"It's 1949. When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job--and don't ever associate with loose women. The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within...

Melody is just out of prison. Faced with the absence of her brother, who's serving life in San Quentin, and hardened by her own experiences in lock-up, Mel sturggles to adjust to the harsh realities of life on the outside. She quickly discovers that freeedom is relative...she has no money, no prospects, no guidance.
Forced to return to her mother's apartment in Marin County and take a job houling portable toilets, Mel finds herself drinking too...

"A slam-bang, no-bull action thriller...and nobody but nobody writes better dialogue." —New York Daily News

It's an established fact: Elmore Leonard is "the uncontested master of the crime thriller" (Washington Post ) who "does crime fiction better than anyone" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), and nowhere is this more obvious than in the pages of Stick.

After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest "Stick"

...

Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. Nord Lafferty was already in his fifties when Reba was born, and he could deny her nothing. Over the years, he quietly settled her many scrapes with the law, but he wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institute for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she is about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence....

"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...

Introducing Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con struggling to find his place in the world after 27 years in jail. Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, recycles bottles and cans for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, who is perilously close to a life of violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia,...

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details and the paper began to prosper. The murderer, Danny Padgitt was tried before...

A former Washington D.C. police cop out to prove herself and a young lawyer from a prestigious law firm meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets from both the private and public world of the nation's capital--and what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal.

Profiles 101 opportunities that are relatively open to people with not-so-hot backgrounds. Gives renewed hope and direction to ex-offenders who are uncertain about what they want to do, can do, and will do in the future.