Book picks similar to
The Lunatic Memoirs: The Jack Downing Story by Thatcher C. Nalley
fiction
mental-health
cruelty
1-psych-abuse-twisted
Shackled
Tom Leveen - 2015
After years of therapy, medication, and even a stint in a mental hospital, she’s finally ready to re-enter the world of the living. Pelly has been suffering from severe panic attacks ever since her best friend, Tara, disappeared from a mall six years ago.And her plan seems to be working, until an unkempt girl accompanied by an older man walks into the coffee shop where she works. Pelly thinks she’s seen a ghost, until the girl mouths “help me” on the way out, and Pelly knows she’s just seen Tara.Too shocked to do anything, Pelly helplessly watches Tara slip away again as she steels herself against a renewed spiral of crippling anxiety. But rather than being overcome by anxiety, Pelly feels more energized than she has in years. Determined to track down enough evidence to force the police to reopen Tara’s file, Pelly’s master plan takes a turn for the dangerous.Pelly decides she cannot be shackled by her past—and the anxiety, fear, and grief that comes with it—any longer if she wants to save Tara. But in seeking answers through whatever means necessary, she’ll come face-to-face with true evil. And not all the shackles are in her head...
The Memory of Water
Karen White - 2008
There is the death of innocence, of love, and of hope. Each sister harbors a secret about that night-secrets that will erode their lives as they grow into adulthood. After ten years of silence between the sisters, Marnie is called back to the South Carolina Lowcountry by Diana's ex-husband, Quinn. His young son has returned from a sailing trip with his emotionally unstable mother, and he is refusing to speak. In order to help the traumatized boy, Marnie must reopen old wounds and bring the darkest memories of their past to the surface. And she must confront Diana, before they all go under.
Rainbow's End
Katie Flynn - 1997
Tracing the stories of two quite diffrent girls: Ellen Docherty, in Liverpool, bringing up her younger sister and brother single-handedly, and Maggie McVeigh, in the Dublin tenements, finding a better life working for the Nolan family, and falling in love with Liam, the eldest son, RAINBOW'S END follows two girls on their struggle for happiness. But the First World War changes everything -and unearths a long-buried link between the families.
Act Of Contrition
Dominic Milne - 2015
Eddie is a reckless and dissolute operator, under investigation by the force and in debt to local mob chief, Vincent Mullis. When a killer starts targeting prostitutes in north London, Mullis is unusually keen for Eddie to solve the crime, but why? A serial killer is targeting prostitutes in Islington, the victims having a number of unusual links. The killings begin the same week that convicted killer and local man, Paddy Graham, is released from prison following a life sentence for murder. DS Eddie Kane has inadvertently found himself under the thumb of Vincent Mullis, who has taken ownership of a debt Eddie has built up with terminally-ill bookmaker, Arnie Duggan. Eddie’s troubles begin to spiral out of control when he is placed under investigation following a drugs-bust gone wrong. While suspended, he is forced to investigate the murders for Mullis, who wants to get to the murderer before the police. He then reluctantly hears a murder confession from his former bookmaker... In this heart-stopping, gripping crime drama, Eddie’s investigations lead him into a murky world of pornography, murder and revenge, all of which seems to centre around a local church and the charismatic vicar, Jonathan Carter. Eddie is feeling the pressure from all sides, but will there be any chance of salvation?
The Medea Complex
Rachel Florence Roberts - 2013
1885. Anne Stanbury wakes up in a strange bed, having been kidnapped from her home. As the panic settles in, she realizes she has been committed to a lunatic asylum, deemed insane and therefore unfit to stand trial for an unspeakable crime. But all is not as it seems…. Edgar Stanbury, her husband as well as a grieving father, is torn between helping his confined wife recover her sanity and seeking revenge for his ruined life. But Anne’s future rests wholly in the hands of Dr. George Savage, chief medical officer of Bethlem Royal Hospital. The Medea Complex is the darkly compelling story of a lunatic, a lie, and a shocking revelation that elucidates the difference between madness and evil….
Afterparty
Daryl Gregory - 2014
Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right.A mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the US, Daryl Gregory's Afterparty is a marvelous mix of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, and perhaps a bit of Peter Watts’s Starfish: a last chance to save civilization, or die trying.