Kidnapping Mystery

When silence falls, who will hear their cries? The body of a young girl is found dumped on the roadside on the outskirts of Edinburgh. When pathologists examine the remains, they make a gruesome discovery: the outline of a doll carved into the victim’s skin. DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach are struggling to find leads in the case until a doll made of skin is found nestled beside an abandoned baby. After another young woman is found butchered, Luc and Ava realise the babydoll killer is playing a horrifying game. And it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.

Rock star Castor Greaves and his model girlfriend vanished twenty years ago after an infamous gig in Soho. According to urban myth they’re still alive - holed up somewhere by the Golden Road, a fabled music-industry 'disappearing' service - so when PI Kenny Gabriel is hired to solve the notorious case, he knows he’ll need to watch his back. But Kenny’s life is in danger already: a brain tumour is messing with his mind, and he may well have nothing to lose. Stalking the seedy clubs and backstreets of Soho, he makes a gruesome discovery....

When 12-year-old Sophie Williams went on a Girl Scout summer camp, she never returned home. Three months later, her body is found inside her sleeping bag in the most frequented area of Cocoa Beach, and the town is outraged. The girl isn't just any child. She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater. As another child, the son of a well-known senator, is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video, FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas plunges into the investigation, breaking her promise to her children not to do police work again.

Sonchai Jitpleecheep - the brash and beguiling Royal Thai Police Force detective who has been our guide through John Burdett’s five previous acclaimed Bangkok novels - is back. The former monk and devout Buddhist, forever battling to protect his karma from the assaults of morally compromising cases, is now faced with the most horrifying technological innovation to make its way to the streets of Bangkok and a conspiracy of almost unfathomable reach.  

Alex Mercer could use a break. But, as usual, he can't catch one. He's overburdened with best man duties, familial changes, and work obligations. The three responsibilities collide when his daughter's boyfriend is taken, his best friend is targeted, and officers and agents go missing. He knows there must be a link, but he's the only common denominator - a fact that doesn't bode well for job security. Or his loved ones' safety.

Two decades ago Marissa Mo escaped a basement prison - the only home she’d ever known. At twenty-seven, Marissa’s moved beyond the trauma and is working under a new name as a freelance photographer. But when she accepts a job covering a string of macabre murders in Portland, it’s impossible for Marissa not to remember. Everything is eerily familiar. The same underground lairs. Sad trinkets and toys left behind, identical to those Marissa had as a child. And then there is the note meant just for her that freezes Marissa’s blood: See you soon, Missy.

You were the golden girl. The apple of your parents’ eyes. My beautiful, clever wife. I would do anything for you. But some things about me must stay hidden. One summer afternoon, it all begins to unravel. Because I’m not the only one with terrible secrets to hide.... And when the truth comes out, it seems we both have blood on our hands....

When Joe Mason agrees to transport a priceless gold basin to its new owner, the ex-MI5 operative arrives only to find the recipient dead – brutally murdered in cold blood. To catch the killer, Mason must uncover the relic’s secrets. But he’s not the only one with an interest. The Guild of Night, a dangerous and vengeful cult, is determined to bring the Church to its knees – and the basin holds the power to do just that.

One second he was there; the next, gone. Taken, forever, without any clue as to how or why - until a family friend developed their vacation photos. These tales aren’t the dramatic reenactments of kidnappings, pieced together from sloppy clues that you’d hear about on the news or Unsolved Mysteries. Be it human, alien, ghost, or monster perpetrator, this collection of weird and frightening disappearances, assembled from true reports, proves unexplainable kidnappings happen more than we like to admit - and no one knows what really happened. 

One year after a terrible tragedy, the coastal town of West Seven is still recovering from its collective trauma. Deputy Lux Bern is a young rookie police officer with a mysterious past. When an opportunity arises to work with a seasoned detective, Lux jumps at the chance. A girl has gone missing, and Lux is personally invested in the teenager’s recovery.

The sleepy town of Barksdale, Louisiana, isn’t known for much - except for its unusually high rate of disappearances. When the daughter of a prominent businessman and a wealthy debutante vanishes, Reese Lindley returns to her hometown to cover the case for her podcast. Confronted by the past and her estranged family, Reese learns that the quiet town has more secrets to hide than she ever could have imagined.

Former CIA operative turned mercenary for hire Ryan Decker’s specialty is rescuing kidnap victims. Hired by an influential US senator to liberate her daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the assault could go so disastrously wrong. The hostage is dead. His team is wiped out, and so are their families, including Decker’s own wife and son - eliminated one by one by the Russian mafia. And he’s survived to take the fall.

Three months after four-year-old Holly Gebhardt was kidnapped, she was inexplicably returned to the same park from which she’d vanished...with no memory of the ordeal. Though a local handyman was convicted, suspicion also fell on his friend - Holly’s mother, Cecily. The troubling doubts about her involvement shattered the family, forever driving a wedge between mother and daughter. Twenty years later, another girl goes missing under eerily similar circumstances. It’s just the latest in a series of kidnappings that Detective Jason Guidry thinks Holly can help solve.

Trauma victims are not new to medical examiner Faith McIntyre, but this one is different. The unconscious woman clinging to life after a hit and run is FBI agent Macy Crow. What the woman from Quantico was doing in a dark alley after midnight is just one mystery. The other is more unsettling: Macy is Faith’s mirror image—the twin sister she never knew she had.

Nine wholesome university students mountaineering in the Urals go missing, and are later uncovered from the snows of a bleak forest's edge in the Siberian Taiga, in a series of grisly discoveries. Why were the climbers wearing no boots? Why were stout branches of the forest pines singed to a height of 30 feet? What were the mysterious markings in the bark of nearby trees? What was so-called "overwhelming force" that was capable of breaking eight ribs in a single blow without bruises?

Kidnapping is one of the cruellest crimes - lives are put at risk for cold, hard cash. But when Somali pirates seize the crew of a yacht off the coast of Africa, they bite off more than they can chew. One of the hostages has friends in high places, and Spider Shepherd is put on the case. He goes deep undercover in an audacious plan to bring an end to the pirate gang's reign of terror. But as Shepherd closes in on his quarry, he realises that there's much more at stake than the lives of the hostages.

Luke's week in the mountains goes from pleasure to business in an instant when he is called upon to help find two teenage boys–one the son of a multi-millionaire Starbucks VIP–who have been abducted at gunpoint during a wilderness survival school expedition. Their captors and the foreigners calling the shots behind the scenes are desperate for their ransom money and willing to do almost anything to get it.

Un soir de septembre 1989, à Misto lors de la fête des pêcheurs, Silva, 17 ans, disparaît sans laisser de trace. Dans ce bourg de la mer Adriatique, les hypothèses vont bon train : Silva a-t-elle été enlevée, assassinée ? Ou s’est-elle simplement enfuie du pays ? Mais l’Histoire est en marche ; le régime de Tito s’effondre et la guerre civile menace. Au milieu du chaos, l’affaire est classée. Mate, son frère jumeau poursuivra ses recherches. Sans relâche.

When he wakes in a pitch-black room with his hands bound, Roland Britten – accountant and champion steeplechase jockey – knows he’s entered a nightmare of someone else’s making. Wracking his brain to figure out who’s out to get him and why, he comes up empty, but somehow manages a death-defying escape. It isn’t long, though, before he’s recaptured.

A traumatized girl wakes in the hospital with no memory of how she got there. Her only thought is to find the one person she remembers - her Uncle Alex. When the authorities contact Alex Mercer, he rushes to the hospital. He's surprised to find it's his cousin Ayla. Shocked to see the condition she's in. Stunned to learn her parents are missing. Alex welcomes her into his home, and the family rallies around her as she tries to recover. But progress is slow, and for every step forward, she backslides. Compounding the problem is the mounting evidence that none of this was an accident.