He saw his drug use as a symptom of depression, but the experts insisted that addiction was the problem. By age nineteen, he'd been through medical detox, inpatient rehab, twelve-step programs, and a halfway house. In his groundbreaking memoir, The Weight of Air, David chronicles his struggle to overcome mental illness and addiction. More than a decade in a double life fueled by depression and heroin. He needed to be sure he could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in his mouth. While his wife and two-year-old daughter watched TV in the living room, David Poses was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from his index finger to his armpit. A potent addition to the literature on drug addiction and recovery."-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
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The focus is Sloane, and how she's survived up to this point, and not just from the zombies. I could talk about the zombie mythology this book presents - how they were made and how to they can (or can't) be defeated - but that's not the primary focus of this story. If they want to live, they'll have to work together, barricading themselves inside the school and rationing the food and water they've found. Though not all of my questions about Sloane's journey were answered, I was invested in her story, and the other teens who have found shelter in their old school: Grace Casper and her twin brother, Trace Cary, who knew Sloane's sister, Lily Rhys, a senior who is prepared to protect Sloane and Harrison, a freshman who is scared out of his wits. I wanted her to live, and to realize that her life was important. This book begins with a girl named Sloane who, feeling abandoned and unimportant, wants to die. Instead of dealing with principals and janitors, they are dealing with zombies. But this is not The Breakfast Club by John Hughes this is This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers. A group of teenagers gather at the local high school and become unlikely allies. The story highlights the dangers of obsession and the complexities of navigating a relationship with someone who has a criminal past. Trisha Wolfe takes into the work of a serial killer, Grayson Sullivan and his relationship with a criminal psychologist, London Noble. This book was little different to what I am usually reading, but I am so glad that I listened to the reviews and took a chance. Their journey together is a dangerous one, full of twists and turns that test the limits of their love and sanity. Born Darkly is one of the best books that I read during 2017. The relationship between London and Sullivan is a complex one, as they both challenge each other's perception of reality and push each other to the brink of madness. Her love for him is put to the test as she is forced to acknowledge the reality of the situation and confront the danger that surrounds her. Throughout her journey, London is faced with the question of whether she is willing to risk her own mental stability to unravel the truth behind Sullivan's actions. As she delves deeper into this maze, she is faced with numerous tests and games that challenge her sanity and force her to confront the true evil in the world. Sullivan, who is a convicted serial killer, presents a complex and dark maze for London to navigate through. London Noble is a criminal psychologist who is faced with a unique and dangerous challenge when she falls in love with her patient, Grayson Pierce Sullivan. The Hall has been home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries. During the long hot summer of 1948, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked. Faraday, the son of a housemaid, who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. THE LITTLE STRANGER tells the story of Dr. If you’re unfamiliar with the book, here’s the IMDB summary written by Focus Features: Color me shocked, pleased, and ultimately disappointed. They didn’t miss the important twist and ensuing interpretation they overdid it. Somehow, they did the opposite of what I expected. Never in a million years would I have guessed how they’d really screw it up. I was so certain that they would miss the subtle but brilliant, meaning-making twist that I actually pitched my column with the title “'The Little Stranger' Twist the Movie Missed.” When I pitched a movie review for The Little Stranger, I felt almost positive I knew where and how they would screw up adapting the beloved Sarah Waters novel by the same name. But when Bee's favorite producer casts her to star in a Christmas movie he's making for the squeaky-clean Hope Channel, Bee's career is about to take a more family-friendly direction.įorced to keep her work as Bianca under wraps, Bee quickly learns this is a task a lot easier said than done. With a huge following and two supportive moms, Bee couldn't ask for more. "The charming holiday romp you absolutely need in your life!" - Tessa Baileyīee Hobbes (aka Bianca Von Honey) has a successful career as a plus-size adult film star. Cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy and USA Today bestselling author Sierra Simone-a steamy plus-size holiday rom-com about an adult film star who is semi-accidentally cast as a lead in a family-friendly Christmas movie, and the former bad-boy pop star she falls in love with. The story is disjointed, and takes forever to really get going. Don't get me wrong, I think French can write - there are some great dialogue scenes in "The Witch Elm," and she does set up a decent universe for the book to exist in - but I don't think even she cares about these characters in the book. This was my first time reading a Tana French novel, and after hearing about her as an author, I'm wondering if I should have started with another one of her works, first. It builds and it builds and then when you come to the end you know everything that has happened and shaped these people, this family and how it has impacted all of their lives. The journey this new information takes him on reshapes his personal narrative. It is only after a tragic event that he learns about well-kept family secrets held within a witch elm on the property of his family's ancestral home. Like most people, Toby is an unreliable narrator. It's easy to forget you're reading a novel and not having a conversation with Toby, the narrator. There's something familiar about the way French writes. In addition to complaining that the dust jacket gives away the plot of the first 140 pages (which it does), King praised Tana French's work - her fourth book and first stand-alone piece. I first became interested in reading "The Witch Elm" after a reading Stephen King's review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Though Maguire's struggle with her perceived bad luck is meant to be the plot's key hook, its true appeal lies with Stokes's well-developed characters Maguire's caring family, her new best friend, her insightful therapist and in the way Maguire and Jordy support each other's efforts to conquer the challenges they face. The bad luck that continues to follow her (a tennis mishap with Jordy, an unfortunate fall by his sister, etc.) can feel like interruptions to this otherwise engaging story. Max Cantrell has never been a big fan of the truth, so when the opportunity arises to sell forged permission slips and cover stories. With help from her therapist, Maguire assembles a list of goals for regaining a social life (including making the tennis team) and a road map for overcoming the debilitating belief that she is cursed. A dark and twisted psychological tale, which Kirkus Reviews called 'captivating to the very end' in a starred reviewperfect for fans of I Hunt Killers and Gone Girl. Maguire's attitude softens, slightly, after she meets a young tennis star, Jordy, in the lobby of their therapist's office. In a romance built around tennis and psychotherapy, Stokes (Liars, Inc.) introduces high school junior Maguire Kelly, who believes that she causes terrible things to happen to everyone around her, and has isolated herself following a series of tragedies. This has been my experience, too: people often presume that others think as they do and are skeptical when they hear about people rotating life-like images, or living in mental worlds without visual scenery. “They had a mental deficiency of which they were unaware,” he wrote, “and naturally enough supposed that those who affirmed they possessed it, were romancing” (Galton 1883, 85). In an early study of visual mental imagery, Francis Galton found participants who did not consciously experience visual mental images. Most mental processes occur subconsciously, but my research focuses on the lived experience of thought that varies from one person to another. By thinking, I mean conscious planning, problem-solving, imagining, and reminiscing. People who don’t think visually often have a hard time imagining the mental lives of those who do. Other chapters look at Wyrd, weaver of destiny, “mystery-singers,” ancestor veneration, herb-chanters-and sexual politics, including early medieval witch burnings. Drawing on Frankish and German ecclesiastical sources, it lays out the founding witch-legend of the Women Who Go by Night with the Goddess, “the witch Holda,” also known as Holle, Swanfoot Berthe and Fraw Percht. This book plunges into the megalithic taproot of the elder kindreds, and traditions of the Cailleach. Archaeology shows that their ritual staffs symbolize the distaff, a spinning tool that connects with broad cultural themes of goddesses, fates, witches, and female power. Scandinavian völur ("staff-women") held oracular ceremonies with incantations, and "sitting-out on the land for wisdom. She shows that old ethnic names for “witch” signify wise-woman, prophetess, diviner, healer, and dreamer. So an Old English scribe let us know that witches counseled the people to “bring their offerings to earth-fast stone, and also to trees and to wellsprings.” In this compelling exploration of language, archaeology, medieval literature and art, Max Dashu pulls the covers off of heritages known to few but scholarly specialists. “My grandmother made dying her life’s work” is the opening sentence and sets the tone and style of the book. Adopted by the Byrne family of Dalkey, he here creates clear and memorable portraits of his parents, grandmother, neighbours, friends and employers. Leonard’s real name was Jack Keyes Byrne, and Home Before Night covers his early life and adulthood up to the time he decided to give up his Civil Service job and become a full-time writer. His two volumes of autobiography, of which this is the first and probably the better, provide powerful, evocative and moving insights into Irish urban working-class family life in the 1930s and 1940s. Hugh Leonard (1926-2009) was among Ireland’s foremost dramatists, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. |