Seventeen-year-old Becca auditions for a new, non-lethal reality show featuring Painiacs, hoping to prove that her deceased mother was not Alcatraz 2.0 executioner, Molly Mauler. Who Wants to Be a Paniac?, the latest reality TV show, on the hunt for the next big-hit serial killer. No one is actually going to murder anyone, as real as the fake gore and pretend murder may appear-- right? When Becca Martinello's perfectly normal soccer mom dies in a...

"Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has a word for everything, and big dreams of being a writer but little hope of seeing them come true. With the fresh pain of her mother's death lingering over her and the only out from her impoverished life being marriage to the handsome but dull local rich boy, Maddie flees from her home. She takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters....

The author of the landmark work On Killing reveals how violent video games have ushered in a new era of mass homicide--and what we must do about it. Paducah, Kentucky, 1997: a 14-year-old boy shoots eight students in a prayer circle at his school. Littleton, Colorado, 1999: two high school seniors kill a teacher, twelve other students, and then themselves. Utoya, Norway, 2011: a political extremist shoots and kills sixty-nine participants in a youth...