Child Crimes

From out of the whiteness, a dark figure comes.... December 1930, Ukraine. After the horrors of war, Luka wants a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality - but everything changes the day a stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo: the bodies of two children. When the villagers' fear turns deadly, they think they have saved themselves.

The crime of sextortion has reached epidemic proportions, fuelled by both sex offenders and organised scammers targeting our most vulnerable online. Children are some of the internet's most prolific and most naive users, and increasing numbers are finding themselves caught in an evil web of networked manipulators. Saving Our Kids highlights the dangers lurking in every child's smartphone, web browser and computer game.

When Philip Digby first shows up on her doorstep, Zoe Webster is not impressed. He's rude and he treats her like a book he's already read and knows the ending to. But before she knows it, Digby - annoying, brilliant, and somehow...attractive? Digby - has dragged her into a series of hilarious and dangerous situations all related to an investigation into the kidnapping of a local teenage girl. A kidnapping that may be connected to the tragic disappearance of his own sister eight years ago.

Police found the body of 16-year-old Calyx on her bed under a white blanket. They found her 13-year-old brother Beau in the family car covered up the same way. Both had two gunshots to the head. Both had been dead for hours. The only other person who had been in the home was their mother, Julie Schenecker. She told law enforcement that she could no longer tolerate her kids talking back to her. Was this a case of premeditated murder? Or a horrible tragedy fueled by a mental illness that had spun out of control?

On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania, 15-year-old Patty Desmond sneaked out through the basement of her house. She had a history of running away, and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave police reason to suspect she’d come home in a week or two.

As the recent tragedies in Oregon, Arkansas, and Colorado Have shown, children as young as eight years old are capable of murder and violence. No community is safe from this tragic phenomenon, and experts ranging from law enforcement officials to guidance counselors are confused and conflicted about how to approach it.

Look out, London! Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose are thrilled to see Big Ben, ride the London Eye, and tour Madame Tussauds wax museum. Then big news hits - someone has stolen Queen Elizabeth’s jewels right outside Windsor Castle! The friends head to the castle to check for clues. But can three kids from Green Lawn find evidence that Scotland Yard has missed?

Samantha is a stranger in her own life. Until the night she disappeared with her best friend Cassie, everyone said Sam had it all - popularity, wealth, and a dream boyfriend. Sam has resurfaced, but she has no recollection of who she is or what happened to her that night. As she tries to piece together her life from before, Sam realizes that it's one she no longer wants any part of. The old Sam took "mean girl" to a whole new level, and it's clear that she and Cassie were more like best enemies.

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.

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?

In 1975, when Oberleutnant Karin Muller is called to investigate a teenage girl's body at the foot of the Berlin Wall, she imagines she's seen it all before. But she soon realizes that this is a death like no other before it - the girl was evidently trying to escape from West Berlin.

One dark secret. One act of revenge. When Emma Joseph met her husband, David, he was a man shattered by grief. His first wife had been killed outright when her car veered off the road. Just as tragically, their six-year-old daughter mysteriously vanished from the scene of the accident. Now, six years later, Emma believes the painful years are behind them. She and David have built a new life together and have a beautiful baby son, Ollie.

Manchester, England 1965. Little Kathy Openshaw is waiting in the car, with only her toy doll for company, while her mother Connie visits close friends Myra and Ian. But when Connie returns to the car, Kathy has vanished. Instantly, she thinks of the news reports of the children who have gone missing from the area. Parents everywhere are worried sick. Connie is struck with terror: What kind of mother leaves their child alone, when a kidnapper is on the loose? Listen to this pulse-pounding, heart-wrenching, and unforgettable story.

Thirteen-year-old Stacy is sunbathing in the backyard when she hears a strange noise from inside the house. Turning to look, she sees a man with a gun burst through the door; then everything goes black. She wakes up in a hospital bed to learn that she has spent the last four years in a catatonic state. Suddenly 17, she finds herself struggling to adjust and fighting to remember what happened to her. She is the only witness to the shooting that injured her and killed her mother.

After sabotaging a mass kidnapping in Paris, Lucas Benes faces a new and perilous threat from Siba Günerro and her anything-but-good Good Company. When a briefcase-toting kid from the Falkland Islands joins the New Resistance Spy School, 14-year-old Lucas learns the truth about his mother and becomes a boy on a mission. Lucas and friends speed in and around Rome - from the Colosseum to the Vatican - until they stowaway on a cargo ship carrying diamonds that could unlock the secret to Lucas's past and destroy the Good Company's future.

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?

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.

First, I Believe You is an astonishing memoir of resilience and recovery from severe childhood trauma she had no memory of. Terrifying flashbacks haunted her for decades despite an affluent, advantaged childhood, resulting in severe depression, food addiction, anxiety, and nightmares.

Even after the institution of slavery became illegal, the legacy of slavery continued through injustices created by the Jim Crow laws. Learn more about these discriminatory laws that have shaped America's past and present. Inspired by a belief that knowledge is power, Read Woke Books seek to amplify the voices of people who are not white, provide information about groups that have been disenfranchised, share perspectives of people who have been underrepresented or oppressed, challenge social norms and disrupt the status quo, and encourage readers to take action in their community.

In the summer heat at the Craven County Fair in rural Pennsylvania, Dr. Leah Wright is shocked to find a pregnant woman hiding from view and in labor. Leah manages to deliver the baby safely, but the woman won’t reveal her name. She's terrified, running from someone, and days later both she and her newborn son go missing....