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"Ranita Atwater is wrapping up her four-year sentence for opioid possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center, near Boston. With three years of sobriety, she is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children from her aunts who have been raising them. My name is Ranita, and I'm an addict, she has said again and again at [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings. But who else is she? Who might she choose to become? She is gaining her freedom, but she is leaving behind the group of women who have helped to get her through. And she is losing her lover, Maxine, who has inspired her to imagine herself and the world differently. Drawing on Maxine's love, the solace of books, and the curiosity, respect, and wonder imparted by her people, Ranita is determined to confront the weight of the past and discover what might lie beyond mere survival. With her fierce and often funny voice, she reveals how rocky and winding the path to healing is for a Black woman. She must steer clear of the temptation of oblivion. She must weather the resentment and mistrust of her children. She must atone. And she must face her unhealed wounds and honor the body that has seldom felt like it belongs to her. Will she be able to draw on family, memory, faith, and nature to keep choosing life? Will she discover abundance in her pomegranate heart, alongside all the loss? With lyrical and masterful prose, Helen Elaine Lee paints a humane, unflinching, and hopeful por- trait of the devastating and interconnected effects of addiction, incarceration, racism, and misogyny... and of one woman's determination to own and tell her story." -- Book jacket

"In the early 1970s, in Stovall, Texas, seventeen-year-old Earl--a loner, dreamer, lover of music and words--meets Tina, the new girl in town. Tina convinces Earl to drive her to see her mother in Austin, where Earl and Tina are quickly separated. Two days later, Earl is being questioned by the police about Tina's disappearance and the blood in the trunk of his car. But Earl can't remember what happened in Austin, and with little financial support from his working-class family, he is sentenced for a crime he did not commit. Forty years later, Earl is released into a world he can barely navigate. Settling in a small town on the Oregon coast, he attempts to establish a sense of freedom from both bars and razor wire and the emotional toll of incarceration. But just as Earl finds the rhythm he's always sought, his past returns to endanger the new life he's built"--Book jacket flap
"The story of Earl, a 17-year-old boy who goes to prison for a crime he didn't commit"-- Provided by publisher

After more than twenty years in prison, a trans woman newly released on parole spends a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend in Brooklyn trying to reconcile with the son she left behind and to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity. Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she'd grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn - before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards, and often placed in solitary. But in her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and given a bus ticket back to a New York City that has changed as much in the intervening decades as she herself has changed to those who knew her before she was sent away. Can she reconcile with the son she left behind and reunite with a family reluctant to accept her as Carlotta, all while complying with near-impossible parole restrictions and doing everything in her power to stay out of jail? Written with the same mischievous verve and astonishing freshness in Delicious Foods, which dazzled critics and listeners alike, Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta sweeps the listener through seemingly every street of Brooklyn in a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend. The novel sings with brio and ambition, offering a fantastically entertaining story and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people even after they've been freed

After more than twenty years in prison, a trans woman newly released on parole spends a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend in Brooklyn trying to reconcile with the son she left behind and to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity. Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she'd grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn - before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards, and often placed in solitary. But in her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and given a bus ticket back to a New York City that has changed as much in the intervening decades as she herself has changed to those who knew her before she was sent away. Can she reconcile with the son she left behind and reunite with a family reluctant to accept her as Carlotta, all while complying with near-impossible parole restrictions and doing everything in her power to stay out of jail? Written with the same mischievous verve and astonishing freshness in Delicious Foods, which dazzled critics and listeners alike, Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta sweeps the listener through seemingly every street of Brooklyn in a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend. The novel sings with brio and ambition, offering a fantastically entertaining story and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people even after they've been freed

"Set in the blighted industrial landscape of the Los Angeles basin, Dreamland Court is a love story. Johnny Dalton, just released from prison, returns home to find his wife Jackie, the mother of his two small children, passionately involved with one of his friends. Determind to do everything in his power to win her back, Johnny blunders his way through one criminal enterprise after another. When the cops pick him up for being the only adult present at a wild teenage party, he’s sent back to jail. The strange thing is, Jackie finds Johnny's antics exciting, even irresistible. Reminiscent of the pathos in Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the comedy of John Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, Dale Herd focuses his astute gaze on lives that are ordinarily invisible, while turning the conventional love story on its head."-- Back cover

When murderer Lee Roy Sears is paroled from prison, he terrorizes the family of the lawyer who helped him

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE NIGHT WATCHMAN ----------------------------------------------------- In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman's relentless errors. Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading 'with murderous attention, ' must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning. The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. ------------------------------------ 'Erdrich is one of the greatest living American writers' Guardian 'Strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic - dark, benevolent and every shade in between - of words on paper' New York Times 'The poet laureate of the contemporary Native American experience' Mail on Sunday.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

The first time Ravi Shankar was arrested, he spoke out against racist policing on National Public Radio and successfully sued the city of New York. The second time, he was incarcerated when his promotion to full professor was finalized. During his ninety-day pretrial confinement at the Hartford Correctional Center--a level 4, high-security urban jail in Connecticut--he met men who shared harrowing and heart-felt stories. The experience taught him about the persistence of structural racism, the limitations of mass media, and the pervasive traumas of twenty-first-century daily life. Shankar's bold and complex self-portrait--and portrait of America--challenges us to rethink our complicity in the criminal justice system and mental health policies that perpetuate inequity and harm. Correctional dives into the inner workings of his mind and heart, framing his unexpected encounters with law and order through the lenses of race, class, privilege, and his bicultural upbringing as the first and only son of South Indian immigrants. Vignettes from his early life set the scene for his spectacular fall and subsequent struggle to come to terms with his own demons. Many of them, it turns out, are also our own.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Recommended by The Washington Post! "Paper Moon meets Badlands in this mesmerizing Texas backroads thriller, a twisty story of a runaway girl who finds a home and a desperate love on the road with an opportunistic criminal...told in a gritty, sensual prose."-Janet Fitch, #1 New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander Set in 1970-90s Texas, a mesmerizing story about a fierce woman and the partner-in-crime she can't escape, perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and Valentine. It was 1970 when thirteen-year-old runaway Kit Walker was abducted by Manny Romero, a smooth-talking, low-level criminal, who first coddled her and then groomed her into his partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny were infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome. Twenty years after they meet, Kit has scraped together a life for herself and her daughter amongst the pecan trees and muddy creeks of the town of Pecan Hollow, far from Manny. But when he shows up at her doorstep a new man, fresh out of prison, Kit is forced to reckon with the shadows of her past. A gritty, penetrating, and unexpectedly tender novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow is a hauntingly intimate and distinctly original debut about the complexity of love-both romantic and familial-and the bonds that define us. .
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning

For Henry and his 8-year-old son, Junior, days are measured in dollars and cents. Evicted from their trailer, they now call Henry's F-250 home. Today is Junior's birthday; tomorrow Henry has a job interview. To celebrate, they have a fast food dinner and spend the night at a cheap motel. But when Henry has a altercation and in the parking lot and Junior falls ill with a fever, can they make it through to the day to come? -- adapted from back cover and perusal of book

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year "Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth." -The New York Times Book Review "A classic that we will read for years to come." -Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club "A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable." - NPR 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 by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction-to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning

""There's no way you can do this reentry thing," Orlando Lucero tells himself after getting out of prison. He has spent most of his life institutionalized, first in an orphanage and then in the Denver Youth Authority for smuggling weed. Orlando knows nothing about freedom. What does one do with it? What is it? His brother promised to teach him the carpentry trade, but Orlando quickly discovers Camilo is--like their parents--an addict, robbing and stealing to feed his habit. So he turns to Lila, his prison pen pal who encouraged both his poetry writing and sexual fantasies. Soon he moves in with her and engages in the acts he dreamed about while incarcerated, but living the straight life seems impossible. "Freedom is full of hazards, lots of sharp edges, and they cut me at every turn." As he is sucked back into a life of crime, he can't help but think going back to prison would be a relief. Renowned poet Jimmy Santiago Baca explores in lyrical prose one young man's attempts to break free from the cycle of addiction, violence and abuse that contributed to his imprisonment and impede his search for happiness and a productive life. In a society that considers him a criminal because of his brown skin, and where those in authority--including a parade of priests when he was just a boy--take advantage of him, Orlando must learn to believe in himself against all the odds, in spite of the institutionalized racism he has endured since boyhood."-- Provided by publisher

"A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek's father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys. Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption"-- Provided by publisher

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY THE GUARDIAN UK A compelling and timely debut novel from an assured new voice: Three-Fifths is about a biracial black man, passing for white, who is forced to confront the lies of his past while facing the truth of his present when his best friend, just released from prison, involves him in a hate crime. Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a black father he's never known, and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn't, twenty-two year-old Bobby Saraceno has passed for white his entire life. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden the truth about his identity from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a newly radicalized white supremacist. Bobby's disparate worlds crash when, during the night of their reunion, Bobby witnesses Aaron mercilessly assault a young black man with a brick. Fearing for his safety and his freedom, Bobby must keep the secret of his mixed race from Aaron and conceal his unwitting involvement in the crime from the police. But Bobby's delicate house of cards crumbles when his father enters his life after more than twenty years, forcing his past to collide with his present. Three-Fifths is a story of secrets, identity, violence and obsession with a tragic conclusion that leaves all involved questioning the measure of a man, and was inspired by the author's own experiences with identity as a biracial man during his time as a student in Pittsburgh amidst the simmering racial tension produced by the L.A. Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial in the mid-nineties.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"Jodi McCarty is seventeen when she's sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter. She's released eighteen years later and finds herself reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she will meet and fall in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a new home and fresh start--but what do you do with a town and a family that refuses to change?"-- Provided by publisher.

Former child prodigy and rich-girl kleptomaniac, Ester--renamed into the gentile Carleen for her own protection--is incarcerated after a botched heist. For two decades, time is the enemy. Her twenties and thirties crawl by in stifling isolation. When finally let loose onto the streets of New York, she finds a job wrestling spoiled canines as a dog walker in Manhattan's most elite neighborhoods, relating better with their brutish instincts than with their human owners. Determined to also prove herself a real person, Carleen tries to reconnect with her estranged and ferociously Orthodox daughter. Amid the strained brunch dates, unsent letters, and the continuing trauma of prison, Carleen begins a slow and halting process of self-discovery. Strikingly funny and self aware, this belated coming-of-age novel asks the question: How do you restart after crashing your first chance at life?

Wynston Cleave, a black taxi driver on a small Caribbean island, spent years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of the death of a wealthy white tourist. Finally released, he tries to piece his life together working as a bartender and reading literary classics to the unruly cockroaches infesting his taxi. On the anniversary of his arrest, Wynston picks up two white Americans just kicked off a cruise ship. The next day, the ship reports a deadly viral outbreak. As the tourist economy collapses, the island succumbs to riots and a devastating spiral of violence, and Wynston's fate becomes entwined with that of three strangers.