Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves,...

"Amos Decker and his journalist friend Alex Jamison are visiting the home of Alex's sister in Barronville, a small town in western Pennsylvania that has been hit hard economically. When Decker is out on the rear deck of the house talking with Alex's niece, a precocious eight-year-old, he notices flickering lights and then a spark of flame in the window of the house across the way. When he goes to investigate he finds two dead bodies inside and it's...

"Still reeling from her older brother's death, Sadie is looking for answers. It isn't unusual for someone to die young in Cutler county--there have been so many overdoses in recent years that an article in the Kansas City Star bemoaned the decimation of the next generation of farmers. But Sadie's brother wasn't an addict. And though his wife who found him said it was a heart attack, he was only thirty-six years old and has never had any health problems....

"Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends....

Cole Freeman maintains an uneasy equilibrium in his Appalachian town, looking after the old and infirm in the community while selling their excess painkillers to local addicts to make ends meet. But when an old friend returns with dangerous new plans that threaten the fragile balance Cole has crafted in his declining mountain town, his world and identity are thrown into deep disarray. A moving lyrical hymn for the complex tangle of hardship and hope...

Describes how the current opioid crisis was driven by greed, incompetence, and indifference and exposes the pharmaceutical industry's control of the healthcare system and how the FDA was duped into pushing painkillers.

Returning to practice after a suspension for stealing opioids, a young doctor takes the only job he can find: a post as a physician at the struggling St. Luke's Hospital in east London. Amid the maelstrom of sick patients, overworked staff and underfunded wards, a more insidious secret soon declares itself: too many patients are dying. And a murderer may be lurking in plain sight.

"A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. "A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape," writes Ben Westhoff. "These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements...

"Tim O'Connor is paid to be violent. He plays for the El Paso Storm in the West Texas Hockey League. People call him Oak. He's been an enforcer for longer than his hip or shoulder or back have been able to hold together. He is a broken machine of gristle and rage. And he has been away from home for too long. He's called back to Boston by his mother's death. There he confronts a life he failed to live, a daughter he doesn't know, and a body that is...

Fast-paced and heartwarming, devastating and redemptive, Maureen's incredible odyssey into the opioid crisis-first as a parent, then as an advocate-is ultimately a deeply moving mother-daughter story. When Maureen and her ex-husband Mike see their daughter Katie's needle track marks for the first time, it is a complete shock. But, slowly, the drug use explains everything-Katie's constant exhaustion, erratic moods, and all those spoons that have gone...