12 results for "Children"

The hunt

Kellerman, Faye
"Peter and his partner, Detective Tyler McAdams, are thrown into an unsolved case and propelled into action when a body is found in Upstate New York, in the very woods where a man previously went missing ... But that's not the only crisis that Peter has to deal with. Teresa McLaughlin, the biological mother of Peter and Rina's foster son, Gabe, has fled to Los Angeles with her two other children in tow, hoping to avoid a court injunction amid a messy divorce. But L.A. is no escape from her problems--she is found by ruthless men and beaten mercilessly. When Terry wakes, barely conscious, she discovers that both of her children are gone and frantically calls Gabe for help. Unable to assist his mother immediately, Gabe enlists the help of Peter and Rina and contacts his biological father, the notorious Christopher Donatti, a former hit man from a known crime family who's now a multi-millionaire in Nevada. By bringing Donatti into the fray, Gabe, Peter, and Rina know they have made a deal with the devil--but with Terry on the verge of death, they have no choice. As these unlikely allies rally to find the kidnappers of Terry's children before things end tragically, they race headlong toward an explosive confrontation from which no one will emerge unscathed..."--Dust jacket flap.
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2022 483 pages

Perfect murder, perfect town

Schiller, Lawrence
In Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller thoroughly recreates every aspect of the complex case of the death of JonBenét Ramsey. A brilliant portrait of an inscrutable family thrust under the spotlight of public suspicion and an affluent, tranquil city torn apart by a crime it couldn't handle, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town uncovers the mysteries that have bewildered the nation. Why were the Ramseys, the targets of the investigation, able to control the direction of the police inquiry? Can the key to the murder be found in the pen and writing pad used for the ransom note? Was it possible for an intruder to have killed JonBenét?
HarperCollins 2000 768 pages

A wilderness of error: the trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

Morris, Errol
Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris examines the nature of evidence and proof in the infamous Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. In 1979 MacDonald was convicted of the brutal 1970 murder of his wife and two children, and remains in prison today. Since then a number of bestselling books, including Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision, and a blockbuster television miniseries have attempted to solve and explain the MacDonald case. Here, Morris, who has been investigating the case for nearly two decades, reveals that almost everything we know about it is ultimately flawed, and an innocent man may be behind bars. In a reinvention of the true-crime thriller, Morris looks behind the haze of myth. Drawing on court transcripts, lab reports, and original interviews, he brings a complete forty-year history back to life and allows the reader to explore the case as a detective might by confronting the evidence as if for the first time.--From publisher description.
Penguin Books 2013 553 pages

The quiet boy

Winters, Ben H.
"In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son Wesley has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room. In 2019, Shenk - still in practice but a shell of his former self - is hired to defend Wesley Keener's father when he is charged with murder . . . the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk's adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what really happened to the murdered witness. Two thrilling trials braid together, medical malpractice and murder, jostling us back and forth in time. The Quiet Boy is a book full of mysteries, not only about the death of a brilliant scientist, not only about the outcome of the medical malpractice suit, but about the relationship between children and their parents, between the past and the present, between truth and lies. At the center of it all is Wesley Keener, endlessly walking, staring empty-eyed, in whose quiet, hollow body may lie the fate of humankind."--Publisher.
Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company 2021-05 438 pages

Going postal: school shootings, workplace massacres and the untold history of failed rebellions

Ames, Mark
American workers and children are rebelling violently all around us. Going Postal explores the rage-murder phenomenon that has both plagued and baffled America for the last three decades, offering provocative answers to the oft-asked question, "Why?" By juxtaposing the historical place of rage in America with the social climate that has existed since the 1980s—when Reaganomics began to widen the gap between executive and average-worker earnings—Ames crafts a convincing argument that these schoolyard and office massacres can be seen as modern-day slave rebellions. He explores numerous fascinating and unexpected cases in detail, showing that as with slave rebellions, these massacres are doomed, gory, sometimes even inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood. Taking up where Bowling for Columbine left off, this book seeks to set these murders in their proper context, thereby revealing their true meaning. Ames updates this edition with an eye toward recent events, including several new essays taking on the violent episodes at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech universities, as well as workplace outrages like that in Alabama in March 2009. With the economy slumping and shooting rampages seemingly on the rise, Ames’s wide-scoped explanations have never been more prudent.
Soft Skull 2010 304 pages

The unloved

Levy, Deborah
When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gather to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an English woman is murdered. Tatiana, 'the unloved child', declares she knows who did it. The subsequent inquiry into the death proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage and sadistic desire, framed within an unfolding narrative of colonial violence which will change the tourists' version of history for ever. The Unloved is a pivotal novel in Levy's career, first published in 1994 and reissued now for a new generation of readers.
Bloomsbury 2015 199 pages

Requiem for a Female Serial Killer

Phyllis Chesler
This psychological crime thriller takes us inside the mind of a unique female serial killer, a prostitute who murdered seven adult men-a case with which the author was intimately involved. The issues raised by this high-profile criminal case remain unresolved to this day. Women, even prostitutes, have the right to self-defense in theory, but in practice, the story is more complicated. This book will challenge everything you ever thought about prostitutes, serial killers, and justice in America. Aileen Wuornos is a damaged soul, a genuine American outlaw, a symbol of women's rage, a symbol of what can happen to severely abused children, and of how our justice system fails women. Chesler's involvement with a serial killer has haunted her ever since. She speaks in Aileen Wuornos' voice, as well as in her own, and delivers an incisive, original, and dramatic portrait of a cognitively impaired, traumatized, and alcoholic woman who had endured so much pain in her short life. When she'd had enough, the results were deadly. This is a poignant, sometimes humorous, never-before-told behind-the-scenes tale. Wuornos' story is handled with great sensitivity, but also with realistic detachment by Chesler as she probes the telling moment, the telling phrase. Was Wuornos suffering from post-traumatic stress after a life lived on a "killing field?" Was she also "born evil?" So many prostitutes have been torture-murdered by serial killers-how did Wuornos, once prey, become a predator? Requiem for a Female Serial Killer will also haunt you. It won't let you put it down. Take a walk on the wild side. The ghost of Aileen Wuornos beckons.
New English Review Press 2020 250 pages

Quit monks or die! a novel

Kumin, Maxine
Set in a small town that houses little more than a research lab and an engineering school, the body of the lab's director is found in a pit used for maternal deprivation experiments with monkeys. A few days later, a graduate student is found murdered as well. Are these deaths connected? And who's responsible for these murders? Written by one of America's greatest poets, this mystery is a scathing social commentary with a criminal twist. Maxine Kumin is the author of poetry, novels, short stories, essays and a number of children's books. She has received several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Poets' Prize, the Levinson Prize, and most recently, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She lives in Warner, New Hampshire.
Story Line Press 1999-09-15 183 pages