Child Crimes

A Riveting Quest for Justice In a small, tranquil town where secrets are buried deep, a newly elected senator is about to uncover truths that could shatter the peace forever. Decades ago, a child vanished without a trace, leaving a community reeling and parents drowning in grief. Now, on the brink of an execution that promises closure, Stoane Cold stands firm on his belief that the wrong man is about to pay the ultimate price for a crime he didn’t commit. With mere days to spare, his mission is clear: discover the truth and set the wheels of justice in motion. As Stoane delves into the ...

Reacher never backs down from a problem. And he's about to find a big one, on a deserted road in Arizona, where a car has crashed into the only tree for miles around. Minutes later, Reacher is heading into town. To introduce himself to the shadowy crew who made it happen. Their boss has a terrifying reputation, and the stakes are high. Just to get in and meet him, Reacher is going to have to achieve the impossible. To get answers will be even harder. There are people in this hostile, empty place who would rather die than reveal their secrets.

Adventure-loving penguin Jackson dreams of being a secret agent like his Uncle Bryn, who works for the Frosty Bureau of Investigation. Jackson and his gadget-inventing best friend, Quigley, might officially be too young to join the FBI, but they aren’t going to let that stop them! They just need to come up with the right plan to prove they are worthy. But when one of Q’s inventions goes dangerously wrong, Jackson suddenly finds himself dropped right in the middle of an FBI stakeout. There’s fishy business afoot at the city’s aquarium....

Matthew Corbin suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He hasn't been to school in weeks. His hands are cracked and bleeding from cleaning. He refuses to leave his bedroom. To pass the time, he observes his neighbors from his bedroom window, making mundane notes about their habits as they bustle about the cul-de-sac. When a toddler staying next door goes missing, it becomes apparent that Matthew was the last person to see him alive.

Mason Buttle is the biggest, sweatiest kid in his grade, and everyone knows he can barely read or write. Mason’s learning disabilities are compounded by grief. Fifteen months ago, Mason’s best friend, Benny Kilmartin, turned up dead in the Buttle family’s orchard. An investigation drags on, and Mason, honest as the day is long, can’t understand why Lieutenant Baird won’t believe the story Mason has told about that day.

Unwrapping a puzzling package and finding a clue launches twelve-year-old cousins Sophie and Jessica into the dangers of The Treasure Key. They're soon racing against time—and bad guys— to find long-lost treasure. Will they be the first to discover its hiding place?

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

There have been monsters among us lurking in the darkest corners of America, preying on children since the first settlers arrived on our shores. They have always been with us, stalking the innocent, from the days of the original colonies, to the Gilded Age, the Depression, and beyond. These monsters are not the stuff of fiction. They are bloodcurdlingly real, and they still walk among us, always looking for their next victim.

There's trouble in the deadly wilds of Nebraska . . . and Reacher walks right into it. He falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire country into submission. But it's the unsolved case of a missing eight-year-old girl that Reacher can't let go. Reacher - bruised and battered - should have just kept going. But for Reacher, that was impossible.

Hamburg 1947: It is the year of extremes. After a bitterly cold winter of starvation, the bombed city groans under excruciating heat. And Chief Inspector Frank Stave is confronted with a new case. In the ruins of a shipyard, the corpse of a boy is found and Stave's hunt for the killer leads him into the world of "wolf children" - orphaned children who have fled from the Occupied Eastern Territories and are now united in gangs. When two more bodies are discovered Stave is under even increasing pressure....

WAS IT A NIGHTMARE OR WAS IT REAL? A seven-year-old boy experienced a horrible nightmare while on a camping trip. But was it a nightmare? Sgt. Jeremy Porter, the squad supervisor for the New Orleans Police Department's Child Endangerment Division, does not think so, especially since he suffers from his own realistic nightmares. Therapists, doctors, and even the police chief are all convinced it was a nightmare and the boy won't cooperate. Amidst the maddening and violent Mardi Gras season, Jeremy develops a wild hunch and sets his sights on a most unlikely suspect for child abuse. While ...

For 500 years, the Cahills have been the most powerful family in the world. For 500 years, they've protected the source of their power - the 39 Clues. And for 500 years, they've kept their secrets silent. Until now. This extraordinary stand-alone novel cracks open the Cahill vault to tell the story of the most coveted piece of artwork in the world, a masterpiece that has been the target of seven separate theft attempts: Jan van Eyck’s altarpiece at Ghent.

If there’s a mystery to be solved, Pete’s your man. Er, your cat. Pete’s a cat, specifically, Alex’s cat. And since Alex and his family moved into a new housing development, Pete is Alex’s only friend. Things start looking up for Alex when Rocky moves in next door. But Rocky isn’t very friendly, and Alex starts to suspect he’s hiding something. And when the neighborhood is terrorized by a rash of fires and vandalism, Pete knows that he’s got to investigate.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with a criminal justice system with the cards stacked against Black men, Hinton was sentenced to death. He resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times.

On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored.

The police find out about the crime the way everyone does: on Snapchat. The video shows a terrified young woman begging for forgiveness. When her body is found, it is marked with a number “2”. Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim, but who could have hated her enough to kill? Then another teenager goes missing, more clips are sent to social media, and the body with a “3” is found. Is there an undiscovered body with “1”?

For hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave, every mission is a matter of life or death. But he faces his most personal challenge yet when two boys are abducted while being driven to Resurrection House, the school Jonathan founded as a sanctuary for children of incarcerated parents. The boys were entrusted to Jonathan's care. Now they're missing. It's time to fight fire with fire. The boys' mom, Connie Kendall, is awaiting trial on drug smuggling charges. Prosecutors want her to testify against the brutal Cortez Cartel to help bring down their ruthless operations.

Most twelve-year-old boys are preoccupied with comics and playing with their friends. Twelve-year-old Frank Heeney, however, is about to start three years of hell at Ireland’s notorious St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack County Galway. St. Joseph’s is an inferno of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of the administrators. Many children, some as young as four, die from such conditions and are secretly disposed of in the surrounding wilderness. As Frank spends three years at St. Joseph’s Letterfrack and two years at St. Patrick’s children’s prison, he is...

A heart-stopping story that highlights the failure of the agencies we trust to protect the most vulnerable among us—and a truth more compelling and powerful than we could imagine. Abuse reports from neighbors draw attention to twelve-year-old Alexey who runs away to hide in the woods. The local child protection agency sends the director of the children’s home to visit Alexey and his younger sisters, Anastasia and Svetlana.

In 1876, in a mining camp called Roaring Fork in the Colorado Rockies, 11 miners were killed by a rogue grizzly bear. Corrie Swanson has arranged to examine the miners' remains. When she makes a shocking discovery, town leaders try to stop her from exposing their community's dark and bloody past. Just as Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI arrives to rescue his protege, the town comes under siege by a murderous arsonist who - with brutal precision - begins burning down multimillion-dollar mansions with the families locked inside.