Then Brian Nichols took her hostage. Just hours earlier, he’d allegedly shot to death a judge, a court reporter, a deputy, and a federal agent, and escaped in a stolen vehicle. Ashley had paid only passing attention to media coverage of the unfolding manhunt. Now she found herself face to face with Nichols, a desperate, heavily armed man with nothing left to lose. Unlikely Angel is Ashley’s gripping, powerful account of how this nightmare scenario developed into a remarkable connection between a man wanted for multiple murders and a single mother struggling to make a fresh beginning from her checkered and tragic past. Juxtaposing the minute-by-minute tale of her experience with the never-before-told tragedies and triumphs of her own life, Unlikely Angel is a story that will leave no reader untouched.

Crime Beat presents stories as fascinating as they are chilling, from the serial killer of young models who cuts a swath across the country to elude police, to the man who leads a bizarre double life on two coasts before his elaborate hoax breaks down. Here, too, we can see Connelly’s razor-sharp eye for telling details: a worn-down earpiece on a cop’s Eyeglasses, the revealing high school yearbook quotes of an alleged cold-blooded murderer, the checkered career of a bumbling gang of killers who publicly advertise their services.
Stranger than fiction and every bit as gripping, these pieces show once again that Michael Connelly is not only a master of his craft but also one of the great American writers in any form. Crime Beat confirms why the Washington Post distinguishes Connelly as “the real thing, taking us in to the parts of the real America that most of our novelists never visit because they don’t even know where, or what, they are. ”

Connelly is a former journalist and the author of the bestsellmg series of Harry Bosch novels, along with the bestselling novels The Lincoln Lawyer, Chasing the Dime, Void Moon, Blood Work, and The Poet. Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and novels, including an Edgar® Award .

Len Cariou is a distinguished stage, television and film actor. He won a Tony Award for his performance in Sweeney Todd . He has read several books for Time Warner AudioBooks.

Carl Franklin is an acclaimed actor and director whose films as a director include One False Move; Devil in a Blue Dress and Out of Time, both starring Denzel Washington ; and One True Thing , starring Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger .

Nancy McKeon has been a series regular on The Division, Style and Substance, The Facts of Life, and Can’t Hurry Love (which she also produced). Nancy read Street Dreams by Faye Kellerman for Time Warner Audiobooks