"What purpose is incarceration supposed to serve, and how successfully does it serve that purpose? What's Prison For? traces the tension between our national punitive streak and our faith in rehabilitation, between viewing prisoners as menacing Others to be incapacitated and shamed and, alternatively, viewing them as future neighbors"--

Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, eyes on the road. Another man next to him, telling stories that don't add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And next to her, a huge man with a broken nose, hitching a ride east to Virginia. An hour behind them, a man lies stabbed to death in an old pumping station. He was seen going in with two others, but he never came out. He has been executed, the knife work professional,...

Witnessing a woman pushed to her death in front of a bus, Jack Reacher, following the killer on foot, is unaware that this is part of a secret conspiracy with many moving parts with no room for error and any threats will be permanently removed, including Reacher. In Gerrardsville, Colorado, two witnesses to the same tragedy give two different accounts: One sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus in what authorities will call a suicide. The other...

"Olivia Taylor Jones's life has exploded. She's discovered she is not only adopted, but her real parents are convicted serial killers. Fleeing the media frenzy, she took refuge in the oddly secluded town of Cainsville. She has since solved the town's mysteries and finds herself not only the target of its secretive elders but also her stalker ex-fiancé. Visions continue to haunt her: particularly a little blond girl in a green sundress who insists...

"Perfect for newcomers and hardened crime junkies alike, The True Crime File is an impulse gift book designed to deliver the mixed pleasures of true crime across more than 200 stories of mayhem, madness, and survival. Adapted from the perennially popular A Year ofTrue Crime Page-A-Day® Calendar, here is a full celebration of the genre, more than 400 pages packed with tales of slashers and serial killers, grifters and con men, dogged investigators...

"Scarlett McCain is a shoot-first ask-questions-later kind of outlaw. She scrapes by on bank heists, her wits - and never looking back. She's on the run from her latest crime when she comes across Albert Browne. He is the sole survivor of a horrific accident, and against her better judgement, Scarlett agrees to guide him to safety. This is a mistake. Soon there are men with dogs and guns and explosives hot on their heels. Scarlett's used to being...

An absorbing portrayal of true-crime lovers who kill and the men and women who are their victims.

In "A Face in the Crowd," widower Dean Evers sees faces from his past while watching baseball; and in "The Longest December," the Howard family struggles to see their kind and gentle neighbor James Wilkinson as the violent criminal the police are investigating.

""Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a...