Illness Fiction

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.

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.

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.

In 1860 America, contrary women are often declared insane. When Hannah True witnesses a young woman being assaulted, she rushes to her rescue and is taken into custody for interfering with the arrest of a fraudulent voter. The judge orders Benita Walton, who dressed as a man and attempted to vote, committed to the Brookdale Lunatic Asylum. He gives Hannah a warning: stifle her impulses and leave physical rescues to men or face prison. Concern for Benita’s welfare leads Hannah to have her family commit her to Brookdale. Inside the asylum, Hannah learns Benita has been removed from the ...

Up until his diagnosis, Lane lived a fairly predictable life. But when he finds himself at a tuberculosis sanatorium called Latham House, he discovers an insular world with paradoxical rules, med sensors, and an eccentric yet utterly compelling confidante named Sadie - and life as Lane knows it will never be the same.

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.

Do you struggle to fall asleep? Are you looking for a new way to relax before bedtime? How can you stop overthinking, calm your mind and sink into peaceful, restful, and regenerating sleep? A natural remedy to treat insomnia is to listen stories that allow you to channel your inner creativity and free your mind in ways that you can’t do during the day. Don't hesitate one more day. Don't let your insomnia keep you up at night. You have finally found out a valid solution to overcome anxiety and stress that drain of your energies!

Join Sam the Sleepy Sheep and friends in this charming, magical bedtime story, which is also a completely natural, safe, and fun way to get children to go to sleep. The authors, Rory Z Fulcher and Dr. Kate Beaven-Marks, designed the story of Sam the Sleepy Sheep, so that it is easy-to-understand for children (and parents) of all ages.

As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, 14-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school - which has become a nightmare - daydreaming about her crush, Julio, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever.

What would cause a mother to contact a hitman to kill her own children? Some ungrateful bastards. When Martha’s husband dies horrifically, she is forced to care for Zoom, Berry and Dodson alone. And although she does all she can to manage their lives, she grows more unstable by the day. When three unrelated incidents occur, she snaps and loses touch with reality. Sensing that his mother is on the brink of a mental breakdown, Zoom, the oldest of the Bastards, does all he can to control his outrageously trouble prone siblings. That is until secrets of the past impact his future. Funny…...

The book that years ago predicted a man-made global pandemic! TWO WOMEN, ONE OF WHOM JILTED HIM, HELP A PRIVATE EYE STOP A BIOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE! A prominent law firm asks an investigator to look into the death of a business executive. The firm's client is the dead executive’s widow – a woman who deserted the private eye years earlier! Against the backdrop of his own personal turmoil, the dogged investigator is soon enmeshed in an international conspiracy fueled by perverted science, and old Cold War hatred. "IF YOU LIKE HARD-BOILED ACTION, MEMORABLE VILLAINS AND TWISTY PLOTS, THE JAKE...

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.

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.

Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship that becomes a lifeline during dark times.

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 ...

Twelve-year-old Al Schneider is too scared to talk about the two biggest things in her life: 1. Her stomach hurts all the time and she has no idea why. 2. She’s almost definitely 100% sure she likes girls. So she holds it in…until she can’t. After nearly having an accident of the lavatorial variety in gym class, Al finds herself getting a colonoscopy and an answer—she has Crohn’s disease.

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.

Paige Rawl has been HIV positive since birth, but growing up, she never felt like her illness defined her. On an unremarkable day in middle school, she disclosed to a friend her HIV-positive status - and within hours the bullying began. From that moment forward, every day was like walking through a minefield. Paige was never sure when or from where the next text, taunt, or hateful message would come. Then one night, desperate for escape, 15-year-old Paige found herself in her bathroom staring at a bottle of sleeping pills. That could have been the end of her story. Instead, it was only the beginning.

Eloquent. Philosophical. Introspective. These are not the words usually associated with an autistic child. But in a remarkable display of courage and creativity, a boy named Tito has shattered stereotypes, and in The Mind Tree makes us question all of our previous assumptions about autism. For Tito is severely autistic and nearly nonverbal, and this is his story.

Dolores Mendoza is not thriving. She was recently diagnosed with a chronic bladder condition called interstitial cystitis. The painful disease isn’t life-threatening, but it is threatening to ruin her life. Just when things seem hopeless, Dolores meets someone poised to change her fate. Terpsichore Berkenbosch-Jones is glamorous, autistic, and homeschooled against her will by her overprotective mother. After a rocky start, the girls form a tentative partnership