A visionary book in the repertoire of prison literature. When Normal Mailer was writing The Executioner's Song, he received a letter from Jack Henry Abbott, a convict, in which Abbott offered to educate him in the realities of life in a maximum security prison. This book organizes Abbott's by now classic letters to Mailer, which evoke his infernal vision of the prison nightmare.

**The 2022 Lammy Award Winner in Transgender Nonfiction** Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing. To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. Da’Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated. Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of “health” and “healthiness” for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad,” and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.

"Into the Belly of the Beast we crawl with Ashe as our guide; into the dark visceral spaces where love, lust, descent and desire work their transformative magic and we find ourselves utterly altered in the reading. A truly gifted poet and truth-spiller, Ashe's metaphors create images within images, leading us to question the subjective truths, both shared and hidden, in personal relationship - to the other, and to oneself. Unflinching in her approach, her poetry gives voice to that which most struggle to admit - even if only to themselves. And as such, Belly of the Beast is a work of startling courage and rich depth - a darkly delicious pleasure." - Amy Palko

There's A Beast in My Belly is a humorous, yet probing, story about a little girl and all of the mysterious stuff that goes on inside of her and all of the feelings she has. Some of these are uneasy and dark, of course. By discovering a beast in her belly, she cleverly relies on humor to explore her fears, both on her own and with others. This story is told by a master storyteller, whose every word is brought to life by the expressive charm and humor of the illustrations. Grzegorz Kasdepke is one of the most popular and highly awarded contemporary Polish writers for children and the author of more than thirty titles for young readers. Tomasz Kozlowski is a highly talented and well regarded Polish illustrator and graphic designer.

Book 3 in the one-of-a-kind adventure series from New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Auxier explores the real magic behind simple acts of kindness. Auggie loves his job at the Fabled Stables, but he fears the day when it will come to an end. Fen keeps dropping hints that caretakers don’t stay forever, and it’s giving Auggie the grumps. Thankfully, there always seems to be a new stall to fill. This time, the stables set Auggie on a quest to rescue a beast called the Shibboleth—but the portal leads Auggie and Fen to the lair of the evil Rooks! In the dark, damp dungeon, they meet one mysterious girl and one very hungry monster. It’s already gobbled up all of the Rooks, and Auggie and Fen are next unless they figure out the one way to calm the creature. Will they be able to work together to complete the mission before it’s too late?

Leading in the Belly of the Beast is an anthology of essays from transformational school leaders around the country who lead in a school system that is not set up for the success of their students, namely students of color and students living in poverty. The book highlights leaders who begin from the premise that the institution of school/system of education in the United States, since its inception, has been established to maintain the racial, cultural, and economic status quo – and to maintain divisions among these racial, cultural, and class groups. These leaders use this very assertion as a foundation for their transformational leadership from within the system. Leading in the Belly of the Beast includes the voices of nine educators in a variety of positions of school leadership, from principals and deans to teacher leaders. The unifying experience of these leaders is that they all currently work in the context of a school and, therefore, have authentic and fresh experiences and expertise to share. The goal of Leading in the Belly of the Beast is to emphasize the need to understand that our current system of education as not broken but as functioning to achieve exactly the results it was designed to achieve, and then to demonstrate why and how transformative leaders can and must achieve different results for students of color and students living in poverty, even while operating in the “belly of the beast”.

“A searing tribute . . . [to] America in its bleakest hour” (Sen. John McCain, New York Times–bestselling author of Faith of My Fathers). On December 13, 1944, POW Estel Myers was herded aboard the Japanese prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, with more than sixteen hundred other American captives. More than eleven hundred of them would be dead by journey’s end . . . The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the navy’s medical corps, Myers arrived in Manila shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military. While he and his fellow corpsmen tended to the bloody tide of soldiers pouring into their once peaceful naval hospital, the Japanese overwhelmed the Pacific islands, capturing seventy-eight thousand POWs by April 1942. Myers was one of the first captured. After a brutal three-year encampment, Myers and his fellow POWs were forced onto an enemy hell ship bound for Japan. Suffocation, malnutrition, disease, dehydration, infestation, madness, and complete despair claimed the lives of nearly three quarters of those who boarded “the beast.” Myers survived. A compelling account of a rarely recorded event in military history, this is more than Myers’s true story—this is an homage to the unfailing courage of men at war, an inspiring chronicle of self-sacrifice and endurance, and a tribute to the power of faith, the strength of the soul, and the triumph of the human spirit. “An inspiring look at one of World War II’s darkest hours.” —James Bradley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys “A searing chronicle.” —Kirkus Reviews

The first serious study of the diverse organizations associated with the resurgence of Black nationalism in the 1960s

Caleb Alexander has woven his most explosive and provocative tale to date. Belly of the Beast takes the readers on a violent, gut wrenching, deeply emotional journey through the American prison system. A place where friends become enemies, and enemies band together for survival in a system that is designed for their destruction, and in a society that has written them off. Belly of the Beast is a straight forward look at racism, the prison industrial complex, and the nature of our humanity. Throw in racist prison guards, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK, Billionaire tax evaders, violent prison gangs, The Mafia, and one man's struggle to make it back home to his woman and child, and you have a story that only Alexander can tell. Welcome to the Federal Prison System; welcome to the Belly of the Beast.

In this astonishing corruption memoir, former Bosasa Chief Operating Officer and whistleblower, Angelo Agrizzi rips open a legacy of secrecy, exposing two decades of untold greed, politicking, corruption, racism, bribery and deep state capture. Inside the Belly of the Beast is a mind-blowing exploration of the fraudulent workings of a company, founded on deep deception, under the cult-like leadership of the Master himself, Gavin Watson. Having been intimately involved with Bosasa since its inception, having worked and travelled side-by-side with Watson, and having witnessed his unique style of bribery and corruption during this period - something that most certainly assisted in bringing South Africa to her knees during Zuma's rule - Agrizzi is one of few people with a first-hand account of what really happened behind the closed doors of Bosasa.In January, 2019, Agrizzi made his first appearance to testify at the Zondo Commission. His ongoing testimony continues to be heard.