Megon J. Walker

Picking up where TrickBaby left off, we dive into the world of Johnny O'Brien, better known as White Folks. After learning to use his fair skin to his advantage to rise to the top of the Chicago con game, Folks is back for the big money and the big stakes of the long con. Following the death of his partner and mentor, Blue, Folks takes off for Canada. Having honed his skills and polished his acting, Johnny is done cheating marks out of small money.

Trick Baby tells the story of White Folks, a blue-eyed, light-haired con artist whose pale skin allows him to pass in the streets as a white man. Folks is tormented early in life, rejected by other children and branded a "trick baby," a child conceived between a hooker and her trick. Refusing to abandon his life in the ghetto and a chance at revenge, Folks is taken under the wing of an older mentor, Blue. What happens next is unbelievable.

Trapped in the festering sore of a major American ghetto, a young man and his girlfriend - both attractive, talented, and full of promise - are inexorably pulled into the living death of the hardcore junkie. It is a horrifying world where addicts will do anything to get their next fix. For 23 years of his young life, Donald Goines lived in the dark, despair-ridden world of the junkie. It started while he was doing military service in Korea and ended with his murder in his late 30s. He had worked up to a hundred-dollars-a-day habit - and out of the agonizing hell came Dopefiend.

D'Anne Burwell's smart, athletic son - raised in a loving and prosperous home - begins abusing OxyContin as a teenager, and within a year drops out of college, walks out of rehab, and lands homeless on the streets of Boulder. Struggling with fear, guilt, and a desperate need to protect her son, D'Anne grapples with her husband's anger and her daughter's depression as the family disease of addiction impacts them all. She discovers the terrifying links between prescription-drug abuse and skyrocketing heroin use.

At the age of 24, Jordan Barnes woke up next to a lifeless body, rifled through his dead friends’ pockets for any remaining heroin, and went right back to using. Strung out and homeless during the supposed best years of his life, there was no clear way out of the opioid crisis ravaging the streets of Portland, Oregon. But though Jordan had long accepted his fate, his parents still held out hope and would do everything in their power to get him the help he so desperately needed.

His music could have made Damien Cantwell the star of his generation. But living fast has its consequences, and Damien soon finds himself spiraling into a dark world full of unfettered debauchery and brutal violence.

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.

In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.

Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, 19-year-old Nicole and her best friend Eric escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows - a drug that will make every day a nightmare.

When Susan Stellin asked Graham MacIndoe to shoot her author photo for an upcoming travel book, she barely knew him except for a few weekends with mutual friends at a summer house in Montauk. He was a gregarious, divorced Scotsman who had recently gotten sober; she was an independent New Yorker who decided to take a chance on a rough-around-the-edges guy. But their relationship was soon tested when Susan discovered that Graham still had a drug habit he was hiding.