Having trouble finding a book for this category? Here are some of our recommendations.
The Houdini club : the epic journey and daring escapes of the first army rangers of WWII
Author: Mir Bahmanyar
Year: 2025
ISBN: 9781635769784
Abstract: Highlighted by the prisoner-of-war escapes that earned them the name "The Houdini Club," here is the elite combat odyssey of World War II's "Darby's Rangers" as never told before--drawing on previously unknown sources and retired Army Ranger Mir Bahmanyar's exclusive, uncensored interviews with the greatest generation of Rangers themselves.
Audiobook always available on hoopla
Also works for: Non-fiction
I who have never known men
Author: Jacqueline Harpman ; translated from the French by Ros Schwartz ; with an afterword by Sophie Mackintosh
Year: 2022
ISBN: 9781945492600
Abstract: "Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl--the fortieth prisoner--sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman's modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature" --Back cover.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Ebook and audiobook always available on hoopla.
Also works for: Post-apocalyptic
Misery
Author: Stephen King
Year: 1987
ISBN: 9780670813643
Abstract: After an almost fatal car crash, novelist Paul Sheldon finds himself being nursed by a deranged fan who holds him captive.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Also works for: Made into a movie, One-word title
The best we could do : an illustrated memoir
Author: Thi Bui
Year: 2017
ISBN: 9781419718779
Abstract: The author describes her experiences as a young Vietnamese immigrant, highlighting her family's move from their war-torn home to the United States in graphic novel format.
Ebook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Ebook always available on hoopla.
Also works for: Graphic novel
Dannemora : two escaped killers, three weeks of terror, and the largest manhunt ever in New York State
Author: Charles A. Gardner
Year: 2019
ISBN: 9780806539249
Abstract: In June 2015, two vicious convicted murderers broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in New York's North Country, launching the most extensive manhunt in state history. Aided by prison employee Joyce Mitchell, double murderer Richard Matt and cop-killer David Sweat slipped out of their cells, followed a network of tunnels and pipes under the thirty-foot prison wall, and climbed out of a manhole to freedom. For three weeks, the residents of local communities were virtual prisoners in their own homes as law enforcement from across the nation swept the rural wilderness near the Canadian border. The manhunt made front-page headlines, as did the prison sex scandal involving both inmates and Joyce Mitchell, and culminated in a dramatic and bloody standoff. Dannemora is a gripping account of the circumstances that led to the bold breakout and the twenty-three-day search that culminated in one man dead, and one man back in custody, and lingering questions about those who set the deadly drama in motion.
Ebook and audiobook always available on hoopla
Also works for: Non-fiction
This man must die
Author: William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone
Year: 2023
ISBN: 9780786049714
Abstract: "'In the world of criminal lawbreakers in Laramie County, Lucien Clay was king. He terrorized the locals, robbed every business in the territory, and ruled the place with a merciless iron fist. Thankfully he's behind bars now -- along with a load of other lowlife prairie rats -- thanks to Laramie's new sheriff, Buck Trammel. Unfortunately, Trammel can only enforce the law while others specialize in working around it: namely, lawyers. And no lawyer is more crooked or corrupt than the belly-crawling snake Clay hired to get him out. By any means possible. Their breakout plan is simple: The lawyer will wait until midnight. Then he'll break in to the county jail to bust his client out. He'll scale the walls, kill the guards, ambush the deputies, and release the prisoner. There's just one catch: As soon as Clay is freed, the other convicts want out, too. Which sparks total chaos in the prison, creates a distraction for Clay -- and unleashes the worst blood-soaked night of murderous mayhem Buck Trammel has ever witnessed. And will never forget. If he survives." -- Amazon.
Ebook and audiobook always available on hoopla
Also works for: A hat on the cover
The water dancer : a novel
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Year: 2019
ISBN: 9780399590597
Abstract: "Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage -- and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child -- but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, all Hiram wants is to return to the Walker Plantation to free the family he left behind -- but to do so, he must first master his magical gift and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss."-- Provided by publisher.
Ebook and audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Room : a novel
Author: Emma Donoghue
Year: 2010
ISBN: 9780316098335
Abstract: Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library.
Also works for: Made into a movie, One-word title
Great escapes : the stories behind 50 remarkable journeys to freedom
Author: Scott Christianson
Year: 2009
ISBN: 9781554075065
Abstract: Shares the stories behind fifty great escapes in which people were able to free themselves from kidnappers, oppressive regimes, prison and the law, man-made disasters, war, and nature.
Also works for: Non-fiction
Out of sight
Author: Elmore Leonard
Year: 1996
ISBN: 9780385308489
Abstract: A bank robber in Florida commandeers a car belonging to a woman U.S. marshall, climbs with her into the trunk, while an accomplice drives. So begins a novel about two people who really wish the ride had gone forever. As it is, she escapes to lead a manhunt for him.
Audiobook always available on hoopla
Also works for: Made into a movie
The escape artist : the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world
Author: Jonathan Freedland
Year: 2022
ISBN: 9780063112339
Abstract: "In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz--one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world--and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen--a forensically detailed report that would eventually reach Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba--then just nineteen years old--had risked everything to deliver. Some could not believe it. Others thought it easier to keep quiet. Vrba helped save 200,000 Jewish lives--but he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man--a gifted "escape artist" who even as a teenager understand that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death, a man who deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust"-- Provided by publisher.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Audiobook always available on hoopla.
Also works for: Non-fiction, Black cover
The great escape
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Year: 2012
ISBN: 9780062106063
Abstract: Lucy Jorik, the daughter of the former president of the U.S., jilts her soon-to-be husband at the altar and embarks on the adventure she has been waiting for.
Audiobook available from the Alaska Digital Library. Ebook and audiobook always available on hoopla.