The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

The gripping true story of a young law student, an unspeakable crime and a past that refuses to stay buried. When Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working on the retrial defence of death-row convicted murderer and child molester Ricky Langley, she is staunchly anti-death penalty. But as soon as she watches footage of Ricky talking about his crimes, she has a shocking realization: she wants him to die.

As Alexandria pores over the facts of the murder delving deeper and deeper into Ricky's difficult and unhappy childhood, she is also forced to face her own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, to reckon with how her own past colours her view of this crime.

The Fact of a Body is a heart-stopping account of how crime, even the darkest and most appalling acts, can happen to any one of us. It is also proof that the truth – and how we reveal it – is more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.