Washoe County Library System

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...

The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him. A female investigator searches for buried information from prisoners' pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, and reveals shocking...

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...

Grieving the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak reluctantly accepts a case from a suspected murderer who may or may not be innocent.

"William A. Noguera tells his story from early childhood: heartrending experiences growing up physically and emotionally abused by his parents. It was no more safe outside, falling victim to vicious beatings by local gangs--a target of racial discrimination for being the only Colombian in a Mexican and Black Los Angeles County suburb. To cope, Noguera escaped into his imagination. Art has always been his refuge. To protect himself from attacks he...