When Brian Nichols, on the run as the subject of a city-wide manhunt and desperate to make contact with his newborn son, takes recovering meth addict Ashley Smith hostage in her own apartment, she turns for guidance to Rick Warren's bestselling inspirational book, The Purpose Driven Life. While reading aloud, Ashley and her would-be killer each face crossroads where despair and death intersect hope.

"A fearless thief and master of disguise plots an impossible crime"-- Super thief Riley Wolfe can do it all. He is a master of disguise, can scale a wall, and can vanish into thin air (thick air, too). He uses these unique talents to rob the richest. But this time, it's the most powerful who have him in their grips. It's not just that the high-up, rogue government agent has abducted the only two people Riley loves: it's the fact that Riley has to...

"At the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and famine almost ended humanity--until the discovery of the Klujns, a barbaric, humanoid species with strangely colored eyes and even stranger abilities. Their crystal claws and bones fertilize barren soil, and their tender meat is a super-protein. Klujns are both humans' saviors and natural-born enemies, meant to be hunted and used. When sixteen-year-old Ava finds herself on the wrong side...

"Sandy has no idea that tonight her life will be forever changed. As a late autumn sky darkens over the Adirondack mountains ... the mood in the Tremont house is already charged with tension ... But when her husband Ben, a wilderness guide, arrives home, the troubled atmosphere immediately lightens ... Nearby, two desperate men on the run make their way through the fading light ... After nearly two decades as prison cellmates, they have become a deadly...

Roxanne Coss becomes trapped in a hostage situation when she's invited to perform at a lavish party for a wealthy industrialist in South America. As a lengthy standoff ensues, hostages and captors form unexpected bonds as they overcome their differences to find their shared humanity.

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center -- a women's reproductive health services clinic -- its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage. After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with...

Detective Michael Bennett and FBI Abduction Specialist Emily Parker reluctantly team up to stop a kidnapper and would-be killer who is targeting not only children from New York's wealthiest families but also the city itself.

Will MacMillan, masquerading as a member of the notorious Walton Gang, falls in love with Jamie Ellis, but must protect her when she is caught in the middle of a hostage situation gone awry.

Paul, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter picks up a drifter and offers him a place to stay. However, when the stranger takes Paul hostage and forces him to write, their unhinged relationship brings buried secrets to light.

"The spectacularly dramatic memoir of a woman whose curiosity about the world led her from rural Canada to imperiled and dangerous countries on every continent, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity in Somalia--a story of courage, resilience, and extraordinary grace.At the age of eighteen, Amanda Lindhout moved from her hardscrabble Alberta hometown to the big city--Calgary--and worked as a cocktail waitress, saving her tips so she could...