This story shares his childhood experiences while growing up in a Southern California barrio. He shares about his love & hate relationship between him & his father, an ex-gang member who had a tremendous amount of influence on his son's life. He shares about the dramatic life-style of the gang member, good & bad, & his constant struggles for survival. At age seventeen, Eddie was a hard-core gang member, a father, a high school student body president & husband. His story is sensitive, yet depicts the harsh realities of the barrio, his first pair of khakis; tainted love to all out gang wars; life & death on the streets. His story shares a message of hope to those with no understanding of the barrio life-style & to those stuck in the barrio.

The galaxy is in trouble. An evil demon from the planet Grore, Xix Serphent, is creating a weapon: the planet-destroying kind. Who can help? The galaxy's fate is in the hands of five misfits. Can they stop Xix in time? Will they put their personal quests aside for the greater good? Battle after battle, the five individuals will eventually learn that making their own decisions is not an option in order to survive! Meet Taco Brentley: An intelligent human from Earth who would do just about anything to meet aliens. Meet Kofi White: A stubborn shapeshifter who wants to follow his own rules. However, on the planet Mersey, he has a soft spot for a little child and wants to build him a future. Meet Ute Cromwall: A fierce but compassionate healer from the planet Aketi, desperate to prove to herself she is a fighter. Meet Wood Slakin: A bored alien with super strength from the planet Orion who wants to escape his mundane life. Meet Seneca Flaghorn: A cocky ghost-assassin from the planet Hox who has her own secret agenda. When offered to save their dying planets from an evil demon Xix, they are all but forced to accept. Who doesn't like to play hero? Searching across the galaxy, these unlikely companions try to obtain the fireflies, magical pieces of light that can obliterate the darkness, before time runs out.

I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is the amazing true story of one man's search for meaning, fall from grace, and eventual victory over injustice. In 1921, Robert E. Burns was a shell-shocked and penniless veteran who found himself at the mercy of Georgia's barbaric penal system when he fell in with a gang of petty thieves. Sentenced to six to ten years' hard labor for his part in a robbery that netted less than $6.00, Burns was shackled to a county chain gang. After four months of backbreaking work, he made a daring escape, dodging shotgun blasts, racing through swamps, and eluding bloodhounds on his way north. For seven years Burns lived as a free man. He married and became a prosperous Chicago businessman and publisher. When he fell in love with another woman, however, his jealous wife turned him in to the police, who arrested him as a fugitive from justice. Although he was promised lenient treatment and a quick pardon, he was back on a chain gang within a month. Undaunted, Burns did the impossible and escaped a second time, this time to New Jersey. He was still a hunted man living in hiding when this book was first published in 1932. The book and its movie version, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1933, shocked the world by exposing Georgia's brutal treatment of prisoners. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is a daring and heartbreaking book, an odyssey of misfortune, love, betrayal, adventure, and, above all, the unshakable courage and inner strength of the fugitive himself.

How Ten Tough men went from organized crime, heroin, murder & motorcycle gangs and more, to peace and happiness. After living tough, checkered, and murderous lives, these are the real stories of conversion: the Motorcycle gang leader serving 50 years for murder, the Mafia Associate and friend to the highest levels of the east coast Cosa Nostra, the ego-driven corporate executive, the former heroin addict now a pastor, the Marine who tried to commit suicide with 375 pills. Their lives and five more changed when they said "now" to God...sometimes immediately, and sometimes slowly. These are their stories, questions, and journeys from hell to happiness.

"Jojo Godinez grew up in L.A. County surrounded by gangs. The night he joined one, he swore to represent his gang until death. Fights, shootings, and arrests followed, but his love of violence waned through the years as more and more of his friends died around him. Amid the bloodshed, he met a homegirl, Dalia. At just 18 years old, they married in Vegas, but their honeymoon was interrupted when a crime Jojo committed brought him into court and eventually into a 45-years-to-life sentence. On the day he was found guilty, Dalia gave birth to their son. Suicidal, Jojo lost himself in the evils of the jail, trying to forget his former life and even his family. It was during a stint in solitary confinement that he came to terms with his need for change. He asked God for forgiveness and resolved to never fight again. Jojo's nonviolent rebellion against the prison culture of hatred and racism was consistently met with death threats but he was willing to risk everything for his newfound faith. In prison after prison, Jojo spread peace, while his wife, Dalia, and their son faithfully waited for the day he finally came home. The powerful true story of Jojo Godinez shows the incredible transformation of a man once written off as nothing more than a criminal."

This brief sheds light on evolving drug markets and the county lines phenomenon in the British context. Drawing upon empirical research gathered in the field between 2012-2019 across two sites, Scotland’s West Coast and Merseyside in England, this book adopts a grounded approach to the drug supply model, detailing how drugs are purchased, sold and distributed at every level of the supply chain at both sites. The authors conducted interviews with practitioners, offenders, ex-offenders and those members of the general public most effected by organised crime. The research explores how drug markets have continued to evolve, accumulating in the phenomenon that is county lines. It explores how such behavior has gradually become ever more intertwined with other forms of organised criminal activity. Useful for researchers, policy makers, and law enforcement officials, this brief recommends a rethinking of current reactive policing strategies.

High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post-World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy.

'Gangs of America' traces the evolution of the corporation, one of the core institutions of the modern world. It ties political debates about multi-national trade agreements, financial scandals and scores of other specific issues into the narrative account.

Pearson, who plays Snoop on the HBO hit series "The Wire," reveals her incredible, hard-knock life story, one that dramatically parallels the life of her character on TV.

The Instant New York Times Bestseller! Kim Liggett's The Grace Year is a speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power. Survive the year. No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden. In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive. Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other. With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between. “A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author