In the wake of being sexually assaulted by her pastor, sixteen-year-old Amina struggles to regain her footing until she finds the strength within herself to confront her abuser in court. Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her tongue as her weapon--even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a classmate, her father forces her to volunteer at their church with Pastor Johnson. But Pastor Johnson isn't the holy man everyone...

"Throughout his long and illustrious career, Mark Bowden has written about crime and was recognized in 2010 with a lifetime achievement award by the International Thriller Writers organization. The Case of the Vanishing Blonde collects six of his most riveting pieces-accounts spanning four decades of searing characters and unsettling tales to illustrate all manner of crimes and the ways technology has progressively altered criminal investigation....

On a clear, brisk night in September of 2000, thirty-three-year-old Della Brown was found sexually assaulted and beaten to death inside a filthy, abandoned shed in seedy part of Anchorage, Alaska. She was one of six women, mostly Native Alaskan, slain that year, stoking fears a serial killer was on the loose. A tanned and thuggish twenty-year-old would eventually implicate himself in three of the women's deaths and confess, in detail, to Della's murder....