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'Guglani is the real deal' Michel Faber 'Profound . . . Poetic . . . Humane' Gabriel Weston 'Shows rare skill . . . Power and fear and morality' Sarah Moss, author of The Tidal Zone 'Tender . . . designed to break your heart, mend it, then break it all over again' Rory Gleeson, author of Rockadoon Shore Histories is a hypnotic portrait of life in one hospital, over one week. In the corridors and consulting rooms, by the bedside, through the open curtain, we witness charged encounters within the emotional and physical world of medicine. Old insecurities surface as junior doctors try to save a man from dying; an enraged chaplain picks a fight with a consultant; a porter waxes lyrical on his invisibility. These are only some of the stories that so seamlessly connect, collide and create an unforgettable panorama of being. Sam Guglani's vivid prose has the raw intensity of poetry that pulls the reader in on every page.
A collection of 13 pieces of courage and resistance, this is work inspired by protests and rallies. Poems written for the women's march, for women's empowerment and amplification, poems that salute people fighting for justice, poems on sexism and racism, class discrimination, period poverty and homelessness, immigration and identity. This work reminds us that Courage is a Muscle, it also contains a letter from the spirit of Hope herself, because as the title suggests, Pessimism is for Lightweights.
Stories take us into other worlds so that we may experience our own more deeply. Master storyteller Geoff Mead brings the reader inside the experience of telling and listening to a story. He shows how stories and storytelling engage our imaginations, strengthen communities and bring adventure and joy into our lives. The narrative is interspersed with consummate retellings of traditional tales from all over the world.
A very special FREE collection of advice for our younger selves, compiled by Joanna Cannon – the author of THREE THINGS ABOUT ELSIE and THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP
We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and developme...
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: an uplifting account of hope and healing by GP Gavin Francis 'I cannot think of anybody - patient or doctor - who will not be helped by reading this short and profound book' - Henry Marsh 'Such a wise, gentle, quietly hopeful book. Exactly what I needed' - Rachel Clarke 'A lovely little book' - Michael Rosen When it comes to illness, sometimes the end is just the beginning. Recovery and convalescence are words that exist at the periphery of our lives - until we are forced to contend with what they really mean. Here, GP and writer Gavin Francis explores how - and why - we get better, revealing the many shapes recovery takes, its shifting history and the frequent failure of our modern lives to make adequate space for it. Characterised by Francis's beautiful prose and his view of medicine as 'the alliance of science and kindness', Recovery is a book about a journey that most of us never intend to make. Along the way, he unfolds a story of hope, transformation, and the everyday miracle of healing.
Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi, on the other hand, has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border.families. Danny is a Chinese-American teenager of Korean descent whose parents left China when he was nine; his quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast among his peers, and he yearns for the China of his youth. These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea--Danny to visit his mother, who is working as a missionary there; Yongju to escape persecution after his father is killed at the hands of the Dear Leader himself; and Jangmi to protect her unborn child. As they struggle to survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, in the form of government informants, husbands, thieves, abductors, and even missionaries, they come to form a kind of adopted family. The novel transports the reader to one of the most complex and threatening environments in the world, and explores how humanity persists even in the most dire of circumstances.
In 2014 I moved back to the United States after living abroad for fourteen years, my whole adult life, because my father was dying from cancer. Six weeks after I arrived in New York City, my father died. Six months after that I learned that I had inherited the gene that would cause me cancer too. When Jean Hannah Edelstein's world overturned she was forced to confront some of the big questions in life: How do we cope with grief? How does living change when we realize we're not invincible? Does knowing our likely fate make it harder or easier to face the future? How do you motivate yourself to go on your OkCupid date when you're struggling with your own mortality? Written in her inimitable, wry and insightful voice, Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir is by turns heart-breaking, hopeful and yet also disarmingly funny. This Really Isn't About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it's a book about discovering you are not really in control of that at all.
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Meet Elliott. Elliott is hugely intelligent. He's an incredible observer. He has a beautiful and unusual imagination. To know him is to adore him. But Elliott is also stuck. He lives in an orphanage in 1979. He spends his days in a wheelchair, in an empty corridor, or wherever the Catholic Sisters who run the ward have decided to park him. So when Jim, blind and mute but also headstrong, arrives on the ward and begins to defy the Sisters' restrictive rules, Elliott finally sees a chance for escape. Together, they could achieve a magnificent freedom – if only for a few hours. But how can Elliott, unable to move or speak clearly, communicate all this to Jim? How can he even get Jim to know he exists? Patience is a remarkable story of love and friendship, courage and adventure. It is also about finding joy in the most unlikely of settings. Elliott and Jim are going to have fun.