Karen Kummerer has been kidnapped by her former boyfriend. For the next seven days they drive, crossing seven states on this odyssey to nowhere. Her only hope is to leave notes in bathrooms, hoping that someone, anyone, will alert authorities ... It's her only way to escape.

Lifelong friends, Rangel and Lorenzo Madrid were fishing in the Sea of Cortez when they noticed the light was fading and the winds were picking up. They told their guide they were ready to head back. What came next landed them on a barren, inhospitable island, where they were stranded for two weeks.

David Parker Ray’s torture chamber is outfitted with a cattle prod and system of pulleys, weights and chains that bring his victims close to death. Scores of women fall victim to Ray and his girlfriend, Cindy Lea Hendy. Cynthia Vigil is one of his unwitting victims. Held and tortured by Ray and his female accomplice she knows she must escape or face certain death.

Eric Le Marque had been snowboarding in the mountains, but now he’s lost. For eight days, he battles the elements – a blizzard, subfreezing temperatures, wild animals, treacherous terrain – and his own fear and exhaustion. He will learn the limits of what the human body can endure … and that Mother Nature takes no prisoners.

On Day 20 of a voyage from Tahiti to San Diego, Tami Ashcraft and her boyfriend Richard Sharp hear a weather warning over the radio chatter — Hurricane Raymond, a dangerous Category 4 storm, is funneling right at them. The radio is dead. The navigational tools are useless. But, after a month lost at sea, Tami Ashcraft finally makes it to land.

In November 1978, nearly 1,000 people are living and working in Jim Jones' People’s Temple, deep in the Guyanese jungles. Kept apart from their parents and forced to work 14-hour days in the sweltering heat of the fields, Brenda and her family secretly begin hatching a plan to escape.

Katya is growing desperate. She’d been lured to America with the promise of a job, but now the Ukrainian student is a slave. Stripped of her passport and all personal identification, Katya’s every move is monitored. After eight months of constant death threats, beatings and a life as dark as possible, she begins to plot her escape.

In the early morning hours of July 29, 1995, 13-year-old Thad Phillips has been kidnapped by a vicious torturer. If Thad is to survive he’ll have no one to count on but himself. When his captor leaves for a date, Thad drags his body to the staircase. The pain will cause him to pass out on the way down. He only hopes he can make it to the telephone before his kidnapper gets back.