Looking for an escape from childhood abuse, Reymundo Sanchez turned away from school and baseball to drugs, alcohol, and then sex and was left to fend for himself before age 14. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became his refuge and his world, but its violence cost him friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly his life. This is a raw and powerful odyssey through the ranks of the new Mafia.

At age five Sonia Rodriguez's stepfather began to abuse her; at 10 she was molested by her uncle and beaten by her mother when she told on him; and by 13 her home had become a hangout for the Latin Kings and Queens who were friends with her older sister. Threatened by rival gang members at school, Sonia turned away from her education and extracurricular activities in favor of a world of drugs and violence.

Rene "Boxer" Enriquez grew up on the violent streets of East L.A., where gang fights, robberies, and drive-by shootings were fueled by rage, drugs, and alcohol. When he finally landed in prison - at the age of 19 - Enriquez found an organization that brought him the respect he always wanted: the near-mythic and widely feared Mexican Mafia, La Eme. What the organization saw in Enriquez was a young man who knew no fear and would kill anyone - justifiably or not - in the blink of an eye.

Martin Corona, a US citizen, fell into the outlaw life at 12 and worked for a crew run by the Arellano brothers, founders of the Tijuana drug cartel that dominated the Southern California drug trade and much bloody gang warfare for decades. Corona's crew would cross into the United States from their luxurious hideout in Mexico, kill whomever needed to be killed north of the border, and return home in the afternoon. Martin Corona played a key role in the downfall of the cartel when he turned state's evidence.

By age 12, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as that culture claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation.

Longtime ATF agent Ken Croke had earned the right to coast to the end of a storied career, having routinely gone undercover to apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into “Slam,” a monstrous, axe-handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect the leadership “mother club” at all costs.

Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found—through art, friendship, luck, and will—a rocky path to a different life. This memoir, written in Joe’s own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors.

Dave Pelzer was brutally abused as a child by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother. She considered him a slave - no longer a boy, but an "it". He was physically and mentally tortured and starved. The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare he experienced behind closed doors, and his father was aware of the abuse but turned to denial and alcohol. The abuse only fueled a determination to survive and become stronger.

On screen, Danny Trejo the actor is a baddie who has been killed at least a hundred times. He’s been shot, stabbed, hanged, chopped up, squished by an elevator, and once, was even melted into a bloody goo. Off screen, he’s a hero beloved by recovery communities and obsessed fans alike. But the real Danny Trejo is much more complicated than the legend.

Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth, with an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad. But it is also misunderstood—less a drug cartel and more a hand-to-mouth organization whose criminal economy is based mostly on small-time extortion schemes and petty drug dealing. Steven Dudley brings listeners inside the nefarious group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and exploitative economic systems, helped foster the gang and sustain it.

This is the true crime best seller that was the basis for Martin Scorsese’s film masterpiece GoodFellas, which brought to life the violence, the excess, the families, the wives and girlfriends, the drugs, the payoffs, the paybacks, the jail time, and the Feds...with Henry Hill’s crackling narration drawn straight out of Wiseguy and overseeing all the unforgettable action.

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie ATF agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols - these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Jay Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard to imagine, but true story of how he infiltrated the legendary Hells Angels.

Despite lacking any experience with motorcycle gangs, Charles Falco infiltrated three of America's deadliest biker gangs: the Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws. In separate investigations that spanned years and coasts, Falco risked his life, suffering a fractured neck and a severely torn shoulder, working deep under cover to bring violent sociopaths to justice.

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family. They socialized with music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, did business with New York's king of bling Jacob "The Jeweler" Arabo, and built allegiances with rap superstars Young Jeezy and Fabolous. Yet even as BMF was attracting celebrity attention, its crew members struck fear in a city.

In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law-enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a "confidential informant" made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance.

During her teens, Rachel Lloyd ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past and devoted herself to helping other young girls escape "the life". In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark world of commercial sex trafficking in cinematic detail and tells the story of her groundbreaking nonprofit organization: GEMS.

At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.

Confessions of a Video Vixen is the widely anticipated memoir of Karrine Steffans, the once-sought-after sexy siren who appeared in the music videos of multiplatinum hip hop artists such as Jay-Z, R. Kelly, and LL Cool J. A top-paid video dancer, Karrine transitioned to film when acclaimed director F. Gary Gray picked her to costar in his film A Man Apart, starring Vin Diesel.

Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.

Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After 11 years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.

Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatest managed to gain entree into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.

In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the 20th century's most notorious criminals and life as one of his "girls". While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying chapters in modern American history.

All too often, we hear about the dangers of male friendships in which peer pressure prevails over common sense. But for George Jenkins, Sampson Davis, and Rameck Hunt, strong and supportive male friendship was a powerful antidote to the temptations and pitfalls of street life. It led three boys to make a vow to be there for one another, to encourage one another every step of the way, until they overcame the odds and became doctors.

Considered by many to be the world's greatest bounty hunter, Duane "Dog" Chapman has become famous for capturing fugitives on Dog the Bounty Hunter, his number-one-rated show on A&E. But his job doesn't end when he cuffs his man - or woman. Having personally struggled against abuse, addiction, and a life of crime, Dog knows a thing or two about the path that these fugitives cuffed in the back of his car are on.

Christopher Yuan, the son of Chinese immigrants, discovered at an early age that he was different. He was attracted to other boys. As he grew into adulthood, his mother, Angela, hoped to control the situation. Instead she found that her son and her life were spiraling out of control - and her own personal demons were determined to defeat her. Years of heartbreak, confusion, and prayer followed before the Yuans found a place of complete surrender, which is God's desire for all families.

Weldon Long knows firsthand that Maui is nicer than prison. After 13 years of federal and state incarceration, he emerged a transformed man: a powerful speaker, driven motivator, and successful trainer/entrepreneur. Long holds a BS in law and an MBA in management, despite dropping out of high school in the ninth grade.

The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working-class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child. But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. All Souls is heartbreaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world".

Widely published journalist William Van Meter returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky to research this harrowing account of a horrifying crime that occurred at Western Kentucky University. In 2003, attractive college student Katie Autry was found dead in her dorm room after being raped, stabbed, and set on fire. As Van Meter delves into the facts of the case, further disturbing information surfaces.

Heloise considers it a blessing to be a person who seldom attracts attention. In her suburb, she's just a mom, the young widow with the forgettable job, who somehow never misses a soccer game. In the state capital, she's the redheaded lobbyist with a good cause and a mediocre track record. But in discreet hotel rooms throughout the area, she's the woman of your dreams - if you can afford the hourly fee. For more than a decade, Heloise believed she was safe, managing to keep up this rigidly compartmentalized life. But her secret life is under siege. One county over, another so-called suburban madam has been found dead in her car, an apparent suicide.