Hope Carpenter finds new purpose in a new phase of life when her husband's forced retirement strains both their savings and their marriage. Seeking inspiration and a financial boost, Hope gets a job teaching crafts to inmates at a local women's prison with surprising results. At first, Hope feels foolish and irrelevant, struggling to relate to women whose choices seem so different from her own. But with time, and the encouragement of the prison chaplain,...

When a condemned woman asks the local Minister to take her daughter home, the childless man is touched and finds himself unable to refuse. Yet the prisoner is unrepentant of the murder of her husband. Will her vices be passed on to this seemingly sweet child?

"Former "It Girl" Janie Jenkins is sly, stunning, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a high-society beauty known for her good works and rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie makes herself over and goes undercover, determined to chase down the one lead she has on her mother's killer. The only problem? Janie doesn't know if she's the killer she's looking...

When Piper Kerman was sent to prison for a ten-year-old crime, she barely resembled the reckless young woman she'd been when she committed the misdeeds that would eventually catch up with her. Happily ensconced in a New York City apartment, with a promising career and an attentive boyfriend, she was suddenly forced to reckon with the consequences of her very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking. Kerman spent thirteen months...

"On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were sharing breakfast when the police arrived to take her away. Her "crime," loving a Chinese man, was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Ms. Demerson was soon transferred, together with forty-six other young women, to Toronto's Mercer Reformatory for Females." "Locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and...

How much would you sacrifice to save someone you love? When Olivia, wild-haired and headstrong, makes a terrible mistake, she must turn to the person least likely to help--her mother, Elaine. Motherhood was a role that Elaine never embraced and her best never amounted to much. But now Olivia faces prosecution for a naïve connection to a drug deal and she needs Elaine more than ever. As the days count down and Olivia's future hangs in the balance,...

Marjorie Standiford has quite a story to tell. And on the eve of her execution for a sensational murder spree, she's giving every detail, just as she remembers them, to the famous novelist who has come to record it all. Of course, Marjorie contends that she didn't do any killing. That was all Lamont, her boyfriend, and Natalie, their girlfriend, while Marjorie got high and took care of the baby. But she was in it just the same, careening across the...

In 1974, women imprisoned at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison. While many have heard of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the August Rebellion remains relatively unknown even in activist circles. Resistance Behind Bars is determined to challenge...

"A rage-brimmed, razor-sharp, feminist neo-western about two women who meet in an Arizona prison and the cat-and-mouse game that follows their release."--

Examines the case of Jo Ann Parks, the sole survivor and eyewitness of a Los Angeles apartment fire in which her three young children perished. Parks was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole based on forensic fire science that is now being challenged by the California Innocence Project, which contends tunnel vision and outright bias not only led to life in prison for an innocent mother, but convicted her of a crime that never actually...