Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

Dr. Ransom, a noted philologist, is kidnapped and flown by spaceship to Malacandra (Mars) where he flees his human captors and establishes communication with the planet's extraordinary inhabitants. What he learns galvanizes his attempt to return to Earth with a message of great urgency.

"In 1848, Ellen Craft became invisible. Ellen, a slave from Macon, Georgia, took trains and steamboats north, but the people all around couldn't see her. They saw only a white man. Ellen Craft's mother was a slave, but her father was her master, and she had skin as white as his. So she posed as a white man, while her husband William posed as her slave. Ellen vanished, and she became William Johnson - an ailing gentleman seeking medical treatment in...

It's 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg, a professional storyteller and writer, has been taken hostage. He has been abducted from his home in Brooklyn, New York, blindfolded and tied to a chair in a dark basement. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, don't explain why Shaltiel has been chosen, just that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best, telling...

"US Marshals Madison James and Jonas Quinn are thrust into a high-profile case when they are called on to transport two prisoners across the country on a private plane. But when the plane experiences engine trouble en route from the Pacific Northwest to Colorado, the pilots crash-land the aircraft deep in the heart of the sprawling Salmon-Challis National Forest. When Madison and Jonas regain consciousness, they find both pilots and one prisoner dead--and...

Sentry Dance Pickett has watched, helpless, as conditions in the Andersonville Prison worsen. Southern belle Violet Stiles cannot believe the good folk of Americus would condone such barbarism. Confederate corporal Emery Jones found an unexpected camaraderie with the Union prisoner he escorted there. When they cross paths, Emery leads Dance and Violet to a daring act. Wrestling with God's harsh truth, they must decide: Who is my neighbor?

Edmond Dantes has a perfect life. He is engaged to a beautiful woman and has just been named captain of a ship. But when three jealous friends conspire to destroy him, Dantes is locked away for life in the infamous Chateau d'If. In prison, Dantes learns of an island where vast treasure is hidden. He plots a daring escape, then uses the treasure to transform himself into the Count of Monte Cristo. Equipped with power, wealth, and disguise, he seeks...

A female deputy U.S. marshal is kidnapped during a prison break, eventually hunting the escapee as he plans his next heist.

On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, there is a little-known and never-visited psychiatric facility. There, far from prying eyes, the government keeps in "deep storage" former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state make them a security risk to their own government, people whose ramblings might jeopardize ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient. One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent...