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The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him. A female investigator searches for buried information from prisoners' pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, and reveals shocking...
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"Set in 1950s Louisiana, the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past"--
1950s Louisiana. Ginny Polk works as a prison cook and also prepares the last meals of those sentenced to execution. When she stumbles upon information about the man executed for killing her father, it leads to a series of dark and painful revelations.
4) Native son
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Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...
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"1910: Twenty-five-year-old Daniel Pitt is a junior barrister in London and eager to prove himself, independent of his renowned detective father's influence. And the new case before him will be the test. When his client, arrogant biographer Russell Graves, is found guilty of murdering his wife, Daniel is dispatched by his superior to find the real killer before Graves faces the hangman's noose--in only twenty-one days. Could the violent death have...
6) Gone again
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Sashi Burgette vanished three years ago on her way to school. The night after the teenager's disappearance, ex-con Dylan Kyle was stopped for drunk driving. An article of Sashi's clothing was found in his truck, and a police videotape of his drunken explanation under interrogation sealed his fate at trial. Now, just days from Kyle's execution, Sashi's mother visits Jack Swyteck, doing pro bono work at the Freedom Institute, and delivers shocking news:...
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Kindle County novels volume 6
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Scott Turow's thrilling drama follows the fate of Rommy Gandolph, an inmate on death row for a triple murder in Kindle County, and the legal friends and foes who hold the keys to his fate. As Rommy nears execution, Arthur Raven, his reluctant court-appointed lawyer, learns of new evidence that may exonerate him. But they run up against Muriel Wynn, Kindle County's formidable chief deputy prosecuting attorney, and Larry Starczek, the original detective...
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Spencer Arrowood was a young, untried deputy sheriff when his testimony helped convict a Tennessee youth for the brutal slaying of two hikers along the Appalachian Trail. Now, twenty years later, Spencer receives an invitation to an execution. After two decades on death row, a date has finally been set to strap Fate Harkryder into the chair and throw the switch. But time has eroded Spencer's moral certainty of guilt and raised the specter of another
...9) The loop
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2022 Summer Top Picks for High Schoolers
2023 Lincoln Award Nominees
2025 Read for a Lifetime
OBD YA SciFi - YOUTH
2023 Lincoln Award Nominees
2025 Read for a Lifetime
OBD YA SciFi - YOUTH
Description
"Luka Kane has spent 736 days wrongfully imprisoned inside the Loop awaiting his execution. Each day is the same. Each day is torturous. But things are starting to change. Whispers of war are circulating. Strange things are happening to the prisoners. And the warden delivers a message: Luka, you have to get out ... Now Luka must decide whether breaking out of the Loop is his only way to survive, especially if there's any chance of saving the ones...
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Christopher Paget novels volume 4
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Fifteen years after Rennell Price is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die for the murder of a nine-year-old girl, lawyer Teresa Peralta Paget becomes convinced that Price did not receive a fair trial and fights to stop his execution.
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Noa P. Singleton sits on death row in a maximum security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date. She is visited by a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is a heartbroken mother of the victim and now wants to see the death penalty delayed--if only Noa reveals her motive.
12) Blow fly
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Kay Scarpetta mysteries volume 12
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Leaving Virginia in search of peace and quiet, Dr. Kay Scarpetta journeys to Florida, where a series of baffling murders entangles her in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the most unexpected circumstance of her life.
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Inspired by the atmospheric poetry of Langston Hughes and set in the heart of Denver's black community, this gripping crime novel pits three characters in a race against time to thwart a gross miscarriage of justice--and a crooked detective who wreaks havoc...with deadly consequences. What happens to a dream deferred--especially when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance? Langston Brown is running out of time and options for clearing his name...
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Frankie Elkin novels volume 3
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Frankie Elkin is an expert at finding the missing persons that the rest of the world has forgotten, but even she couldn't have anticipated this latest request--to locate the long-lost sister of a female serial killer facing execution in three weeks' time. She has called herself "death," but people called her the devil. The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media's chronicling...
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In what is arguably his greatest book--written in 1979 and reissued here in trade paperback--America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who---after robbing two men and killing them in cold blood--insisted on dying for his crime.
17) Cry me a river
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Tyrone Stokes was imprisoned for shooting a man in a convenience store. His wife, Pauline, saw her chance to end their marriage and raise their son, Marcus, on her own. Now Tyrone has returned to Brownsville, Louisiana, to discover that Marcus needs help. Marcus has been convicted of the rape and murder of a young white girl.
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A woman falls in love with a celebrity convict, only to discover a truth more sinister than she could imagine in this "compulsively readable thriller" (Booklist, starred review).
Twenty years ago, Dennis Danson was arrested and imprisoned for the brutal murder of a young girl in Florida's Red River County. Now he's the subject of a true-crime documentary that's whipping up a frenzy online to uncover the truth and free a man who has...
Twenty years ago, Dennis Danson was arrested and imprisoned for the brutal murder of a young girl in Florida's Red River County. Now he's the subject of a true-crime documentary that's whipping up a frenzy online to uncover the truth and free a man who has...
19) The star rover
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The story of San Quentin death-row inmate Darrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and long stretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London's friend Ed Morrell.
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"Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk "the Green Mile," the lime-colored linoleum corridor leading to a final meeting with Old Sparky, Cold Mountain's electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities over the years working the Mile, but he's never seen anything like John Coffey--a man with the body of a giant and the mind of...