"In 1948, Sally Horner was just eleven years old when she was kidnapped by a man claiming to be an FBI agent. Seven years later, Vladimir Nabokov published Lolita, perhaps the most seminal novel of the twentieth century. Sarah Weinman's investigation into how the two are connected is a thrilling, heartbreaking mix of literary scholarship and true-crime writing."--back cover.

Traces the life and infamous 1973 abduction of the Getty Oil founder's grandson, offering insight into J. Paul Getty III's questionable social life, his family's abandonment, and the audacious ransom demanded by the kidnapper.

"They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives 'like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path'. But when Regina discloses the truth about her abusive mother to her social worker,...