Southern Appalachia. He was 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. Damon braves the perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes...

Amos Decker and his FBI colleague Alex Jamison are in Baronville, Pennsylvania, visiting Alex's sister and her family. It's a bleak place: a former mill and mining town with a crumbling economy and rampant opioid addiction. Decker has only been there a few hours when he stumbles on a horrific double murder scene. Then the next killing hits sickeningly close to home. With the lives of people he cares about suddenly hanging in the balance, Decker realizes...

"Emma loves her life. She's the mother of a precocious kindergartener, married to her soulmate--a loyal and loving police detective--and has a rewarding career as a doctor at the local hospital. But everything comes crashing down when her son, Josh, is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Determined to save him, Emma makes the risky decision to sell opioids to fund the lifesaving treatment he needs. But when somebody ends up dead, a lethal game of...

The availability of both opioid prescription medications and powerful illicit drugs like heroin and fentanyl has resulted in a deadly epidemic of drug abuse. Opioids and opiates are not confined to poor neighborhoods or inner cities; addicted victims are dying in communities throughout the United States. This easy-to-read, comprehensive guide uses recent statistics and up-to-date guidelines from government health and criminal justice agencies to educate...

"What had happend to my baby brother? How did a tiny little pill shatter our family? When did we first begin losing Pat? These are the harrowing questions that plagued Erin Marie Daly after her youngest brother Pat, an OxyContin addict, was found dead of a heroin overdose at the age of twenty. In just a few short years, the powerful prescription painkiller had transformed him from a fun-loving ball of energy to a heroin addict hell-bent on getting...

In September 2019, Purdue Pharma--the maker of OxyContin and a company controlled by the infamous billionaire Sackler family--filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from 2,600 lawsuits for its role in fueling the U.S. overdose crisis. Author and activist Ryan Hampton served as co-chair of the official creditors committee that acted as a watchdog during the process, one of only four victims appointed among representatives of big insurance companies,...