Follow one veterinarian's story through the course of her career and experience the dramas, the traumas and the comedies that regularly take place in a veterinary emergency room. Become privy to some of the authors most humorous, shocking and hackle-raising encounters with animals and overhear some of the more memorable conversations that she has had with owners throughout her years of practice. Follow her through her foreign travels and learn how modern veterinary medicine far exceeds the medical care that is available in these third world countries.Bite Me gives a rare insider's view of the frustrations, the joys and the heartbreak that veterinarians experience on a daily basis and exposes the reasons why the veterinary profession is currently facing some dire and frightening challenges. From page to page you will find yourself laughing, crying, angry, shocked, laughing again, and then eager to know more.Bite Me is a must-read for any pet owner, any person aspiring to be a veterinarian, any veterinary student, and any person who has an interest in the welfare of both animals and people.

    And yes I still count. I promised Iwould never speak about it publicly until my childrenunderstood what that meant, that mommy was an alcoholic.I think they may have understood long before I did.”From Whiskey to Water is the no-holds-barred memoir byone of South Africa’s most loved radio talk show hosts, SamCowen. Having kept her alcohol addiction well away fromthe public eye for over 14 years, in this tell-all tale, Sam findsthe courage to talk about her struggle with her addictionto whiskey, food and finally to a passion that saved herlife – marathon swimming. Told in her characteristicallyhilarious dead-pan style, this is one of the bravest booksyou’ll read this year.“So this is a book on how I stopped drinking? No, it’snot. It’s how I stopped drinking, started eating, becameclinically severely obese, stopped eating (everything thatwasn’t nailed down) and swam my way to freedom. No, it’snot. It’s actually about addiction and learning and sadnessand anxiety and love and drive. It’s about channelling theunchangeable into the miraculous. It’s about dragons andlearning how to put them to sleep when you can’t slay them.It’s about being my own Daenarys.”

    King Peggy has the sweetness and quirkiness of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the hopeful sense of possibility of Half the Sky.  King Peggy chronicles the astonishing journey of an American secretary who suddenly finds herself king to a town of 7,000 souls on Ghana's central coast, half a world away. Upon arriving for her crowning ceremony in beautiful Otuam, she discovers the dire reality: there's no running water, no doctor, and no high school, and many of the village elders are stealing the town's funds. To make matters worse, her uncle (the late king) sits in a morgue awaiting a proper funeral in the royal palace, which is in ruins. The longer she waits to bury him, the more she risks incurring the wrath of her ancestors. Peggy's first two years as king of Otuam unfold in a way that is stranger than fiction. In the end, a deeply traditional African town has been uplifted by the ambitions of its headstrong, decidedly modern female king. And in changing Otuam, Peggy is herself transformed, from an ordinary secretary to the heart and hope of her community.

    Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War, were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded. These women saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before, and medicine was at a turning point. HEROINES OF MERCY STREET follows the lives of women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and more before, during, and after their epic struggle in Alexandria and reveals their personal contributions to this astounding period in the advancement of medicine.

    Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic; the visionary scientist Gregory Pincus, who was dismissed by Harvard in the 1930s as a result of his experimentation with in vitro fertilization but who, after he was approached by Sanger and McCormick, grew obsessed with the idea of inventing a drug that could stop ovulation; and the telegenic John Rock, a Catholic doctor from Boston who battled his own church to become an enormously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Enovid.Spanning the years from Sanger’s heady Greenwich Village days in the early twentieth century to trial tests in Puerto Rico in the 1950s to the cusp of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, this is a grand story of radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes. Brilliantly researched and briskly written, The Birth of the Pill is gripping social, cultural, and scientific history.

    Her battle is not against soldiers but against her neighbors and a thousand years of tradition. Born during Ho Chi Minh’s revolution against the French, she was just a baby when his followers in the village, out of spite, came to her home one night and murdered the men in the family, driving her mother mad with fear and rage. She was fourteen when her mother forced her to marry and have a child with a brutal man who beat and tortured her, finally leaving her for dead beside the road. Recovered, she ran away with her infant son, only to discover there was no place for them. To save her baby’s life, she returned home in disgrace, only to face the Viet Cong. In desperation she escaped again, leaving her child in safety, she thought. On Saigon’s deadly streets, with no identity papers, she became an outlaw, hiding from her ex-husband, grieving for her lost child. Homeless, penniless and pursued, only her dream of freedom kept her alive. Then one day she would meet a saintly woman, who gave her hope, and an Irish-American naval officer, who gave her love. Crossing the Bamboo Bridge is a tale of mothers and daughters, and of their children. It is a tale of war, and grief, and a young girl’s dreams. It is a stunning epiphany of hope where there is none, of courage in the face of despair, of love, respect and freedom.

    Soon he was struggling to breathe, and then he was admitted to hospital, suffering from coronavirus as the nation teetered on the edge of a global pandemic. What followed was months on the wards: six weeks in an induced coma, and many more weeks of rehab and recovery as the NHS saved Michael's life, and then got him back on his feet. Throughout Michael's stay in intensive care, a notebook lay at the end of his bed, where the nurses who cared for him wrote letters of hope and support. Embarking on the long road to recovery, Michael was soon ready to start writing about his near-death experience.Combining stunning new prose poems by one of Britain's best loved poets and the moving coronavirus diaries of his nurses, doctors and wife Emma-Louise Williams, this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS. Featuring original illustrations by Chris Riddell, each page celebrates the power of community, the importance of kind gestures in dark times, and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well.

    ‘Why you not stay with me tonight—in my cave.’ He seemed enthusiastic. And we were looking for adventure." Thus begins the story of how Marguerite van Geldermalsen—a New Zealand-born nurse—became the wife of Mohammad Abdallah Othman, a Bedouin souvenir-seller of the Manaja tribe, and lived with him and their children in a community of 100 families in the ancient caves of Petra in Jordan. Marguerite and a friend were traveling through the Middle East in 1978 when she met the charismatic Mohammad and decided that he was the man for her. Their home was a lofty 2,000 year-old cave carved into the red rock of a hillside. She became the resident nurse and learned to live like the Bedouin—cooking over fires, hauling water on donkeys, and drinking sweet black tea—and over the years she became as much of a curiosity as the cave-dwellers to tourists. This is her extraordinary story.

    Illustrated throughout with rare black-and-white photographs.

    Six years later, his daughter Chessie interviews him in an attempt to understand the trauma that led her father to burnout, in the process unravelling stories and memories from her own remarkable family history. Chessie rebuilds her family’s lives on the page, from her parents’ honeymoon across Africa, to living in Tokelau as one of five children under ten before returning to New Zealand, where her mother would set her heart and home in the Clarence Valley only to see it devastated in the 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake, and the family displaced. Written with the same love and compassion that defines her family’s courage and strength, We Can Make a Life is an extraordinary memoir about the psychological cost of heroism, home and belonging, and how a family made a life together.

    Left of the bang: a military term for the build-up to an explosion.For failing concert pianist Tamsin Jarvis, the pressure is mounting. She thought she was happy with her adoring schoolteacher boyfriend Callum, but when Chris comes into their lives, that starts to change. In a few months Chris will be gone, leaving for his first tour of Afghanistan. Nothing seems to be working out the way Tamsin wants it to – in fact, she’s not even sure what it is she wants.Claire Lowdon is a thrilling, highly accomplished new voice in fiction, and with LEFT OF THE BANG she has written a VANITY FAIR for her times. With sharp, satirical humour,unparalleled social observation and great empathy, LEFT OF THE BANG is an unflinching insider’s view of the foibles, hopes and difficulties of a generation of young Londoners today – who are often having much less fun that it seems.

    We got your test result.  And I’m really sorry to tell you that it is positive for Ebola.” Dr. Kent and Amber Brantly moved with their children to war-torn Liberia in the fall of 2013 to provide medical care for people in great need—to help replace hopelessness with hope. When, less than a year later, Kent contracted the deadly Ebola virus, hope became what he and Amber needed too.   When Kent received the diagnosis, he was already alone and in quarantine in the Brantly home in Liberia. Amber and the children had left just days earlier on a trip to the United States. Kent’s personal battle against the horrific Ebola began, and as thousands of people worldwide prayed for his life, a miraculous series of events unfolded.  Called for Life tells the riveting inside story of Kent and Amber’s call to serve their neighbors, as well as Kent’s fight for life with Ebola and Amber’s’ struggle to support him from half-a-world away. Most significantly, Called for Life reminds us of the risk, the honor, and the joy to be known when God and others are served without reservation.

    He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. Here Sissay recounts his life story. It is a story of neglect and determination. Misfortune and hope. Cruelty and beauty. Sissay reflects on adoption, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's best-loved voices, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

    What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more--a powerful exhortation to the living.That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it--a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion--this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep--an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously.With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life.

    When you're No. 1, that means everybody..."Under the watchful eye of pro scouts and the weight of massive expectations, seventeen young men rank No. 1 in the country. In the tradition of Buzz Bissinger's classic Friday Night Lights, Blades of Glory follows these talented athletes, their coaches, their parents and their fans, offering a captivating glimpse into an elite program and the triumphs and tragedies of real life.***"The fervor with which Minnesotans celebrate hockey raises issues about sport and society that transcend Minnesota and reach into communities across the country, wherever kids play and parents cheer them to victory."-from the IntroductionFor a championship team like the Bloomington Jefferson Jaguars, hockey is religion and failing to win is a sin. This is a place where kids dream of playing for the state championship from the time they can pick up a stick, and parents plan their entire social calendar around the season.John Rosengren was given unlimited, season-long access to every harsh reality and euphoric high these teammates experienced during one full season at the top. Amid the turmoil, politics and pain, Blades of Glory draws into sharp focus the challenges of divorce, teen suicide and performance-enhancing drugs to examine what it ultimately means to win.Though Blades of Glory follows one hockey team, this story could be set in any gym, rink or field where students train and compete, coaches holler and parents scream from the stands. This is a story of high drama and emotion; intense and poignant, it is what happens to boys with championship dreams...