Illness Fiction

In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life’s calling: To cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Tracy Kidder’s magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease.

Audrey is over romance. While dealing with her parents’ contentious divorce, a breakup of her own, and shifting friendship dynamics, she has every reason to feel cynical. But then she meets Harry, her fellow coworker at the local cinema. He’s brash, impulsive, and a major flirt. And even though Audrey tries to resist, she finds herself falling for his charms. But in this funny, insightful, and ultimately empowering novel, love—and life—isn’t what it’s like in the movies.

Simone Garcia-Hampton is starting over at a new school, and this time things will be different. She's making real friends, making a name for herself as student director of Rent, and making a play for Miles, the guy who makes her melt every time he walks into a room. The last thing she wants is for word to get out that she's HIV-positive, because last time...well, last time things got ugly.

Building on the tradition of Little Bee, Chris Cleave again writes with elegance, humor, and passion about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They've loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits.

After a hard-fought battle in the heart, Progen has defeated the agents of the entity that wants to destroy the body he is determined to control. It was a temporary defeat, however, as the entity retreated up into the body’s brain, safely entrenched behind the blood-brain barrier that is preventing the dungeon crystal from accessing the coveted home base of the central nervous system. As he further establishes his control over the different systems that he can access, a grievous wound to the body creates a problem that could spell the end of his objective.

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.

From a comic mastermind comes this brilliant collection of stories. Three teenagers believe they are witches. A woman defaces a local billboard. A bored landlord tries to influence his son's best friend. A cul-de-sac WhatsApp group discusses eggs at length. A heavily pregnant woman finds a way to time travel and a girl discovers joy on a stolen bicycle. Each tale paints a life in miniature and offers an escape chute from the catastrophes of modern life.

Dereka Jones, a former child sex trafficking victim, struggles to cope with the mental and emotional scars of her ordeal. When she stops attending therapy and taking her medication, she descends into the grips of paranoid schizophrenia. Her family tries desperately to convince Dereka to get help, but she refuses. And when she commits an act that puts herself and others at risk, they’re forced to take drastic steps regarding her psychiatric care. Meanwhile, an old family nemesis and prisoner called Memphis, is still out for revenge. Within the prison walls he uses the vast array of ...

Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day and has since the age of 10, when the tumor that was removed from Flora's brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend's boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora's fractured mind and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again.

What if the dreaded world of Alzheimer's was also a world of emotional discovery? Eugenia Zukerman's poetry and simple prose, both heartbreaking and ultimately inspirational, ushers the listener into her world as she unflinchingly examines familial loyalties, moments from her past and present, and the need to face an uncertain future due to the diagnosis of a condition that she truly hopes "will remain unnamed."

A History of the Present Illness takes listeners into overlooked lives in the neighborhoods, hospitals, and nursing homes of San Francisco, offering a deeply humane and incisive portrait of health and illness in American today....In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese, Aronson's writing is based on personal experience and addresses topics of current social relevance. Masterfully told, A History of the Present Illness explores the role of stories in medicine and creates a world pulsating with life, speaking truths about what makes us human.

Sometimes, in order to find your soul, you have to lose your mind. Kyle Getty was a successful, accomplished person. Until the day he lost his mind and brutally assaulted a man who was bullying a disabled person. Now, Kyle has been placed into court ordered therapy at Fallbrooke Mental Institution in Oregon. Waiting to meet him at Fallbrooke are a group of fellow “clients” that he will never forget. There is the young man who will only speak in rhymes and the French girl who cannot sleep. There is the old man who is trying to sketch his memories in the face of his Alzheimer’s, and ...

Warning: This book may cause drowsiness. Peaceful Tales, Volume 2 - three more lighthearted stories that were written specifically to help you fall gently to sleep. After listening to the first volume myself, nearly every night for well over a year, I decided I needed some new stories to read and listen to.

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.

”When I was little I believed in Jesus and Santa, spontaneous combustion, and the Loch Ness Monster. Now I believe in science, statistics, and antibiotics.” So says 17-year-old Zac Meier during a long, grueling leukemia treatment in Perth, Australia. A loud blast of Lady Gaga alerts him to the presence of Mia, the angry, not-at-all-stoic cancer patient in the room next door. Once released, the two near-strangers can't forget each other, even as they desperately try to resume normal lives.

Volleyball was my way out. So now, instead of trying to get away from my small town, I’m just trying to escape the pain. I don’t know how, but I went from never-been-kissed to kissing two guys in a week. Somehow I got the attention of the sweet guy with a sunshine smile and Kellum freaking Watts. And now I have to make a choice between the guy who will dream of a different future with me and the one I’ve been dreaming about. The problem is, it’s hard to think of the future when you’re just trying to survive the present.

Miss Kaye works at The Institute. A place for the damaged, the outliers, the not-quite rights. Everyone has different strategies to deal with the residents. Some bark orders. Some negotiate tirelessly. Miss Kaye found that simply being herself was mostly the right thing to do. Susie was seven when she realised she'd had her fill of character building. She'd lie between her Holly Hobbie sheets thinking how slowly birthdays come around, but how quickly change happened.

You may have listened to other collections of short stories, but the contents of this audiobook are specifically designed to put you at the advantage when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep regularly. Follow the most effective routine for great sleep and experience true restfulness. Never suffer from sleeplessness or more extreme complications of exhaustion ever again with these stories.

Do you find it hard to fall asleep each night? Is it so bad that you actually don’t look forward to going to bed each night? Do you spend hours frustrated because you can't stop anxious thoughts from running through your head? You need to find a way to unwind from the world. Project Sleep was created for people who need help finding sleep and staying asleep. These are bedtime stories for adults. You deserve peaceful deep and satisfying sleep.

Lenny (short for Eleanor) feels like the world is about to end. Her best friend is moving to San Francisco and her dad is dying. To cope with her stress, Lenny is making a list of all the ways the world can end - designer pathogens, blood moon prophecies, alien invasion - and stockpiling supplies in a bunker in the backyard. Then she starts to develop feelings for her dad's very nice young doctor - and she thinks he may have feelings for her, too. Spoiler alert: he doesn't.