Karen Havelin's Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a life told in reverse and a subversion of what we expect from stories of illness. Having been diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties, we follow Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fuelled by her belief that to survive her chronic illness ......
Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Aftershocks is a haunting novel-in-translation about Saga, a woman who comes to after an epileptic seizure on a sidewalk along busy Miklabraut Street. Her three-year-old son is gone. The last thing she remembers is a double-decker bus that no one else can confirm seeing. Over the following days, Saga's mind is beset by memories and doubts. What happened before her seizure? Who can she trust? And how can she make any sense of her emotions when her memory is so fragmented? Hailed as Audur Jonsdottir's "best-written novel so far," Aftershocks is a shocking and revelatory exploration of the blurred lines between fact and fiction, reality and imagination, and where mother ends and child begins.
A teen who's never even been kissed becomes her school's unofficial sex expert in Olivia Hinebaugh's fun, voice-y contemporary YA romance debut. Seventeen-year-old Lacey Burke feels like the last person on the planet who should be doling out sex advice. For starters, she’s never even kissed anyone, and she hates breaking the rules. Up until now, she's been a straight-A music geek that no one even notices. All she cares about is jamming out with her best friends, Theo and Evita. But then everything changes. When Lacey sees first-hand how much damage the abstinence-only sex-ed curriculum of her school can do, she decides to take a stand and starts doling out wisdom and contraception to anyone who seeks her out in the girls' restroom. Meanwhile, things with Theo have become complicated, and soon Lacey is not just keeping everyone else’s secrets, but her own as well.
It's the eve of the recession, but who cares? For commodity trader Marcus, life is good. So what if he's a fantasist? So what if he wills his college sweetheart to death? So what if it's all falling apart? This isn't a crisis. Until it is. As misfortune strikes Marcus again and again, he finally has to change. But can this English psychopath ever change? Maybe he needs to find himself? Maybe he needs to travel? Maybe he needs to help others? Maybe he needs to change his medication? Another Justified Sinner is a literary black comedy about the fall and rise and fall of Marcus, a slippery sinner. How difficult is it to change? Sophie Hopesmith is a 2012 Atty Awards finalist and her background is in feature writing. Born and bred in London, she works for a reading charity. She likes comedy, poetry, writing music, and Oxford commas. All of her favourite films were made in the 70s.
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BIG LITTLE LIES AND HERE ONE MOMENT A “sharp and funny romantic tale.”—O, the Oprah Magazine Ellen O’Farrell is a professional hypnotherapist who works out of the eccentric beachfront home she inherited from her grandparents. It’s a nice life, except for her tumultuous relationship history. She’s stoic about it, but at this point, Ellen wouldn’t mind a lasting one. When she meets Patrick, she’s optimistic. He’s attractive, single, employed, and best of all, he seems to like her back. Then comes that dreaded moment: He thinks they should have a talk. Braced for the worst, Ellen is pleasantly surprised. It turns out that Patrick’s ex-girlfriend is stalking him. Ellen thinks, Actually, that’s kind of interesting. She’s dating someone worth stalking. She’s intrigued by the woman’s motives. In fact, she’d even love to meet her. Ellen doesn’t know it, but she already has.
"The book is a balanced and comprehensive treatment of an important social issue. It is accessible to the general reader and belongs in public as well as academic libraries." -- Religious Studies Review "Painstaking analysis of the knotty ethical problems involved in human-subjects research, and a well-thought-out proposal for a community approach to conducting field trials for an HIV vaccine.... Highly recommended for medical ethicists and anyone concerned about the AIDS epidemic and how HIV research is conducted."Â -- Kirkus Reviews "... a carefully reasoned account of how research for and trial of a preventive vaccine differ from the methods used to discover a therapy."Â -- Booklist "I highly recommend reading this book which I would attest to be a thrilling, ethically challenging, and informative descent into the allopathic solution." -- Ryan Hosken, Bastyr University Library Newsletter "As the scientific effort to produce an efficacious vaccine continues, [Grady's] work provides an ethical compass that will guide us well, regardless of where phase III HIV vaccine trials ultimately occur." -- Journal of the American Medical Association "Highly recommended... " -- AIDS Book Review Journal "A remarkable treatment of a most difficult and complex subject... Grady's book is of special merit because it is simple, readable, and understandable, while conveying in-depth perceptions that are critical to the reader. A useful and essential reference work for those who would engage in the initiative to bring about a resolution of a mighty human health problem." -- Maurice R. Hilleman, Ph.D., D.Sc., Director, Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research "Dr. Grady's important study captures the complexity of the search for an AIDS vaccine with startling clarity. Her insights into the full range of forces that shape our national response to AIDS vaccine development should read like signposts to vaccinologists, AIDS community activists, and most importantly, the Public Health Service. An impressive contribution." -- Derek Hodel, Gay Men's Health Crisis "This book is recommended to medical ethicists, those involved in non-HIV vaccine trials, and all persons involved in HIV vaccine trials, including investigators, sponsors, study subjects and communities at risk." -- Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law The creation of a vaccine now seems the best hope for controlling AIDS. Yet developing and testing an HIV vaccine raises a host of difficult ethical issues. These concerns are the focus of this timely and important book. Essential reading for everyone interested in ethics and the conduct of HIV vaccine research.
"[The Doloriad] just might be what your rotten little heart deserves." —J. Robert Lennon, The New York Times Book Review Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by i-D, Cosmopolitan, Thrillist, Lit Reactor, and Lit Hub, and one of Nylon's March 2022 Books to Add to Your Reading List Macabre, provocative, depraved, and unforgettable, The Doloriad marks the debut of Missouri Williams, a terrifyingly original new voice In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch, her brother, and the family descended from their incest cling to existence on the edges of a deserted city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over again, though her children are not so certain. Together the family scavenges supplies and attempts to cultivate the poisoned earth. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But one day the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors and sends away one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering. When Dolores returns the next day, her reappearance triggers the breakdown of the Matriarch’s fragile order, and the control she wields over their sprawling family begins to weaken. Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, and at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.
In 1925 Harold Ross hired Katharine Sergeant Angell as a manuscript reader for The New Yorker. Within months she became the magazine’s first fiction editor, discovering and championing the work of Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, James Thurber, Marianne Moore, and her husband-to-be, E. B. White, among others. After years of cultivating fiction, White set her sights on a new genre: garden writing. On March 1, 1958, The New Yorker ran a column entitled “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” a critical review of garden catalogs, in which White extolled the writings of “seedmen and nurserymen,” those unsung authors who produced her “favorite reading matter.” Thirteen more columns followed, exploring the history and literature of gardens, flower arranging, herbalists, and developments in gardening. Two years after her death in 1977, E. B. White collected and published the series, with a fond introduction. The result is this sharp-eyed appreciation of the green world of growing things, of the aesthetic pleasures of gardens and garden writing, and of the dreams that gardens inspire.
This genre lends itself to sophisticated experimentation in political discourse. Sony Labou Tansi's La Vie et demie (1979) and Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross (1982) caricature the puerile representatives of political and economic power through grotesque physical appetites and bodily deformations.
