Unlike Frédéric Moreau in Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale (to which this book owes no meagre debt), Piet is magnificently gifted, not only "extremely attractive to most women and to many men," but also a fine pianist, draughtsman and lover. We first meet him interviewing for the role of tutor to the son of the wealthy hotelier, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts. All is not well in his gilded household. Egbert, the son, is agoraphobic. The matriarch, Jacobina, hasn't been touched by her husband in almost a decade. Into this highly strung atmosphere comes Piet, charged with the task of freeing Egbert from his paralysing fear of the outside world. We soon realise, however, that Egbert isn't the only one in need of help. Piet sets about liberating the libidos of the repressed family through music – championing bawdy Bizet over abstract Bach – and oral sex. While the setting is Dutch, the influences are French – think Bel-Ami, Les Liaisons dangereuses and Gide's L'Immoraliste.

    Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.(front flap)

    Melissa (Mel), still ringless after dating the same man for six years, deserves the engagement ring charm. The red hot chili pepper would be perfect for Seema, who is in love with her best male friend Scott, but can't seem to make their relationship more than platonic. And recently laid off journalist Nic wants the shovel, which symbolizes hard work, to help her get her career back on track. Nic does everything she can to control who gets which silver keepsake - as well as the future it represents. But when the charmed cake is mysteriously shifted from the place settings Nic arranged around it, no one gets the charm she chose for them. And when the other party guests' fortunes begin coming true, Mel, Seema, and Nic can't help but wonder.... Is the cake trying to tell them something?

    The emotional, incredible true story of Neil White, a man who discovers the secret to happiness, leading a fulfilling life, and the importance of fatherhood in the most unlikely of places—the last leper colony in the continental United States.

    He prided himself on furthering relations between communities, speaking several tribal languages fluently and developing a reputation as a man to be trusted and sought after for help and advice. With a thriving young family, a devoted wife and a quick succession of promotions, George is proud of everything he has achieved so far, in particular the understanding he is fostering between whites and blacks. Then, in the wake of the 1948 elections, George feels a shift in the Native Affairs Department's agenda. As he is shunted from one outpost to another, his role becoming ever more hopeless, his place in South Africa's future increasingly hazy, he feels the weight of his powerlessness and finds himself fighting off a crippling depression. "The Native Commissioner" is a heart-wrenching portrayal of a kind and conscientious man who felt himself cast adrift under the weight of South African apartheid.

    Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.

    On the verge of becoming a name in the interior design world, he can't afford a scandal and must discreetly dispose of the body—not an easy job when the whole of London seems to be conspiring against him.

    But I was just a naive Wisconsin boy, fresh out of medical school and new to Oakland, California. I chose Highland Hospital for my surgical internship: an entire year filled with sick patients, brutal work hours, more brutal staff surgeons, and flawed attempts to maintain a long-distance relationship. Yet, somehow, it’s a work of nonfictional comedy.I take on many roles throughout the story. I’m a kid who still plays Tetris, a guy who can’t commit to his girlfriend, an untrained doctor who finds himself cutting open people’s skulls, and a fish out of water who is called to the ER to drain the blood from a cocaine-engorged penis.But this adventure isn’t just crazy hospital anecdotes or what it takes to become a surgeon. It's a coming of age tale about learning what it means to be a caregiver. Sure, I worked 40 hours without sleep, but that is only one of the ways They tried to kill me. Their real evil was crushing the enthusiasm and compassion of their trainees. I struggled to remain a “normal” human while joining a fraternity of holier-than-thou surgeons, and nothing grounded me more than trying to cope with the illnesses within my own family.If this book proves anything, it's that "Laughter is the best medicine, but surgery is a close second."Enjoy.A dollar of every Kindle book sold will benefit the charity Operation Access.

    But between her drug addict patients, sleepless nights on call, and battling wits with the sadistic yet charming Sexy Surgeon, Jane can’t imagine an afterlife much worse than her first month of medical internship at County Hospital.And then there’s the devil herself: Jane’s senior resident Dr. Alyssa Morgan. When Alyssa becomes absolutely hell-bent on making her new interns pay tenfold for the deadly sin of incompetence, Jane starts to worry that she may not make it through the year with her soul or her sanity still intact.

    After sorting out the labels Black, English Whites, Afrikaners, and Coloreds, the discussion pushes on to more difficult questions: Why should you never give a White woman a white-gold engagement ring? Why do Indian men always play sports in jeans? and How do Colored gangsters fare in the navy?

    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.

    The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

    He's putting aside childish things, starting his first business serving food to the workers in Cape Town. His Pa is proud.At the same time, Mattie is pulled toward an altogether different version of masculinity, in which oiled and toned bodies cavort for him at the click of a mouse. His porn addiction threatens his relationship with his boyfriend, Jack, and imperils his inheritance.Pa’s days as a swaggering businessman are done, but even as cancer shrivels him, his ancient authority intensifies. While the family wrestles with his patrimony, around them a new South Africa moves forward, demanding they confront the challenges of the future as well as the past.

    After eleven years in the remote Mahlangeni region they are transferred, first to Crocodile Bridge and then to Pretorius Kop. Fully at peace in the wild and lonely landscapes of the North, Kobie fears she will never adapt to the relatively people-populated southern area. It takes time, but eventually she is able to acknowlege that the move has shown her "other Edens" and has given her a store of the new and precious memories. Foremost among these memories is the unique experience of raising Leo, an abandoned lion cub. It is a facinating and emotional encounter with the king of the beasts, which brings her and her family equal measures of joy and sorrow.

    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.”