Washoe County Library System

"Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black. She felt their eyes, all those executioners… Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a...

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in 1943, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. His life is a daily struggle to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from pitiless beatings--until he receives a letter that will change him forever. Moving deftly from the POW camp to contemporary Australia, from the experiences of...

Jake Brigance is called upon to help his old friend, disgraced former attorney Mack Stafford, make his return; young death row inmate Cody Wallace has one final request just several hours before execution; and two young attorney brothers, Kirk and Rusty Malloy, look to Diantha Bradshaw to help save their once prosperous firm which they inherited from their father.

"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon...

Accused by her in-laws and imprisoned for the murder of her husband, Zeba forges bonds with a group of women who have also been locked up for social violations and places her fate in the hands of an Afghan-born, American-raised civil rights lawyer.

Not every gift is a blessing. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie is a very special girl.

"A prisoner in a secret cell. The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence. From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait...

A current death-row inmate relates the story of his life--including heroin-addict parents, an abusive foster family, a life of crime and imprisonment, and his eventual embracing of Buddhism. "When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose." The moving memoir of...

“Whatever comes your way, find the happiness in it.” Hope Carpenter received that advice from her mother decades ago. Now, with their four children grown, Hope and her husband, Rick, are suddenly facing an uncertain future, after a forced retirement strains both their savings and their marriage. Seeking inspiration and a financial boost, Hope gets a job teaching crafts to inmates at a local womens prison. At first, Hope feels foolish and irrelevant,...

"Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop who can't let injustice go-and who has the fighting skills to back up his idealism. If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he's going to rescue her and cause some damage. When he does just that in a small corrupt Missouri town, he's brutally beaten and thrown into a maximum-security prison. Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor's daughter, is about to take a tour of the...