In 2012, a Florida native sold a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton for more than $1 million. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Lying Game were smash hits, and she has appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times. From the Gilded Age to Silicon Valley, discover page-turning stories that will make you question everyone’s intentions… 24 votes, 11 comments. Con artists are often in the news these days, but this week special attention went to a fascinating story, ... November's Best Reviewed History and Politics Books November 24, 2020 by Book Marks. Focusing on cases in which authors impersonated people of other ethnic groups and life circumstances in order to get published, Christopher L. Miller's Impostors exposes an ongoing problem of literary fraud. Amy Reading tells his amazing story in The Mark Inside. From insiders tips on how to promote yourself online to the best contemporary business practices, this book helps you understand the ins-and-outs of galleries as well as alternative platforms for selling your work. The story of a $5 billion heist carried out in the heart of Goldman Sachs, Billion Dollar Whale explains how one man spent 10 years skimming money from an investment account to make himself filthy rich. In the early 20th century, Rhode Island con artist Edgar Laplante adopted the persona of Chief White Elk, a supposed Cherokee native and activist. I don’t know if Hal qualifies exactly as a con artist, but she does set out to commit a con. Please note: Moderation is enabled and may delay your comment being posted. Although it remains a common trope in film, TV, and literature, faking your own death is actually pretty difficult to do these days. Danny is in some ways the polar opposite of Tom – charming, handsome, principled – a knave with a heart of gold, who robs from the rich to give to the… well, ok, he doesn’t quite go that far. All rights reserved. June 28, 2018. Check out the true-crime books about con artists below — just don't get too inspired by the stories: In Bad Blood, journalist John Carreyrou tells the inside story of Elizabeth Holmes' tech startup, Theranos, a company that made billions off of a medical technology concept that ultimately failed to deliver. In total, he is believed to have conducted fraud to the value of $64.8 billion. And in doing so, she’s following in some pretty big fictional steps. The film rights to all three books have been optioned and she is published in more than 40 languages. Years later, a woman named Anna Anderson surfaced in a German asylum, claiming to be Anastasia herself. Recently adapted into a film starring Melissa McCarthy, Lee Israel's true-crime memoir chronicles her career as the infamous literary forger who passed off fake letters from famous writers as the real thing. In fact, he doesn’t really set out to commit a con at all – the planning and conception is down to another character entirely, the shady Alex Loding who appears only briefly at the beginning and end of the novel. Explore our list of Con Artists - Fiction Books at Barnes & Noble®. The Best Reviewed Books of the Week November 20, 2020 by Book Marks. Registered office: 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA UK. The best con artists in fiction. This is a bit of a cheat, since Jane is very much a reformed con man, but there’s a kind of charming “set a thief to catch a thief” logic to the pitch of The Mentalist, which imagines that a fraudulent medium has been recruited as a consultant to the CBI to help them solve cases.