Illness Fiction

"I returned to my body and enjoyed Miriam who felt the mysteries of my sex organ and its delicate sensitivities with me. She spoke about me not feeling that I’m here and exist without external approval. I thought about the baby that is guided towards a survival relationship with its environment from birth. Smiling at them, crying, making eye contact, copying those around it incessantly, saying hello to them with a bright smile etc., etc. That’s how I am too, I explained to her. My entire being is directed towards broadcasting on the frequency of whoever wants to receive. I stretch my ...

When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don’t use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online.

Heather Fowler's fourth collection of fiction speaks to the language of need. Desperate, obsessive, even demented need is voiced by characters ill or ill-advised. From modern to historical, cyber to stalker, explicit to tender, the relationships in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness translate love and lust into disorder.

Jonah thinks his life is finally back on track when he agrees to stay in the Amish faith and plans to marry his love, Mary Lou. The bliss is short-lived because Mary Lou falls into a coma. While waiting for Mary Lou to awaken, Jonah tries to make amends with his past and prepare for the future. Jonah enlists the help of his childhood best friend, Samuel, to build Mary Lou’s dream house. Samuel convinces his younger sister, Catherine, who’s now all grown up, to help as well. Will Mary Lou wake from her coma? Will Catherine’s presence distract Jonah? Does God have other plans? This is ...

Seventeen-year-old Katie Price has a rare disease that makes exposure to even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Confined to her house during the day, her company is limited to her widowed father and her best friend. It isn't until after nightfall that Katie's world opens up, when she takes her guitar to the local train station and plays for the people coming and going. Charlie Reed is a former all-star athlete at a crossroads in his life - and the boy Katie has secretly admired from afar for years. When he happens upon her playing guitar one night, fate intervenes and the two embark on a star-crossed romance.

In spring of 1918, World War I was underway, and troops at Fort Riley, Kansas, found themselves felled by influenza. By the summer of 1918, the second wave struck as a highly contagious and lethal epidemic and within weeks exploded into a pandemic, an illness that travels rapidly from one continent to another. It would impact the course of the war, and kill many millions more soldiers than warfare itself.

Noblewoman and cultivator Li Yao is called to a small village to investigate a mysterious illness that has drained residents of their chi. Accompanying her are her suitors, Xiang An and Shen Wei, both more trouble than they're worth in Li Yao's eyes. Perhaps not all is as it seems.

Poor sleep is one of the most common health problems and can leave you feeling exhausted, stressed and run-down. While prescribed medications and over-the-counter remedies rarely offer lasting benefits, cognitive behavioural therapy can help enormously and is the treatment of choice for insomnia.

Jonah has lost his community, and he’s struggling to get by in the English world. He yearns for his Amish roots, but his past mistakes keep him from returning home. Mary Lou is recovering from a medical scare. Her journey has impressed upon her how precious life is, so she decides to go on rumspringa to see the world. While in the city, Mary Lou meets Jonah. Unable to understand his foul attitude, especially towards her, she makes every effort to share her faith with him. As she helps him heal from his past, an attraction develops. Will Jonah’s heart soften towards Mary Lou? What will ...

Psychologist, Amy Rose Michaels, spent years in her attempt to understand the crazy workings of her parents' dysfunctional minds; her father, Brandon Michaels, suffers from bi-polar illness and alcoholism, and her mother, Silvia Michaels with an extreme case of OCD and a whole lot of cuckoo. This search for answers leads Amy to study psychology. After years in practice, Amy grows alarmed as she sees, one by one, her patients become murdered. Is there romance in this story? Do ducks have wings? * The word Bedlam can be traced back to 1247 when the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem was ...

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life. The condition's name has always felt ironic to her, because she certainly does not "select" not to speak. In fact, she would give anything to be able to speak as easily and often as everyone around her can. She suffers from crippling anxiety, and uncontrollably, in most situations simply can't open her mouth to get out the words. Steffi's been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her.

Eighteen-year-old Del is in a healthier place than she was a year and a half ago: She’s sober, getting treatment for her depression and anxiety, and volunteering at a suicide-prevention hotline. Her own suicide attempt is in the past, and living in San Francisco with her beloved aunt has helped her see a future for herself. But when Aunt Fran is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Del’s equilibrium is shattered. She’s dedicated herself to saving every life she can, but she can’t save Fran.

Tiene que decidirse: su familia y Nueva York, su novio y su amor por la música clásica. Pero entonces, ocurre un accidente. Ya nada será como antes. Y solo le queda una decisión: vivir o morir.

Leann sells Volvos and recently had her Uncle Ron move in with her. She's having an affair with her boss, Ed, who claims to have an agoraphobic girlfriend, Kelly. Leann decides Ed is a loser and ends the affair. She feels bad about it and decides to tell Kelly everything. But when she gets to Ed's house she finds Kelly behind a barred window claiming she's being held against her will. Kelly ends up coming home with Leann, who doesn't know what to do with the stray girl. Everything Leann thought she knew about Ed, about Kelly, seems to be wrong. Kelly claims Ed is a sadistic murderer who ...

Mo is used to his father’s fits of rage. When Abbu's moods shake the house, Mo is safe inside his head, with his cherished folktales: The best way to respond is not to engage. Apparently, his mama knows that too—which is why she took a job on the other side of the world, leaving Mo alone with Abbu. With Mama gone, the two move to Texas to live with Mo’s aunt and cousin, Rayyan. The two boys could not be more different.

Eighteen-year-old Devon longs for two things: The stars, and the boy she fell in love with last summer. When Ashton breaks Devon's heart at the end of the most romantic summer ever, she thinks her heart will never heal again. But over the course of the following year, Devon finds herself slowly putting the broken pieces back together. Now it's senior year and she's determined to enjoy every moment of it, as she prepares for a future studying galaxies. That is, until Ashton shows up on the first day of school. Can she forgive and open her heart to him again?

Three years ago mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband in a tragic accident. No longer the hopeful wife and mother she once was, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and into the quietude of her job - restoring to the dead the illusion of life. Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary, and for Phoebe, everything changes. Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and bears an alarmingly familiar tattoo. Even more startling is that among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe.

Diagnosed as severely autistic at the age of three, Tito, nearly nonverbal, was brought up by his loving mother Soma, who taught him to read English and challenged him to write his own stories. The initial result was The Mind Tree, published in 2003, which Tito wrote between the ages of eight and 11. The Gold of the Sunbeams is an equally impressive, beautiful collection of stories, each prefaced by a charming note from Tito explaining how the story came into being.

Dr. K is a pensioned-off insurance lawyer who occasionally publishes fiction. One day when he’s walking in a Berlin park with his young girlfriend Dora he comes upon a little girl who’s lost her doll. Dr. K calms her tears by explaining that Josefine isn’t lost; she’s merely gone off on an adventure. Serving as the doll’s ghost writer, K entertains the child with a series of letters relating Josefine’s life as she makes her way through a friendly but unexpectedly baffling world. The doll’s fantastic adventures mirror the strange chronicle of Dr. K’s life—an existence he ...

Hunting for Hope: Trusting God Through Trials A novel inspired by the faithful life and ministry of Pastor Kim Earhart In the rugged quiet of Montana’s wilderness, where the winters are long and the hearts of men often guarded, one preacher learns to follow God’s call the hard way. Caleb Harding was raised in the shadow of the pulpit, the son of a faithful Baptist pastor. After Bible college, he returned home to serve under his father, with every expectation—his father’s and his own—that one day, he would step into the pulpit as pastor. But when his father died suddenly, the ...