Akron Public Library

Gentleman/banker-robber Jack Foley is back in prison doing a thirty-year sentence after a week-long escape. Brought in by Karen Sisco, US marshall, who got her man after being abducted with the escapees, Jack and Karen have a thing for each other, and Karen arrests him only after a meaningful 'time'out' together. Jack is resigning himself to doing time, lots of it, and he seems to have a friendly and easy control over the hardened criminals he is...

"A desire for absolution brought ex-con Travis Alden to Paradise Peak, Tennessee. But when he finds honest work, along with a keen sense of belonging, he shelves his plan to unburden his guilty secret, instead working to rehabilitate a ranch alongside the very people his transgressions hurt the most. With the chance to create a haven for wildfire refugees, Travis seizes the opportunity to do good, to earn the respect his new boss shows him. Only Travis...

After more than a decade spent in and out of juvenile detention, halfway houses, and jail, Roy Alison returns to his rural hometown determined to do better, to be better. But what he finds is a working-class community devastated by the economic downturn--a town without anything to hold onto but the past.

"Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of running a ranch on her own, Laurel Tracey decides to hire a convict--a man who's just scary enough to take care of squatters and just desperate enough to agree to a one year post. The years following the war have been hard on Laurel Tracey. Both her brother and her father died in battle, and her mother passed away shortly after receiving word of their demise. Laurel has been trying to run her two hundred acre...

One night, Matt Hunter innocently tried to break up a fight-and ended up a killer. Now, nine years later, he's an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. His wife, Olivia, is pregnant, and the two of them are closing on their dream house. But all it will take is one shocking, inexplicable call from Olivia's phone to shatter his life-a second time...

Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and town mayor. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector...

A recently paroled ex-convict, Dell, strikes up an unusual and unlikely friendship with a quadriplegic billionaire, Philip Lacasse, in this funny and warm-hearted buddy comedy. From worlds apart, Dell and Philip form an unlikely bond, bridging their differences and gaining invaluable wisdom in the process, giving each man a renewed sense of passion for all of life's possibilities.

Returning to Branding Iron, Texas, is Travis Morgan's last resort, and the abandoned ranch he inherited isn't much more welcoming than the prison cell where he spent the last three years doing time for a tragic accident. Completely without funds or family, Travis finds celebrating Christmas is the last thing on his mind, but there's no escaping the holiday spirit in this close-knit town - not with Branding Iron's longtime Santa retiring, and sweetly...

Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he's an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute, unless she does as he says. This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically...

"Nick Mason is out of prison. After five years inside, he has just been given the one thing a man facing 25-to-life never gets, a second chance. But it comes at a terrible price. Nick Mason is out of prison, but he's not free. Whenever his cell phone rings, day or night, he must answer it and follow whatever order he is given. It's the deal he made with Darius Cole, a criminal kingpin serving a double-life term who still runs an empire from his prison...