Here are 100 books that You Got Nothing Coming fans have personally recommended if you like
You Got Nothing Coming.
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I am the product of a love triangle—an unusual one, between a French Holocaust survivor, an African student from France’s colonies, and a black GI. My parents came of age during really turbulent times and led big, bold lives. They rarely spoke about their pasts, but once I began digging—in the letters they exchanged, in conversations with my grandmother and aunts, with their childhood friends—I realized that all three had witnessed up close so much of the drama and horrors of the twentieth century and that what they had lived together merited being told. My parents’ love triangle is at the heart of my love of love-triangle stories.
I absolutely love a book that introduces me to characters I like, then visits trouble on them—to paraphrase (poorly!) the writer Charles Baxter as he described his approach to storytelling. In An American Marriage, I’m rooting for Celestial and Roy, even as their love journey gets upended. And then I’m rooting for Celestial and Andre as she tries to recover from Roy’s tragic, unjust incarceration. And then, when Celestial must choose between the two, I don’t know who to root for!
A great set-up for suspense—and also for feeling all the things.
Plus, Jones paints a beautiful portrait of Blacklanta in all its nuance, complexity, and splendor.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
Genet’s prose really kicks a lot of others to the curb, even in translation, and the curb is where he is most comfortable. To paraphrase Wilde, he was definitely in the gutter but looking at the stars.
His visionary, unabashed grit, queer defiance, and uncanny lyrical ability really should make him required reading for everyone. But if you’re a defiant freak, you get mixed up in the prison system, and you need a North Star, you can’t do much better than Genet, a beautiful, wild thinker about all things related to the place of punishment and jails in society.
He truly lived the life he described, which people love nowadays. The Thief’s Journal is shockingly countercultural and exhilarating even now.
Jean Genet, French playwright, novelist and poet, turned the experiences in his life amongst pimps, whores, thugs and other fellow social outcasts into a poetic literature, with an honesty and explicitness unprecedented at the time. Widely considered an outstanding and unique figure in French literature, Genet wrote five novels between 1942 and 1947, now being republished by Faber & Faber in beautiful new paperback editions.
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such…
At a conference hosted by Maria Shriver, I met Sister Terry Dodge, who works with women exiting prison with nothing but $200, with no job and no place to live. She showed a video, and that video has stuck with me. So much so that it wrote itself into The Breaks. Meanwhile, I was volunteering with a therapy program, taking pets into Juvenile Hall. I learned a lot from the kids and counselors there. Then You Got Nothing Coming came my way, and later Orange is the New Black (the book, not the television show). In both fiction and nonfiction, the mix of pathos, hilarity, and horror is astounding.
First of all, this book is hilarious. Second of all, it made me cry.
A trans woman leaving a men’s prison? After twenty years inside? With nowhere to go that will meet the requirements of her parole? Never mind meeting her requirements in the way of wardrobe. So this novel was quite a ride for me, right from page one. Although I have nothing in common with Carlotta, I somehow found myself identifying with her, and I was hooked. I can’t explain it.
I’m fussy about grammar and punctuation—until this book, which had my head spinning with mid-sentence switch-ups between first person and third person, between prison-speak and whatever I speak, between using and not using punctuation and sentence structure. I loved every minute, every sentence.
In this “dangerously hilarious” novel (Los Angeles Times), a trans woman reenters life on the outside after more than twenty years in a men’s prison, over one consequential Fourth of July weekend—from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Delicious Foods.
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected,…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
This book is one of the most compassionate, no-nonsense, and highly informative books about the system out there.
It’s intended as a helpful guide for people who are about to leave prison, but if you’re on the outside and curious about the largely hidden, unconsidered, and technical aspects of incarceration in the USA, this book, like its earlier companion, Behind Bars, will blow your mind and maybe save your life, especially if you’re involved in the system.
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
This book has a provenance that’s almost like a prison sentence: released in 1953 under the title Cast the First Stone, it would have been Himes’ first novel, but its frankness about homosexual relationships in prison and the fact that a Black writer had written white main characters, made publishers shit their pants and doctor the life out of it to make it conform to 50s market expectations. Of course, in the process, they ruined it.
But in 1998, Old School Books released Himes’ "director’s cut,” a much different, more beautiful, raw, and thoughtful book that’s as much about prison life as it is about the prison of masculinity. Paradoxically, prison seems to be a place where people indulge homosexual desires, though the atmosphere somehow remains homophobic.
Reading this book could foster more compassion for queer desires, whether those of prisoners who identify as LGBTQIA+, or those who…
A classic restored-the complete and unexpurgated text of a great African-American writer's brutal and lyrical novel of prison life. First published in reduced and bowdlerized form in 1952 as Cast the First Stone, Yesterday Will Make You Cry was Chester Himes's first, most powerful, and autobiographical novel. This Old School Books edition presents it for the first time precisely as Himes wrote it, a sardonic masterpiece of debasement and transfiguration in an American penitentiary and one of his most enduring literary achievements.
At a conference hosted by Maria Shriver, I met Sister Terry Dodge, who works with women exiting prison with nothing but $200, with no job and no place to live. She showed a video, and that video has stuck with me. So much so that it wrote itself into The Breaks. Meanwhile, I was volunteering with a therapy program, taking pets into Juvenile Hall. I learned a lot from the kids and counselors there. Then You Got Nothing Coming came my way, and later Orange is the New Black (the book, not the television show). In both fiction and nonfiction, the mix of pathos, hilarity, and horror is astounding.
I loved the characters in this novel, both the “ordinary” people and the quirky ones. And the non-human ones.
I loved how each character’s backstory and front story came out over time and sometimes merged and sometimes stayed quiet. I loved how the main and minor plots merged and separated and did not always go where I thought they would go. I loved that the story sometimes seemed predictable, and then, like real life, didn’t go as planned.
Most of all, I love how the author constructed a novel about a tough subject that didn’t drag me down into hopelessness and also didn’t turn out all sunshine and kittens. As a bonus, I learned some pretty cool things about parrots.
"The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours....A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world." —New York Times Book Review
"A beautiful, big-hearted treasure of a novel." —Lily King
National Bestseller * From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
At a conference hosted by Maria Shriver, I met Sister Terry Dodge, who works with women exiting prison with nothing but $200, with no job and no place to live. She showed a video, and that video has stuck with me. So much so that it wrote itself into The Breaks. Meanwhile, I was volunteering with a therapy program, taking pets into Juvenile Hall. I learned a lot from the kids and counselors there. Then You Got Nothing Coming came my way, and later Orange is the New Black (the book, not the television show). In both fiction and nonfiction, the mix of pathos, hilarity, and horror is astounding.
Allen Eskens is adept at melding literary fiction with crime, mystery, suspense, and psychological thriller.
In this book, his lawyer-protagonist (Boady) is trying to save two unrelated people: the teen-aged Emma, but also Elijah, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital, convicted of murder. And he has to save himself.
I love how these stories are interwoven, how Boady struggles with family, his work with the Innocence Project, and his own grief, fears, and failings. I found the Elijah story especially gripping—to save Elijah, he must unpick the knots that keep Elijah from helping himself, and at the same time he must gently undo brainwashing at the hands of a devious aunt.
A lawyer's race to reveal a wrongful conviction collides with the dark shadow of a murder in his own home in this propulsive and perfectly-plotted thriller from "one of our best crime writers at the top of his game" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author).
"Ambitious, absorbing, and deeply satisfying." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Eskens brilliantly combines legal and personal drama." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Superb . . . another Eskens novel to be savored." South Florida Sun-Sentinel
When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he's certain there's not much he can do. Elijah, who…
At a conference hosted by Maria Shriver, I met Sister Terry Dodge, who works with women exiting prison with nothing but $200, with no job and no place to live. She showed a video, and that video has stuck with me. So much so that it wrote itself into The Breaks. Meanwhile, I was volunteering with a therapy program, taking pets into Juvenile Hall. I learned a lot from the kids and counselors there. Then You Got Nothing Coming came my way, and later Orange is the New Black (the book, not the television show). In both fiction and nonfiction, the mix of pathos, hilarity, and horror is astounding.
Women’s prison was something I never thought about, until I picked up this memoir because I was curious about the title (and was completely wrong about it).
How a Smith graduate with a job as a New York creative ended up in prison was interesting, but once she walked inside, I was spellbound. I got caught up in the sadness, the fear, the drama, the boredom, and the unfairness of (no period products??).
This book was as eye-opening as it was mesmerizing.
'I loved this book ... a beautifully told story about how incredible women can be, and I will never forget it Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love
With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424.
And Then the Sky Exploded came about after I traveled to Japan when my novel, Numbers, was awarded the Sakura Medal, a readers’ choice award voted on by the students in English speaking high school students in Japan. During my time touring and giving author presentations to schools in that wonderful country, I became interested in Japanese culture and history and eventually decided to write a novel exploring one of the most devastating moments of the 20th century—the exploding of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima during World War ll.
I Killed Zoe Spanosis absolutely contemporary, even using a true-crime podcast as a (successful) device in the telling of the story. I’m a sucker for false confession stories and in the story of Zoe, the victim who disappears on New Year’s Eve and whose body is found the following August; and Anna, who bears a strong resemblance to Zoe, and confesses to the murder, you have the makings of a potential can’t-put-it-down thriller. And author, Kit Frick, doesn’t miss the mark. A creepy cast of characters, wonderfully spooky settings, plenty of twists and turns—all brought to life by a gifted storyteller—make this one of my great favourites.
A People Best Book of Summer 2020 A Parade Best Book of Summer 2020 "The YA thriller of the summer." -Bustle
For fans of Sadie and Serial, this gripping thriller follows two teens whose lives become inextricably linked when one confesses to murder and the other becomes determined to uncover the real truth no matter the cost.
What happened to Zoe won't stay buried...
When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
I've lived in Brooklyn for over 30 years now. I've always had a weakness for fun, snarky urban fantasy where the city is always a supporting character—and sometimes a major one. One day I decided to write a short story in the style of Simon R. Green's Nightside books, only instead of London, it'd feature New York City. And thus, the Conradverse was born. I tend to combine action, humor, real Brooklyn and NYC locations and history, and copious pop culture references when writing in this setting, and I seek out other books that do a great job at handling some or all of these elements.
If Indiana Jones was based in Brooklyn and was also an expert at magic and arcane lore, you'd have Piers Knight, the titular character of this book. Although a bit lighter on humor than the other entries here, I found this book to be fun and snappy, and as an additional bonus delves into the real (and weird!) historical factoids about New York City.
Professor Piers Knight, an esteemed curator at the Brooklyn Museum, is regarded by many on the staff as a revered institution of his own, if not an outright curiosity. Knight's portfolio includes lost civilizations; arcane cultures, languages, and belief; and, more than a little bit of the history of magic and mysticism. His colleagues don't know that, in addition to being a scholar of all things ancient, he is schooled in the uses of magical artefacts, the teachings of forgotten deities, and the threats of unseen dangers. If a mysterious object surfaces, Professor Knight makes it his job to figure…
