We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”—or torturer—s...

However repugnant, torture has been practiced, either publicly approved or clandestinely, for thousands of years. From the rack to electrodes, from witch- hunts to the Inquisition to a post-colonial world, torture is something we have always lived with. The History of Torture tells the complete story, from the ancient world to the present day, from physical cruelty to mental torment. The rack may be thought of as something medieval, but was first...

Explaining the mechanics of torture-even now a controversial topic-this history questions why so much effort has been put into causing pain to fellow human beings Taking readers into the ancient Roman coliseum, the medieval dungeon, the Inquisitional interrogation, the auto-da-fe, the witch-trial, and the most horrid of prisons, this is an exploration of the systematic use throughout the ages of various means of punishment, torture,...

"The Only Girl in the World describes the author's harrowing upbringing by fanatic parents, who raised her in isolation through traumatic disciplinary exercises designed to "eliminate weakness" and recounts how she eventually escaped with the help of an outsider." --

"Two years after the disappearance of her father, seventeen-year-old Liv and her friend capture an alien in the Iowa countryside, and instead of turning him over to the authorities, they choose a different path." --

Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander. The price of Ben's release: find and eliminate Larison, a rogue operator from Ben's unit who has stolen torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the U.S. government.

Dahlia Barr does not suffer fools--or her own government, with which she is normally at odds. Shrewd, brash, and as tough as she is beautiful, the controversial Israeli attorney specializes in defending Palestinians accused of terrorism. She is also a devoted mother, a soon-to-be-divorced wife, and the lover of a handsome American television correspondent. To Dahlia's astonishment, the Israeli security establishment one day approaches her wit a tantalizing...

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights...

Two young girls on their way to a Bloodlust concert end up as captives of three escaped convicts. Chilling drama of kidnap, torture and revenge.

When the orphanage they live in is closed, Pax and a younger boy, Kai, are forced to live on the streets. Desperate to make enough money to send Kai to school, Pax does jobs for a shady character known only as Mister. When Pax is given a "special mission"--to deliver a heavy box to a certain location--Pax winds up charged with terrorism and plunged into a brutal prison environment where his captors will do anything to make him talk.