An unnamed Sri Lankan inmate has barricaded himself inside a prison coputer lab in Dutchess County, New York. A riot rages outside, incited by a poem published in The Holding Pen, the house literary journal. This, our narrator's final Editor's Letter, is his confession. An official accounting of events, as they happened. As he awaits imminent and violent interruption, he takes us on a roller-caster ride of plot and language, determined to share his...

"Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin. Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around and fast. The Positron...

"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"--

"With her older brother in prison, a young girl copes with the confusing feelings his absence creates"--

While Ian is in prison for drug smuggling, he will only see his wife and four children occasionally. Each member of his family will develop a different relationship with him as he is not there to offer the guidance of a father and husband. By the time he is allowed visits at home, their lives have become forever separated. However, the bonds that hold a family together will keep them forever linked.

Incarceron is a prison so vast that it contains not only cells and corridors, but metal forests, dilapidated cities, and wilderness. It has been sealed for centuries, and only one man has ever escaped. Finn has always been a prisoner here. Although he has no memory of his childhood, he is sure he came from Outside. His link to the Outside, his chance to break free, is Claudia, the warden's daughter, herself determined to escape an arranged marriage....

"In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for his participation in a utopian socialist discussion group. The account he wrote after his release, based on notes he smuggled out, was the first book to reveal life inside the Russian penal system. The book not only brought him fame but also founded the tradition of Russian prison writing. Notes from a Dead House (sometimes translated as The House of the Dead)...

In 1776, after witnessing the execution of Nathan Hale in New York City, newly occupied by the British army, young Sophia Calderwood resolves to do all she can to help the American cause, including becoming a spy.

Confronting the possibility that she might be forced to spend the rest of her life in a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, Jess Moulson discovers that the prison is haunted by the ghost of a little boy who imparts a chilling message.