NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Biography/Autobiography In her own words, Cyntoia Brown-Long shares the riveting and redemptive story of how she changed her life for the better while in prison, finding hope through faith after a traumatic adolescence of drug addiction, rape, and sex trafficking led to a murder conviction. “Those...years in prison hadn’t just turned me into woman. They transformed me. The girl who desperately wanted to belong, who felt powerless, who clawed, and scratched her way out of every corner she was backed into, was gone.” At the age of sixteen, Cyntoia Brown, a survivor of human trafficking, was arrested for killing a man who had picked her up for sex. Two years later, she was sentenced to life in prison. Brown reflects on the isolation, low self-esteem, and sense of alienation that drove her straight into the hands of a predator. Once in prison, she attempts to build a positive path and honor the values her beloved adoptive mother, Ellenette, taught her, but Cyntoia succumbs to harmful influences that drive her to a cycle of progress and setbacks. Then, a fateful meeting with a prison educator turned mentor offers Cyntoia the opportunity to make the pivotal decision to strive for a better future, even if she’s never freed. In these pages, Cyntoia shares the details of her transformation, including a profound encounter with God, an unlikely romance, an unprecedented outpouring of support from social media advocates and A-list celebrities, and her release from prison. A coming-of-age memoir set against the shocking backdrop of a life behind bars, Free Cyntoia takes you on a spiritual journey as Cyntoia struggles to overcome a lifetime of feeling ostracized and abandoned by society.

Kiera Van Gelder's first suicide attempt at the age of twelve marked the onset of her struggles with drug addiction, depression, post-traumatic stress, self-harm, and chaotic romantic relationships-all of which eventually led to doctors' belated diagnosis of borderline personality disorder twenty years later. The Buddha and the Borderline is a window into this mysterious and debilitating condition, an unblinking portrayal of one woman's fight against the emotional devastation of borderline personality disorder. This haunting, intimate memoir chronicles both the devastating period that led to Kiera's eventual diagnosis and her inspirational recovery through therapy, Buddhist spirituality, and a few online dates gone wrong. Kiera's story sheds light on the private struggle to transform suffering into compassion for herself and others, and is essential reading for all seeking to understand what it truly means to recover and reclaim the desire to live.

“Gato’s head snapped back... We could make out the shots of several 9mms, a couple of 38s and one or two 45s. I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room. I didn’t look back.” Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world’s deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive – and fast – because one wrong move would mean death. This is the insider account of what it’s like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.

New York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”

I am Not Your Slave is the shocking true story of a young African girl, Tupa, who was abducted from southwestern Africa and funneled through an extensive yet almost completely unknown human trafficking network spanning the entire African continent. As she is transported from the point of her abduction on a remote farm near the Namibian-Angolan border and channeled to her ultimate destination in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, her three-year odyssey exposes the brutal horrors of a modern day middle passage. During her ordeal, Tupa encounters members of Africa's notorious gangs, terrifying witchdoctors, mysterious middlemen from China, corrupt police and border officials, Arab smugglers and high-ranking United Nations officials. And of course, Tupa meets her fellow trafficking victims, young women and girls from around the world. Tupa's harrowing experience, including her daring escape and eventual return home, sheds light on the most shocking aspects of modern day slavery, as well as the essential determination to be free.

In April 2008, the world watched in horror as the news of Josef Fritzl made worldwide headlines. But for one British woman the story was not the stuff of unimaginable nightmares. Alice Lawrence knew all too well the torture suffered at the hands of a father whose depravity knew no bounds. She too was kept prisoner and repeatedly made pregnant - and it was only after the death of one of her babies that she finally found the courage to escape. Born in 1970, Alice grew up in the impoverished backstreets of an industrial Northern town with her parents and seven brothers and sisters. She was first raped by her father when she was 11. From the age of 15, she was made pregnant six times by him in an effort to secure additional state benefits. All bar one of her pregnancies failed, but her daughter never made it through her first year. The death of her baby was the spur to Alice bringing her father and abuser to justice. Finally, Alice can tell her deeply moving story of recovery from abuse.

Since the Apostle John penned his apocalyptic work in the first century, readers have speculated, debated, and pondered the meaning of the mark of the beast. In popular culture, the number has come to personify evil. Careful reading of John's work reveals that the mark of the beast is a number assigned to people, not a symbol intended to conceal the identity of someone in partiucular. In this short book, the reader will be led to an astonishingly obvious conclusion. The mark is a three-digit number assigned to people by something not human to facilitate commercial transactions. Most likely, the reader has been marked with such a number already, as have 75 percent of adult Americans and a growing number of others around the world. The important issue is what we can do about it now. It is hoped that this book can help the reader find the way out of Babylon.

Argues that racial profiling by police officers, highway troopers, and customs officials is morally reprehensible and does not help catch criminals, but rather contributes to the moral decay of American society.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • A “powerful and devastating” (The Washington Post) call to free those buried alive by America’s legal system, and an inspiring true story about unwavering belief in humanity—from a gifted young lawyer and important new voice in the movement to transform the system. “An essential book for our time . . . Brittany K. Barnett is a star.”—Van Jones, CEO of REFORM Alliance, CNN Host, and New York Times bestselling author Brittany K. Barnett was only a law student when she came across the case that would change her life forever—that of Sharanda Jones, single mother, business owner, and, like Brittany, Black daughter of the rural South. A victim of America’s devastating war on drugs, Sharanda had been torn away from her young daughter and was serving a life sentence without parole—for a first-time drug offense. In Sharanda, Brittany saw haunting echoes of her own life, as the daughter of a formerly incarcerated mother. As she studied this case, a system came into focus in which widespread racial injustice forms the core of America’s addiction to incarceration. Moved by Sharanda’s plight, Brittany set to work to gain her freedom. This had never been the plan. Bright and ambitious, Brittany was a successful accountant on her way to a high-powered future in corporate law. But Sharanda’s case opened the door to a harrowing journey through the criminal justice system. By day she moved billion-dollar deals, and by night she worked pro bono to free clients in near hopeless legal battles. Ultimately, her path transformed her understanding of injustice in the courts, of genius languishing behind bars, and the very definition of freedom itself. Brittany’s riveting memoir is at once a coming-of-age story and a powerful evocation of what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist them both. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

"What can I do?" That was the question Diane Latiker asked of herself as she watched the teens in her Chicago neighborhood succumb at an alarming rate to gangs and gun violence. Her answer started small, inviting ten kids into her living room to talk about their struggles and dreams. But over the years it grew. With the help of God, her family, and many other people along the way, Diane's Kids Off the Block morphed from a personal crusade to do what she could into a nationally known program that has helped more than 3,000 at-risk Chicago teens. In this powerful, energizing book, she tells her incredible story to men and women who are sick of sitting behind their keyboards watching the world crumble and are ready to do something to make a difference. Through doubt, financial strain, and deep grief over lives lost, Diane has never lost her faith that God called her to this life-transforming work. In these pages she'll show you that God is calling you to do something too. Maybe something that feels small . . . definitely something that will change the world.