When Pastor Bruce Deel took over the Mission Church in the 30314 zip code of Atlanta, he had orders to shut it down. The church was old and decrepit, and its neighborhood—known as "Better Leave, You Effing Fool," or "the Bluff," for short—had the highest rates of crime, homelessness, and incarceration in Georgia. Expecting his time there to only last six months, Deel was not prepared for what happened next. One Sunday, he was approached by a woman he didn't know. "I've been hooking and stripping for fourteen years," she said. "Can you help me?"

Soon after, Bruce founded an organization called City of Refuge rooted in the principle of radical trust. Other nonprofits might drug test before offering housing, lock up valuables, or veto a program giving job skills and character references to felons as "a liability." But Bruce believed the best way to improve outcomes for the marginalized and impoverished was to extend them trust, even if that trust was violated multiple times—and even if someone didn't yet trust themselves. Since then, City of Refuge has helped over 20,000 people in Atlanta's toughest neighborhood escape the cycles of homelessness, joblessness, and drug abuse.

Presenting an unvarnished window into the lives of ex-cons, drug addicts, human trafficking survivors, and displaced souls who have come through City of Refuge, Trust First examines the context in which Bruce's Atlanta neighborhood went downhill—and what City of Refuge chose to do about it. They've become a one-stop-shop for transitional housing, on-site medical and mental health care, childcare, and vocational training, including accredited intensives in auto tech, culinary arts, and coding. While most social services focus on one pain point and leave the burden on the poor to find the crosstown bus that'll serve their other needs, Bruce argues that bringing someone out of homelessness requires treating all of their needs simultaneously. This model has proven so effective that a dozen new chapters of City of Refuge have opened in the US, including in California, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, and Georgia. 

Read about this local success by reserving a copy in hardcover, ebook, or mp3 audiobook download. More titles featuring our city, both in fiction and non-ficiton, can be found by searching the keyword Atlanta in our catalog and in the Libby app.

College basketball player Victor Li, the narrator of Nieh’s remarkable debut novel, has little to concern him beyond his next game, until his restaurateur father, Vincent Li, is killed in a burglary at home in L.A.

Traveling home, Victor is shocked by a confessional letter he finds among his father's things. In it, Vincent admits that he was never just a restaurateur— he was part of a vast international crime syndicate that formed during China's leanest communist years.

Beijing Payback then embarks on an adventure filled with beautiful young courtesans, Chinese thugs, Russian gangsters, French journalists, and corrupt police in Beijing. Fans of thrillers, hard-boiled detective novels, and gangster stories should take a chance on this new author by reserving a copy in hardcover, mp3 audio download, or ebook format.

The bestselling author of the Tess Monaghan Series, Laura Lippman returns with a novel that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir and wholly unique characters.

In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know—everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. 

Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl—assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.

Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie—and the dead woman herself. Maddie's going to find the truth about Cleo's life and death. Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone. 

Join Laura Lippman's growing fan base by reserving Lady in the Lake in hardcover, ebook, or mp3 auidobook with Fulton County Libraries. If you like what you read, the entire Tess Monaghan series is available in our catalog in both hardcover and ebook formats.

In turn-of-the-20th century Texas, the Berachah Home for the Redemption and Protection of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth, circumstance, or personal tragedy.

Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth's red-light districts, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training, and rehabilitation to prostitutes, addicts, unwed mothers, and "ruined" girls without forcibly separating mothers from children. When Lizzie Bates and Mattie McBride meet there—one sick and abused, but desperately clinging to her young daughter, the other jilted by the beau who fathered her ailing son—they form a friendship that will see them through unbearable loss, heartbreak, difficult choices, and ultimately, diverging paths.

A century later, Cate Sutton, a reclusive university librarian, uncovers the hidden histories of the two troubled women as she stumbles upon the cemetery on the home's former grounds and begins to comb through its archives in her library. Pulled by an indescribable connection, what Cate discovers about their stories leads her to confront her own heartbreaking past, and to reclaim the life she thought she'd let go forever. Home for Erring and Outcast Girls explores the dark roads that lead us to ruin, and the paths we take to return to ourselves. 

Reserve a copy in hardcover, or download the Libby app and enjoy this read in ebook or listen to the mp3 audiobook on your favorite device.

In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, and Marvel's Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.

To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family's past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.

Straczynski's personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.

Click here to reserve a copy of this incredible autobiography in hardcover, mp3 audiobook, or ebook.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

You can reserve this bestseller in every format offered by Fulton County Libraries - hardcover, ebook, mp3 audiobook, CD audiobook, and large print.