Empfehlungen basierend auf "Protecting Alabama's Kids"

Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the little-known ghetto world. She charts the tumultuous cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.Two romances thread through Random Family: the sexually charismatic nineteen-year-old Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. Fleeing from family problems, the young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways in the Poconos and to nightclubs. They cruise the streets in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George's business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Together, then apart, the teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Coco moves upstate to dodge the hazards of the Bronx; Jessica seeks solace in romance. Both find that love is the only place to go.A gifted prose stylist and a profoundly compassionate observer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding inner-city life and come back with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets. Random Family is a compulsive read and an important journalistic achievement, sure to take its place beside the classics of the genre.

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything he's supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he - mostly - stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he's told, and his future is lit with promise.But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same-the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone.Close to Home begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.

From the award-winning author of George, the story of a boy named Rick who needs to explore his own identity apart from his jerk of a best friend. Rick's never questioned much. He's gone along with his best friend Jeff even when Jeff's acted like a bully and a jerk. He's let his father joke with him about which hot girls he might want to date even though that kind of talk always makes him uncomfortable. And he hasn't given his own identity much thought, because everyone else around him seemed to have figured it out. But now Rick's gotten to middle school, and new doors are opening. One of them leads to the school's Rainbow Spectrum club, where kids of many genders and identities congregate, including Melissa, the girl who sits in front of Rick in class and seems to have her life together. Rick wants his own life to be that ... understood. Even if it means breaking some old friendships and making some new ones. As they did in their groundbreaking novel George, in Rick, award-winning author Alex Gino explores what it means to search for your own place in the world ... and all the steps you and the people around you need to take in order to get where you need to be.

Joey Goldman's flying south for the winter. The second-string New York wiseguy just packed up his faithful girlfriend Sandra and took off for Key West -- land of sun, surf and sleaze -- where a small-time hustler in search of a racket can score the big one. If he can find it. Enter Joey's half brother Gino. On the lam from the mob after one of the most royally screwed-up jewel heists in Florida history, Gino's a man in need of a fall guy. Which is where Joey comes in . . .Suddenly, everyone's after Joey -- including the ruthless Miami don who wants his three million worth of uncut emeralds and who just dispatched his goons to deliver Joey a one-way ticket -- out. Now Joey's where he always wanted to be -- in the big time. All he has to do is find out where the stones are stashed. And for an unikely hero out to make a killing, this could be Paradise . . . if he lives long enough.

“Wise and heartbreaking” (Ann Napolitano), this captivating epic weaves the intimate lives of two Midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those whom they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea.As the country reconstructs during the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were, and what the future might hold.Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness.

While reluctantly staying with her biological father, a member of a motorcycle club, sheltered seventeen-year-old Emily falls for the youth her father asked to protect her from a rival club with a score to settle.

A compilation of reader requested scenes from the series retold through the eyes of Colton Donavan. Colton Donavan lived life in the fast lane, but it took Rylee Thomas to teach him what racing was all about. Arrogant Rogue Broken Conceited Dirty-Talking Rebel Egomaniacal Voodooed Bent Reckless You think you know me? Think again. This companion explores pivotal scenes as well as some new ones written in Colton Donavan's point of view that were not previously published in the Driven series. Hear his thoughts, experience his inner-turmoil, and laugh with him on his journey as he overcomes his demons and accepts what it means to love.

Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family—rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious—until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

When you are raised to believe that the person you are is unacceptable, you hide. And you stay hidden. If you are X-Men and Dance Academy star Tim Pocock, you become an expert at hiding - until you can't anymore. Tim Pocock was a born performer. At ten, he took to the stage as a professional opera singer. At twenty-two, he launched his acting career in the blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine and went on to star in the beloved series Dance Academy. But Tim's biggest role was one he never auditioned for - the role he played at home as a devout, straight son. Raised in a deeply conservative Catholic family and attending a school with links to Opus Dei, Tim knew that he would never be accepted for who he was. Being gay was out of the question. Tim was encouraged to become a priest and experienced gay conversion therapy to have his sexuality hypnotised out of him. This captivating memoir reveals shocking details of Tim's strict religious upbringing and the institutional harms he experienced. After his bid for freedom, Tim traversed the glitzy landscape of Los Angeles, navigated the pressures of the acting industry, and made chaotic forays into the gay dating scene - all while carrying immense trauma. With unflinching honesty, Tim reveals his journey toward healing, discovery and self-acceptance. In doing so, he offers hope for anyone who is still in hiding from the person they know they are and shows how we can set ourselves free.

Jake offers to act as foreman of the family mine after a series of mysterious accidents have left Indigo's father seriously injured. But Jake's real motives are as secret as his true identity, and as personal as his growing attraction to Indigo. When Indigo and Jake are unfairly compromised, Indigo's sense of betrayal hardens into a wariness of Jake's tenderness and suspicion of his intentions. Will Jake's patient efforts to win over the outwardly rebellious, inwardly vulnerable Indigo be enough to break through her loving heart? Or will a devious villain's attempt to sabotage the mine also endangered their future together?