It wasn’t too long ago that people tried all sorts of things to help sick people feel better. They tried wild things like drinking a glass full of millipedes or putting some mustard on one's head. Some of the cures worked, and some of them…well, let’s just say that millipedes, living or dead, are not meant to be ingested. Carlyn Beccia takes readers on a colorful and funny medical mystery tour to discover that while times may have changed, many of today’s most reliable cure-alls have their roots in some very peculiar practices, and so relevant connections can be drawn from what they did then to what we do now.
Kate and Jake have always been best friends; always, that is, until Jake's cousin, Lionel, moves nearby. Jake starts spending time with Lionel instead of Kate. Kate struggles with his abandonment and her own loneliness as she seeks new friends that share her likes and dislikes. And, perhaps there is a place in her life for her old best friend after all.
Designed to fit the National Curriculum, the English 5-14 Guidelines in Scotland and the Northern Ireland Guidelines for English, this is part of the Longman Book Project. The project aims to enable teachers throughout the primary school to teach: language; fiction; and non-fiction. The project also offers practical guidance and in-built record keeping and assessment. It is carefully structured, enabling all teachers throughout the primary school to teach reading and language with success and understanding.
When Virginia Freer spends a weekend with her friends the Boscotts the last person she expects to meet is the lying, light-fingered charmer who was her husband. She and Felix have been separated for several years. Yet within a few hours of a party given to celebrate the engagement of a local poet and a best-selling novelist, the novelist's sister arrives distraught on the Boscotts' doorstep to announce that she has found her shot dead in their bungalow next door. And when Virginia, Felix and the Boscotts reach the scene they find that something very strange has happened to the corpse . . .
Kilmer shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles. Kilmer has played so many iconic roles over his nearly four-decade film career, but here he steps out of character and reveals his true self. While containing plenty of tantalizing celebrity anecdotes, the book is ultimately a deeply moving reflection on mortality and the mysteries of life. -- adapted from jacket
"With magical, concise and perceptive poems, Newbery-Honor winning author Joyce Sidman captures the life of a tree frog in an intimate and moving way. A master of the science note, her fascinating sidebars help bind the twin poems together and ground our perspective. We learn how treefrogs have sticky toe pads, how they still themselves when in danger, how they can change from green to gray to camouflage themselves - even how they eat their own skins, which is full of nutrients. The narrator's connection with this small creature brings solace, comfort, and a sense of mystery"--
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America—and a master of American fiction—we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. "An enchanting novel." —The New York Times The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.
A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from victims’ bodies. This compelling book focuses on possession and exorcism in the Reformation period, but also reaches back to the fifteenth century and forward to our own times. Entire convents of nuns in French, Italian, and Spanish towns, thirty boys in an Amsterdam orphanage, a small group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts—these are among the instances of demon possession in the United States and throughout Europe that Brian Levack closely examines, taking into account the diverse interpretations of generations of theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and historians. Challenging the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness, the author argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts. “Riveting [and] readable . . . must-reading for students of history, psychology and religion.” —Publishers Weekly “Levak, a distinguished historian of early modern witchcraft, now sets exorcism in a long historical perspective, providing the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of the theme yet published.” —Peter Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice—if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. "Her greatest achievement yet . . . Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music—she shows genius." —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life.
