Lethal Rejection features an array of fiction on crime and punishment written by prisoners, academics and students of criminology. The authors use short stories, plays, and poetry to provide authentic and vivid depictions of the netherworld that is our penal system. In the words of noted criminologist and lawyer, Joycelyn Pollock, "this book is fiction; but it is also a book about prison that can offer a type of truth that numbers can't. Enjoy your reading – if you can."

“Robert Johnson, Sonia Tabriz and their fellow authors paint a compelling picture of lives shaped by crime and dubious punishment. By connecting us emotionally to people and places too-often hidden from public empathy, these writings force these experiences to the forefront of our consciousness. In describing real lives and real people sometime obscured by the policy debates on criminal justice, these fictionalized realities counter a narrow conception of prisoners and their worlds. I highly recommend this book to all  students of the prison.” —Barbara Owen, California State University Fresno

“Too much of the writing about prisons is at arms-length from the experience and reality of confinement. Not this book. The stories provided in Lethal Rejection are alive with the drama, the emotion, and the deep meaning of living behind bars. The writers give us powerful and vibrant testimony about the imprisonment experience—something that cannot easily be imagined in the abstract but which can, with the help of the writings here, be felt in the reading. The book makes us encounter the lives of the confined in a way I have not experienced in any other book about prison life.” —Todd Clear, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York