Child Crimes

Eight true crime stories of murder and mayhem. In my first audiobook as a true crime author I've started with a few of the stories that have haunted me for some time. Some of these stories are unbelievable in their brutality while others are astounding in the stupidity of the killers. This collection of stories are from all around the globe and have no common thread between them other than that they are both thought provoking and disturbing. The stories included in this anthology are dark and creepy and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

Rushing back to her seat, Makayla Rossi is relieved that all’s still quiet. But when she checks on her sleeping baby, relief morphs into fear. The bassinet is empty. Liam is gone. It was a long flight from Anchorage to New York, and with every flight attendant busy, Makayla reluctantly ran to the restroom, asking a seat neighbor to watch her son. She stepped away for just a few minutes. Yet at thirty thousand feet, he still vanished.

At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce - a hostile thirteen-year-old - boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the "evil presence". But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double murderer.

Things are getting desperate for Maya and her friends. Hunted by the powerful St. Clouds and now a rival Cabal as well, they're quickly running out of places to hide. And with the whole world thinking they died in a helicopter crash, it's not like they can just go to the authorities for help. All they have is the name and number of someone who might be able to give them a few answers. Answers to why they're so valuable, and why their supernatural powers are getting more and more out of control.

On October 1, 1993, a 12-year-old girl was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, during a sleepover with two friends, while her mother slept soundly in the room next door. This rarest of all kidnappings—a stranger abduction from the home—triggered one of the largest manhunts in FBI history. New York Times bestselling author Kim Cross has written the first comprehensive account of what happened on that fateful night in October, as well as how the case forever transformed the Bureau’s approach to solving crimes.

No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won't say who fired the shot that killed their friend, Grant; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them. Kate Marino's senior year internship at the District Attorney's Office isn't exactly glamorous - more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen.

A blonde beauty queen, missing children, six suspicious deaths, and the twisted Mormon doomsday writings of her fifth husband are only the beginning of a tragic crime saga that gripped Americans and instigated frantic searches all over the country. It all started when Lori Vallow met Chad Daybell at a doomsday prepper event. Their story grew like a wildfire that creates its own weather, and what happened next will shock even the most experienced true crime listener.

Special Agent Pendergast arrives at an exclusive Colorado ski resort to rescue his protégée, Corrie Swanson, from serious trouble with the law. His sudden appearance coincides with the first attack of a murderous arsonist who - with brutal precision - begins burning down multimillion-dollar mansions with the families locked inside. After springing Corrie from jail, Pendergast learns she made a discovery while examining the bones of several miners who were killed 150 years earlier by a rogue grizzly bear.

Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, eyes on the road. Another man next to him, telling stories that don’t add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And next to her, a huge man with a broken nose, hitching a ride east to Virginia.

Against all odds, Constance has found a way back to the place of her origins, New York City in the late 1800s, and sets off on a quest to prevent the events that lead to the deaths of her sister and brother, and stop Manhattan’s most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng of the seminal Pendergast novel The Cabinet of Curiosities, before his nefarious experiments come to fruition.

Alex Rider's life changed forever with the silent pull of a trigger. When Ian Rider died at the hands of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, Alex, ready or not, was thrust into the world of international espionage - the world's only teenage spy. Alex vowed revenge against Yassen and the two have battled ever since. Yet, years ago, it was none other than Alex's own father who trained and mentored Yassen, turning him into the killer he would eventually become. What makes us choose evil?

Now that Maeve Merrit has surrendered Mermeros, the djinni she found in a sardine can, she expects her life in London will be dull as dirt. Mermeros, however, has other plans. Maeve’s friend Tommy, a former orphan, has been adopted by Mermeros’s newest owner. When Tommy’s new father tries to use one of his wishes, he and Mermeros go missing - and without a guardian, Tommy will be forced back to the orphanage.

It’s Christmastime in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favourite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody.

Manhattan. Les ouvriers d'un chantier de démolition s'affairent parmi les gravats, lorsque le bulldozer se fige soudainement devant l'horreur du spectacle qui apparaît ; des ossements humains. L'enquête menée par Pendergast, du FBI, l'archéologue Nora Kelly et le journaliste William Smithback établit qu'il s'agit des restes de trente-six adolescents, victimes d'un tueur en série, le Dr Leng, ayant sévi à New York vers 1880.

The younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, 14-year-old Enola is no slouch herself when it comes to sleuthing. This time, she must team with Sherlock to rescue Lady Cecily Alistair from a dreadful arranged marriage.

Detective Lindsay Boxer's long-awaited wedding celebration becomes a distant memory when she is called to investigate a horrendous crime: a badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby is nowhere to be found. Lindsay discovers that not only is there no trace of the criminals - but that the victim may be keeping secrets as well.

After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world. But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels, NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help.

Commanded by the magical artifact known as the Dragon’s Eye, junior con artist Callan and his friends are eagerly reaching the end of the epic quest that will finally free him from the Eye’s sinister hold. But their final task is their most ambitious: sneaking into the emperor’s private island prison and rescuing a man from a jail cell that has been locked tight for a hundred years. This impossible heist will strain the gang’s unique abilities to thieve and deceive everyone from the guards, the city elite, the warden, and even the nefarious local crime boss who warns them to stay away.

A seemingly straightforward private case turns out to be much more complicated - and sinister - than Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast ever could have anticipated. Pendergast, together with his ward, Constance Greene, travels to the quaint seaside village of Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the theft of a priceless wine collection. But inside the wine cellar, they find something considerably more disturbing: a bricked-up niche that once held a crumbling skeleton.

A centuries-old, cursed pirate's treasure, valued at over $2 billion, lies deep within the treacherous waters off the coast of Maine. Men who have attempted to unearth the fortune have suffered gruesome deaths. Will a high-tech expedition meet the same fate?