Journalists John McCoy and Ethan Hoffman spent four months inside the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla in 1978, just as Washington, once a leader in prison reform, abandoned its focus on reform and rehabilitation and returned to cell time and punishment. It was a brutal transition. McCoy and Hoffman roamed the maximum-security compound almost at will, observing and befriending prisoners and guards. The result is a striking depiction of a community in which there was little to do, much to fear, and a culture that both mimicked and scorned the outside world. McCoy’s unadorned prose and Hoffman’s stunning black-and-white photographs offer as authentic a portrayal of life in the Big House as “outsiders” are ever likely to experience. Originally published in 1981, Concrete Mama revealed a previously unseen stark and complex world of life on the inside, for which it won the Washington State Book Award. Long unavailable yet still relevant, it is revitalized in a second edition with an introduction by scholar Dan Berger that provides historical context for the book's ongoing resonance, along with several previously unpublished photographs.

A cop gets shot. . . He loses his left eye. He loses his job. And that's after he loses his wife. So what's he going to do? Michael "Doc" Kildare, former undercover narc, sues the government. Claims one-third of the $45 million recovered in the drug raid he led. Armando Guzman, the drug lord who lost the money, doesn't like that. He puts out a contract on Doc's life. Doc's former boss, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, also takes exception. He says the confiscated drug money is his. So when he learns of Guzman's contract, he quietly passes the word: Nobody wearing a CPD star is to help Doc in any way. But that's not all. An old friend of Doc's asks a favor. Help find her son. The boy is 17 years old, but mentally handicapped. Doc investigates and soon learns there might be a serial killer working his neighborhood. Oh, yeah. Doc's ex-wife? She's back. He tells himself that she's only after the millions that might be coming his way. Thing is, he doesn't know if that's a good enough reason to turn her away. Hitmen to the right, a maniac to the left, and a redheaded distraction. Nobody ever said retirement would be easy.

Gilmore Girls meets A Snicker of Magic in this sweet debut novel about twelve-year-old Rosie Flynn, whose film-making skills may be the answer to uncovering the miracles of her town and bringing her father home. There’s no accounting for Miracles, at least that’s what the folks of Glimmer Creek say. Every year, one lucky inhabitant survives danger, and bits of magic cling to them for a lifetime. Rosie Flynn doesn’t know how to get a Miracle but knows for sure they’re real. It’s the same way she’s certain she’ll always have her two best friends, Henry and Cam, that she’ll be a famous film director someday, and that she and her Mama are the perfect team of two. But when someone Rosie loves goes missing, she just might discover that the true Miracle of Glimmer Creek is much different than she’d always believed and that the relationships she holds dear are the most fortunate gift of all.

The young woman watched me like a cat watches a rat he is going to catch for his dinner. As I walked up the stairs to let myself in the building she jumped in front of me. She pressed her face close to my ear. I could feel and smell her hot stinking breath as she whispered menacingly into my ear, "Open this goddamned door quick bitch. You better not scream or I will run this knife right through your side." I fumbled in my purse for my key. I tried to keep as still as possible because I could feel the knife pricking my skin every time I moved. I finally found the key and my hand was trembling so badly that I could barely turn the lock. "You better hurry up bitch if you don't want to die." Once I got the door opened the woman pushed me to the floor. She went straight to the cabinets and rambled through the vaccine bottles and other medicines that had been set aside for the research project. "You better not try anything." she yelled, while she rambled through the cabinets, She cursed and threw bottles on the floor as she pillaged through every cabinet in the office. She finally found what she was looking for. She headed towards the door, turned back, came to where I was lying on the floor, leaned close to me and yelled in my face, "You better not call the sheriff bitch, or I will come back, find you, and kill your fuckin ass."

Giving voice to the hardworking Italian immigrants who worked, lived, and died in New York City shortly before the Great Depression, this American classic ranks with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as one of the 20th century’s great works of social protest. Largely autobiographical, Christ in Concrete opens with the dramatic Good Friday collapse of a building under construction, crucifying in concrete an Italian construction worker, whose death leaves his pregnant wife and eight children impoverished. His oldest son, Paul, at just twelve years old, must take over his father’s role—and his job. Paul’s odyssey into manhood begins on the high girders where death is an occupational hazard and a boy’s dreams are the first fatality. Written in sonorous prose that recalls the speaker’s Italian origins, Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete is at once a powerful social document and a deeply moving story about the American immigrant experience.

Macbeth for Murderers is a true story of how lives collide behind the walls of the Maximum Security Prison. The inmates include Rashid, a street-smart drug dealer; Jorge, a bitter man convicted of murder; Tommy, a modern-day Sundance Kid; William, rapist and murderer; and Jim, a murderer at nineteen. Fate, Shakespeare and two unlikely teachers, peel away their hard-core exteriors and reveal the men behind their violent crimes. Some will deserve a second chance, and some wont. Roberta Davidson, an English Professor from the Ivy League, and John Kerwin, a television producer turned teacher, mingle in the sub-culture of the incarcerated, and their experiences provide a unique and truthful view of modern-day prison life.

A National Jewish Book Award–winning biography: A look at the early years of Israel’s statehood, experienced through the life of a pioneering nurse. During her extraordinary career, nurse Raquela Prywes was a witness to history. She delivered babies in a Holocaust refugee camp and on the Israeli frontier. She crossed minefields to aid injured soldiers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and organized hospitals to save the lives of those fighting the 1967 Six-Day War. Along the way, her own life was a series of triumphs and tragedies mirroring those of the newly formed Jewish state. Raquela is a moving tribute to a remarkable woman, and an unforgettable chronicle of the birth of Israel through the eyes of those who lived it.

For fans of Dave Eggers, Teju Cole, and James McBride, comes this extraordinary novel of morality and the redemptive powers of art that offers a glimpse into an African underworld rarely described in fiction. Meet Bingo, the greatest drug runner in the slums of Kibera, Nairobi, and maybe the world. A teenage grifter, often mistaken for a younger boy, he faithfully serves Wolf, the drug lord of Kibera. Bingo spends his days throwing rocks at Krazi Hari, the prophet of Kibera’s garbage mound, “lipping” safari tourists of their cash, and hanging out with his best friend, Slo-George, a taciturn fellow whose girth is a mystery to Bingo in a place where there is never enough food. Bingo earns his keep by running “white” to a host of clients, including Thomas Hunsa, a reclusive artist whose paintings, rooted in African tradition, move him. But when Bingo witnesses a drug-related murder and Wolf sends him to an orphanage for “protection,” Bingo’s life changes and he learns that life itself is the “run.” A modern trickster tale that draws on African folklore, Bingo’s Run is a wildly original, often very funny, and always moving story of a boy alone in a corrupt and dangerous world who must depend on his wits and inner resources to survive. ONE OF LIBRARY JOURNAL’S OUTSTANDING NEW VOICES TO CONSIDER “Bingo’s voice guides us; by turns he is aggressive, confident, smart, cynical, but also naive. Bingo tosses his observations at us with great urgency, almost percussively, in a staccato manner that recalls gunshots. And though he’s blunt, he’s also a sensitive observer. . . . Levine is creating a sense of an entire world, raffish and fast. . . . The larger story Levine is telling . . . is the story of a person’s mind, and of the good, bad, and indifferent forces that make him what he is—and that story is told with compassion and intelligence.”—The Boston Globe “James A. Levine is a deeply gifted writer who reaches into the dirt, sweat, and diesel of modern-day Nairobi and introduces us to a young innocent whose adventures are unforgettable. Bingo’s runs between joy and death, laughter and sorrow, survival and redemption, will make you feel like cheering.”—James McBride, author of The Good Lord Bird and The Color of Water “Bingo’s Run is one of those rare books that infuse a potentially difficult subject with intimacy, tenderness, and humor. Social commentary, gritty comedy, and pure cinematic adrenaline meet in an utterly compelling novel with a voice all its own.”—Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire “Bingo’s Run manages to read like timely news and high adventure at the same time. Levine’s main character, Bingo, is an underage drug runner, hardened orphan, and hustler extraordinaire. He’s also funny and wise well beyond his years. The rousing story of Bingo’s evolution is matched only by Levine’s portrait of modern-day Nairobi, both child and city depicted with real flair and affection.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver “Bingo is a fascinating and inimitably likable character. Levine, a Mayo clinic professor of medicine and well-known child advocate, excels at telling his adventurous, comic, and realistically gritty story with humor but not with pathos, successfully addressing the harsh and sometimes tragic story of a child at risk.”—Library Journal

The author deals with grief and reflects on life and change following the death of his mother in 2006. Her treasure old house and the unintended influence of Arthur Miller are followed through this book.

Examining prisons from the perspectives of sociology, theology, history, and biblical exegesis, Griffith argues that the church has taken a woefully wrong turn by aligning itself with the traditional justice system. He shows how prisons are clearly ineffective at deterring crime and rehabilitating offenders and maintains that Christians should be even more concerned with how the prison fails in principle than how it fails in practice.