On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for

Leukin. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex Fontunzelman. This is

the Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Today, two books that blur the line between novel and non-fiction.

Later, I'm off to Paris to hear from a hero of mine, Tetti Michelle Pommasse, whose book

Michelle the Giant tells a true story that seems stranger than fiction, of a penniless

Tuggerly's teenager who runs away from a python cult and finds a new home

in Greenland. But first, a work of fiction that brings into sharp relief a family whose story

lies at the heart of an all-too-real piece of American history. Karen Joy Fowler is a Booker

Prize shortlisted novelist whose last novel, we are all completely

beside ourselves, sold more than a million copies and won the Penn Faulkner Award.

Her latest book, Booth, brings together years of historical research during that tumultuous

period leading up to the American Civil War.

Through the Booth family, we explore the struggle for emancipation from slavery

and the polarisation of the US with a growing disjuncture between the Union and the Confederacy

that eerily speaks at the contemporary moment. The novel also takes us on a journey into the world

of theatre, as well as the domestic struggles of women during the period. And haunting the

narrative is the true story of how one of the Booth offspring, John Wilkes, changes American

history forever when he assassinates Abraham Lincoln. And I'm pleased to say that the author

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