Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters’s Carr P. Collins Award

A New York Times Bestseller

One of Book Riot Best Book of the Year

In nineteenth-century Austin, Texas, a ruthless murderer terrorized the city in what would soon become a story more shocking than any fiction.

In the late 1800s, just as Austin was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis, a series of brutal murders rocked the burgeoning city and shook it to its core. At the time, the concept of a serial killer was unknown and unimaginable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens panic reached a fever pitch.

For more than a decade, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth has researched this gripping tale of murder and madness that plays out like a well-crafted whodunit. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Hollandsworth’s The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer brings this terrifying saga to life.