Combining his knowledge as a doctor and a lifelong fascination with Virginia Woolf's life and work, eminent psychiatrist Peter Dally offers a haunting and compelling look at the depression that tormented Virginia Woolf throughout her adult years.On three ocassions Virginia went mad. Symptoms of these episodes included conversations with her dead mother, and hearing birds speak in Greek. Thougha quiet life cushioned her childhood, the renown Woolf achieved through writing inspired the bouts of depression and elation that she regularly experienced as an adult. This terrified Virginia, and though the experience offered extraordinary insight into her craft, Woolf lived in constant fear of her dreadful affliction.Virginia's most vital protection from stress was her husband, Leonard. Without his constant vigilance and care, it is doubtful she would have been so creatively productive. Yet, paradoxically, their marriage ultimately preciptated her most dangerous bout of madness.... Views: 20
Thirteen-year-old Anna's passionate dream is to go to high school, the first girl from her tiny farm community back in 1910 to do so. She is determined not to stay at home like her older sister, Mary Ellen, helping their mother and waiting to marry a local farmer. But there is no money to send her to River Heights, seven miles away, and anyway, her mother needs her. When sixteen-year-old Mary Ellen is sexually assaulted by a local boy, the situation gets worse. No one suspects Mary Ellen is pregnant until she gives birth to the illegitimate baby. The surprise birth threatens to ruin the family's standing in the community and Mary Ellen's reputation. Anna wrestles with helping her parents and sister while still striving to make her burning desire to go to high school a reality. Meanwhile she becomes involved in solving the mystery of a missing ring, and in stopping another attack by the boy who assaulted her sister. But how will that help her realize her dream? Views: 20
Dinah and her sister Lisa are growing up in 1950s South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a dissenting liberal family. Big sister Lisa is strong and sensible, while Dinah is weedy and arty. At school, the sadistic Mrs Vaughan-Jones is providing instruction in mental arithmetic and racial prejudice. And then there's the puzzle of lunch break. 'Would you rather have a native girl or a koelie to make your sandwiches?' a first-year classmate asks. But Dinah doesn't know the answer, because it's her dad who makes her sandwiches. As the apparatus of repression rolls on, Dinah finds her own way. As we follow her journey through childhood and adolescence, we enter into one of the darker passages of twentieth-century history. Views: 20
Loet Velmans was seventeen when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman's Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indies—now Indonesia—where he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave labor camps, building a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border so the Japanese could invade India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died building this Death Railway. Velmans, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit sprung this stunning memoir. Long Way Back to the River Kwai is a simply told but searing memoir of World War II... Views: 20
A chilling true story of murder and betrayal on Manhattan's gritty West Side It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window. Under their reign, Hell's Kitchen becomes a place where death literally rains from the sky. But when Mickey goes down for a murder he didn't commit, he suspects his friend has sold him out. He returns the favor, breaking the underworld's code of silence and testifying against his gang in open court. From one of the creators of NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street comes an incredible true story of what it means to survive in the... Views: 20
A brilliant, exhilarating debut novel that retells The Odyssey during the 1965 Watts Riots—like nothing you've ever read beforeIt's August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching. Americo Monk, a street-haunting aficionado of graffiti, is frantically trying to return home to the makeshift harbor community (assembled from old shipping containers) where he lives with his girlfriend, Karmann. But this is during the Watts Riots, and although his status as a chronicler of all things underground garners him free passage through the territories fiercely controlled by gangs, his trek is nevertheless diverted. Embarking on an exhilarating, dangerous, and at times paranormal journey, Monk crosses paths with a dizzying array of representatives from Los Angeles subcultures, including Chinese gangsters, graffiti bombers, witches, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and others. Graffiti Palace is the story of a city transmogrified by the upsurge of... Views: 20
This lyrical tale of evil, loss, and redemption is a stunning addition to the Southern gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews.A Choir of Ill Children is the startling story of Kingdom Come, a decaying, swamp backwater that draws the lost, ill-fated, and damned. Since his mother’s disappearance and his father’s suicide, Thomas has cared for his three brothers—conjoined triplets with separate bodies but one shared brain—and the town’s only industry, the Mill.Because of his family’s prominence, Thomas is feared and respected by the superstitious swamp folk. Granny witches cast hexes while Thomas’s childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost and his best friend, a reverend suffering from the power of tongues, is overcome with this curse as he tries to warn of impending menace. All Thomas learns is that “the carnival is coming.”Torn by responsibility and rage, Thomas must face his tormented past as well as the mysterious forces surging toward the town he loves and despises. Views: 20
Sage has completed his transformation, but their troubles aren’t over yet. While trying to convince the powers that be he is no threat to the werenation, Charlotte must face her past head on and survive to reinvent herself, all while saving her grandfather from the clutches of a power-hungry sorcerer and the werewolf who would be king. Views: 20
