Child Crimes

Ex-CIA Officer Patrick Evans is too late to save his colleague from a drug overdose—but just in time to kill the Chinese spy responsible. The two killings trigger an avalanche of twisted connections, treason at the highest level, and grim deaths in quiet places. Drafted to investigate by his Congresswoman employer, Pat follows a trail of chemicals and money from the Chinese provinces to Mexico City, and back home to Washington DC—where the Fentanyl boom is secretly financing one man's political machine.

London is everything to Cynthia, so when her parents move her to a place where there is only one bus an hour and the faint smell of horse manure continuously permeates the air, it's a culture shock, to say the least. As is transitioning to a private school. At her new school, Cynthia immediately finds herself caught between two brothers—head boy Thomas, who is white, and his adopted Black brother, Isaac. There is something about Isaac she cannot quite get enough of...but her father wants her to partner up with someone like Thomas.

In this exciting adventure, a presidential election campaign brings the governor to Cam’s school. With all the police and Secret Service agents, it seems like nothing can go wrong. But then there’s an explosion that sounds like a gunshot, and Cam determines to get to the bottom of what really happened.

The second gripping instalment in the DI Paolo Sterling crime series. Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling is determined to shut down the syndicate flooding Bradchester’s streets with young prostitutes. When a child is murdered, Paolo becomes aware of a sinister network of abusers spread across Europe and spanning all levels of society. But Joey, the shadowy leader of the gang, always seems to be one step ahead in the chase. Has Paolo come up against a criminal he cannot defeat?

Since her husband's murder two years earlier, life hasn't been easy for Elle Harrison. Now, at the start of a new school year, the second grade teacher is determined to move on. She's selling her house and delving into new experiences, like learning trapeze.Just before the first day of school, Elle learns that a former student, Ty Evans, has been released from juvenile detention where he served time for killing his abusive father.

A stand-alone novel based on high-profile child abductions, which have been followed by millions of concerned parents on the news. Five-year-old twins are abducted from a tent in the Lake District and the hunt for a dangerous paedophile ring begins. Police procedure follows the premise that 60% of abducted children are murdered within the first four hours of being taken. The first hour is called "The golden hour" and the longer a child is missing, the less chance there is of them being recovered unharmed.

At three years old, Jodie watched her father murder a woman in a seedy hotel room. He, a true-born sociopath, strolled undetected, using religion as his disguise. A life suffocating the truth wouldn't work for Jodie. The murdered woman's spirit seemed to ignite a search for answers in Jodie's adulthood. A budding darkness around the reality of her past was coming sharply into focus.

At first, Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer. Hiram sees firsthand how the local whites mistreat blacks who refuse to "know their place". When Emmett's tortured dead body is found floating in a river, Hiram is determined to find out who could do such a thing. But what will it cost him to know?

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.

On the first warm day of spring, in a seemingly unprovoked attack, a young mother is stabbed. At the same time, her five-year-old daughter is snatched. As part of the Violent Crimes Taskforce, DI Erica Swift and her team are assigned with finding the person responsible for the stabbing and to locate the missing child. But as Erica digs deeper, she uncovers a disturbing motive behind the attack. When another child is taken and with time running out, she needs to solve the case before many more lives are lost.

The early morning hours bring ill news for Detectives Jim North and Kerry Martin. As they learn of two dead parents and a missing child, their search leads them on a winding journey of deceit, lies, and betrayal because the only person more evil than a kidnapper are the people who let it happen.

When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as listeners start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.

A man shot dead in the street. But what the police find nearby is far worse. An elderly African man is found dead in the street, shot through the head. The killing has the hallmarks of a professional assassin. Dumped in a waste bin next to the dead man is the dismembered torso of a child. On his first day back at work, disgraced Detective Superintendent Ray Paterson finds himself teamed up again with newly promoted Detective Inspector Johnny Clocks. They must hunt down a ruthless killer with connections that go far beyond anything they’ve ever encountered before.

Charly Bloom’s life took a wrong turn that has left her alone and frustrated. When she gets a call from an old flame, she returns to her hometown to investigate the disappearances of four children. The abductions are eerily similar to a set of previous crimes. Two decades ago, Charly and her two friends decided to play amateur detectives and help find a girl who was stolen from her home. Then, another girl went missing. Clues overlooked by the inept sheriff left only one child to survive: Charly. She managed to fight back and kill the Snatcher. Or so everyone thought.

Investigative journalist Oonagh O'Neil's instincts tell her when a story is worth pursuing. And the death of an elderly priest on the altar of his Glasgow church, just as she is about to expose the shocking truth behind the closure of an infamous Magdalene Institution, tells her a sinister cover up is in play. DI Alec Davies is appointed to investigate the priest's death. He and Oonagh go way back. But now they're united in uncovering not only what happened to the lost babies secretly born in the Institution, but what happened to the young women that survived by vowing loyalty to one another...forever.

Fifteen-year-old Rachael Donahue - abandoned by society, raised in foster homes, and violently unapproachable - has been discovered, dead, at the bottom of a stairwell at Firebird, the secure facility for juvenile offenders in Cleveland. For Maggie and Jack, her death comes with a disturbing twist - the girl may have been involved with a much older man. But Rachael's not the only resident at the center to come to a dead end. Firebird's 10-year-old wild child has overdosed in the infirmary - back-to-back tragedies that appear to be terrible accidents.

Mandy Miller disappeared from Hallow’s End when she was just three years old. She was never found. Thirty years on, Elaine Ellis is carrying her mother’s ashes back to Hallow’s End to scatter them in the place that she once called home. Elaine has never been there, but it’s the only place Jean talked about while she was growing up - so it seems as good a place as any.

Michael Redford died on his 17th birthday - the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin, and assaulted him. Now he's Mikey and he works for Joss. With streaked blond hair and a cute smile, he sleeps by day and services clients at night. Sometimes he remembers his old life, but with what he's become now, he knows there is no return to his comfortable middle-class background. Then he makes a friend in Lee. A child of the streets, Lee demands more from friendship than Mikey is prepared to give. But the police are closing in on them now and Mikey's not sure anymore who he really is - streetwise Mikey or plain Michael Redford.

Freedom Oliver has plenty of secrets. She lives in a small Oregon town and keeps mostly to herself. Her few friends and neighbors know she works at the local biker bar; they know she gets arrested for public drunkenness almost every night; they know she’s brash, funny, and fearless.

Four months ago Beau Epstein watched his parents die. For 14 years he lived with his family in the jungle village of Santa María, ignoring the outside world. It was paradise until the civil war came to find them. His parents were gunned down in the streets, and Beau found himself suddenly alone in the world. His grandfather, an old-school Hollywood mogul, sends for the child.