Washoe County Library System

In the Old South of the 1930s, when a gentle giant of a man is sentenced to death for the murder and rape of two little girls, the fact that he is black and the girls are white is inflammatory enough, but the situation is further complicated by his near muteness and gift for healing. The #1 New York Times bestselling dramatic serial novel and inspiration for the Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Tom Hanks, the "literary event" (Entertainment...

Nine years ago, Travis Boyette raped and murdered a popular high school student in Sloan Texas. To his amazement, Donte Drumm, the school's football star, was wrongly convicted of his heinous crimes and sent to death row. Now, Travis, who has an inoperable brain tumor and is stricken with guilt, decides to confess in a bid to save Donte, who has just four days before his execution.

Melvin Mars awaits his fate on Death Row. He was one of America's most promising football stars until, aged twenty-years-old, he was arrested and convicted for the murder of his parents just as he was due to begin a very lucrative contract with the NFL. When Amos Decker, newly appointed special agent with the FBI, hears the news that Melvin was saved in the final seconds before his execution because someone has confessed to the killings, he persuades...

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

Visited by a high-powered attorney who has initiated a clemency petition on her behalf and who is also the mother of her victim, death-row inmate Noa is slowly persuaded to share the events surrounding the murder in spite of her reluctance to reveal the whole story or have her life extended.

In what is arguably his greatest book--written in 1979 and reissued here in trade paperback--America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who---after robbing two men and killing them in cold blood--insisted on dying for his crime.

After a few years in London, housewife Eliza, her successful husband, and their teenage daughter return home to Washington, D.C. However, Eliza's homecoming sparks up memories of past torments, when she was abducted by a serial killer who is now sitting on death row.

Private eye Noah Braddock has finally found peace in his once tumultuous relationship with Detective Liz Santangelo and has called a tentative truce with his alcoholic mother, Carolina. So when lawyer Darcy Gill demands that he look into a hopeless death row case, he's more interested in catching some waves before San Diego's rare winter weather takes hold. Then Darcy plays her trump card: the man scheduled to die--convicted of killing two men in...

Eliza Benedict's peaceful suburban life is shattered after being contacted by Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped and held her hostage as a teen in 1985, and who now claims to want forgiveness while on death row. An edgy, utterly gripping tale of psychological manipulation.