The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder


Charles Graeber - 2013
    But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.Cullen's murderous career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, THE GOOD NURSE weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal.Graeber's portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanor masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the hardboiled, unrelenting work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen's professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there's no telling how many more lives could have been lost.In the tradition of In Cold Blood, THE GOOD NURSE does more than chronicle Cullen's deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America's medical system. Harrowing and irresistibly paced, this book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.

After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search


Sarah Perry - 2017
    When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah’s bedroom.   The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother’s life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.   Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.

A Dog Called Hope: The wounded warrior and the dog who dared to love him


Jason Morgan - 2016
    Discovered face-down in a Central American swamp after a jungle mission gone wrong, he had a smashed spine, collapsed lungs and countless broken bones. It was a miracle he'd even survived.Months of painful surgery followed, with Jason's life balanced on a knife-edge. Released from hospital in a wheelchair and plagued by memory loss, Jason's life fell apart. Left alone to raise his three infant sons, all hope seemed gone, until Jason met Napal, a handsome-as-hell black Labrador provided by a very special charity. With this one incredible dog at their side, Jason's life and that of his family would never be the same again. With Napal's help Jason was able to conquer his paralysis, eventually completing a marathon and winning numerous medals in the Wounded Warrior Games. More than that, this amazing service dog helped heal a family and taught Jason to be the father his kids needed him to be. A Dog Called Hope is the moving and heart-warming story of how Jason rediscovered his life's mission, his strength as a father and, through his beloved dog, his hope. It's the story of the closeness between one man and one dog like no other, and how this mesmerizing duo changed countless lives.Inspirational, tear-jerking and laugh-out-loud uplifting, this is a story that will brighten any day and warm every heart.

Who Killed John Lennon?: The lives, loves and deaths of the greatest rock star


Lesley-Ann Jones - 2020
    

Pictures in My Head


Gabriel Byrne - 1994
    His career in film started in John Boorman's atmospheric Excalibur and to date has included such highlights as Miller's Crossing (The Coen Brothers), Gothic (Ken Russell), In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan) which he also produced, The Usual Suspects (Brian Singer) and most recently Smila's Feeling for Snow and the Man in the Iron Mask. The range of roles is varied but always played with a brooding intensity.

Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed - A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings


Michelle Knight - 2014
    Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world.Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken.In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.

My Life Among the Underdogs: A Memoir


Tia Torres - 2018
    With inimitable honesty and characteristic brashness, Tia captures the spirit and heart of these intelligent and loving canines, while carrying us behind the scenes of her TV show, into the heart of post-Katrina New Orleans, onto the soundstages of Hollywood films, and even to the jungles of Sri Lanka. Tia has devoted her life to shattering the stereotype that pit bulls are dangerous, vicious predators. As the top dog at the Villalobos Rescue Center in New Orleans, the largest pit bull rescue in the United States, she and her team have rescued, rehabilitated, and rehomed hundreds of animals that might otherwise have been destroyed. As she puts it, "Most of the stories in this book are about animals (and a few humans) that needed someone to believe in them and a purpose in order to show their true nobility." Each dog Tia writes about here has overcome abuse, trauma, neglect, or just bad luck to become a stalwart, loving companion to Tia and her family. You'll meet Duke, whose intelligence and matinee-idol looks made him a star in movies and music videos; Junkyard Joe, whose single-minded passion for tennis balls was channeled into expertise as a drug-sniffing dog; Bluie, the unswerving protector of Tia's daughter Tania; and a host of other unforgettable canines. My Life Among the Underdogs is above all a love story--one that is sure to grip the heart of anyone who has ever loved a dog.

Mind of a Survivor: What the wild has taught me about survival and success


Megan Hine - 2017
    Often faced with frozen tundra, sweltering deserts, humid jungles, perilous mountains and fast-flowing rivers, Megan Hine is no stranger to perilous conditions. Whilst leading expeditions and bushcraft survival courses and in her work on television shows such as Bear Gryll's Mission Survive and Running Wild, she has explored the corners of the globe in pursuit of adventure.Faced with the toughest of conditions: bad weather; lack of food and being in the presence of predators, is the ultimate test of character and often the biggest challenge to overcome is in the head. In these situations, the human brain is simultaneously the greatest asset and biggest liability. Not everyone is suited to the great outdoors and when danger calls many aren't as well-equipped to survive, no amount of top of the range kit will save you if you don't have the right frame of mind. Here Megan Hine examines the human ability and instinct for survival, showing us how others have developed the attitudes and attributes to thrive in the most dangerous situations, and how those same attitudes and attributes help them confront problems and obstacles at work and at home. Being chased through the jungle by armed opium farm guards, abseiling past bears and lighting fires with tampons, Megan has seen and done it all. In Mind of a Survivor she takes you along for a series of life-and-death adventures and shows you what happens to people when they are pushed to their limits. Inspirational rather than instructional, Megan examines the human ability and instinct for survival sharing the life tools that she uses and showing how they can as easily be applied to more domestic everyday life - from careers to relationships, from overcoming adversity to decision making. Filled with her own experiences, Mind of a Survivor is packed full of adventure and can help people survive in any situation and cope with whatever life throws at them.

Cherry


Nico Walker - 2018
    A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.Hammered out on a prison typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.

Perfect Sound Whatever


James Acaster - 2019
    Thinking this is his rock bottom, little does James know that by the end of the year he will have befouled himself in a Los Angeles steakhouse and disrespected a pensioner on television. Luckily, there is one thing he can rely on for comfort – music. In true Acaster fashion, this ends up with a completely unnecessary mission: to buy as much music as he can released in 2016, the year before everything went wrong (for James, at least). Some albums are life-changing masterpieces, others are ‘Howdilly Doodilly’ by Okilly Dokilly, a metalcore album devoted to The Simpsons character Ned Flanders. But all of them play a part in the year that James gets his life back on track.In PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER, James takes us through the music of 2016, the bullshit of 2017, and how the beauty of one defeated the ugliness of the other. He will also reveal how he stole a cookie from Clint Eastwood and attempted to complete his musical odyssey by reforming one of Kettering’s most overlooked bands.

Guantánamo Diary: Restored Edition


Mohamedou Ould Slahi - 2015
    Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go. Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir -- terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. Published now for the first time, Guantanamo Diary is a document of immense historical importance.

Freedom: My Book of Firsts


Jaycee Dugard - 2016
    She was missing for more than eighteen years, held captive by Philip and Nancy Garrido, and gave birth to two daughters during her imprisonment. In A Stolen Life Jaycee told the story of her life from her abduction in 1991 through her reappearance in 2009. Freedom: My Book of Firsts is about everything that happened next. “How do you rebuild a life?” Jaycee asks. In these pages, she describes the life she never thought she would live to see: from her first sight of her mother to her first time meeting her grownup sister, her first trip to the dentist to her daughters’ first day of school, her first taste of champagne to her first hangover, her first time behind the wheel to her first speeding ticket, and her first dance at a friend’s wedding to her first thoughts about the possibility of a future relationship. This raw and inspiring book will remind you that there is, as Jaycee writes, “life after something tragic happens…Somehow, I still believe that we each hold the key to our own happiness and you have to grab it where you can in whatever form it might take.” Freedom is an awe-inspiring memoir about the power we all hold within ourselves.

Inside The Kingdom: My Life In Saudi Arabia


Carmen Bin Ladin - 2004
    On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, married into-and later divorced from-the bin Laden family and found herself inside a complex and vast clan, part of a society that she neither knew nor understood. Her story takes us inside the bin Laden family and one of the most powerful, secretive, and repressed kingdoms in the world.

Shotgun Angels: My Story of Broken Roads and Unshakeable Hope


Jay Demarcus - 2019
    You'll follow his intensely personal journey through big breaks and broken dreams, desperate dashboard prayers, and limelight glories. Along the way, you'll find the same constant source of strength that he has--hope that is powerful enough to hold you up through whatever trials come your way.

Dying to Get Married: The Courtship and Murder of Julie Miller Bulloch


Ellen Harris - 1991
    Julie Miller was a successful executive who, through a newspaper ad, met who she thought was "Mr. Right." Little did she know that he had a violent past and a predisposition for bizarre sexual rituals. This tragic, true-crime tale will shock its horrified readers.