Seven Long Times is the prison memoir of one of America's greatest, most passionate chroniclers of life in dehumanizing prisons and on mean city streets. Wounded and arrested while committing an armed robbery, Thomas begins his long seven years of incarceration first in the prison ward at Bellevue and then in Sing Sing and Great Meadows (Comstock). Thomas' great heart and tough street philosophy face off lyrically with the brutality of the guards, the sterility of steel and cement, the per...

In these eight stories Piri Thomas takes us with him into El Barrio—Puerto Rico in New York City—and recreates the scenes he knows so well from his own childhood. He leads us through streets teaming with life, up crumbling front stoops, down dark hallways, into crowded rooms, and into the hearts and minds of his people. He takes us into the ring for a hard-fought boxing match and out of the city on a Boy Scout outing. He sits us in the barber’s chair and right under the burning scalp of a ...

Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery--a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri w...

Buddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu.It was Mann's first novel, published when he was twenty-six years old. With the publication of the second edit...

Many people write about the ghetto. Piri Thomas lived there. In this book, the author of Down These Mean Streets tells what he found when he returned from a seven year prison term. Friends dying on heroin, or getting rich selling it. Jobs he couldn’t get, not because he lacked training or ability, but because the union was open only to whites. And an indomitable aunt who brought him into her church, where he met the woman who became his wife, and where he began to take an interest in helpi...

From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family’s journey through the New World.A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduced the world to Junot Díaz's exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator— Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family’s precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage fr...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians seriesFor Tres Navarre, English professor turned private investigator, business has lately taken a drastic turn south. But if chasing down bail jumpers, adulterous spouses, and workmen’s comp cases seemed like the dregs of the PI game, it was at least a living. Not as much could be said for tracking down a man like Will “the Ghost” Stirman.The stone-cold killer has...

A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.

Jason Blue is a 1950s hard boiled detective out of San Francisco. He's hired to go down to pre-Castro, decadent Havana to find a rich American lost in the tropical turmoil of sex, drugs and politics. The result is nothing like anybody expected. Cynical, sexy and thrilling, Jason joins the ranks of world weary professionals like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlow, doing the job well, no matter the cost.

The searing novel on which the internationally acclaimed hit film was based. "A Scarface-like urban epic . . . punctuated with lyricism and longing" ( Publishers Weekly).City of God is a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from one of Brazil's most notorious slums. Cidade de Deus: a place where the streets are awash with narcotics, where violence can erupt at any moment over drugs, money, and love—but also a place where the samba beat rocks ti...

The unforgettable novel—and the basis for the feature film—about Carlito Brigante, a Harlem drug dealer in the 1960s, and his rise to the top.Carlito Brigante is just another Spanish Harlem street punk with a poor boy's dream of flash and fast money. But as he gets older he determines that it's either take or be taken, and he knows which role he intends to play.Soon he's a mob-connected professional with an easy charm, joie de vivre, stubborn pride...

If the gunshots dont wake you, the agonizing screams will! When darkness descends on the concrete jungle people check the bars on their windows and the locks on their doors; praying to stay safe during the night. The wicked are always on the prowl. People hunker down in houses, apartments, the back seats of cars, or inside cardboard boxes down a fog shrouded alley trying their best not to be noticed by the people and things that walk and slither in the shadows. Most get lucky and are left alo...