Child Crimes

In the damp embrace of a Portland night, a confession so vile spills from the shadows of the Grotto that Father Thomas flees the confessional. He asks another priest to take over, but fate, it seems, is a fickle deity. The wrong priest ends up with his throat slit, a victim of mistaken identity. Haunted by his own demons, Detective Johnny Walker takes the case. Battling the insatiable hunger of addiction, he delves into Portland's deceptive heart, unearthing a darkness festering beneath the surface. He’s called upon to navigate the labyrinth of a chilling child serial killer. As Walker ...

When a desperate mother calls Denton Police Department to report her children missing, Detective Josie Quinn races to investigate. Sixteen-year-old Kayleigh and her little sister Savannah went for a walk in the woods but never came home. They are good girls and know not to go far, say their frantic parents. Kayleigh always looks after Savannah and brings her home safely. Until now....

When someone you love goes to jail, you might feel lost, scared, and even mad. What do you do? No matter who your loved one is, this story can help you through the tough times.

Suzie Housley, Midwest Book Review…"Parsons writes with an intense purpose that will leave the reader fully satisfied. Masterfully crafted…readers will find themselves unable to put this book down." Cambridge, Massachusetts…Detective Karl Shea is drinking Tanqueray London Dry Gin, straight up, at a bar in Harvard Square. He hasn't been to church in thirty years, but the prayer he learned to the rhythmic tap of the nuns' rulers ruminates through his brain…confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life, Amen. Amend. With less than a year to live, Karl knows he has to start amending ...

The tragic story of Susan Powell and her murdered boys, Charlie and Braden, is the only case that rivals the Jon Benet Ramsey saga in the annals of true crime. When the pretty, blonde Utah mother went missing in December of 2009 the media was swept up in the story - with lenses and microphones trained on Susan's husband, Josh. He said he had no idea what happened to his young wife, and that he and the boys had been camping in the middle of a snowstorm.

March 1997. A woman has her throat cut behind a bar in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base.Is the murderer a local guy - or is he a soldier?Jack Reacher, still a major in the military police, is sent in undercover. The county sheriff is a former U.S. Marine - and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn't she really want to find the killer? The adrenaline-pumping, high-voltage action in The Affair is set just six months before the opening of Killing Floor....

It is a society that is, officially, a paradise. Superior to the decadent West, Stalin's Soviet Union is a haven for its citizens, providing for all of their needs: education, health care, security. In exchange, all that is required is their hard work, and their loyalty and faith to the Soviet State. But now a murderer is on the loose.

In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy's home. The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa's friends and peers. With a fresh perspective and painstaking research, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents.

When Grace Ozmian, the beautiful and reckless daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire, first goes missing, the NYPD assumes she has simply sped off on another wild adventure. Until the young woman's body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, the head nowhere to be found. Lieutenant CDS Vincent D'Agosta quickly takes the lead. He knows his investigation will attract fierce scrutiny, so D'Agosta is delighted when FBI Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast shows up at the crime scene assigned to the case.

A body is found in the attic of a fabulous Long Island estate. There is a claw print scorched into the wall, and the stench of sulfur chokes the air. When FBI Special Agent Pendergast investigates the gruesome crime, he discovers that 30 years ago four men conjured something unspeakable. Has the devil come to claim his due?

On a quiet October night in 1993, 12‑year‑old Polly Klaas was snatched from her bedroom in Petaluma, California while attending a sleepover and mere steps from her sleeping mother. What began as a seemingly ordinary evening turned into one of the most chilling stranger abductions in U.S. history. Suddenly, the nation was gripped by tragedy and terror as authorities launched one of the largest man‑hunts ever seen, scouring every inch of Northern California and piecing together a complex trail of evidence. America’s Lost Child delves deep beyond headlines and speculation. Through ...

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of 15 adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots.

Stephen Smith is the boy who did not exist. Born out of wedlock in the early 1960s, Steve's parents - both devout Catholics - had felt so 'shamed' by their son's illegitimate birth that they hid him away from the world by locking him in the cellar...for 13 years. Apart from a few admissions to hospital as a result of his 'imprisonment', Steve remained in the coal cellar of the family home where he was deprived of daylight, his childhood, school and human contact until he'd reached his teenage years.

In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about, and makes a rather grisly discovery - a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine is the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

In the Name of the Children gives an unflinching look at what it's like to fight a never-ending battle against an enemy far more insidious than terrorists: the predators, lurking amongst us, who seek to harm our children. During his 30-year career with the FBI, Jeff Rinek worked hundreds of investigations involving crimes against children: from stranger abduction to serial homicide to ritualized sexual abuse. Those who do this kind of work are required to plumb the depths of human depravity, to see things no one should ever have to see - and once seen can never forget.

How far would you go to save your child? This is the impossible question facing Lacey. Would you sacrifice your lover, your mother, your husband? Three families are torn apart, their lives shattered, everything they know turned upside down. when their children are kidnapped, the only communication they receive is a request from the abductor to sacrifice a loved one to be tortured to death. failing to follow the instructions will result in their child suffering that fate instead. Delving into the depths of a damaged mind, this novel contains some graphic scenes of torture and explores some ...

Two lonely towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, 12 miles of empty road. Jack Reacher never turns back. It's not in his nature. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets is big trouble. So in Lee Child’s electrifying new novel, Reacher - a man with no fear, no illusions, and nothing to lose - goes to war against a town that not only wants him gone, it wants him dead. It wasn’t the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope.

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil. Sometimes the bad guy can become the savior. Jocelyn – Momma always said if I laid down with dogs, I’d get up with fleas. I was too stubborn to listen and now I’m in a situation I can’t escape. I’ve seen too much. I know too much. Even now, two years after my momma left this earth, I can still hear her voice in my ear telling me to leave and never look back. I thought this was the perfect life, but it was all a lie. Now I have someone else I need to take care of, and if it’s the last thing I do, I’m getting us out of this place. Dallas – ...

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town. Featherbank. But the town has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Written in free verse, Hidden is a compelling tale about an unlikely friendship between two girls. Darra Monson and Wren Abbott first cross paths when Darra’s deadbeat dad is arrested for theft and kidnapping after he steals a car - unaware that Wren was sitting in the back. Years later, the girls - now teens - attend the same summer camp, and are forced to confront the fateful event that changed their lives.