Kidnapping

The new novel Falling is a thriller and the debut of writer T.J. Newman who is a former flight attendant. It's about an airline pilot who faces a terrible choice.

Kidnapped by Somali pirates, journalist Michael Scott Moore spent two and half years in captivity. At times he was held on land, other times at sea. Once, when he was on a 160-foot tuna boat, he tried to escape by jumping over the side at night.

Lynsey Addario was taken captive in 2011 while covering Libya's civil war. With a gun to her head, she says, she was thinking, "Will I ever get my cameras back?"

Foley was held hostage in Syria for nearly two years before he was killed by his captors. GlobalPost co-founder Phil Balboni tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the efforts to win his release.

Last year, journalist Rukmini Callimachi found thousands of al-Qaida documents in Timbuktu in Mali. She tells Fresh Air about al-Quaida's strategy of kidnapping Europeans and demanding ransoms.

Aaron Katz's mumblecore flick Cold Weather is set in Portland, Ore.; Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is from South Korea. Critic John Powers says both films are wonderful, in part because the stories they tell are so unpredictable.

Despite the economic recession — or perhaps because of it — the kidnapping business is booming. In his recent New York Times Magazine article, journalist Nicholas Schmidle explores the international hostage market and its impact on workers.

AMC's newest miniseries is an ill-advised attempt at a reboot of the cult-hit '60s spy series: A man known as Six (Jim Caviezel) finds himself trapped in a strange desert village, dogged b y a mysterious watcher (Ian McKellen's elusive Two). Critic David Bianculli says that despite McKellen's captivating performance, the remake has none of the curious genius of the original.

TV critic David Bianculli considers the impact of the FX drama series The Shield, which begins its seventh and final season.

Actor Jeremy Sisto, best known for his role as Billy on HBO's Six Feet Under, is now starring in the new series Kidnapped on NBC. It premieres next Wednesday.