Child Crimes

Canyon Sacrifice brings the rugged western landscape, the mysterious past of the ancient Anasazi Indians, and the Southwest's ongoing cultural fissures vividly to life. A deadly struggle against murderous kidnappers in Grand Canyon National Park forces archaeologist Chuck Bender to face up to his past as he realizes every parent's worst nightmare: a missing child.

Myrtle Hardcastle has no desire to go on a relaxing travel excursion with her aunt Helena when there are more important things to be done at home, like keeping close tabs on criminals and murder trials. Unfortunately, she has no say in the matter. So off Myrtle goes - with her governess, Miss Judson, and cat, Peony, in tow - on a fabulous private railway coach headed for the English seaside.

Vaka sits on the cold steps of her new school. Her father appears to have forgotten to pick her up, her mother has forgotten to give her this week’s pocket money, and the school is already locked for the day. With no way to call home, she resigns herself to waiting on the steps until her father remembers her. When a girl approaches, Vaka recognizes her immediately from class and from her unusual appearance: two of her fingers are missing. The girl lives at the back of the school, and Vaka asks to call her father from the girl's house. That afternoon is the last time anyone sees Vaka.

Award-winning investigative journalist and contributing Wired editor Scott Carney leads listeners on a breathtaking journey through the macabre underworld of the global body bazaar, where organs, bones, and even live people are bought and sold on The Red Market. The Red Market sheds a blazing new light on the disturbing, billion-dollar business of trading in human body parts, bodies, and child trafficking, raising issues and exposing corruptions almost too bizarre and shocking to imagine.

Jack Reacher is having a bad day. It would be a dumb idea to make it worse. Reacher sees a West Point class ring in a pawn shop window. It's tiny. It's a woman cadet's graduation present to herself. Why would she give it up? Reacher was a West Pointer too, and he knows what she went through to get it.

Fletcher Moon has never been like other kids. For one thing, he has had to suffer the humiliating nickname "Half Moon" because of his short stature. But the real reason Fletcher is different is that ever since he was a baby, he's had a nose for sniffing out mysteries. And let's just say, it's not a skill that has been appreciated by many people, including his own family.

Ryan and Phil had always been inseparable. Twins born thirty-five minutes apart, Ryan was the protective one, constantly looking out for his younger brother. They can't remember how old they were when the abuse started, but they can remember their uncle very clearly. A frequent visitor to their home in Lincoln, he lavished their family with expensive treats. School holidays and weekends were spent visiting him, when he would often take the two little boys aside to play the games he liked. Trapped with him, day after day, year after year, the abuse continued until Ryan and Phil turned sixteen.

For Tess Kendrick, a junior at the elite Hardwicke School in Washington, DC, fixing runs in the family. But Tess has another legacy, too, one that involves power and the making of political dynasties. When Tess is asked to run a classmate's campaign for student council, she agrees. But when the candidates are children of politicians, even a high school election can involve life-shattering secrets. Meanwhile, Tess' guardian has also taken on an impossible case, as a terrorist attack calls into doubt who can - and cannot - be trusted on Capitol Hill.

For much of the twentieth century, a series of terrible events—abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths—took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy, and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For ten years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth.

"Failure to comply with these requests means no one will ever see the girl again, except the angels in heaven." The year is 1927, and Christmas is right around the corner. In the city of Los Angeles, lights are shining, streets are bustling, and a well-to-do family of five is living out what seems to be just another ordinary day. However, unbeknownst to all but one man, this would be the last time the Parker family would ever experience such peace. By the time dusk falls, they would be forever torn apart. Marion Parker's Abduction and Murder is an excursion into a crime so chilling that it ...

On a cold morning a cyclist finds the brutally-slaughtered body of a woman in her car, on a remote lane leading to the long-abandoned Irish village of Kelly’s Forge. But when Detective Finnegan Beck arrives from the nearby town of Cross Beg to investigate he notices there’s a baby’s seat in the back of the car. A bottle of baby’s milk lying in the footwell. And no child. Little Róisín isn’t the first child to go missing from that same remote location though. There was another baby girl, taken more than 50 years before, who was never found.

One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle - just in case her brother missed.

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.

After an epic and interrupted journey all the way from the snows of South Dakota, Jack Reacher has finally made it to Virginia. His destination, the closest thing to a home he ever had: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th Military Police. Why? He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner. He liked her voice on the phone. But now he's arrived, she's disappeared, and things are getting weird. Accused of a sixteen-year-old homicide and co-opted back into the army, Reacher says nothing.

What possesses a mum to kidnap her own child? That's what Maggie asks herself when she's asked to foster 13-year-old Saskia, the subject of a bitter custody battle between her parents. When Saskia's mum Rosa fears the courts are going to favour her ex-husband, James, she takes matters into her own hands. With Rosa facing criminal charges, and Saskia refusing to live with her dad, her future looks uncertain. Will Maggie be able to step in and discover the bombshell that will tear this family apart?

Jack Reacher gets off the bus in a sleepy no-name town outside Nashville, Tennessee. He plans to grab a cup of coffee and move right along. Not going to happen. The town has been shut down by a cyber attack. At the centre of it all, whether he likes it or not, is Rusty Rutherford. He's an average IT guy, but he knows more than he thinks.

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men—a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town—had burst into the doctor’s apartment while the family was sleeping, attacked him, and taken away his eighteen-month-old boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent that it has left the doctor mute? Who would have authorized such an alarming operation?

Sophie Jenkins is living a happy life in the idyllic Dorset countryside when she meets Martin Brett, the man who will go on to abuse her and haunt her dreams for years to come. A momentary act of neglect leads to a horrible series of events that leaves her changed forever. Badly let down by the adults entrusted to care for her, Sophie’s life begins to spiral downward. However, Sophie’s message is ultimately one of hope and empowerment. She is in the process of rebuilding her life when fate leads her to encounter her childhood attacker once again.

Claire Mumford has had enough of the supernatural. The last time she tangled with a ghost almost got her killed. But the lure of an unnamed spirit haunting the waters by Lums Pond State Park is more than she can resist. Can she discover the identity of the ghost who screams so plaintively in the darkness? All that may be left are rumors and speculation. Who was the poor woman who lost her life so brutally by the pond so many years ago? Can the undeniable powers of her two year old daughter finally help her give a name to The Screaming Woman Of Lums Pond? Should Claire risk everything to ...

Like the biblical Job, John Ramsey had it all - wealth, social position, a loving family. And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him.