The Inbox: Prison Love Affairs


Book Description

IN LOVE, THERE ARE NO INSECURITIES, BUT IN LUST, THERE IS FEAR! For Ann, who is seeking love in all the wrong places, prison lust is her ultimate desire, but can real prison love really exist? This book follows Ann as she learns the game of prison love, so that she won't get played. She soon discovers that fear, love, lust and pain are the elements of pursuing lasting intimate relationships. She also learns to think with her mind and not with her heart, to believe what she sees and not what she hears, and that even in lies, there is truth. "The Inbox: Prison Love Affairs" is an unflinching and vulnerable look at what happens when women commit to enjoying the lies men in prison tell them, lies that will never come true. It is a transparent narrative that tells the story of a woman who chooses to believe the fantasy she creates because all she needs is to feel loved.




This Woman


Book Description

The true account of the scandalous affair between one of Britain’s most notorious murderers, Myra Hindley, and a prison guard—and their jailbreak plot to run away together. Myra Hindley was convicted in 1966, with her boyfriend Ian Brady, of what became known as the Moors Murders. Between July 1963 and October 1965 the couple sexually assaulted and killed five children and teenagers. Four bodies were buried on the moors near Manchester, and a tape recording was played in court of one child begging Hindley for their life. Hindley became an icon of evil, but in 1973, in London’s Holloway prison, one woman fell in love with her. Hindley was a highly intelligent woman capable of charming anyone. Desperate to regain her freedom, she convinced an infatuated prison guard named Patricia Cairns, a former Carmelite nun, that she was a reformed woman who wanted to return to the Catholic church. Believing Hindley was sincere, yet had no chance of parole, Cairns plotted to break Hindley out of prison. This riveting story is told in vivid detail based on prison records and new interviews with former prison staff, inmates, and even the women’s accomplice. Interspersed with powerful accounts of the Moors Murders, This Woman reveals Hindley’s complex character and fiendish powers of manipulation—skills she used to lure children to their deaths in the 1960s, and used again to try to escape from prison.




Everybody, Always


Book Description

What if we stopped avoiding the difficult people in our lives and committed to simply loving everybody? What happens when we give away love like we're made of it? In Everybody, Always, Bob Goff's joyful New York Times bestselling follow-up to Love Does, you'll discover the secret to living without fear, constraint, or worry. Bob teaches us that the path toward the outsized, unfettered, liberated existence we all long for is found in one simple truth: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits. In Everybody, Always, Bob shows us the simple truths about life that have the power to shift our mindset forever: Jesus uses our blind spots to reveal himself to us It's easy to love kind, lovely, humble people, but you have to tackle fear in order to love people who are difficult What we do with our love will become the conversations we have with God Dark and scary places are filled with beautiful people who need our unconditional love Extravagant love has extraordinary power to change lives, including our own Driven by Bob's trademark storytelling, this book reveals the wisdom Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible. Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.




Based on a True Story


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”




The Love Prison Made and Unmade


Book Description

A Notable Memoir by the New York Times Medium’s Books to Help You Transition Into 2020 With echoes of Just Mercy and An American Marriage, a remarkable memoir of a woman who falls in love with an incarcerated man—a poignant story of hope and disappointment that lays bare the toll prison takes not only on those behind bars, but on their families and relationships. Ebony’s parents were high school sweethearts and married young. By the time Ebony was born, the marriage was disintegrating. As a little girl she witnessed her parents’ brutal verbal and physical fights, fueled by her father’s alcoholism. Then her father tried to kill her mother. Those experiences drastically affected the way Ebony viewed love and set the pattern for her future romantic relationships. Despite being an educated and strong-minded woman determined not to repeat the mistakes of her parents—she would have a fairytale love—Ebony found herself drawn to bad-boys: men who cheated; men who verbally abused her; men who disappointed her. Fed up, she swore to wait for the partner God chose for her. Then she met Shaka Senghor. Though she felt an intense spiritual connection, Ebony struggled with the idea that this man behind bars for murder could be the good love God had for her. Through letters and visits, she and Shaka fell deeply in love. Once Shaka came home, Ebony thought the worst was behind them. But Shaka’s release was the beginning of the end. The Love Prison Made and Unmade is heartfelt. It reveals powerful lessons about love, sacrifice, courage, and forgiveness; of living your highest principles and learning not to judge someone by their worst acts. Ultimately, it is a stark reminder of the emotional cost of American justice on human lives—the partners, wives, children, and friends—beyond the prison walls.




Halfway Home


Book Description

A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air




Reckoning with Restorative Justice


Book Description

In Reckoning with Restorative Justice, Leanne Trapedo Sims explores the experiences of women who are incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center, the only women’s prison in the state of Hawai‘i. Adopting a decolonial and pro-abolitionist lens, she focuses particularly on women’s participation in the Kailua Prison Writing Project and its accompanying Prison Monologues program. Trapedo Sims argues that while the writing project served as a vital resource for the inside women, it also remained deeply embedded within carceral logics at the institutional, state, and federal levels. She foregrounds different aspects of these programs, such as the classroom spaces and the dynamics that emerged between performers and audiences in the Prison Monologues. Blending ethnography, literary studies, psychological analysis, and criminal justice critique, Trapedo Sims centers the often-overlooked stories of incarcerated Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women in Hawai‘i in ways that resound with the broader American narrative: the disproportionate incarceration of people of color in the prison-industrial complex.




From Prison to Palace


Book Description

International author, police officer and consultant Cat Williams was, in her younger days, voted most likely to end up in prison. After her expulsion from an exclusive girls' boarding school, Cat was angry and borderline neurotic. She veered off the rails and when arrested by the local police, she joked that she would make a better copper than the officers who had locked her up. This is a humorous true story of triumph over adversity and follows the author on her journey from a junior police officer in London to working as a royalty protection officer at Buckingham Palace. You will learn:- How to overcome adversity without losing your sense of humour- Strategies to persevere in the face of considerable odds- Ways to overcome your fear of failure- How to turn your vulnerability into strength- Why it's important to take responsibility for the direction of your life- The secrets to stop procrastinating and take action- Tips to finding your true passion in life Find your passion and take control of your life today! 20% of the profits of this book will be donated to The Harry Perkins Institute for Cancer Research.




Four Thousand Weeks


Book Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.




The Shot Caller


Book Description

When you feel like you've made too many missteps to go forward, how do you find the strength to carry on? Join Casey Diaz as he tells the remarkable story of God's heart for second chances. The son of El Salvadorian immigrants, Casey Diaz was brought to Los Angeles at the age of two. An abusive, impoverished family life propelled Casey into the Rockwood Street Locos gang at just eleven years old. Casey was willing to do anything to be number one, but years of chasing rival gang members led to a dramatic ambush and arrest by the LAPD. By age sixteen, Casey was sentenced to more than twelve years in solitary confinement in California's toughest prison as one of the state's most violent offenders. He thought his life was over--but as the days in solitary wore on, Casey realized someone else was calling the shots. What happened next can only be described as a miracle. Join Casey as he shares how we can all: Embrace the incredible gift of God's redeeming love Change our lives for the better Find our God-given purpose A visceral insider's look at the violent world of gangs and prison life, The Shot Caller is a remarkable demonstration of God's reckless, unending grace, and desire to reach even the worst of sinners--no matter where they are. Praise for The Shot Caller: "When I read about the life of Casey Diaz, I see so much of my own life. This is a story of a tough young man who lost his way, and of a loving God who never forgot him, no matter where he was. I know you will be inspired by Casey's story. I hope you, too, will surrender to the love of Jesus Christ." --Nicky Cruz, bestselling author of Run Baby Run