Aug 20, 2026 · 3 min listen · Last updated August 20, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Here are today's top 5 true crime stories. Let's get into it. First, from CrimeReads (Literary Hub). Why is everybody watching The Town all of a sudden?. Is i just me, or is everybody into The Town again?
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Daily True Crime Brief · August 20th
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Why is everybody watching The Town all of a sudden?
Is i just me, or is everybody into The Town again? Everybody I know seems to be watching it. My HBO Max account is pushing it aggressively, and this stragey appears to be working across the board. The Town is the talk of the town, so to speak, sixteen years after its release. But why? Why now? Why The Town? Don’t get me wrong… The Town is a fantastic movie.
What do Norman Mailer and Charles Dickens Have in Common?
It might seem strange to attempt to put Norman Mailer and Charles Dickens in conversation, or even to pair them as interlocutors collaborating on much of anything, except of course that both were writers, nearly a century apart, who had an equally central role in the cultures of their different social worlds.
Clay McLeod Chapman on Why Horror and Romance Work So Well Together
Don’t be afraid to open your heart to horror. As I’ve gotten closer to the release of my upcoming horror-romance novel Devil Inside, which is all about a man with no soul falling in love with a demon looking for a vessel to possess, I have encountered several readers who say one of the following: Horror readers: Oh—I don’t read romance. Romance readers: Oh—I don’t read horror. Same for reader reviews, now that they are beginning to trickle in on Goodreads and StoryGraph.
London Haunting: A Tour Through A. Rushby’s Favorite Spooky Spots in England’s Capital
If you’ve ever been to London before, you’ve surely seen all the glittering highlights—Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Maybe you’ve even dipped a toe into the darker side of things at the Tower of London, learning about some of the city’s more gruesome history, or on a night-time ghost walk, hearing about its haunted streets. And maybe you liked it? If so, on your next visit, you might want to think about truly slipping into the shadows and dining on some of London’s darker delights.
The Long, Strange, Sometimes Bloody History of Poker in America
It’s an iconic scene, two grizzled and dirty outlaws, both with bad intentions and a lust for money, sitting across from each other with nothing but a stack of chips and a nervous dealer between them. Their guns hang heavy on their hips, as heavy as the tension in the saloon air. The piano music has stopped, the bartender pauses from slinging beers, and all the other players can’t peel their eyes away from the action at the table. The two outlaws peer menacingly over the weathered cards they hold in their hands, trying to get a read on each other.