NEW YORK, March 16 — True crime authors spend countless hours chronicling some of the most gruesome cases that make up the fabric of our history’s sordid culture. And though it’s a dirty job, someone has to do it. But what happens when these writers become part of their own true crime stories — and when it pays the bills becomes it almost killed me?

Read on for a list of authors who became so wrapped up in their stories — whether through personal involvement with the killer or victim, or through more sinister means — that they became the story.

1. Fred Rosen, Lobster Boy

Author Fred Rosen, a former columnist for the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times, now spends his days penning true crime bestsellers. Though his dedication to sharing stories of serial killers and murderous mayhem have won him many awards, it’s also what almost got him killed.

In Lobster Boy, a sordid account of abuse, murder, and carnival freaks, Rosen lays out the details of how a woman named Mary Teresa engineered the murder of her husband, Grady Stiles Jr. (aka Lobster Boy, dubbed so because of his pincher-like hands). And when he receives threats from Mary’s daughter during her trial, Rosen finds himself a featured player in his very own sideshow saga.

2. Joan Barthel, A Death in Canaan

On September 28, 1973, Barbara Gibbons was found dead in her home, her throat slashed, her body naked. Who found her? Her 17-year-old son, Peter Reilly, who then became law enforcement’s No. 1 suspect. Shocked and positive the police had the wrong man in custody, freelance writer Joan Barthel rallied around Peter’s case, along with his neighbours and famed names like Arthur Miller. Thus began a three-year odyssey through Connecticut’s crooked judicial system, which ultimately led to Peter’s exoneration. Barthel, who was intimately involved with the group working to free Peter and present at each and every trial hearing, shares her and Peter’s story in A Death in Canaan.

3. Linda Wolfe, Love Me to Death

Linda Wolfe is an acclaimed author of 10 published books, a journalist, and book critic. Her library spans the genre spectrum, but there’s one true crime work in particular that really hits home. In Love Me to Death, Wolfe spins a yarn so chilling you’d think she’d been there. And you’d be right.

When Ricardo Caputo, a deadly Don Juan of sorts, turned himself in in 1994, Wolfe’s theories were confirmed that it was Caputo who indeed murdered her dear friend 10 years earlier. It was then that she set out to unmask the murderer. The result? This intimate portrait of a serial killer, complete with interviews with the lady-killer himself.

4. Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me

Horror films have us believing that murderers carry chainsaws and wear masks made of human flesh. But in reality, they wear suits and ties and occupy the seats right next to us at work. So goes the true story of Ann Rule’s hair-raising memoir, which recounts her days as a crisis hotline operator and her gradual realisation that her sensitive co-worker — and friend — Ted Bundy was indeed the man would later confess to killing at least 36 women. Rule, a true crime writer who can actually answer the question What was Ted Bundy really like?, delivers a story so chilling one can only wish it weren’t true.

5. Sebastian Junger, A Death in Belmont

Back in the early ‘60s, Boston was in a state of panic as a man was entering homes, wrapping his hands around women’s throats, and squeezing the life right out of them. He became known as the Boston Strangler.

A Death in Belmont focuses on one of his victims: Bessie Goldberg, an elderly woman whose rape and murder was hastily and wrongfully attributed to her handyman. Little did police know the actual killer was hiding out a few doors down — in the home of now internationally acclaimed author Sebastian Junger. Junger writes of this confluence of elements in his riveting account — and even includes a truly chilling photo taken of him and his mother, with the killer smiling behind them.

6. Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence

A fiction writer turns his attention to truth to pen his most beguiling and chilling thriller yet. Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence in the year 2000 to live out his dream in an Italian farmhouse, not knowing at the time that the olive trees that lined his idyllic dream home were also the setting of a gruesome double murder. Intrigued and curious, Preston teamed up with an investigative journalist to crack the case, though instead the two wound up at the centre of an ongoing investigation of Italy’s most infamous serial killer, known only as the Monster of Florence.

7. Derf Backderf, My Friend Dahmer

Yes, Jeffrey Dahmer was a monster who raped, murdered, defiled, dismembered, and even devoured parts of 17 men and teenagers from the year 1987 to 1991. But he was once just a boy. A boy who went to school, played sports, and had friends. One of those friends was Derf Backderf. Now a much-honoured graphic novelist, Backderf paints a different picture of Jeffrey Dahmer, a sympathetic portrait that reveals Dahmer as the troubled soul he was. My Friend Dahmer is a graphic novel that may just change the way you think about a man with a very graphic and disturbing past. — The Lineup/Reuters

*This story was originally featured on The-Line-Up.com. The Lineup is the premier digital destination for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal.