Illness Fiction

A History of the Present Illness takes listeners into overlooked lives in the neighborhoods, hospitals, and nursing homes of San Francisco, offering a deeply humane and incisive portrait of health and illness in American today....In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese, Aronson's writing is based on personal experience and addresses topics of current social relevance. Masterfully told, A History of the Present Illness explores the role of stories in medicine and creates a world pulsating with life, speaking truths about what makes us human.

Paige Rawl has been HIV positive since birth, but growing up, she never felt like her illness defined her. On an unremarkable day in middle school, she disclosed to a friend her HIV-positive status - and within hours the bullying began. From that moment forward, every day was like walking through a minefield. Paige was never sure when or from where the next text, taunt, or hateful message would come. Then one night, desperate for escape, 15-year-old Paige found herself in her bathroom staring at a bottle of sleeping pills. That could have been the end of her story. Instead, it was only the beginning.

This audiobook will educate you on why there are so many people in this country dying, going blind or losing limbs to diabetes? Diabetes is a lifelong manageable disease that can be controlled and the goal is not to let it control you. Diabetes is not and should not be a death sentence for anyone, however, due to the lack of information and education, many people do die from the disease. It is after all the third largest killer in the U.S. and the number one killer of African Americans!

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith's debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.

Join Sam the Sleepy Sheep and friends in this charming, magical bedtime story, which is also a completely natural, safe, and fun way to get children to go to sleep. The authors, Rory Z Fulcher and Dr. Kate Beaven-Marks, designed the story of Sam the Sleepy Sheep, so that it is easy-to-understand for children (and parents) of all ages.

After a hard-fought battle in the heart, Progen has defeated the agents of the entity that wants to destroy the body he is determined to control. It was a temporary defeat, however, as the entity retreated up into the body’s brain, safely entrenched behind the blood-brain barrier that is preventing the dungeon crystal from accessing the coveted home base of the central nervous system. As he further establishes his control over the different systems that he can access, a grievous wound to the body creates a problem that could spell the end of his objective.

Do you find it hard to fall asleep each night? Is it so bad that you actually don’t look forward to going to bed each night? Do you spend hours frustrated because you can't stop anxious thoughts from running through your head? You need to find a way to unwind from the world. Project Sleep was created for people who need help finding sleep and staying asleep. These are bedtime stories for adults. You deserve peaceful deep and satisfying sleep.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Under the rule of the Isle’s Voice, the people of Aeris suffer from a jarring divide between the wealthy and impoverished. The Isle’s Voice controls the distribution of immersia, a magic that keeps bloodthirsty monsters known as the vayle away from Aeris’s people. Laborers slave to do the jobs allotted to them, while privileged families remain in control. When young Aselle Attete, a laborer in the great city of Aurora, hears a mysterious song in the desert that surrounds her city, a series of events unfolds that proves there is hope of salvaging Aeris.

Do you have trouble unwinding after a stressful day? Do you lie down at night and spend hours trying to get to sleep? But, it feels like you just can't stop thinking about what you forgot to do today, what you could've done better, what you need to get done tomorrow, or what happens if something unexpected happens. Your brain keeps on going even though you desperately want to rest. Even worse, it feels like you are focused on negative things. And all you want is rest. You want to shut your brain down!

Sixteen-year-old Whisper, who has a cleft palate, lives in an encampment with three other young rejects and their caregiver, Nathanael. They are outcasts from a society (in the not-too-distant future) that kills or abandons anyone with a physical or mental disability. Whisper’s mother visits once a year. When she dies, she leaves Whisper a violin, which Nathanael teaches her to play. Whisper’s father comes to claim her, and she becomes his house slave, her disfigurement hidden by a black veil.

Ve el mundo de otra manera. Te presentamos a Ginny Moon. Es la típica adolescente, toca la flauta en la banda de la escuela, practica baloncesto semanalmente, y lee poemas de Robert Frost en la clase de inglés.

Pero Ginny es autista. Y lo que es importante para ella puede parecer un poco… diferente: comienza cada día con nueve uvas exactas como desayuno, su muñeca llamada Michael Jackson y la elaboración de un plan secreto de escapar.

The End of Miracles is a twisting, haunting story about the drastic consequences of a frustrated obsession. A woman with a complex past wants nothing more than to become a mother, but struggles with infertility and miscarriage. She is temporarily comforted by a wish-fulfilling false pregnancy, but when reality inevitably dashes that fantasy, she falls into a depression so deep she must be hospitalized.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves - which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)

Heather Fowler's fourth collection of fiction speaks to the language of need. Desperate, obsessive, even demented need is voiced by characters ill or ill-advised. From modern to historical, cyber to stalker, explicit to tender, the relationships in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness translate love and lust into disorder.

After her mother, Brenda, passed away and her father sold the family home, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself floundering, unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then they found the letters. This heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters is a celebration of correspondence; those lost acts of penned love, the vivid snapshots in time scattered back through a life.

Ettie is trying to figure out her future. Dominic’s just trying to forget his past. But with the help of some unlikely friends, young and old, a secret lake hidden in the grounds of a beautiful estate and a scruffy dog, a new community is formed–right when they all need each other the most.

Teenager Cason Martin is the youngest ballerina in the Atlanta Ballet Conservatory. She never really had a choice of whether she learned to dance or not. Her mother, the conservatory's artistic director, has made all the decisions in Cason's life. But that's about to change. Cason has been hiding an injury, and it's much worse than anyone imagines.

Blood is survival for seventeen-year-old Bly, who lives in the poverty-stricken human villages caught between enemy vampire and witch kingdoms. Most of the time, vampires and witches live in uneasy truce, buying human blood for their food and spells. But for two weeks a year, the ceasefire dissolves, and they hold the Revenant Games.

In New York City, newly single Caroline is stumbling her way through the recent implosion of her life. After a surprise breakup leaves her with no job, no apartment, and no backup plan, she’s unsure of what to do next. That is, until Caroline’s father, Leo, injures himself in a bad fall and asks her to move home to the Jersey Shore suburb she’d always been desperate to escape. But Leo doesn’t want his daughter to be his caretaker; he needs her to replace him as third baseman in his local men’s softball league.