“The body would have been nearly impossible to identify. There was so little of it left, for one thing.”

Thus begins the sordid tale of the “Scissors Grinder,” one of 40 heart-pounding true crime stories that will have you looking over your shoulder. Or keeping your bedside light on at night.

With this and other blood-curdling accounts, veteran crime writers Barb Pacholik and Jana G. Pruden offer up another installment in her best-selling series of true crime books set in Saskatchewan. This time they pursues cadaver dogs, unearths charred remains, explores the horrifying “killing room,” and delves into cold cases–those unsolved crimes, some whose perpetrators still lurk out there.

Reconstructed from court transcripts, these all-too-true stories expose the greed, desperation, and inhumanity living just down the street and around the corner.

Jana G. Pruden is an award-winning feature writer at The Globe and Mail based in Edmonton, and the former Crime Bureau Chief of the Edmonton Journal. In her 20 years as a reporter, she has written for newspapers and magazines around the country, covering some of Canada’s biggest criminal cases and breaking news events. She has co-authored two books of true crime. In addition to The Globe and Mail, her work has appeared in The Walrus, Reader’s Digest and Longreads.