Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Read this history-making serial novel -- from cliffhanger to cliffhanger -- in its entirety. When it first appeared, one volume per month, Stephen King's The Green Mile was an unprecedented publishing triumph: all six volumes ended up on the New York Times bestseller list -- simultaneously -- and delighted millions of fans the world over. Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the... (more)

Change of Heart: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

The acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation. Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth? One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as... (more)

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row

by Susan Kuklin

No Choirboy takes readers inside America’s prisons, and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices—raw and uncensored—they talk about their lives in prison, and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there. Susan Kuklin also gets inside the system, exploring capital punishment itself and the intricacies and inequities of criminal justice in the... (more)

The Chamber

by John Grisham

In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm: Twenty -six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case. Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances -- except for one: the young,... (more)

The Innocent Man

Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

by John Grisham

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his... (more)

True Crime

by Andrew Klavan

In the heat of the city, a man is out of time: speeding in a beat-up Ford Tempo, blasting easy-listening music. Reporter Steve Everett drinks too much, makes love to his boss's wife, and has just stumbled upon a shocking truth: a convicted killer is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit. In the cold confines of Death Row, Frank Beachum is also out of time. Ready to say good-bye to the wife and child... (more)

Within These Walls

by Carroll Pickett

The Reverend Carroll Pickett spent 15 years as the death house chaplain at "The Walls", the Huntsville unit of the Texas prison system. During this time he accompanied 95 men to their death by lethal injection.

Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story

Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story

by Caryl Chessman

In June 1948, 27-year-old petty criminal Caryl Chessman was sentenced in California on two counts of sexual assault, receiving two death sentences as punishment in a case that remains one of the most baffling episodes in American legal history. Maintaining his innocence of these crimes, Chessman lived in Cell 2455, a four-by-ten foot space on Death Row in San Quentin for the twelve years between his sentencing and... (more)

Death Penalty (A Charley Sloan Courtroom Thriller)

Death Penalty (A Charley Sloan Courtroom Thriller)

by William J. Coughlin

Detroit lawyer Charley Sloan has been around the block once or twice. Down for the count, drinking heavily, a three-time loser in the marriage wars, Charley repairs his tattered career and gets back in the game. Heading his rogues' gallery of clients is the infamous, twisted angel of mercy, Doctor Death, whose patients have a strange habit of dying under very peculiar circumstances. But now Charley steps into a... (more)

Jack Swyteck: Book 1

The Pardon

by James Grippando

After getting a confessed killer off on a technicality, brilliant young defense attorney Jack Swyteck, estranged son of Governor Harry Swyteck, a proponent of the death penalty, finds himself framed for murder. A first novel. 75,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Lit Guild. Tour.

In Spite Of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases

In Spite Of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases

by Michael L. Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau

The stories of some 400 innocent Americans who were falsely convicted of capital crimes.

Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit

Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit

by Kerry Max Cook

Kerry Cook is an innocent man who wrongly served two decades in Texas's notorious death house for the brutal 1977 rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards. His struggle for freedom is said to be one of the worst cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct in American history. In the summer of 1977, Cook was staying in Tyler, TX. He met an attractive young woman named Linda Edwards and was invited back to... (more)

Green Mile Complete Set of 6 Books Signet Series 1996 (The Green Mile)

Green Mile Complete Set of 6 Books Signet Series 1996 (The Green Mile)

by Stephen King

A Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

Angels: A Novel

by Denis Johnson

The most critically acclaimed, and first, of Denis Johnson's novels, Angels puts Jamie Mays -- a runaway wife toting along two kids -- and Bill Houston -- ex-Navy man, ex-husband, ex-con -- on a Greyhound Bus for a dark, wild ride cross country. Driven by restless souls, bad booze, and desperate needs, Jamie and Bill bounce from bus stations to cheap hotels as they ply the strange, fascinating, and dangerous... (more)

Chasing Justice

by Kerry Max Cook

The Speed Queen

by Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan is one of the most highly acclaimed fiction writers of his generation, selected by Granta as one of the Best Young American Novelists and hailed by The New York Times as "a master." Grove Press is proud to reissue his haunting noir novel The Speed Queen. The Speed Queen is the gripping story of a twisted love triangle's drug-fueled killing spree across the desert plains, told in the voice of Oklahoma... (more)

Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful ExecutionsSister Helen Prejean

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: death row

The Green Mile

by Stephen King, Frank Muller

Change of Heart: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row

by Susan Kuklin

The Chamber

by John Grisham

The Innocent Man

Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

by John Grisham

True Crime

by Andrew Klavan

Within These Walls

by Carroll Pickett

Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man's Own Story

by Caryl Chessman

Death Penalty (A Charley Sloan Courtroom Thriller)

by William J. Coughlin

The Pardon

by James Grippando

In Spite Of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases

by Michael L. Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau

Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit

by Kerry Max Cook

Green Mile Complete Set of 6 Books Signet Series 1996 (The Green Mile)

by Stephen King

A Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

Angels: A Novel

by Denis Johnson

Chasing Justice

by Kerry Max Cook

The Speed Queen

by Stewart O'Nan

Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

by Sister Helen Prejean