Child Crimes

Maddie Diaz never should have taken that shortcut through the park. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have seen two gang members attacking a homeless man. Now, as the only witness, Maddie knows there's a target on her back. But her courage has also caught the attention of Lobo, the mysterious leader of a rival gang, who promises to protect her. Lobo might be out for his own revenge, but Maddie knows she can trust him.

With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness or his enormous vanity.

Human traffickers earn up to 35 billion dollars a year. They are ruthless and give no thought whatsoever to the victims and what happens to them. They take them, buy them, then sell them to anybody. Eighty percent of the trafficked are sold into the sex trade and the biggest demand is for the children. Taken away from their families, these children are drugged, tortured, then repeatedly raped. They have nowhere to run to, are unable to fight back, and their average age is 11. Their life expectancy once they are taken, is seven years.

Denmark, Tennessee, stinks. Bad. The smell hits Horatio Wilkes the moment he pulls into town to visit his best friend, Hamilton Prince. And it’s not just the paper plant and the polluted Copenhagen River that’s stinking up Denmark: Hamilton’s father has been poisoned and the killer is still at large. Why? Because nobody believes Rex Prince was murdered. Nobody except Horatio and Hamilton. Now they need to find the killer before someone else dies, but it won’t be easy. It seems like everyone’s a suspect. But who has committed murder most foul?

In May of 2007, in a small, quiet town in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic, a technical glitch - a simple, accidental crossing of signals - revealed a terrible case of child abuse, and an entire nation watched transfixed with horror as the grisly extent of the perversion of the maternal instinct was revealed. Two small brothers named Jakub and Ondrej, nine and seven years old respectively, were revealed to have suffered confinement, mutilation, psychological brutality, and cannibalism at the hands of several people.

Cassel always thought he was an ordinary guy, until he realized his memories were being manipulated by his brothers. Now he knows the truth - he’s the most powerful curse worker around. A touch of his hand can transform anything - or anyone - into something else. That was how Lila, the girl he loved, became a white cat. Cassel was tricked into thinking he killed her, when actually he tried to save her. Now that she’s human again, he should be overjoyed. Trouble is, Lila’s been cursed to love him. And if Lila’s love is as phony as Cassel’s made-up memories, then he can’t believe anything she says or does.

FBI agent Tiberius Granger has seen his share of darkness. But a new case sets him on edge. It’s not just the macabre way both victims—found posed in front of lighthouses—are tattooed with flowers that match their names. There’s also the unsettling connection to the woman Ty once loved and to the shadowy cult they both risked everything to escape.

Sixteen-year-old Day Connor views life through the lens of her camera, where perspective is everything. But photographs never tell the whole story. After Day crosses paths with Julian, the world she pictures and the truths she believes - neatly captured in black and white - begins to blur. Julian is not the "armed and dangerous" escapee the police are searching for, but his alibis don't quite add up, either. There is more to his story. This time, Day is determined to see the entire picture...whatever it reveals. Did he? Or didn't he?

Filicide is the intended act of parents killing their children. The act is also regarded as an offense since it amounts to murder. It appears to very unnatural for a parent to end the life of his child. As much as this appears to be inhumane and unimaginable, there are some parents who kill their offspring. We consider mothers to hold the highest status in our lives. For a son, there is no greater being on this planet than his mother. She gives birth to the child, cares for him when he is at his most vulnerable stage, unable to eat or drink, and she feeds him her own milk.

Melody Bird has discovered an old, abandoned building on the edge of town.... It's a dark, creepy place, but she can't resist its pull. When she goes to explore, she finds a boy hiding out there. Hal tells Melody that he is a spy-in-training, using the house as a base for his undercover surveillance of a nearby suspected criminal. He's very secretive about the details, but Melody trusts him and starts bringing him blankets and sneaking him food. She confides in her friends Matthew and Jake about Hal - they immediately question the likelihood of a 12-year-old spy.

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma’s Indian Country, these tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land. Journalist and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County.

On a damp October day, a body is found in an abandoned hospital, too burnt to be identified, but detective Alex King knows that every victim is someone’s daughter or son. Pushing aside her own troubles, Alex puts everything into finding the killer, but when someone else is found dead, she begins to suspect that the body in the hospital was just the first of many. Just as Alex uncovers a heart-breaking link between the victims, she finds her own safety under threat. Is this a figure from her past hell-bent on revenge, or could the murderer be even closer than she thinks?

Jack Reacher has no place to go and all the time in the world to get there, so a remote railroad stop on the prairie with the curious name of Mother's Rest seems perfect for an aimless one-day stopover. He expects to find a lonely pioneer tombstone in a sea of nearly ripe wheat...but instead there is a woman waiting for a missing colleague, a cryptic note about 200 deaths, and a small town full of silent, watchful people.

Farrah "Digit" Higgins may be going to MIT in the fall, but this L.A. high school genius has left her geek self behind in another school district so she can blend in with the popular crowd at Santa Monica High and actually enjoy her senior year. But when Farrah, the daughter of a UCLA math professor, unknowingly cracks a terrorist group's number sequence, her laid-back senior year gets a lot more interesting. Soon she is personally investigating the case, on the run from terrorists, and faking her own kidnapping - all while trying to convince a young, hot FBI agent to take her seriously.

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust - in ghettos, on death marches, and in concentration camps - a young couple seeks refuge in Canada. They settle into a new life, certain that the terrors of their past are behind them. They build themselves a cozy little cottage on a lake in Muskoka, a cottage that becomes emblematic of their victory over the Nazis. The charming retreat is a safe haven, a refuge from haunted memories. That is, until a single act of unspeakable violence defiles their sanctuary.

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.

Two best friends. One terrible event. Abdi Mahal and Noah Sadler have been inseparable since they met. They've stuck together, even when their peers have excluded them. But when a horrifying incident leaves Noah in a coma and fighting for his life, Abdi is too traumatised to say anything about what happened. DI Jim Clemo, freshly returned to work after an enforced leave of absence, is tasked to investigate.

What sort of betrayal would drive a brother and sister apart? When Grace and her brother Andrew inherit their grandmother's house, they surprise few people by deciding to move in together. But they've always got on well and the London house is large enough to split down the middle. There's just one thing they've not taken into account though: what if one of them wants to bring a lover to the house?

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.

Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities.