Urban Memoirs

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.

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.

Some seemingly preordained lives end up elsewhere entirely when a person manages to break the mold. Mary's mold was broken from the outside. When the unthinkable happened in her traditional southern family, Mary's quiet childhood was transformed into a journey of discovery amidst the world around her and of all the potential that lay within her.

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. In tracing Danny "Tekashi 6ix9ine" Hernandez's life from Bushwick to the heights of the rap scene, Complex reporter Shawn Setaro illuminates the story of the young rapper who forged an alliance with a notorious street gang to bolster his image and boost his internet clout.

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.

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.

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?

Sorridente e solare con i suoi caftani e le collane esagerate, Marta Marzotto è stata una donna esuberante che ha vissuto una vita a tinte forti, anzi, sette vite. Giovane e bella, dalla miseria delle risaie di Mortara si ritrova, negli anni Cinquanta, a sfilare sulle passerelle delle più importanti case di moda. E, come Cenerentola, sposa il rampollo di una nobile famiglia di imprenditori veneti, i Marzotto, perdutamente innamorato di lei.

Childhood friends from Trinidad, Colin Warner and Carl King grew into men on opposite sides of prison bars after Colin was arrested for murder in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. With no evidence against him, Colin was wrongfully convicted and wrongfully imprisoned for more than two decades. But time and walls could not break the friends' bond. Carl's extraordinary resolve, sacrifice, and courage were Colin's last rays of hope in a harrowing struggle for freedom and justice.

When a middle-class kid from the suburbs was caught using Facebook to distribute firearms bought legally at Indiana gun shows to notorious gangsters across the border - was he a kingpin or a scapegoat? David Lewisbey received perhaps the harshest sentence ever in a gun-trafficking trial. A college student from the suburban outskirts of Chicago, he allegedly embodied the enterprising swagger of his favorite rap lyrics, moving weapons for stacks of cash. John H. Richardson tours Chicago’s gun-soaked South Side with Lewisbey’s clientele and meets with the “Big Man” himself to unpack the truth.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally beaten and murdered in the street near her apartment, in full view of more than three dozen friends and neighbors - and no one did a thing to stop it. More than thirty-five years after its first publication, Thirty-Eight Witnesses, the true account of what transpired that night in Queens, New York, continues to disturb us. We would like to think that we would step in and do what we could to stop the carnage.

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.

World famous phlebotomist Dr. Clarence Griffin has gone missing! It's up to Apollo Grant to find him. Complications arise when Griffin’s son, Connor, is found dead in a Vegas hotel. His death leads Apollo into a series of events involving a group of vampires known as The Coven. Apollo and his roommate, Murray, must keep the supernatural tension in the city from imploding. Time is running out, and they need to hurry, before the mastermind controlling the Coven enacts their plan to create an army of super-vampires using Dr. Griffin’s research.