"Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 250,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers, a plague ignited by the aggressive marketing of OxyContin by its maker, Purdue Pharma. Purdue, owned by a wealthy and secretive family--the Sacklers--knew early on that teenagers and others were abusing its billion dollar "wonder" drug. But Justice Department officials balked a decade ago when it came to meting out justice, allowing an opioid...

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question -- why her only son died -- and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm....

Three out of four people addicted to heroin probably started on a prescription opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the United States alone, 16,000 people die each year as a result of prescription opioid overdose. But perhaps the most frightening aspect of the prescription drug epidemic is that it's built on well-meaning doctors treating patients with real problems. Combining case studies from her own practice with...

"When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she'd left, that's exactly what happens -- Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken marriage and her lost dreams for children. What she hopes to find is solace with "Bootsie," her dear grandmother who raised her, a Walker woman with a knack for making everything all right....

"An award-winning crime reporter describes how two high school honor-roll students used gang connections to loot pharmacies and sell narcotics through delivery drivers using location-based technology and even formed an alliance with the Mexican drug cartel headed by El Chapo"--NoveList.

Mother of a kindergartener, married to her police detective soulmate, Emma has a rewarding career as a doctor at the local hospital. When her son, Josh, is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, she is determined to save him. Emma makes the risky decision to sell opioids to fund the life-saving treatment Josh needs. When somebody ends up dead, a lethal game of cat and mouse ensues -- with her own husband leading the chase. With her son's life hanging...

"From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a shocking and tender novel about a young woman's efforts to sustain a state of deep hibernation over the course of a year on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her...