From her secluded mountain cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, USA, best-selling author Karin Slaughter crafts stories which keep millions awake at night. She tells Lucy Collingwood how she works best – at her bespoke ‘cockpit’ desk, a couple of intense weeks at a time, where she juggles the tv-adaptation of her book The Good Daughter and her latest thriller The Secrets We Hide.

100 Objects #1: The Century Safe In 1876, Americans filled an iron safe with objects meant to tell their story — to be opened a century later. Roman Mars and historian Jill Lepore trace its long wait, from Reconstruction to Watergate, and the surprising, unsettling contents that emerged in 1976. What do the objects we choose to preserve — or forget — reveal about how we author our own history? Host: Roman Mars Producers: Priscilla Alabi, Brenna Daldorph, Isaac Fisher, Ellie Lightfoot EPs: Annie Brown, Courtney Harrell, Kathy Tu

When Dr. Mahrang Baloch was a teenager, she joined hundreds of families across Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan to search for her father, who had disappeared. Activists and rights groups say thousands of ethnic Baloch people have disappeared over the past two decades, alleging many were detained by security forces, tortured and killed as part of operations against a long-running separatist movement. After three years of being missing, Mahrang's family received a call telling them that her father's body had been found. This led Mahrang herself becoming a campaigner, leading protests and marches demanding information about missing persons in Balochistan. But last year she was arrested and she has now been sentenced to life in prison. Farhat Javed of BBC Urdu tells her story.

 As the group stage of the World Cup comes to a close, Cape Verde, a tiny nation off the coast of West Africa, is celebrating a remarkable achievement. It's their first ever time at the tournament, but the Blue Sharks, as their team is known, have made it out of the group stage with a series of strong performances where they have held big teams like Spain and Uruguay to account. Meanwhile, in South Korea, a much more seasoned squad packed with international talent have arrived home in defeat after losing to teams their critics feel they should have beaten. The fallout has been painful. Paul Njie, journalist with BBC West Africa and Jake Kwon, Seoul Correspondent for BBC News, reflect.

The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts.

Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India.

If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from The Fifth Floor, the show at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world.

Presented by Irena Taranyuk.

Produced by Laura Thomas, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean.

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

The people of Venezuela are still reeling from the aftermath of two powerful earthquakes which struck near the capital Caracas in June. As buildings collapsed, the impact was devastating. Over two and a half thousand are recorded dead but, with tens of thousands of people still missing, the final number will be much higher. We hear from people who were in Caracas and the nearby port of La Guaira - one of the worst affected areas. Some have been made homeless. Some are students, who were about to graduate and are now mourning the loss of friends. Some, like Gonzalo, are continuing to search for those who are still trapped beneath collapsed buildings.

While rescue teams have arrived from all over the world, Gonzalo is dismayed at the shortage of aid from his own government.

"As Venezuelans right now we cannot afford to stop and process. We are stuck in the loop of helping, helping, helping, helping, helping. We have to get each other out, we have to get each other out, which is a beautiful thing," said Gonzalo.

"But the painful thing is that it's just a sign of how alone we are. How destroyed the network of this country is and that is the most desolating part of it all."

Host: James Reynolds BBC producers: Iqra Farooq and Ryan Keane. Boffin Media producer: Sue Nelson Editors: Harriet Oliver and Arja Haikonen

An EcoAudio certified Boffin Media production in partnership with the OS team.