Urban Memoirs

Coca, farlopa, perico, merca, Fariña. Nunca Galicia comercializó un producto con tanto éxito. Aunque ahora parezca una pesadilla lejana, en los años 90 el 80 por ciento de la cocaína desembarcaba en Europa por las costas gallegas. A través de testimonios directos de capos, pilotos de planeadoras, arrepentidos, jueces, policías, periodistas y madres de toxicómanos, Nacho Carretero retrata con minuciosidad este paisaje criminal. Fariña incluye, además, un repaso inédito por los clanes que siguen operando hoy en día.

This is the story of an unforgivable con man. Vulnerable families were his prey. His promise was an impossible dream and a lie. Peter Candlewood understood the system. That’s how he could commute prison sentences and reunite hopeless families with incarcerated loved ones. For a price. Except there was no Candlewood. No hope. Just a lowly Texas con artist who bet on the desperate - and won. And he wasn’t working alone. The multimillion-dollar deception cost the betrayed more than their savings.

Dr. Sampson Davis looks at the health-care crisis in the inner city from a rare perspective: as a doctor who works on the front line of emergency medical care in the poor urban neighborhood where he grew up. He also offers practical advice for those living in such communities, where conditions like asthma, heart disease, strokes, obesity, and AIDS are disproportionately endemic. As someone who has struggled with many of the issues troubling his patients, Dr. Davis is able to write with empathy.

Gil was just another college student when his father died and left him an incredible inheritance. Destined to be both the hero of Varay and the heir to its crown, Gil stepped through the magical doorway where he received a cram course in the hazards of the Varayan buffer zone. But now he would need all his skill, luck and wizard and warrior allies to face a new menace.

Gil Tyner has plans for the future: He’s going to be a computer programmer in the bustling technology Mecca of Silicon Valley. And as his 21st birthday approaches, he’s on the cusp of realizing his goals. But fate has other plans. A note from his mother on his birthday propels Gil into The Buffer Zone, seven magical kingdoms that stand between our world and the realm of the immortal elves. Gil’s about to learn that plans can change. When destiny calls, he’ll discover that the life he’d imagined and the life he’ll lead will be very different.

When seven moons rise, the world will end. So the prophecy says, and so it is being carried out. In the magical world of Varay, more and more moons rise. On earth, nuclear war lays the planet to waste. Gil Tyner, Hero of Varay, must make common cause with his sworn enemy, the Elflord, to avert the end of everything. As the boundaries between earth and the realm of magic begin to blur, Gil must brave dangers in both worlds, until he finally stands against an entity so mighty that their battle will either avert Armageddon, or destroy everything we’ve ever known.

A young African American millennial filmmaker's funny, sometimes painful, true-life coming-of-age story of trying to make it in New York City - a chronicle of poverty and wealth, creativity and commerce, struggle and insecurity, and the economic and cultural forces intertwined with "the serious, life-threatening process" of gentrification.

The story of one of the most controversial figures in all of hip-hop history, Dummy Boy tells the tale of Tekashi 6ix9ine and his meteoric rise to fame.

There is an old man sitting in a bed in angel ward, telling stories. He says he has to tell someone, because he is dying. He says he doesn't care if you believe that the tales are true or not, because he is not sure that half of them ever happened at all. Reg Weldon claims that he has seen things that would make your skin crawl. He claims a lot of things.

Like Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’ Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage - an intimate portrait of an invisible man. Mohammed Ashraf studied biology in college, and after college he learned how to repair television sets, cut suit lengths, and slice chicken. He has lived in Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Surat, and Patna, but this evening he is stoned on a street in Sadar Bazaar, in North Delhi. The morning shall bring hangovers, whiskey breakfasts, and possibly answers to the lingering questions that haunt Ashraf.

The remarkable lengths Ruderman and Laker go to for the story - chasing down witnesses on the city's grimmest streets, sifting through archive boxes and hours of surveillance tape for crucial clues, and coaxing reluctant victims to come forward - put their determination to balance motherhood with the career they love to the ultimate test.

From Season 3 of VH1’s hit reality television show Love & Hip Hop - New York, Winter Ramos delivers a brazen and unabashed memoir of her life in the world of hip hop. In Game Over, Winter puts all of her emotions on the page, leaving no experience, emotional abuse, secret, or former lover uncovered. Winter was privy to the cray beyond the videos, private flights, and limos that the cameras caught for us. Her reality and theirs was no game.

Patrick thought he knew what awaited him in the afterlife. He's learning the hard way that he was dead wrong. He is hunted by a race of giant beasts, the likes of which have never been seen by living eyes, and he is surrounded by the newly-dead from worlds beyond knowing. In this Realm, nothing and no one can be trusted.

Imagine having your innocence stolen at an early age by someone you trust, or struggling financially before even knowing the meaning of the word “struggling.” Ebony Canion has had her share of tumultuous events, yet even she was stunned when a speeding car hit her intentionally, dragging her through the streets with her body folded underneath the vehicle. In a coma for nearly two months, Ebony had no idea her tongue and face had to be sewn back on, or the list of thirty other life-threatening injuries she had sustained. Ebony didn’t know she’d been Left for Dead.

Von der Rechtschreibreform zur gendergerechten Sprache, von der Vogelgrippe zu den Metamorphosen des Covid, vom Vermummungsverbot in Zeiten der Startbahn West zur Maskenpflicht in Zeiten der Pipeline Ost - was haben wir nicht schon alles überstanden! Bei seiner satirischen Zeitreise durch unsere immer bunter werdende Republik setzt Urban Priol auf Humor statt Alarmismus. Gemeinsam mit Helmut Kohl betrat er die Bühne des politischen Kabaretts, seitdem knöpft er sich alle Regierenden bis zur Ampel vor.

A kooky, gregarious mother and perceptive, poised daughter introduce listeners to their offbeat Connecticut family, who follow their hearts to rural Brazil. Broke and broken, they're forced to return to the United States, and navigate their rebirth in a foreclosed 1770 New England farmhouse. Hilariously honest and heart-wrenching, listeners will fall in love with their spunk, feel the knockout punches of betrayal along with them, and be rooting for them to get back up off the mat.

Giselle Burgess was a young mother of five trying to provide for her family. Though she had a full-time job, the demands of ever-increasing rent and mounting bills forced her to fall behind, and eviction soon followed. Giselle and her kids were thrown into New York City's overburdened shelter system, which housed nearly 60,000 people each day. They soon found themselves living at a Sleep Inn in Queens, provided by the city as temporary shelter; for nearly a year, all six lived in a single room with two beds and one bathroom.

Detective Grainger has finally recovered from a shaky career by closing a major case in the small town of Rock City. He goes from the fringe of being kicked off the force to a local hero. During his 15 minutes of fame, bodies with familiar faces start to turn up. In Grainger's world, there were no such things as coincidences, so he immediately starts a back-door investigation. When he finally starts to piece together the pattern, Grainger realizes that a childhood secret he thought long buried is threatening to come to light. Some scars never healed.

Harold is dead, shot by an unknown assailant. While staring at his lifeless body, his deceased uncle enters the room and urges Harold to follow him to a better place. Harold refuses, determined to hold onto his earthly belongings. While he investigates his own murder, he learns how to adjust to the world as a spirit, interact with the town's other ghostly inhabitants, and frighten new tenants who dare move into his house. Eventually a malicious entity known as "the Dark One" invades his home. Can Harold get rid of it and solve the mystery of his death?

Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End Factories. On an autumn day in 1944, Ethel Alleyne walked the short distance from her house to Tate & Lyle’s refinery on the shining curve of the Thames. Looking up at the giant gates, Ethel felt like she had been preparing for this moment all her life. She smoothed down her frizzy hair, scraped a bit of dirt off the corner of her shoe and strode through. She was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes …