Child Crimes

In books like Buried Onions and Boys at Work, Gary Soto displays a gift for revealing the tough, heart-breaking life of contemporary urban kids. In Petty Crimes, Soto offers 10 stories about the risky situations and dangerous little scams faced by young people growing up on the harsh streets of the city.

March 1997. A woman has her throat cut behind a bar in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base.Is the murderer a local guy - or is he a soldier?Jack Reacher, still a major in the military police, is sent in undercover. The county sheriff is a former U.S. Marine - and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn't she really want to find the killer? The adrenaline-pumping, high-voltage action in The Affair is set just six months before the opening of Killing Floor....

Florence Lovelady's career was made when she convicted coffin-maker Larry Grassbrook of a series of child murders 30 years ago in a small village in Lancashire. Like something out of a nightmare, the victims were buried alive. Florence was able to solve the mystery and get a confession out of Larry before more children were murdered, and he spent the rest of his life in prison. But now, decades later, he's dead, and events from the past start to repeat themselves. When her own son goes missing under similar circumstances, the case not only gets reopened...it gets personal.

Faced with a severely schizophrenic daughter, homeless with no hope, and a heroin-addicted daughter clinging to life living in her car. A mother searches an infant boy's eyes for the answers. How can God's hand pull them through all this darkness? How will a mother find a different route? This is a journey through unmerciful mental madness and the torment of the people who desperately try to find help. Mentally ill are SKIPPED by society. Drug addiction is relentless. One day at a time, God's glorious path becomes clear.

For 500 years, the Cahills have been the most powerful family in the world. For 500 years, they've protected the source of their power - the 39 Clues. And for 500 years, they've kept their secrets silent. Until now. This extraordinary stand-alone novel cracks open the Cahill vault to tell the story of the most coveted piece of artwork in the world, a masterpiece that has been the target of seven separate theft attempts: Jan van Eyck’s altarpiece at Ghent.

Friday's Mum, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, has been accused of espionage. The police think she's been selling secrets about the CERN Hadron Super Collider. Friday knows her mother isn't capable of such a thing - this is a woman who can't even operate a dishwasher. She's got to smuggle herself into Switzerland to clear her Mum's name. Fortunately, Melanie is a master of disguise. After an extremely extreme make-over, Friday arrives at CERN and finds axolotls in the water coolers, graffiti in the great hall and most baffling of all - her sister has fallen in love with an engineer!

Twelve true crime stories of murder and mayhem. Fifth audiobook of the True Crime Case Histories Series (2020). When researching these stories, I commonly use actual police reports, court documents, and first-hand descriptions. Some of the details can be disconcerting. I do my best to not leave out any of the details in my audiobooks, no matter how depraved they may be. My intent is not to shock, but to show precisely how twisted the mind of a killer can be. The stories in this volume are shocking and disturbing, but they’re also true. These things really do happen in the world.

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.

“Hello, mom?” “Piper?” “I have been arrested. Will you please come get me?” “AGAIN, Piper?!” I sigh. “I can explain…” “I will be right there. My mom comforts me, “ I know you are tired; just go get her, and we can talk when you get back.” Stressed and upset, I drive to the police station to pick up my wayward daughter. I am at my wit's end with this girl! I know that rebelling as a teenager is normal; even though I had rebellious moments, Piper takes it to a new level. I stopped short when my eyes lock on her new probation officer. “Come on, Piper,” I insist....

1992. Eight respectable, upstanding people have been found dead across the US. These deaths look like accidents and don't appear to be connected. Until one body - the victim of a fatal fall from a hospital window - generates some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defence, who promptly calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher is assigned as the Army's representative. Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people's secrets under the carpet isn't part of his skill set.

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.

In the spring of 2016, someone kidnapped the young step-daughter of John Allen Douglas, a very dangerous figure in the Philadelphia criminal world. Is this the opening move in a gang war, one designed to distract Douglas from his business, or is it something more personal? Ellen is drawn into the hunt for the child when Robert Blasingame reappears in her life. Ellen first met him during what was supposed to be a vacation but turned into a life and death struggle. She cut off her feelings for Blasingame when she discovered he was a very dangerous man operating outside the law. Nowadays, ...

Most twelve-year-old boys are preoccupied with comics and playing with their friends. Twelve-year-old Frank Heeney, however, is about to start three years of hell at Ireland’s notorious St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack County Galway. St. Joseph’s is an inferno of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of the administrators. Many children, some as young as four, die from such conditions and are secretly disposed of in the surrounding wilderness. As Frank spends three years at St. Joseph’s Letterfrack and two years at St. Patrick’s children’s prison, he is...

An unlicensed outlaw private eye hunts a wanted man for the bounty on his head in this Kindle crime action, mystery and suspense vigilante justice thriller. Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck is in a snowy Detroit, Michigan, hot on the trail of a murderous drug dealer wanted by the U.S. Marshals. He witnesses an unrelated murder on a deserted main street and deals with it in the way he does best. But his actions don't go unnoticed. A woman witnesses what he does. A pressing problem weighing heavily on her mind and seeing him as the only viable solution, she approaches him on the street ...

Run, Hide, Repeat is a memoir of a childhood steeped in unexplained fear and menace. Gripping and suspenseful, it moves from Dakin's uneasy acceptance of her family's dire situation to bewildered anger. As compelling and twisted as a thriller, Run Hide Repeat is an unforgettable portrait of a family under threat and the resilience of family bonds.

Ryan and Phil had always been inseparable. Twins born thirty-five minutes apart, Ryan was the protective one, constantly looking out for his younger brother. They can't remember how old they were when the abuse started, but they can remember their uncle very clearly. A frequent visitor to their home in Lincoln, he lavished their family with expensive treats. School holidays and weekends were spent visiting him, when he would often take the two little boys aside to play the games he liked. Trapped with him, day after day, year after year, the abuse continued until Ryan and Phil turned sixteen.

Two fourteen-year-old girls go missing from an exclusive boarding school. Did they abscond, or have they been kidnapped? The girls’ parents - and indeed the parents of many other pupils – have considerable influence in very high places. Pressure is quickly brought to bear to get Scotland Yard involved. Concern for the girls’ safety is paramount. Detective Chief Inspector Adair and three of his officers are assigned to help the local police. Initially there is little to go on, but Adair soon determines that the children didn’t leave voluntarily. The first step – to ascertain how ...

A young couple trying to get to New York City are stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. Before long they're trapped in an ominous game of life and death. Meanwhile, Jack Reacher sets out on an epic road trip across America. He doesn't get far. Deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been - the town where his father was born. But when he arrives he is told no one named Reacher ever lived there. Now he wonders: who's lying?

The story is based during the post war years of Britain, when rationing was still a prominent feature of daily life and people were struggling to survive. Unfortunately for one young family living in the backstreet slums of Birmingham, their father, Reginald Tinwood, who worked at the local gasworks was a violent domestic bully who targets the youngest of three siblings. Six-year-old Jimmy is subjected to a number of severe beatings until the last leaves him close to death, having witnessed the brutal murder of his mother by his father who then disappears from the small, terraced house. ...

Canyon Sacrifice brings the rugged western landscape, the mysterious past of the ancient Anasazi Indians, and the Southwest's ongoing cultural fissures vividly to life. A deadly struggle against murderous kidnappers in Grand Canyon National Park forces archaeologist Chuck Bender to face up to his past as he realizes every parent's worst nightmare: a missing child.