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Ghost Girl: The True Story Of A Child In Desperate Peril - And A Teacher Who Saved Her
By Torey Hayden. 2006
Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked…
in her own troubled world . . . until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence.Nothing in all of Torey Hayden’s experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her—a story too horrendous for Torey’s professional colleagues to acknowledge. Yet a little girl was living in a nightmare, and Torey responded in the only way she knew how—with courage, compassion, and dedication—demonstrating once again the tremendous power of love and the resilience of the human spirit.Playing with Feelings: Video Games And Affect
By Aubrey Anable. 2018
How gaming intersects with systems like history, bodies, and code Why do we so compulsively play video games? Might it…
have something to do with how gaming affects our emotions? In Playing with Feelings, scholar Aubrey Anable applies affect theory to game studies, arguing that video games let us “rehearse” feelings, states, and emotions that give new tones and textures to our everyday lives and interactions with digital devices. Rather than thinking about video games as an escape from reality, Anable demonstrates how video games—their narratives, aesthetics, and histories—have been intimately tied to our emotional landscape since the emergence of digital computers.Looking at a wide variety of video games—including mobile games, indie games, art games, and games that have been traditionally neglected by academia—Anable expands our understanding of the ways in which these games and game studies can participate in feminist and queer interventions in digital media culture. She gives a new account of the touchscreen and intimacy with our mobile devices, asking what it means to touch and be touched by a game. She also examines how games played casually throughout the day create meaningful interludes that give us new ways of relating to work in our lives. And Anable reflects on how games allow us to feel differently about what it means to fail.Playing with Feelings offers provocative arguments for why video games should be seen as the most significant art form of the twenty-first century and gives the humanities passionate, incisive, and daring arguments for why games matter.Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women
By Autumn Stephens. 2009
First ladies are supposed to be dignified background figures, quietly supportive of their husbands' agendas. Above all, they're not supposed…
to act out or cause even a whiff of scandal. Of course, reality often overrides conventional wisdom, and this book shows how far from the prim ideal many of the Presidents' wives have strayed. Part irreverent portrait gallery, part exuberant expose, Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women introduces a remarkable array of wild women, from Martha Washington, who opposed her own husband's presidential election; to Abraham Lincoln's eccentric wife, Mary; to rebellious daughters like Patti Davis who were the tabloid fodder of their day. Laugh-out-loud funny and filled with amazing stranger-than-fiction facts from our American history, Feisty First Ladies journeys into the realm of the eclectic sisterhood whose outrageous words and deeds have rocked the fusty old foundations of the White House -- and the nation!Devil's Child
By Jerry Coyne. 2012
Deserted by his mother and abandoned by his father at just three months old, Jerry Coyne was sent to live…
in a Catholic children's home run by nuns of the order of the Sisters of Nazareth. Life soon settled into a rhythm and then, one day, the beatings started. Harsh, vicious punishments became part of everyday life for the bemused little boy as the nuns attempted to beat the Devil out of him. Jerry began to hide behind bad behaviour and at the age of 12, his defiance resulted in him being sent to a boarding for boys with behavioural problems. Life then got worse when his housemaster, the man whose job it was to take care of him, began a regime of mental, physical and sexual abuse. Years of self-hatred and guilt led to Jerry suffering from a severe stammer and, eventually, he tried to hang himself. This was the turning point and, after finally finding the courage to go to the authorities, Jerry and numerous other victims came forward and were instrumental in the conviction and imprisonment of their abuser. Devil's Child is the devastating true story of a childhood destroyed by abuse and of a young man's struggle to try to come to terms with the past and believe in the future.Criminal That I Am
By Jennifer Ridha. 2015
A candid memoir from a talented young lawyer who becomes romantically entangled with the convicted drug felon she represents--Cameron Douglas,…
son of film actor Michael Douglas--and who soon makes the mistake of her life. Or does she?Criminal That I Am is a defense attorney's account of the criminal justice system as seen through the prism of a particular case: her own. Jennifer Ridha is enlisted to defend Cameron Douglas in a federal drug trafficking case while he is incarcerated in a maximum-security prison under difficult, even dangerous, conditions. As media scrutiny and the pressures of Cameron's case mount and as Jennifer becomes increasingly transfixed by her charismatic but troubled client, he asks her to do the unthinkable: commit a crime. In a decision inexplicable even to herself, guided only by her indignation and infatuation, she agrees. When her transgression is discovered, her criminal case begins, and her life as she knows it is over. A page-turning trip through professional self-destruction, tabloid scandal, and self-reckoning, Criminal That I Am is about the choices one woman makes: how they define her, how she lives with them, and, ultimately, how she is transformed by them. Recounted with brutal introspection and self-deprecating humor, this strange and twisted love story contemplates what we make of crime and punishment...and what it makes of us.Life of Charlotte Bronte
By Elizabeth Gaskell. 2013
Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) is a pioneering biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another.…
Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Brontë, and, having been invited to write the official life, determined both to tell the truth and to honour her friend. She contacted those who had known Charlotte and travelled extensively in England and Belgium to gather material. She wrote from a vivid accumulation of letters, interviews, and observation, establishing the details of Charlotte's life and recreating her background. Through an often difficult and demanding process, Gaskell created a vital sense of a life hidden from the world. This edition is based on the Third Edition of 1857, revised by Gaskell. It has been collated with the manuscript, and the previous two editions, as well as with Charlotte Brontë's letters, and thus offers fuller information about the process of composition than any previous edition.Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It
By Kate Harding. 2015
The first non-academic, single-author book since the 1990s to examine sexual assault as a social phenomenon: noted blogger and author…
Kate Harding's provocative, sharp--and yes, funny--book tackling rape culture, also offering some suggestions for moving toward a culture that fully respects and supports victims, while protecting the rights of the accused.Breakup: The End of a Love Story
By Catherine Texier. 1998
I will never forgive you.I will never make love with you again.I do not love you anymore.Breakup is the erotically…
charged chronicle of the tempestuous final months of an eighteen-year romantic and literary partnership, self-destructing in the aftermath of the ultimate betrayal. Fearlessly and courageously, Texier chronicles the end of that love as it is wrecked by infidelity and deceit in a literary tour de force reminiscent by turns of Marguerite Duras and Henry Miller.Texier writes in harrowing detail about the powerful sexual relationship she shared with her husband even during their breakup, how sex between them became a substitute for real intimacy, and how the fabric of a marriage (a shared cup of café au lait on a yellow table every morning, the memories of giving birth to two glorious daughters, of coediting their own literary magazine) is brutally dissolved.Breakup is unsentimental and unflinching, a journal of love's exquisite torture. Every emotion, including rage, disgust, self-pity, hatred, sympathy, and jealousy, is mined. Heartbreaking, too, is the effect of the breakup on Texier's two children who, sometimes caught in the crossfire of their parents' turmoil, are trapped as the relationship spirals out of control and their once-secure home becomes a battlefield.Ultimately, Breakup is about the risks one great passion involves. It is a journey of the heart in all its wild beating; a courageous diary of a soul laid bare, and the redemptive power of love.Forged From Silver Dollar
By Li Feng. 2015
One family's epic tale of survival in tumultuous twentieth-century China.Li Feng grew up in Mao's communist China with her mother's…
motto burning in her ears - Success demands two things: unconditional sacrifice and absolute mental focus. Finally breaking free of her mother's overbearing clutches and fleeing to Sydney as an adult, Li struggled to make sense of her own lost childhood by piecing together her family's history.What she found was a heartbreaking tale of love and loss that echoed across four generations of women - from Silver Dollar, who fought to regain her dignity and change her destiny after being sold into a loveless marriage at the age of 13; to Ming Xiu, who was forced to make a choice no mother should ever have to make following the execution of her husband; to Li's mother Rong, who grew up as an outcast on the periphery of society but never gave up hope of a better life for herself and for her daughters.Despite economic and political upheaval, these women battled to offer their children a better future through sheer determination in the face of unimaginable adversity. FORGED FROM SILVER DOLLAR is an inspiring true story about Modern China, iron will and the strength of a mother's love.The House of Lies: A shocking true story of secrets, abuse, murder - and surviving it all
By Renee Mcbryde. 2017
This compelling memoir of family secrets, murder, sexual assault and domestic violence is also the gripping story of Renee's constant…
struggle to accept the truth and her true identity, and, ultimately, to forge a life on her own terms.From the outside, Renee McBryde had a fairly typical childhood - school, working mum, swimming lessons with loving grandparents. But waiting for her was a secret so awful that it would rock her to the core.Renee's mother was a teenage runaway who found herself pregnant and alone when Renee's father was jailed for killing two men. When Renee discovered the truth, she knew her life would never be the same again. She was a murderer's daughter - but that made her determined to escape the past.This is her sometimes shocking, often moving, inspirational true story of terrible secrets and tragic lies, and a life of abuse, suffering and survival.Back on Top: Confessions of a High-Class Madam
By Samantha X. 2017
We left Samantha X confused at the end of HOOKED - should she stay escorting or hang up her high…
heels? In this fascinating, compelling sequel we see Samantha grow in to her new role as boss of her escort agency Samantha X Angels (and her male escort agency too), how she deals with the girls and boys, falling in love with Mr Big (while still managing to sneak in a few clients), her journey with sobriety ... and much, much more!BACK ON TOP is fast-paced and occasionally outrageous, told with the flair readers loved in HOOKED. Samantha X does not hold back when it comes men, love, sex - and getting herself back on top.Australian Tragic: Gripping Tales From the Dark Side of Our History
By Jack Marx. 2009
A compelling collection of tales from Australia's dark heart - of catastrophe and misfortune, intrigue and passion, betrayal and tragedy.AUSTRALIAN…
TRAGIC ranges across our past and our present: the heartbreaking story of the fire at Luna Park; the unstoppable opportunist who snatched innocent men and women from Palm Island to be part of P. T. Barnum's 'Greatest Show on Earth'; a world-class boxer who lost his battle with alcohol and ended up in an unmarked American grave; a man who heroically survived a war to find himself crushed and defeated by events much closer to home; and a new story - of an echo from Ned Kelly at Stringybark Creek, in our own time ... Heartbreaking and shocking, gothic and weird, these fascinating stories are all true, and told to remind us of the Australia we don't know, the one that simmers with love and hate, of hopes raised and futures dashed, unheralded and unnoticed . . . until now.Two Decades Naked: A true story of dancing, dreams and desire
By Leigh Hopkinson. 2016
For fans of Hooked by Samantha X and In My Skin by Kate Holden. Leigh Hopkinson was the least likely…
person to become a stripper but after spending two decades naked, she realised it was her career - and her life.When Leigh Hopkinson was a university student in Christchurch she worked at a succession of low-paying jobs that paid the rent and fit in around her degree. None of them fit so well, however, as stripping. She figured it couldn't be that difficult - she was just going to dance on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. She'd show them a bit of skin, but the gig wasn't going to last that long. Or so she imagined.While stripping was harder than Leigh thought it would be, she hadn't counted on it being so exhilarating - or lucrative. So when she moved to Melbourne and needed to make a living, the lure of her old job was strong. The world of the strip club had become familiar, even reassuring, though some of the people she met during the course of her job didn't exactly give her faith in the future of humanity.Over the course of Leigh's career, she learnt a lot about other people and even more about herself, and the result is a story that delves into a world that not everyone visits but everyone finds fascinating.See Naples and Die
By Penelope Green. 2007
The second book in a much loved Italian travel memoir trilogy which also includes the delightful When in Rome and…
Girl by Sea.After three years living and working in Italy, Australian journalist Penelope Green needs a reason to stick around - true love or gainful employment.When a job comes up in Naples - crime capital of Italy, home of pizza and the Camorra, and crouched at the foot of a volcano - Penny launches herself into the unknown.With her innate curiosity and eye for detail, Penny prises Naples open to show us the real city, in all its splendour... and all its depravity. She uncovers a chaotic metropolis when crime and poverty blur with abundant natural beauty, and where the shadow of Mount Vesuvius is a daily reminder that life must be lived for the moment.And when Penny meets a bass player in a local band, she thinks she might have found that other reason to stick around.'This is a bewitching, true tale of a tantalising city. Magnifico!' - Marie Claire'frank, funny and honest' - Notebook'Her down to earth tone and genuine curiosity make for an interesting and insightful read' - Sun-HeraldAuthor BiographyPenelope Green was born in Sydney and worked as a print journalist around Australia for a decade before moving to Rome in 2002. Her first book, When in Rome, recounts her early experiences in the Eternal City. In 2005 she moved to Naples to work for ANSAmed, a Mediterranean news service. She found an apartment in the city's colourful Spanish Quarter, worked hard at mastering the Neapolitan dialect, and writing her second travel memoir, See Naples and Die. Girl by Sea completes Penny's Italian experience as she moves to the idyllic island of Procida, across the bay from Capri, with her Italian partner, Alfonso. The couple have now returned to Australia, where they are making a new life for themselves back in the Southern hemisphere. For more information visit penelopegreen.com.auGirl By Sea: Love, Life and Food on an Italian Island
By Penelope Green. 2009
The conclusion to Penelope Green's bestselling trilogy about her life in Italy that includes When in Rome and See Naples…
and DieFrom her rooftop terrace, Penelope looks out across the sparkling waters of the Bay of Naples, and into a garden of lemon trees and magnolias. Has her Italian dream come true? Imagine catching a ferry home and stepping onto a waterfront lined with multicoloured buildings, busy with fishing boats and couples strolling to their favourite café. For Penny and her Italian love Alfonso, the idyllic island of Procida can offer the life they are looking for. But first Penny has to find a way into its small community. One thing she has in common with the locals is a love of food, so she sets herself a goal - to master the Procidan cuisine and become more than just a visitor. Across kitchen tables, in bustling cafés, and over long lunches under vine-covered pergolas, Penny learns the art of Italian cooking, builds friendships, and discovers the rhythms and secrets of island life. 'It?s a lovely chronicle of the joys and pitfalls of moving to a small community... A charming concoction of love, food and life ? with recipes!' - The Australian Women?s Weekly'With her observant eye for detail, young Sydney-born journalist Penelope Green's account of her time living on the beautiful Italian island of Procida with her partner, Alfonso, is an endearing insight into a small community where life, love and food reign supreme' - Sunday Telegraph'interspersed with mouthwatering recipes and Procida is explored from a historical, cultural, architectural, social and heart-on-the-sleeve personal perspective. Delivered with a light and breezy tone, it's easy to consume' - Courier MailAuthor BiographyPenelope Green was born in Sydney and worked as a print journalist around Australia for a decade before moving to Rome in 2002. Her first book, When in Rome, recounts her early experiences in the Eternal City. In 2005 she moved to Naples to work for ANSAmed, a Mediterranean news service. She found an apartment in the city's colourful Spanish Quarter, worked hard at mastering the Neapolitan dialect, and writing her second travel memoir, See Naples and Die. Girl by Sea completes Penny's Italian experience as she moves to the idyllic island of Procida, across the bay from Capri, with her Italian partner, Alfonso. The couple have now returned to Australia, where they are making a new life for themselves back in the Southern hemisphere. For more information visit penelopegreen.com.auThe Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook—What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing
By Maia Szalavitz, Bruce D. Perry. 2017
Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has treated children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, witnesses, children raised in closets and cages,…
and victims of family violence. Here he tells their stories of trauma and transformation.Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune
By John Merriman. 2014
The Paris Commune lasted for only 64 days in 1871, but during that short time it gave rise to some…
of the grandest political dreams of the nineteenth century—before culminating in horrific violence. Following the disastrous French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, hungry and politically disenchanted Parisians took up arms against their government in the name of a more just society. They expelled loyalists and soldiers and erected barricades in the streets. In Massacre, John Merriman introduces a cast of inimitable Communards—from les pétroleuses (female incendiaries) to the painter Gustave Courbet—whose idealism fueled a revolution. And he vividly recreates the Commune’s chaotic and bloody end when 30,000 troops stormed the city, burning half of Paris and executing captured Communards en masse. A stirring evocation of the spring when Paris was ablaze with cannon fire and its citizens were their own masters, Massacre reveals how the indomitable spirit of the Commune shook the very foundations of Europe.The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones-Confronting A New Age of Threat
By Benjamin Wittes, Gabriella Blum. 2015
The ability to inflict pain and suffering on large groups of people is no longer limited to the nation-state. New…
technologies are putting enormous power into the hands of individuals across the world--a shift that, for all its sunny possibilities, entails enormous risk for all of us, and may even challenge the principles on which the modern nation state is founded. In short, if our national governments can no longer protect us from harm, they will lose their legitimacy. Detailing the challenges that states face in this new world, legal scholars Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum controversially argue in [Title TK] that national governments must expand their security efforts to protect the lives and liberty of their citizens. Wittes and Blum show how advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to technologies--from drones to computer networks and biological data--that could possibly be used to extort or attack states and private citizens. Security, too, is no longer only under governmental purview, as private companies or organizations control many of these technologies: internet service providers in the case of cyber terrorism and digital crime, or academic institutions and individual researchers and publishers in the case of potentially harmful biotechnologies. As Wittes and Blum show, these changes could undermine the social contract that binds citizens to their governments. In this brave new world of dispersed threats, Wittes and Blum persuasively argue that the best means for safeguarding our liberty and privacy are strong governmental surveillance and security networks. Indeed, they show--through engaging looks at political thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to the Founders and beyond--that security and liberty are mutually supportive, rather than existing in a precarious balance in which the increase in one leads to a proportional decrease in the other. And not only must we bolster our domestic security efforts, but we must think internationally. Our best defense is increasingly a transnational one: more multinational forces and greater action to protect (and protect against) the territory of weaker states who do not yet have the capability to police themselves. [Title TK] is at once an exposé of our emerging world--one in which students can print guns with 3-D printers and scientists’ manipulations of viruses can be recreated and unleashed by ordinary people--and an authoritative blueprint for how government and individuals must adapt to it.Poverty Alleviation Investment and Private Economy in China
By Lin Wang. 2014
This book explores the mechanisms and significance of China's private economy participating in poverty alleviation. By basing its analysis on…
theories of development economics and public economics, the book stresses practical significance and abandons unreasonable assumptions. It uses a systematic set of statistical analysis tools and descriptive statistics to provide a multidimensional and highly visual format. Beyond the traditional qualitative comparison of countries, it also introduces quantitative comparison. Considering the increasing concern and curiosity about China's booming economy and rising private sector, the book is highly topical, offering readers theoretical insights into China's poverty alleviation mechanisms and essential information on the role played by the private economy in social and economic development. The nineteenth-century eccentric Ida C. Craddock was by turns a secular freethinker, a religious visionary, a civil-liberties advocate, and a…
resolute defender of belly-dancing. Arrested and tried repeatedly on obscenity charges, she was deemed a danger to public morality for her candor about sexuality. By the end of her life Craddock, the nemesis of the notorious vice crusader Anthony Comstock, had become a favorite of free-speech defenders and women's rights activists. She soon became as well the case-history darling of one of America's earliest and most determined Freudians.In Heaven's Bride, prize-winning historian Leigh Eric Schmidt offers a rich biography of this forgotten mystic, who occupied the seemingly incongruous roles of yoga priestess, suppressed sexologist, and suspected madwoman. In Schmidt's evocative telling, Craddock's story reveals the beginning of the end of Christian America, a harbinger of spiritual variety and sexual revolution.