Crime Kidnap

What would be the "right" price for your loved one - and can you avoid putting others at risk by paying it? What prevents criminals from maltreating hostages? How do you (safely) pay a ransom? Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business uncovers how a group of insurers at Lloyd's of London have solved these thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), as well as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.

Epiphany ‘Pip’ Bloom is down on her luck. She can barely afford cat food, and just because Most has three legs doesn’t mean he eats any less. So she absolutely can’t afford to mess up her latest temp job. But when she walks through the door of the private investigation firm, her new boss mistakes her for a missing persons expert. He then charges her with finding Matty Price - the teenage son of two A-list celebrities - who has mysteriously disappeared from his home in Kensington. 

Brilliant yet poor, Ramesh Kumar grew up working at his father’s tea stall in the Old City of Delhi. Now, he makes a lucrative living taking tests for the sons of India's elite—a situation that becomes complicated when one of his clients, the sweet but hapless eighteen-year-old Rudi Saxena, places first in the All Indias, the national university entrance exams, thanks to him.

A young boy walks into a police station in France. He claims to be Carl Meagan - a missing child from Sheffield whose name is still whispered as a warning to kids who stay out after dark. On her way home from the supermarket, nine-year-old Keeley Armitage vanishes without trace. Her family is overcome with shock and DCI Matilda Darke can’t help but focus on memories of the Carl Meagan case that almost ruined her career.

The normally quiet Dutch town of Leiden is horrified when the chairman of the local Masonic lodge is brutally killed. Almost simultaneously, an old manuscript is discovered in which an anonymous author tells the hidden history of the Pilgrims – the Founding Fathers of the United States. From 1609 to 1620 they lived in Leiden, after which some of them left for America. University teacher Peter de Haan is drawn into the mystery. Why did so many of the Pilgrims stay behind in Leiden? What involvement do the Freemasons have?

Four stand-alone crime thrillers written by USA Today best-selling author Kristen Middleton. This audiobook includes: Searching for Faith, Looking for Lainey, Forget Me Not, and Hear Them Scream. These books are suggested for fans of Kay Hooper, Heather Graham, Iris Johansen, and Nora Roberts.

Children of powerful and wealthy parents are vanishing. It's serial kidnapping on an international scale, and the kidnappers are calling all the shots. It started in the UK with the disappearances of PJ Scott, only son of the world's highest paid film star, and Hunter Driscoll, whose Irish father is a high tech billionaire. Then it spread to the US and Europe, with no end in sight. Having eliminated the possibility of terrorists, and with no real clues, Scotland Yard is rapidly running out of options, and the clock is ticking.

The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America - parents struggled to feed their children and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with guns and corrupt law-enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. The Kidnap Years is a thoughtfully reported pause-resister that chronicles the sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country as desperate people were pushed to do the unthinkable.

Early on August 12, 2000, four of America's best young rock climbers were sleeping in their portaledges high on the Yellow Wall, in the central Asian mountain range of Kyrgyzstan,. By daybreak, they would be taken at gunpoint by militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. In a life-and-death journey over six terrifying days, they would be forced to choose between saving their own lives and committing an act none of them thought they ever could.

In the follow-up to KIDNAP.org, Robin and her gang take on an unscrupulous pharmaceuticals manufacturer, Neil Preston, who lives on a fortress-like estate and is a big fan of Josef Stalin. As their plan for making Preston change his dishonest ways develops, Robin runs into an old lover. Seeing Darin again makes her question her future. Should she leave crime-fighting behind and try to return to normal life?

In this third and final story, Robin’s attempt at a simple caper goes wildly wrong when her father appears on the scene and turns her world upside down. Mark Parsons is Robin’s bugaboo, the voice in her head she can’t silence. Though she admits he taught her things that are useful to the gang, that’s no credit to his parenting. He’s the kind of person who would - and did - use his own children to further his money-grubbing schemes. 

Ivy Sinclair knew the job offer was too good to be true. But she was desperate. She’d lost her father, her job, her apartment, and her best friend all in one fell swoop. She’d no choice but to hope this was a turning point. She thought things couldn’t get any worse. How wrong she had been. Abducted and thrust into a world of violence, trapped alone with a captor who had been stalking her for years, Ivy must find a way to survive his darkness without losing herself completely as he forces her to become his, in body, mind, and soul. 

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But can the SAS pull off a daring prison break and escape from Communist-run Ethiopia alive? In 1975 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, recently deposed in a Communist revolution, is declared dead. In the hands of the brutal army officer Mengitsu Haile Mariam, the country has descended into chaos and bloodshed. Then an astonishing truth emerges. The emperor is being kept alive in prison by Mengitsu, but only until he reveals the location of his billion-pound fortune.

Mouthpiece is a brutally told biographical sketch of an incarcerated pimp in prison for human trafficking. Raw boasts and brazen inner-city tales litter the story’s violent, unrepentant landscape. Like a marked man, Mouthpiece keeps after the listener with a cold perspective. Money is the aim, and young women are the product.

Meet Claire. Your average, broke, mid-20s millennial who’s sick of the way her life is going. All she has keeping her afloat is her longtime boyfriend, Corey. She wants nothing more than to escape this frustrating, New Jersey life together. So, Claire comes up with an idea: fake her own kidnapping with Corey to extort Claire's parents out of 2 million dollars, in ransom money, and to start a new life together. Perfect, right? Well, meet Corey - the average, broke, mid-20s millennial who's sick of the way his life is going and especially sick of his girlfriend, Claire.

I met my best friend in jail. Yep, me, in jail. I was 27 at the time, and she was just a few years older than me. Two woman, from two very different walks of life, ending up in the same horrible place. My reason, my husband at the time wanted to experience another woman, yet keep my kids, and I was just in the way. So they set me up, and had me arrested. Our secret spot. When my grandmother had passed away 2 years prior, she left me her home. She lived deep in the woods, in a cabin.

38 Years Later covers two periods in Brian’s life: before prison and life in prison. The before-prison story takes the listener through Brian’s upbringing and early-life choices while living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The before-prison story also covers in detail the extraordinary play-by-play of Brian’s 1980 commitment offense, an offense for which he remains in prison today. The life-in-prison story reveals how time does not stop when men face the world in shackles. 

When the body of a young woman is discovered in a shipping container in Bristol, the police suspect she was an illegal immigrant whose death was a tragic accident. But their theory is shot down by two pieces of evidence: the container was due to ship out, not in; and, even more sinister, a video camera with a live feed was filming her from a hidden compartment. Someone watched her die. Slowly.

It was like thick darkness during the day; not an eclipse that is predicted months and days ahead, but an unexpected event, very unexpected. The fact that one serves God Almighty does not exempt him from problems, suffering etc. Job in the Bible was a righteous man, yet, he had his own share of tribulations. It is in such situations that God demonstrates his power. Such situations can lead one to an extreme: either to adhere more closely to God, or to have doubts about God and his ability to perform.