Luggage by Kroger

Luggage By Kroger has been recognized as one of 2009's top true crime thrillers with a Silver Medal from the IPPYs (Independent Publisher Book Awards), a Bronze Medal from ForeWord Magazine, a Runner-Up citation in the true crime category of the National Indie Excellence Awards and a true crime finalist citation in the 2009 USA Book News Awards. The 2009 New York Book Festival also named it runner-up in general nonfiction. Finalist: ForeWord Magazine's 2008 Book-of-the-Year Awards. Remember the movie Fatal Attraction? And the movie Basic Instinct? And the movie Play Misty For Me? Toss all three of the movies in a blender, hit frappe and stand back. What comes out would be Gary Taylor's new book Luggage By Kroger. Self-Publishing Review Magazine. And what a story it turned out to be! Reader Views online review. A riveting true story that reads like a high-octane crime thriller Midwest Book Review Catherine was destined to become several important things to me. But most prominently, she would become my problem-solver. Before I met her, I had a bunch of problems. Then, all of sudden, with her in my life I had only one. In Luggage By Kroger, former Houston Post reporter Gary Taylor recounts his intensely personal involvement in the trail of controversy that has followed Texas attorney Catherine Mehaffey Shelton for nearly three decades. It's a trail littered with murder investigations and acts of violence that has warranted coverage by media outlets as diverse as People magazine, The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Press, CBS-News 48 Hours and the A&E channel's American Justice. It's a trail that has placed Taylor in the public eye as a true-life fatal attraction interview subject on talk shows from Oprah Winfrey to Sally Jesse Raphael. It's a story that has been twice-optioned for television docudramas and served as the lead segment on a prime-time TV special called Crimes of Passion. But the intimate details of Taylor's fatal attraction tale have remained under the radar until now. With his true crime memoir, Taylor invites the reader to grab a seat on the wild ride of an obsessive relationship, from its erotic beginning through the violent end and the trials required to clean up the mess. Laying bitterness aside, he employs self-deprecating humor to share comical anecdotes and maintain a reporter's detachment on what becomes a tale of self-discovery through a potentially deadly encounter that nearly cost him his life. Beyond that volatile relationship, Taylor's brief backstory offers a historical treasure trove of information from his days as a crime and courts reporter for The Post, covering some of the state's most significant criminal events: from the 1972 murder of Dr. John Hill, through the 1974 siege of Huntsville prison, the trial of officers accused in the death of Joe Campos Torres, early capital murder cases in the death penalty center of America and the Houston trial of Fort Worth tycoon T. Cullen Davis. Luggage By Kroger defies all efforts to pigeonhole it into one specific genre. In the end, however, it emerges as an action-packed and suspenseful memoir of a personal odyssey that should tantalize a wide range of reading interests.