Julesburg Public Library

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187-424-one of the millions of people who disappear "down the rabbit hole" of the American...

"It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church"--Provided by publisher.

At the heart of this novel is a crime of unfathomable horror and its effect on several profoundly different lives, each altered by a surprising connection to the others. We hear four brilliantly realized voices: Helen, an inmate at Sloatsburg women's prison serving a life sentence for the murder of her children; trapped within the maze of her own tortured mind, she is the subject of damning national attention. Dr. Louise Forrest, the recently divorced...

In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Texas, the Berachah Industrial Home for the Redemption of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth, circumstance, or personal tragedy. Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between the red-light districts of Dallas and Fort Worth, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training, and rehabilitation...

A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a woman's prison.

Charlee Cox is a spoiled, second-generation prison guard in a minimum-security prison for women. His mother is the warden. The warden knows her lifelong bachelor son is up to something in her prison, but she needs proof--before he ruins his life and hers. A tunnel, conjugal visits, a spy on a diet, and forbidden love all lead to the only escape in the prison's history. And only Charlee could get away with it.

"Do Penance or Perish tells the fascinating story of Ireland's Good Shepherd Magdalen Asylums. First brought to widespread public attention by the 2002 film The Magdalen Sisters, the asylums were homes that were founded in the mid-nineteenth century for the detention of prostitutes undergoing reform. The inmates of these asylums were discouraged - and many forcibly prevented - from leaving and sometimes were detained for life. Put to work without...