Ashley Smith
By her own account, Ashley Smith is far from a hero. Yet today, her face is known around the world as the single mother who persuaded Brian Nichols, Atlanta’s courtroom killer, to surrender to police. Nichols called Ashley “an angel sent from God,” but, ironically, it was Ashley’s less-than-angelic past that allowed her to convince him to face justice. Today, Ashley lives in Atlanta with her daughter Paige and husband Daniel. She is actively involved with her church, Blackshear Place Baptist Church, and its Celebrate Recovery ministry, and continues to speak nationally and tell the story of Unlikely Angel, which debuted at #15 on the New York Times Bestseller List and is now a major motion picture. According to her wishes, some of the proceeds from the book will be donated to a memorial fund that will honor the victims of the courthouse tragedy.
All Books By Ashley Smith
Captive
- By: Ashley Smith
- Narrator: Ashley Smith
- Length: 5 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: August 18, 2015
- Language: English
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3.67(281 ratings)
Now a stirring movie from Paramount Pictures–starring Kate Mara (House of Cards and Fantastic Four) and David Oyelowo (Selma)–this inspirational, news-making life story of the young female hostage who in 2005 single-handedly talked the infamous Atlanta courthouse killer, Brian Nichols, into surrendering peacefully by gaining his confidence through her prayers and personal faith and by reading passages to him from the Christian blockbuster A Purpose Driven Life.
In March 2005, Ashley Smith made headlines around the globe when she miraculously talked her way out of the hands of alleged courthouse killer Brian Nichols after he took her hostage for seven hours in her suburban Atlanta apartment. In this moving, inspirational account, Ashley shares the details of her traumatic ordeal and expands on how her faith and the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life helped her survive and bring the killer’s murderous rampage to a peaceful end.
Like her captor, Smith too has faced darkness and despair. Seeking a new life, she moved to Atlanta, got a job, enrolled in a medical assistant training program, and was beginning to find her way to becoming the kind of mom she wanted her little girl to have. Then Brian Nichols took her hostage. Just hours earlier, he’d allegedly shot to death a judge, a court reporter, a deputy, and a federal agent and escaped in a stolen vehicle. Now she found herself face-to-face with Nichols, a desperate, heavily armed man with nothing left to lose.
Juxtaposing the minute-by-minute tale of her experience with the tragedies and triumphs of her own life, Captive is a riveting story that will leave no reader untouched.
... Read moreUnlikely Angel
- By: Ashley Smith
- Narrator: Ashley Smith
- Length: 5 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publish date: November 25, 2005
- Language: English
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3.67(831 ratings)
“He believed that I was an angel sent from God.”—Ashley SmithIn April 2005, Ashley Smith made headlines around the globe when she miraculously talked her way out of the hands of alleged courthouse killer Brian Nichols after he took her hostage for seven hours in her suburban Atlanta apartment. In this moving, inspirational memoir, the 26-year-old widowed mother of a six-year-old girl shares for the first time the little-known details of her traumatic ordeal, and expands on how her faith and the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven(r) Life helped her survive and bring the killer’s murderous rampage to a peaceful end.Just as she told her 6’1″, 210-pound captor that his ultimate “purpose” in life was to end up spending the rest of his life in prison, preaching the teachings of Jesus Christ to his fellow inmates, Smith believes her own purpose is to spread that message of love to the rest of us. Juxtaposing the minute-by-minute tale of her experience with the never-before-told tragedies and triumphs of her own life, Unlikely Angel is a gripping tale of downfall and redemption, involving addiction, violence, death, loss, faith, and love. It is a story that will leave no reader untouched.
... Read more