Linda Fairstein Books in Order

Drawing on her years leading Manhattan’s sex crimes unit, Linda Fairstein explains how rape cases are investigated and prosecuted, from first report to sentencing. Through detailed case studies, she explores date rape, stranger assaults, forensic advances, and the cultural myths that keep many victims silent.

Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper wakes to a tabloid announcing her own murder, only to learn that a famous actress was killed at her Martha's Vineyard cottage instead. As Alex hunts the shooter, she must decide whether she or her friend was the real target.

When top neurosurgeon Gemma Dogen is raped and stabbed in her Manhattan hospital office, Alex Cooper is called in to untangle a maze of colleagues, students, and rivals. The investigation turns the hospital from a place of healing into a claustrophobic and deadly crime scene.

A silk clad woman is found bound to a ladder and pulled from the Hudson near Manhattan’s northern tip, her identity and killer unknown. Alex Cooper follows a trail through elite auction houses and edgy galleries, where stolen art and buried secrets make her a target too.

After a university professor is strangled and dumped in an elevator shaft, a cryptic note leads Alex Cooper to Roosevelt Island and the ruins of a nineteenth century smallpox hospital known as the Deadhouse. Digging into the island’s dark history, she uncovers fresh motives for murder.

A young museum researcher’s body is discovered shipped inside an Egyptian sarcophagus bound for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alex Cooper, Mike Chapman, and Mercer Wallace trace the crime through the hidden corridors, rivalries, and fundraising battles of New York’s great museums.

Alex Cooper prosecutes a complicated date rape case even as an elderly woman with a glamorous past is murdered for a legendary gold coin. As the two investigations intersect, Alex is drawn into a web of family greed and violence that stretches to the tidal flats known as the Kills.

Demolition workers at a Greenwich Village brownstone once linked to Edgar Allan Poe uncover a woman’s skeleton bricked upright behind a wall. While Alex Cooper also pursues a serial rapist on the Upper East Side, a Poe obsessed secret society and a copycat killer collide in chilling ways.

When a world famous ballerina vanishes during a performance at Lincoln Center, Alex Cooper joins Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace backstage at the Metropolitan Opera. Their search exposes ruthless ambitions, dangerous lovers, and old scandals in the rarefied but cutthroat world of New York theater.

Assistant DA Alex Cooper is trying a high profile case against a charming businessman accused of hiring a hit man to kill his wife when an explosion tears through New York’s massive Water Tunnel 3 project. Links between the defendant and the underground blast force her into the perilous world of sandhogs and long buried family feuds.

In the middle of a brutal summer, Alex Cooper and her detectives chase a predator whose victims turn up tortured and murdered in abandoned buildings and on isolated islands. As a decades old rape case and gang threats resurface, the hunt becomes a race to stop a serial killer.

A frightened rare book conservator is attacked in her Upper East Side apartment, then vanishes, and another woman is found dead beside a jewel encrusted volume. Alex Cooper’s search leads into the tunnels and reading rooms of the New York Public Library, where priceless maps and family rivalries collide.

A shipwreck off New York’s coast exposes a deadly human trafficking operation, just as a sex scandal threatens a rising congressman. When Alex Cooper sees that a tattoo links a drowned young woman to the murdered politician’s lover, she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches deep into city politics.

The decapitated body of a woman is staged on the steps of a Harlem church, her head later found near a cathedral. When another outspoken female cleric is killed, Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman follow a trail through Manhattan’s religious institutions and old scandals about women and power in the pulpit.

Fairstein explains how serial rapists study “comfort zones,” from stairwells to quiet streets, to find victims when they are most vulnerable. Using real investigations as examples, she shows the patterns behind these attacks and everyday steps that can reduce risk.

Collecting several of her true crime essays, this volume examines charming psychopaths, serial rapists’ habits, untested rape kits, dangerous everyday spaces, and false accusations. Together the pieces offer a concise, candid look at how sexual violence is investigated and why some victims still struggle to be heard.

This brief true crime essay looks at offenders who seem polished and harmless in public but commit brutal sexual assaults in private. Fairstein unpacks the traits common to psychopaths and offers practical advice on recognizing manipulative charm before it turns dangerous.

On vacation in the south of France with her restaurateur boyfriend, Alex Cooper is pulled into a local murder that threatens his reputation and freedom. Called back to New York to help with a politically charged rape case involving an international power broker, she must decide whom she can trust on either continent.

Based on years in sex crimes courtrooms, this essay highlights everyday locations where women are often attacked, precisely because they feel safe there. Fairstein explains why these settings are risky and offers clear, realistic suggestions for staying alert without living in fear.

Fairstein explores how homes, apartments, and familiar buildings can become targets for violent crime. Using examples of real home invasions, she outlines how offenders pick a residence, what vulnerabilities they exploit, and practical changes that can make a break in less likely.

Investigating the nationwide backlog of untested rape kits, Fairstein describes how evidence sat for years in storage while offenders remained free. She focuses on one victim’s story to show how delays in testing DNA undermine justice and leave entire communities less safe.

Here Fairstein looks at the small number of sexual assault complaints that turn out to be false. She discusses the motives behind these lies, how investigators uncover them, and why they cause deep harm both to wrongly accused men and to real survivors.

A teenage girl’s body is found near Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, beneath the Angel of the Waters statue. As Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman connect the murder to past disappearances and the buried history of Seneca Village, the park’s seeming refuge becomes a hunting ground for a calculating killer.

A young woman is discovered murdered in a luxury suite at the Waldorf Astoria, strange track like cuts carved into her skin. When a second body turns up near Grand Central Terminal with the same mark, Alex Cooper and her team uncover a threat rooted in the station’s vast maze of tunnels and secrets.

After learning that a dangerous stalker has finally been arrested, Alex Cooper disappears on her way home from a celebratory dinner. Told largely from Detective Mike Chapman’s point of view, the novel turns into a citywide chase that stretches from the George Washington Bridge to the Statue of Liberty as he races to find her.

In this crossover short story, Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper shares a legal conference panel with Los Angeles defense attorney Paul Madriani. When an audience member offers new evidence that could clear Madriani’s client, the pair follow the lead into a conspiracy reaching far beyond any single courtroom.

Twelve year old Devlin Quick and her friend Liza witness a man slicing a page from a rare map book at the New York Public Library. When no one believes them, Dev launches her own investigation through reading rooms, subways, and police labs to catch a book thief.

Still recovering from a recent kidnapping, Alex Cooper is supposed to be on leave when fashion icon Wolf Savage dies in what looks like a staged suicide. Drawn in through an old friend, she finds that the glamour of Seventh Avenue hides financial ruin, family rifts, and motives for murder.

Moments after stepping outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alex Cooper’s boss, District Attorney Paul Battaglia, is shot and collapses into her arms. Branded a prime suspect, Alex joins Mike Chapman to probe secret societies, wildlife trophy hunting, and political enemies to clear her name and find the real killer.

Devlin Quick heads to Montana for a summer dinosaur dig, only to discover that someone has swapped her friend’s fossils for worthless rocks. Tracking the forgery back to New York, Dev uses museum back rooms, lab tests, and quick thinking to expose a scheme built on fake bones.

While visiting Martha’s Vineyard, Devlin Quick scoops up a bucket of seawater for a school science project and finds a gleaming gold coin buried in the sand. Her search to prove it is a pirate doubloon leads through island history, family legends, and a high stakes coin show in New York.

Back in the DA’s office after trauma and scandal, Alex Cooper meets a young woman who reports a long ago rape by a powerful man she once trusted. As Alex works to revive the abandoned case, a poisoning inside her own office and old secrets at a research institution raise the stakes.