Holmes, a relentless and elusive con artist who became best known as the terror of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair when unwitting guests were welcomed into his “hotel” of horrors.

Aaron Mahnke introduces us to William Brodie, a renowned Scottish cabinetmaker who used his professional expertise to prey on the citizens of Edinburgh and whose rampant criminality behind a veneer of social respectability inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella Strange Case of Dr. In this illustrated volume from the host of the hit podcast Lore, you’ll find tales of infamous characters whose veins ran with ice water and whose crimes remind us that truth can be more terrifying than fiction. Others are as real as flesh and blood: humans who may look like us, who may walk among us, often unnoticed, occasionally even admired-but whose evil deeds and secret lives, once revealed, mark them as something utterly wicked.

Some monsters are figments of our imagination. A chilling, lavishly illustrated who’s who of the most despicable people ever to walk the earth, featuring stories from the Lore podcast-now a streaming television series-including “Black Stockings,” “Half-Hanged,” and “The Castle,” as well as rare material.

The world of lore wicked mortals