Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

A Million Little Pieces

James Frey · 430 pages

"The most lacerating tale of drug addiction since William S. Burroughs' Junky." --The Boston Globe"Again and again, the book delivers recollections that leave the reader winded and unsteady. James Frey's staggering recovery memoir could well be seen as the final word on the topic."--San Francisco Chronicle"A brutal, beautifully written memoir."--The Denver Post"Gripping . . . A great story . . . Y

My War Gone By, I Miss It So

Anthony Loyd · 334 pages

Nothing can prepare you for Anthony Loyd 's portrait of war. It is the story of the unspeakable terror and the visceral, ecstatic thrill of combat, and the lives and dreams laid to waste by the bloodiest conflict that Europe has witnessed since the Second World War. Born into a distinguished military family, Loyd was raised on the stories of his ancestors' exploits and grew up fascinated with war.

You Can't Win

Jack Black · 346 pages

William Burroughs, at the age of 13, was inspired by this book, as he mentions in a preface to Naked Lunch. You Can't Win is a memoir that explodes our ideas about the supposedly lawful past; Jack was a drifter, robber, junkie, and hustler that survived from the frontier times til the depression era...apparently. He became a librarian of sorts, wrote his memoir, and then vanished...

Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography

Mike Tyson · 580 pages

"A bare-knuckled, tell-all memoir from Mike Tyson, the onetime heavyweight champion of the world--and a legend both in and out of the ring"--

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison

Warren Fellows · 192 pages

Eating Smoke: One Man's Descent Into Crystal Meth Psychosis in Hong Kong's Triad Heartland

Chris Thrall

Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member

Sanyika Shakur · 383 pages

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · 514 pages

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Se

The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare

Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell

Mr. Nice

Howard Marks · 466 pages

THE BOOK: During the mid 1980's Howard Marks had forty three aliases, eighty nine phone lines and owned twenty five companies throughout the world. Whether bars, recording studios or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealingMarks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosopy course at Oxford and soon he was moving much

Scar Tissue

Anthony Kiedis · 465 pages

Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis's searingly honest memoir of a life spent in the fast lane. In 1983, four self-described "knuckleheads" burst out of the mosh-pitted mosaic of the neo-punk rock scene in L.A. with their own unique brand of cosmic hardcore mayhem funk. Over twenty years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, against all odds, have become one of the most successful bands in the world. Though

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

John Grisham · 360 pages

John Grisham's first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was

Hole in My Life

Jack Gantos · 200 pages

On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one crazed moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a criminal, and his time in prison. But running, just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos - once he was locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell - moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how dedicating

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

Sam Quinones · 377 pages

Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin-- the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin-- to the veins of people across the United States.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages

Chasing the Dragon: One Womans Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Dens

Jackie Pullinger · 255 pages

Zeitoun

Dave Eggers · 352 pages

From Goodreads: The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days followi

Hotel Kerobokan

Kathryn Bonella · 332 pages

Welcome to Hotel Kerobokan, or Hotel K, the tongue-in-cheek nickname for holiday Mecca Bali’s most notorious jail. Its walls touch paradise; sparkling oceans, surf beaches and palm trees on one side, while on the other it’s a dark, bizarre and truly frightening underworld of sex, drugs, violence and squalor. Hotel K has been home to a procession of the infamous and the tragic: Muslim terror bomb

The Son

Jo Nesbo · 401 pages

This novel is set amid Oslo's hierarchy of corruption, from which one very unusual young man is about to propel himself into a mission of brutal revenge. Sonny Lofthus, in his early thirties, has been in prison for the last dozen years: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin, and the unexpected stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his unc

Hard Time: Banged Up Abroad Raving Arizona

Shaun Attwood · 345 pages

My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N' Roses

Steven Adler · 322 pages

The River Is Waiting

Wally Lamb · 451 pages

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that's before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe · 416 pages

One of the most essential works on the 1960s counterculture, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Test is the seminal work on the hippie culture, a report on what it was like to follow along with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched out on the "Transcontinental Bus Tour" from the West Coast to New York, all the while introducing acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks, stagi

Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir

Dave Mustaine, Joe Layden · 346 pages

Mustaine has battled through it all to achieve dizzying heights. From the early, heady days of Metallica, to being let go only to become founder and frontman for Megadeth, Mostaine's is a story that will inspire, stun, and terrify.