War of the Bloods in My Veins

War of the Bloods in My Veins
Author: DaShaun "Jiwe" Morris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2009-01-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1416565337

By turns harrowing, moving, and ultimately redemptive, this is a war story -- a war that rages out of control on the streets of the United States, claiming the lives of our loved ones and neighbors. In this memoir, complete with child soldiers, unspeakable violence, and eventual salvation, we witness the journey of an East Coast member of the notorious Bloods gang coming to terms with the lost boy he was and the transformation into the man he wants to become. Unlike the child warriors of Mozambique and Sierra Leone, gang members and the wars they wage are the United States' homegrown nightmare. Lacking protection, support, or any alternatives, Dashaun Morris is forced into battle for the first time at age eleven, in the streets of Phoenix, when a friend's older brothers put him in a car filled with 40s and weed smoke, put a gun in his hands, then make him point it at the men on the corner and squeeze the trigger. The targets are Crips, of course, and, as Morris writes, "In the darkness of the streets, my childhood is murdered.... I am reborn -- a gangster." In this haunting, violent memoir, Morris takes us through an American childhood turned grotesquely inside out. In the fourth grade, he loses his first friend in a drive-by shooting. By high school he is the man, a champion on the football field by day and a reputable banger on his 'hood turf by night. Living the life of a gang banger, Morris does it all -- drug dealing, jacking, and continuing the aimless war with rival gang members -- almost opening fire one night on a close friend, a cheerleader, as she hangs out with young men he mistakes for Crips. He eventually makes it to college on a football scholarship, but on the verge of being drafted by the NFL, Morris can't escape his gang-banging mentality and gets caught up in crimes that snatch away all future hopes. Sitting in a prison cell, he anticipates the birth of his first child while counting the friends he's buried. War of the Bloods in My Veins is part of Morris's redemption, a cry to his brothers that gang life is mental illness. It is a rare and brutally honest look into the relentless storm of abandonment, violence, crime, death, and the endless rush toward the complete and utter self-annihilation that plagues the lives of the young "soldiers" who die every day in our streets.

Inside the Crips

Inside the Crips
Author: Colton Simpson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-12-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466860995

Inside the Crips is the memoir of the author Colton Simpson's life as a Crip--beginning at the tender age of ten in the mid-seventies--and his prison turnaround nearly twenty-five years later. Colton ("C-Loc") Simpson calls himself the only gang member ever allowed to quite the Crips--and one of the few to survive into his thirties. Simpson--son of a ballplayer for the California Angels and a mother who was relentlessly rough with her sons after their fathers left her--became a gang member at ten. Inside The Crips tells the remarkable--and at the same time, all too common--story of gang life in the 1980s in immediate and descriptive prose that makes this book a gripping true-life read. Inside The Crips covers the rush that comes from participating in gang violence and the years-long wars between the Bloods and Crips. Simpson's story also puts the reader in the middle of the struggle between the Crips and corrections officers in Calipatria prison. It covers gang life from the mid-seventies to the mid-nineties, and introduces characters it's impossible not to care about: Simpson's fellow gangbanger Smile; and Gina, the long-suffering friend and mother of two sons who married Simpson in prison.

World War Z

World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
Publisher: Broadway Books
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0770437400

An account of the decade-long conflict between humankind and hordes of the predatory undead is told from the perspective of dozens of survivors who describe in their own words the epic human battle for survival, in a novel that is the basis for the June 2013 film starring Brad Pitt. Reissue. Movie Tie-In.

Blood's Pride

Blood's Pride
Author: Evie Manieri
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2013-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765332345

Cultures clash and sister betrays sister against the backdrop of a rich, fully realized world in this epic fantasy debut.

Chasing the Scream

Chasing the Scream
Author: Johann Hari
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2015-01-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1620408929

The New York Times Bestseller What if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari's journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question--and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix. One of Johann Hari's earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realized he had addiction in his family. Confused, not knowing what to do, he set out and traveled over 30,000 miles over three years to discover what really causes addiction--and what really solves it. He uncovered a range of remarkable human stories--of how the war on drugs began with Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer, being stalked and killed by a racist policeman; of the scientist who discovered the surprising key to addiction; and of the countries that ended their own war on drugs--with extraordinary results. Chasing the Scream is the story of a life-changing journey that transformed the addiction debate internationally--and showed the world that the opposite of addiction is connection.

Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone
Author: Tomi Adeyemi
Publisher: Henry Holt Books For Young Readers
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250170974

Zľie Adebola remembers when the soil of Ors̐ha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zľie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

Blood in the Fields

Blood in the Fields
Author: Julia Reynolds
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1613749724

The city of Salinas, California, is the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for his epic masterpiece, East of Eden, but it is also the home of Nuestra Familia, one of the most violent gangs in America. Born in the prisons of California in the late 1960s, Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state, and left a trail of bodies in its wake. Prize-winning journalist and Nieman Fellow Julia Reynolds tells the gang's story from the inside out, following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family, quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal. Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow, the FBI's questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia, along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agencies. Written as narrative nonfiction, journalist Reynolds used her unprecedented access to gang members, both in and out of prison, as well as undercover wire taps, depositions, and court documents to weave a gripping, comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed. Julia Reynolds coproduced and wrote the PBS documentary Nuestra Familia, Our Family, and reported on the northern California gang for more than a decade. She currently works as a staff writer at the Monterey County Herald, and has reported for National Public Radio, the Discovery Channel, The Nation, Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, and more.

Lady Q

Lady Q
Author: Reymundo Sanchez
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1569762856

Reymundo Sanchez, a former member of the Latin Kings street gang, recounts the experiences of Sonia Rodriguez, a young girl who became a powerful leader of the Latin Queens, and explores the devastating impact gangs can have on a young girl's life.

R is for Ricochet

R is for Ricochet
Author: Sue Grafton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593328620

In this #1 New York Times bestseller in Sue Grafton's Alphabet series, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has her hands full when a job that should be easy money takes a turn for the worse. 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 wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institution for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she's about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence. Her father wants to be sure Reba stays straight, stays home and away from the drugs, the booze, and the gamblers... It seems a straightforward assignment for Kinsey: babysit Reba until she settles in, make sure she follows all the niceties of her parole. Maybe a week’s work. Nothing untoward—the woman seems remorseful and friendly. And the money is good. But life is never that simple, and Reba is out of prison less than twenty-four hours when one of her old crowd comes circling round...

Heart of Iron

Heart of Iron
Author: Bec McMaster
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402270313

Lena Todd is pretty and vivacious, which makes her the perfect spy against the Echelon. But when she ventures too deep, she'll find herself at the mercy of Will Carver, the only man she can't wrap around her finger and whose kiss she can't forget. Lena Todd makes the perfect spy. Nobody suspects the flirtatious debutante could be a sympathizer for the humanist movement haunting London's vicious blue blood elite. Not even the ruthless Will Carver, the one man she can't twist around her little finger, and the one man whose kiss she can't forget... Stricken with the loupe and considered little more than a slave-without-a-collar to the blue bloods, Will wants nothing to do with the Echelon or the dangerous beauty who drives him to the very edge of control. But when he finds a coded letter on Lena—a code that matches one he saw on a fire-bombing suspect—he realizes she's in trouble. To protect her, he must seduce the truth from her. With London on the brink of revolution, Lena and Will must race against time—and an automaton army—to stop the humanist plot before it's too late. But as they fight to save a city, the greatest danger might just be to their hearts... A fresh, suspensful paranormal romance, Bec McMaster's London Steampunk novels will appeal to fans of Gail Carriger, Kristen Callihan's Darkest London series, and the Blud series by Delilah Dawson. London Steampunk Series: Kiss of Steel (Book 1) Heart of Iron (Book 2) My Lady Quicksilver (Book 3) Forged by Desire (Book 4) Of Silk and Steam (Book 5) What readers are saying about Heart of Iron: "A clever and entertaining combination of historical romance, steampunk, paranormal and alternate history." "a vastly unique and utterly vivid world that transports readers into another place." "a perfect mix of action, romance and steampunk!" "a little dark and a lot dangerous." "Steampunk, romance, paranormal, suspense this book literally had it all." What reviewers are saying about Heart of Iron: "An engrossing, thrilling sequel." — Tynga's Reviews "Intriguing... [readers will] love the sexy, action-packed narrative. " — Publishers Weekly "McMaster's second London Steampunk Book dazzles and seduces... will leave readers breathless. 4 1⁄2 Stars, Top Pick of the Month! " — RT Book Reviews What everyone is saying about Bec McMaster: "a must read for paranormal fans and steampunk fans alike. 5/5 Stars, Reviewer Top Pick" — Night Owl Reviews "richly imagined, gritty and dark, and full of hot heroes and hot sex... utterly delicious. " —Smart Bitches, Trashy Books "Action, adventure, steampunk, and blazing hot seduction...Bec McMaster offers it all."—Eve Silver, author of Sins of the Flesh