Acclaimed for her 'devastatingly accurate insight' (The New York Times Book Review) into the criminal mind, Ann Rule has chronicled the most fascinating cases of our time in her bestelling Crime Files series. For this sixth stunning collection, Rule has culled from her private files the most-asked about homicide-cases — riveting accounts of seemingly normal men and women who are compelled by a murderous rage to suddenly lash out at innocent victims. Torn from the headlines, here is the shocking case of a Seattle city bus ride that turned to mayhem and murder at the hands of a gunman. While the scene unfolds as in a terrifying movie, Rule answers the haunting question 'how could this happen?' and expertly constructs the unseen chain of events that resulted in an explosive and shattering tragedy. Included here are nine other sensational cases that illuminate Rule's uniquely authoritative view of the human psyche gone temporarily berserk. You may think you know who is safe and who is dangerous; in A RAGE TO KILL, Ann Rule shows that none of us are truly protected from the irrational violence that can erupt from the killers among us.

Joined in a romantic love that most people only ever dream about, Pat Taylor's marriage to Tom Allanson was all she ever wanted. Both came from fine Southern families, and both longed to recreate for themselves a plantation where they would raise horses, grow roses, and move with grace and style in the highest social circles of Atlanta; in short, to be the Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler of their time. But scarcely two months later, their perfect world had erupted into family hatreds, terror, bloodshed and murder, The beautiful estate was mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom Allanson stood accused of the brutal slaying of his own mother and father. Before the terrifying truth about the perpetrator was revealed, other innocent victims were to suffer attempts on their lives as intricate family loyalties and cruel, obsessive jealousies were played out.

In perhaps the first true-crime book written at the victim's request, Ann Rule untangles a web of lies and brutality that culminated in the murder of Sheila Blackthorne Bellush, a woman Rule never met, but whose shocking story she now chronicles with compassion, exacting detail, and unvarnished candor. Although happily ensconced in a loving second marriage, and a new family of quadruplets, Sheila never truly escaped the vicious enslavement of her ex-husband, multi-millionaire Allen Blackthorne, a handsome charmer and a violent, controlling sociopath who subjected Sheila to unthinkable abuse in their marriage, and terrorized her for a decade after their divorce. When Sheila was slain in her home, in the presence of her four toddlers, authorities raced to link the crime to Blackthorne, the man who vowed to monitor Sheila's every move in his obsessive quest for power and revenge.

The bestselling author of THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, DEAD BY SUNSET and BITTER HARVEST, Ann Rule is an acknowledged expert on violent crimes. In this fifth volume of fascinating true cases, she explores the circumstances that has driven ordinary people to cross society's boundaries and commit the desperate act of murder. In THE END OF THE DREAM, Ann Rule chillingly profiles the workings of a criminal mind, and confirms she is the world's number-one writer of true crime.