Will life ever return to normal? That’s the question everyone in the O’Connell family has asked since their lives were turned upside down by a murder charge. With their father now back from the dead, the O’Connells are coming to grips with the idea that justice isn’t equal. But despite the pending arrival of a new grandchild, and the fact that the family is settling into a new identity, trouble seems to always be one step away. This time, it could come from within, as a shadowy new enemy has found its way into the close-knit family and could ultimately destroy the bond the siblings share, forcing them to finally cut their losses and walk away from one another.
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. “Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects.” —Esquire We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with what’s ahead.
A raw, funny, and fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before feeling like a grown up. When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a "natural" birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself. Smart, funny, and true in all the best ways, this book made me ache with recognition." -- Cheryl Strayed
It's the end of the world as we know it and Charles Gilbert Billingsworth the VIII feels just fine. Not only is he surviving the zombie apocalypse, he's enjoying it too. But Charlie's idyllic life as a daydreaming zombie killer takes a turn when he finds two lost children. One of whom is hiding an amazing, powerful secret. Meanwhile, Kalila Trout is on a quest for revenge. The only survivor of an attack by the warlord known as King George, Kalila's vengeance is only stopped by his distinct advantage in numbers. When King George kidnaps one of Charlie's children, Kalila finds an unlikely ally to help her get the closure she needs. But even if Kalila and Charlie manage to make it out alive, a new race of zombie might ruin everything they are fighting for.
When dispatcher Charlotte Roy passes along a call to bad-boy deputy Marcus O’Connell, they learn a six-year-old child is in danger. Can they save the girl from a desperate situation? NY Times & USA Today bestselling author Lorhainne Eckhart brings you an emotional O’Connell family novel that is both “Gut-wrenching & Riveting.” When Deputy Marcus O’Connell is blindsided one night after a series of calls that comes in from an unknown number, and the caller on the other end is a child. All he knows is she’s six years old, her name is Eva, and there’s someone in her house who wants to hurt her. “A new family series more suspenseful than the Friessens.” Karen L. Vine Voice “This book masterfully interweaves several hot button topics and evokes feelings of anger, sympathy and even shock. A scared little girl and her calls for help are the catalyst to a situation that quickly spirals out of control and ends in tragedy.” Rebmay “Deputy Marcus O'Connell has a sixth sense when it comes to crime, honed by a troubled childhood. So when a young girl calls, asking for help, he finds himself in a hostage situation of sorts with a disillusioned ex- military and a homeless single mother.” Honest Bookworm “I truly love this author. She writes from the heart about the everyday things that actually happen in real life.” Caroline L. Marcus is the ultimate bad boy turned deputy. He knows everything about how to get away with something, considering he was one of the middle of the six O’Connell siblings. He never had responsibility resting on his shoulders like his brother Owen, and he’s never been the center of attention like his little sister, Suzanne. Marcus knows how to find trouble and talk his way out of it. Now, as the head deputy for the Livingston sheriff’s office, he knows everything about everybody, and no one can pull anything over on him. It’s why he’s such a damn good deputy. But even Marcus dreads what cops know as the third call. When Marcus takes the call the first time, he thinks it’s a prank. The second time, he knows there’s a problem. The third time the call comes in and is patched through to him, he knows it’s something he can’t ignore. The only thing is, the girl is terrified and keeps hanging up, and Marcus knows someone is in the house with her. Where are her parents, and who is this mysterious girl who needs his help?
Brothers Oren and Josh disappear into the woods. Only Oren comes out. Twenty years later, the mystery of what happened to Josh is going to be exposed, and somebody is finally sending him home-bone by bone.
“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
NOW a NETFLIX series entitled Special from Executive Producer JIM PARSONS starring RYAN O‘CONNELL as himself. From the beloved blogger turned voice of an online generation, an unforgettable and hilarious memoir-meets-manifesto exploring what it means to be a millennial gay man living with cerebral palsy, which VICE calls “a younger, gay version of Mary Karr's Lit.” People are obsessed with Ryan O’Connell’s blogs. With tens of thousands reading his pieces on Thought Catalog and Vice, watching his videos on YouTube, and hanging on to each and every #dark tweet, Ryan has established himself as a unique young voice who’s not afraid to dole out some real talk. He’s that candid, snarky friend you consult when you fear you’re spending too much time falling down virtual k-holes stalking your ex on Facebook or when you’ve made the all-too-common mistake of befriending a psycho while wasted at last night’s party and need to find a way to get rid of them the next morning. But Ryan didn’t always have the answers to these modern-day dilemmas. Growing up gay and disabled with cerebral palsy, he constantly felt like he was one step behind everybody else. Then the rude curveball known as your twenties happened and things got even more confusing. Ryan spent years as a Millennial cliché: he had dead-end internships; dabbled in unemployment; worked in his pajamas as a blogger; communicated mostly via text; looked for love online; spent hundreds on “necessary” items, like candles, while claiming to have no money; and even descended into aimless pill-popping. But through extensive trial and error, Ryan eventually figured out how to take his life from bleak to chic and began limping towards adulthood. Sharp and entertaining, I’m Special will educate twentysomethings (or other adolescents-at-heart) on what NOT to do if they ever want to become happy fully functioning grown-ups with a 401k and a dog.
Features the plays Car, Raw, and Kid. Brutality. Fear. Self-loathing. A need to belong. The plays in O'Connell's Street Trilogy portray the vulnerable and the violent as they lash out against the world around them. From the adrenaline-fuelled anarchy of a car theft and the ritualised violence of teenage gangs, to the new beginning offered by a baby in the womb, life on the dirty side of the tracks is shown without compromise or sentimentality. The characters lurch between hope and despair, giving voice to the trials of change through verbal pyrotechnics and acts of sudden aggression. Street Trilogy was performed at the Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh in 2003.
The Personals reveals how classified ads are not just a few commercial lines of text in print or online – they can be a treasure trove of fascinating human stories; stories of love, loss, loneliness, redemption and hope.
