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The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders
by Joshua Sharpe
The riveting story of a 1985 double murder, a long-overdue investigation, and the fight to exonerate an innocent man.
In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area's Black community. Detectives at the time were unable to apprehend their killer. Twenty years later, police claims lead to the conviction of a local man, Dennis Perry, on a double life sentence.
When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of small-town corruption, devastating missteps, and secrets. Driven by a relentless pursuit of the truth, Sharpe considers another suspect―an alleged white supremacist who brags about committing the murders―and discovers explosive evidence that helps to overturn Perry's wrongful conviction. In this gripping work of literary journalism, Sharpe finds closure to one of the most confounding cases in Georgia history and offers a moving examination of how we reckon with the sins of our past.
What are you reading this week? (8/28/2025)
Finishing "The man no one believed" by Joshua Sharpe and also reading "Something so wicked" by Doreen McMillan. Then starting "Forget me not" by Stacy Willingham.
-Marijana_Bankovic
"A skillfully constructed spiderweb of a true-crime, cold-case narrative." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] gripping, infuriating, and enlightening work of true crime whose real-world impact can be felt on every page." —Publishers Weekly
"Every wrong that is righted, like the one at the center of this story, brings us closer to living up to the promise of freedom. The Man No One Believed takes you into a battle for the truth, and inside the forces threatened by the very idea of justice―Joshua Sharpe offers us a chronicle from the beating heart of America. This is essential reading if you want to understand who we are and how we got here." ―Wright Thompson, best-selling author of The Barn and Pappyland
"Joshua Sharpe writes with deep sensitivity, care, context, and perspective about this American tragedy. The Man No One Believed demonstrates the kind of investigative reporting that is increasingly rare, and more important than ever." ―Robyn Semien, two-time Peabody Award-winning former producer of This American Life
This information about The Man No One Believed was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joshua Sharpe is a print and audio journalist and editor whose stories have helped free two innocent people from life in prison. He is a 2023–2024 Knight-Wallace Fellow, Livingston Award winner, and a 2022 and 2023 Pulitzer Prize judge. He lives in the Detroit area.
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