't predict the outcome of these truly baffling cases until the conclusions revealed in Ann Rule's marvelously insightful narrative. An ideal family is targeted for death by the least likely enemy, who plotted their demise from behind bars... A modest preacher's wife confesses to shooting her husband after an argument - but there's more to her shattering story than meets the eye. These and other true cases are analyzed with stunning clarity in a collection you won't be able to stop listening to.
©2008 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors: And Other True Cases
Summary
It’s a chilling reality that homicide investigators know all too well: The last face most murder victims see is not that of a stranger, but of someone familiar. Whether only an acquaintance or a trusted intimate, such killers share a common trait that triggers the downward spiral toward death for someone close to them: They are masters at hiding who they really are. Their clever masks let them appear safe, kind, and truthful. They are anything but - and almost no one can detect the murderous impulses buried deep in their psyches.
These doomed relationships are the focus of Ann Rule’s 16th Crime Files collection. In these shattering inside views of both headlined and little-known homicides, Rule speaks for vulnerable victims who relied on the wrong people. She begins with two startling novella-length investigations.
In July 2011, a billionaire’s Coronado, California, mansion was the setting for two horrifying deaths only days apart - his young son’s plunge from a balcony and his girlfriend’s ghastly hanging. What really happened? Baffling questions remain unanswered, as these cases were closed far too soon for hundreds of people; Rule looks at them now through the eyes of a relentless crime reporter. The second probe began in Utah when Susan Powell vanished in a 2009 blizzard. Her controlling husband, Josh, proved capable of a blind rage that was heartbreakingly fatal to his innocent small sons almost three years later in a tragedy that shocked America as the details unfolded. If anyone had detected the depth of depravity within Josh Powell, perhaps the family that loved and trusted him would have been saved.
In these and seven other riveting cases, Ann Rule exposes the twisted truth behind the facades of Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors.
©2013 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases
Summary
A Fever in the Heart dissects an explosive triangle that led to obsession and murder in a small town in the northwest of America. Ann Rule reveals the story of an alluring wife and the two men desperate for her love; a story with a bizarre and deadly twist that no one could have suspected. In this and several other riveting true-crime cases from her personal files, Ann Rule masterfully probes the delusions of the criminal mind, the fateful circumstances and the unrelenting investigative forces at work in the aftermath of murder.
©2013 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Too Late to Say Goodbye
Summary
America's foremost true-crime writer offers her most riveting real-life drama ever: a heartbreaking story of treachery, jealousy and murder. Jenn Corbin appeared to have it all: two dear little boys, a posh home in one of the upscale suburbs of Atlanta, expensive cars, a plush houseboat, and a husband - Dr. Bart Corbin, a successful dentist - who was tall, handsome, and brilliant. But gradually, their seemingly idyllic life together began to crumble. Bart was distraught and Jenn seemed disenchanted. Then, just a few weeks before Christmas 2004, Jenn was found dead with a bullet in her head, an apparent suicide. But Gwinnett County detective Marcus Head was not totally convinced, nor was Jenn's family. Was this death related to another apparent suicide 14 years earlier of a beautiful student who once dated Bart Corbin in dental school? Or was the answer to be found in a secret - even dangerous - relationship Jenn Corbin was having outside her marriage? For Too Late to Say Goodbye, Ann Rule has interviewed virtually everyone related to the story to uncover the truth behind the headlines of these two sensational deaths. What emerges is an incredible tale of jealous rage that runs from the steamy to the macabre. The definitive unraveling of one of the strangest murder investigations of our time, Too Late to Say Goodbye is perhaps the finest achievement of a truly great writer's career.
©2007 Ann Rule (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
In the Still of the Night
Summary
From true crime legend Ann Rules comes this riveting story of a young woman whose life ended too soon - and a determined mother’s 11-year crusade to clear her daughter’s name. It was nine days before Christmas 1998, and 32-year-old Ronda Reynolds was getting ready to travel from Seattle to Spokane to visit her mother and brother and grandmother before the holidays. Ronda’s second marriage was dissolving after less than a year, her career as a pioneering female Washington State Trooper had ended, but she was optimistic about starting over again. "I’m actually looking forward to getting on with my life," she told her mother earlier the night before. "I just need a few days with you guys." Barb Thompson, Ronda’s mother, who had met her daughter’s second husband only once before, was just happy that Ronda was coming home. At 6:20 that morning, Ron Reynolds called 911 and told the dispatcher his wife was dead. She had committed suicide, he said, although he hadn’t heard the gunshot and he didn’t know if she had a pulse. EMTs arrived, detectives arrived, the coroner’s deputy arrived, and a postmortem was conducted. Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson, who neither visited the death scene nor attended the autopsy, declared the manner of Ronda’s death as "undetermined." Over the next eleven years, Coroner Wilson would change that manner of death from "undetermined" to "suicide", back to "undetermined" - and then back to "suicide" again. But Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide.
©2011 Anne Rule (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
But I Trusted You and Other True Cases
Summary
The most fatal mistake? Trust. It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each blood-soaked account. Whether driven to extreme violence by greed or jealousy, passion or rage, these calculating sociopaths targeted those closest to them - unwitting victims whose last disbelieving words could well have been "but I trusted you...."
Headlining this anthology is the case of middle-school counselor Chuck Leonard, found shot to death outside his Washington State home on an icy February morning. A complicated mix of family man and wild man, Chuck played hard and loved many...but who crossed the line by murdering him in cold blood? And why? The revelation is as stunning as the shattering crime itself, powerfully illuminating how those we think we know can ingeniously hide their destructive and homicidal designs. Along with other shattering cases, immaculately detailed and sharply analyzed by America's number-one true-crime writer, this 14th Crime Files volume is essential listening for getting inside the mind of the hidden killers among us.
©2013 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Practice to Deceive
Summary
From the New York Times #1 best-selling author comes a riveting true-crime mystery set on a sleepy island in the Pacific Northwest: a man is murdered and the long list of suspects includes an aging beauty queen and her boyfriend. One wintery night on tiny, quiet Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington, Russ Douglas spent Christmas with his estranged wife, Brenna. She agreed to let him visit his children even though they were headed for divorce. He left Brenna Douglas's home in Langley on the morning of December 26, 2003 to run some errands. But hours passed and the sun set in the late afternoon; Russ didn't return home as he'd promised his children he would. Nor did he come back during the night. On the afternoon of December 27, a couple walking down a rural road noticed a vehicle that had apparently backed into the driveway of a cabin. Since many of the places were vacant during the winter, neighbors kept an eye out for strangers. Curious, they walked up the cabin's driveway to check inside. They saw a man in the front seat, still strapped in his seatbelt, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. They immediately put in a call to the Island County Sheriff's Office. The dead man was easily identified; it was Russell Douglas. But what came next surprised law enforcement and captured the attention of the entire town when the suspects included an aging beauty queen, her guitar-teacher lover, and Russell's widow, Brenna. With her trademark aplomb, Ann Rule unravels the fascinating story of a murder, a small town, and a number of potential killers.
©2013 Ann Rule (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
A Rose for Her Grave - and Other True Cases
Summary
"A Rose for Her Grave" - the principal story of this collection - vividly recreates the cautionary tale of Randy Roth, a misogynistic sociopath from the Pacific Northwest whose rage was directed primarily at women and children. Addicted to his own greed, Roth exercised a powerful aura of control over his victims, using his ability to charm and boyish good looks to lower their defenses. By the time they saw the reality of the madness in his eyes, it was usually too late. This, along with five other chilling cases, bears the stamp of classic Ann Rule - informed, comprehensive, and eerily evocative of man's inhumanity to man.
©1995 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The End of the Dream: The Golden Boy Who Never Grew Up and Other True Cases
Summary
An explosive account of lethal greed and twisted desire from the files of America's number-one true-crime writer, Ann Rule.
They were best friends, four talented and charismatic young men who lived charmed lives among the evergreens of Washington state: Kevin, the artist; Steve, the sculptor; Scott, the nature lover and unabashed ladies' man; and Mark, the musician and poet. With their stunning good looks, whip-sharp minds, athletic bodies - and no lack of women who adored them - none of them seemed slated for disaster.
But few knew the reality behind the leafy screen that surrounded Seven Cedars, Scott's woodland dream home - a tree house equipped with every luxury. From this idyllic enclave, some of these trusted friends would become the quarry for a vigilant Seattle police detective and an FBI special agent, who unmasked clues to disturbing secrets that spawned murder, suicide, million-dollar bank robberies, drug-dealing, and heartbreaking betrayal. When the end came in a violent standoff, the ringleader of the foursome - the fugitive dubbed "Hollywood" for his ingenious disguises and flawless getaways; the persuasive talker who turned his friends into accomplices - faced a final chapter no one could have predicted. In a blast of automatic gunfire, the highest and lowest motives of the human heart were, at last, revealed.
Along with four other true-crime tales, The End of the Dream is a masterful and compelling tour of the criminal mind from Ann Rule.
©1998 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Worth More Dead and Other True Cases
Summary
Why would a man kill his lover's husband and then his wife, the woman who fought successfully to have him paroled from prison? Why would he risk arrest by kidnapping the child of another woman who adored him? Because they were...Worth More Dead
A cold case reopened - and solved - with dogged police work and new evidence. One of the shocking true crimes of passion and greed from Ann Rule's Crime Files.
Former Marine sergeant and judo instructor Roland Pitre Jr. claimed it was all an elaborate plan to win back his wife's love - it wasn't supposed to end with her dead body in the trunk of a car. Nearly twenty years later, he acknowledged that he had hired someone to kill his estranged wife in 1988, though his alleged excuse for why a monstrous "mistake" happened is as shocking and convoluted as the crime itself. Eventually, he was charged with first-degree murder in the long-unsolved death of Cheryl Pitre, after a mysterious witness betrayed Pitre to save his own skin. Tracing back the dark and bloody path of Pitre's life, two generations of detectives found a chain of brutal and terrifying crimes by a man who manipulated the courts and prisons to walk free.
©2005 Ann Rule (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.