Illness Fiction

Hard-charging and irrepressible 18-year-old Amelia Linehan could see a roller-derby opponent a mile away - and that’s while crouched down, bent over skates, and zooming around a track at the speed of light. What she couldn’t see coming, however, was the flare-up of the rare liver disorder with which she was born. But now, it’s the only thing she - and everyone around her - can think about.

The story of a family's dramatic clinical and emotional journey as they try to understand why their third-grader is failing school. They assume that his problems stem from anxiety and stress because Dad is serving in the US military in Iraq. The child's blackouts are finally identified by a neurologist's evaluation, and the cause is epilepsy! The parents are devastated. Will Conner ever be able to live a normal life?

Do you know what it's like give to 100 percent and still feel like it's not, and you're not, enough for anybody? To be caught between caring for an aging parent and raising young children? Ivy Schneider lives in this place, too, and she isn't at all happy about it.

Kiss Tomorrow Hello brings together the experiences and reflections of women as they embark on a new stage of life. The 25 stellar writers gathered here explore a wide range of concerns, including keeping love and sex alive, discovering family secrets, negotiating the demands of illness and infertility, letting children go, making peace with parents, and contemplating plastic surgery. The tales are true, the confessions candid, and the humor infectious.

In this companion piece to Is This Seat Taken?, Mandy's life hasn't turned out the way she planned. Her father died, her mother is bipolar, and she's overwhelmed with responsibility and indecision. That's why she's so grateful for her boyfriend, Luke. But just how long does he plan on sticking around? This Heart of Mine is a sweet, new adult romance short story about loving each other just right (3,500 words).

It is 1871. At the farm of Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, a mysterious flock of red birds has descended. Samuel, whose fame as a philosopher is waning, takes the birds’ appearance as an omen that the time is ripe for his newest venture. He will start a school for young women, guiding their intellectual development as he has so carefully guided his daughter’s. Despite Caroline’s misgivings, Samuel’s vision - revolutionary, as always; noble, as always; full of holes, as always - takes shape.

Décembre 2018. Anna, Nico et Mathis, trois jeunes pleins de vie, préparent ensemble les fêtes du Nouvel An. Inséparables, ils partagent leur quotidien entre les amis, les amours, et les études. Pourtant, l'année suivante débute au rythme des machines de l'hôpital où Anna s'accroche à la vie. Au fil des pages, l'auteure nous transporte dans un futur proche et inquiétant, et laisse deviner qu'une menace pèse sur la petite bande : pour eux, tout semble devoir changer.

Sometimes the further you distance yourself, the closer you are to the truth. What starts out as a simple trip around India soon becomes a psychological journey into the darkness of Sam's past. One he knows there's no running from. When Sam decides to give up his mundane life and travel to India he has no idea what he'll do when he gets there and it isn't long before his lack of preparation takes its toll. Vulnerable and alone, Sam is haunted by memories of his childhood and as he struggles to make sense of the pain he has suffered he follows a dangerous path that has devastating ...

A poor tailor is too ill to finish the beautiful coat and waistcoat he has been stitching for the mayor of Gloucester to wear at his wedding on Christmas morning. He sends his cat, Simpkin, out in the snowy evening to buy some food and, most importantly, the cherry-colored silk he needs to finish his coat and waistcoat. While Simpkin is out, the tailor discovers all the mice Simpkin has hidden under the teacups and accidentally frees them all. They run out of the house, but not before they overhear him speak aloud his fears that he will not be able to complete his work.

Sam's daily challenges is far from having good grades and being a good boy. He dreads waking up to an intolerant stepfather and escaping to school into the traps of his bullies. His struggles to keep up with his grades is proving futile as his ordeal grows by the day. He loses the only girl who made him feel loved and accepted to cancer, and then turns into the monster his tormentors created. Once and for all standing up for himself and taking the others down with him.

Sometimes, going back is the only way to move on... With an engagement ring on her finger and a New York career to die for, life in the big apple is sweet for Emily Forrester... Until she is called back to Little Duxbury, the picture-perfect English village where she grew up – though it was anything but idyllic for the tearaway teenager. Her estranged stepfather, a former high-court judge, is ill and her stepsisters are demanding help. It’s just a week, Emily tells herself as she swaps stilettos for wellies, power lunches for 4G blackspots, and polished fiancé Brett for sexy new ...

Sixteen-year-old Whisper, who has a cleft palate, lives in an encampment with three other young rejects and their caregiver, Nathanael. They are outcasts from a society (in the not-too-distant future) that kills or abandons anyone with a physical or mental disability. Whisper’s mother visits once a year. When she dies, she leaves Whisper a violin, which Nathanael teaches her to play. Whisper’s father comes to claim her, and she becomes his house slave, her disfigurement hidden by a black veil.

Could gratitude and positivity be the secret to helping your child feel stronger and recover faster? When facing illness or injury, it's perfectly natural for children to feel sad and down. However, The Gratitude Prescription for Kids reveals how finding reasons to be grateful and adopting a positive mindset can become their greatest healing superpowers yet! Could gratitude and positivity be the secret to helping your child feel stronger and recover faster?

Step into a haunting vision of the future. In the year 2032, a relentless pandemic grips the world, spreading an insidious madness that knows no bounds. As society grapples with the pervasive grip of insanity, only a few glimmers of hope emerge—innovative technologies promising to shield minds from the relentless torment. But at what cost? Is surrendering one's humanity the only path to salvation?

Many readers still claim this haunting, atmospheric novel of Michael Ondaatje's as their first love—a novel as sensual and erotic today as ever it was. At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. But it had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden—he who cut hair by day at N. Joseph's Shaving Parlor, and at night played jazz, unleashing an unforgettable wildness and passion in crowded rooms.

Twenty-one-year-old narcoleptic Angel Duet knows her father harbors secrets. He loves and protects her, but his suspicious refusal to discuss her mother's death drives Angel to worship an image created from the little history she does have: her father's sketchy stories and her mother's treasured photography, studies of clouds that have hung in the their foyer for more than twenty years. When her father's girlfriend moves in, the photographs come down, and Angel's search for truth becomes an obsession.

Skin Deep explores beauty, ageing, imperfection, health and illness, all of which are closely related to skin, and interrogates whiteness, both historically, structurally and through current notions of white fragility and victimhood. Phillipa McGuinness has interviewed plastic surgeons, dermatologists, burn survivors, beauticians, melanoma sufferers, people who suffer from body dysmorphias, victims and perpetrators of racism and all kinds of people who are and are not comfortable in their own skin to write a book where science meets art and culture, history and politics.

"Sie müssen sich mit dem Gedanken vertraut machen, dass Ihre Frau die Alzheimersche Krankheit hat." Diese erschütternde Diagnose eines Arztes bekamen Muriel und Robertson McQuilkin vor vielen Jahren zu hören. Dabei hatte doch eigentlich nur Muriels Gedächtnis ein wenig nachgelassen ... Aber unaufhaltsam wird die erst 55-jährige Muriel immer verwirrter und hilfloser. Robertson gibt seinen Beruf als Universitätspräsident auf, um seiner Frau ungeteilte Aufmerksamkeit widmen zu können.

In early 2020, our lives were upended by a new virus that caused the most severe pandemic in over a century. Where did this virus, first called the novel coronavirus and later SARS coronavirus-2, come from? Did we see it coming? If so, why weren't we better prepared for it? How lethal is it really? How can we protect ourselves from it? How will the pandemic end? What will life be like once it is over? In this meticulously researched book, Anirban Mahapatra demystifies the virus and offers us a historical perspective.

Seventeen year-old Jonas Norton is trying to come to terms with what his blood disorder has robbed from him, including his two most favorite things: basketball, and competing in Hatchet Racket, Wanless' annual hatchet-throwing contest. The facts that his father works constantly to pay for his blood tests and Jonas can actually see the disappointment in his eyes for being such a failure only make matters worse.