|
Books > Fiction > True stories > General
The Care Factor tells the story of one incredible nurse – one among many – who chose to meet an unprecedented global health crisis on the frontline.
Simone Sheridan has one of the most sought-after skills today. As a nurse, her skill is to care. When Covid-19 began to spread across the world in 2020, Sim volunteered to retrain to work in Melbourne’s intensive care units. And as she prepared to go back to ICU and case numbers began climbing, Sim started talking to her friend Ailsa. Through the exhaustion, the confusion, the many tears and the surprising moments of hilarity, Sim kept talking. And Ailsa started writing.
In The Care Factor, Ailsa walks behind Sim as she faces the realities of the coronavirus. The result is a deeply human account of what the pandemic has really meant, not just for Sim and her fellow health professionals, but also for their patients, their families and friends, and the many who faced life in lockdown. This is a celebration of nursing, of friendship, and of the layers of connection and care that allow us to keep going when it feels impossible.
This large, full colour, hardcover book is full of images and an
informative read on all things Black Sabbath. Adored by their fans
and loathed by their critics, across a career that spanned almost
fifty years, Black Sabbath divided opinions more than any other
band. From heavy psych to heavy metal, this band of Brummie mates
ploughed their own unique furrow, releasing a trove of albums along
the way and cementing themselves as one of the hardest working live
acts on the road. Friendship, ambition, betrayal and jealousy,
alongside a yearning for acceptance, interacted with a prodigious
appetite for drugs and practical jokes that drove them to the edge.
In the hothouse that was Seventies rock 'n' roll all of these
elements combined to make what is a truly remarkable story. This is
a tale of how four ordinary working class blokes emerged from the
Aston area of Birmingham in the late 1960s and helped to redefine
music and invent a genre. Along the way each of them overcame
personal travails to conquer the world and become one of the
biggest bands on the planet. Other members like Ronnie James Dio
came and went, but at the centre of it sat the core members, Ozzy
Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. Inspiring and
heartbreaking in equal measure their journey to the top and their
appetite for wilful self destruction is the stuff of showbiz
legend, mixing witches' curses and financial mismanagement along
the way. In this exhaustive yet concise study Greg Healey examines
the history of the band and their music. Looking beyond the myths,
Healey seeks to uncover the truth behind what inspired their sound,
drove their wild behaviour, and the circumstances that led them to
lose everything and then, against impossible odds, try to win it
back again. Love them or loathe them, this is Black Sabbath.
In this large, full colour, hard cover book by James Court, yu can
read about guitarist, drummer, bass player, pianist, keyboardist,
song writer, producer, programmer, arranger, vocalist, business
entrepreneur, actor, director, dancer and choreographer Prince.
James Court has been an avid collector, writer and follower of
Prince and his work for more than thirty years. Upon Prince's death
in April 2016, James set about the colossal task of revealing every
part of this fascinating ever-changing musician, leaving no stone
unturned. The Biography tackles the issue's that plagued the
Superstar, his fight for Musical freedom and his constant need to
write record and perform without restriction or filter.Often
described as the greatest Musician of his generation Prince
remained at the very top of the game, a multi-instrumentalist with
the ability to write cutting edge songs at will, his talent ability
and influence were simply unmatched. The results make this the most
comprehensive, detailed and exhaustingly accurate depiction of one
of the most popular, misunderstood and illusive musicians in modern
day music....
'I stood up. A miracle had happened. I could walk. It was as if I
was born again.' With a heart full of prayer, Marion Carroll
journeyed to Knock in the west of Ireland. For 17 years, Multiple
Sclerosis had ravaged her body so utterly that this reluctant
pilgrim travelled on a stretcher. Then, at the Mass, an
unimaginable miracle. Marion rose, pain-free, to walk, talk and see
once more. Thanks to this wondrous blessing, Marion has transformed
- in her 'own small way' - the lives of countless others. Her
ministries share her rock-like faith and devotion to God. They
testify to the power of ordinary people to listen, to care, to
inspire. Nearly 30 years later, the Catholic Church officially
recognised Marion's cure as a proclaimed miracle. Here, with
warmth, grace, humility - and down-to-earth Irish humour - she
tells of her life 'before' and 'after'. Marion's powerful,
uplifting story is unique. It shines a light on love, hope and a
remarkable relationship with God. 'In a world filled with bad news
Marion Carroll's story gives hope and inspiration to us all.'
BISHOP CHRISTY JONES 'The Church formally acknowledges that Marion
s healing does not exist of any medical explanation.' ARCHBISHOP
MICHAEL NEARY 'Marion is a chosen instrument of God and Our Lady to
communicate at home and abroad.' MONSIGNOR JOSEPH QUINN
For fourteen years, Jayne Senior tried to help girls from Rotherham
who had been groomed, raped, tortured, pimped and threatened with
violence by sex traffickers. As the manager of Risky Business,
which was set up to work with vulnerable teens, she heard
heartbreaking and shocking stories of abuse and assiduously kept
notes and details of the perpetrators, passing information on to
the authorities in the belief that they would do something.
Eventually, when she lost hope that the authorities would take
action against the gangs she had identified as the abusers, she
became a whistleblower for The Times investigative reporter Andrew
Norfolk. Now, in her powerful memoir Broken and Betrayed, she
describes a life spent working to protect Rotherham's girls, the
pressure put on her to stop rocking the boat, and why she risked
prison in the hope that she could help end the appalling child
exploitation in the town.
Chaos. Frustration. Compassion. Desperation. Hope. These are the
five words that author Wendy Welch says best summarize the state of
foster care in the coalfields of Appalachia. Her assessment is
based on interviews with more than sixty social workers, parents,
and children who have gone through "the system." The riveting
stories in Fall or Fly tell what foster care is like, from the
inside out. In depictions of foster care and adoption, stories tend
to cluster at the dark or light ends of the spectrum, rather than
telling the day-to-day successes and failures of families working
to create themselves. Who raises other people's children? Why?
What's money got to do with it when the love on offer feels so
real? And how does the particular setting of Appalachia-itself so
frequently oversimplified or stereotyped-influence the way these
questions play out? In Fall or Fly, Welch invites people bound by a
code of silence to open up and to share their experiences. Less
inspiration than a call to caring awareness, this pioneering work
of storytelling journalism explores how love, compassion, money,
and fear intermingle in what can only be described as a marketplace
for our nation's greatest asset.
Sunday Times bestselling foster carer Maggie Hartley faces one of
the toughest challenges of her career when she is forced to choose
between two children in her care. A heartbreaking true story
perfect for fans of Cathy Glass, Casey Watson, Angela Hart and
Rosie Lewis. ***** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER At just ten years
old, Kirsty has already suffered a lifetime of heartache and
suffering. Neglected by her teenage mother and taken into care,
Kirsty thought she had found her forever family when she is
fostered by Pat and Mike, who she comes to see as her real mum and
dad. But when Pat has a heart attack and collapses in front of her,
Kirsty's foster family say it's all her fault. They blame her
temper tantrums for putting Pat under stress and they don't want
Kirsty in their lives anymore. Kirsty is still reeling from this
rejection when she comes to live with foster carer Maggie Hartley.
She acts out, smashing up Maggie's home and even threatens to hurt
the baby boy Maggie has fostered since birth. Social Services must
take Kirsty's threat seriously and Maggie is forced to choose
between eight-month-old Ryan, who she's grown to love, or angry
Kirsty, who will most likely end up in a children's home if Maggie
can no longer care for her. Maggie is in an impossible position,
one that calls in to question her decision to become a foster carer
in the first place... An inspiring and heartwarming read, perfect
for fans of Cathy Glass, Casey Watson, Angela Hart and Rosie Lewis.
After over twenty-five years, BROS reunited to give a breathtaking
reunion gig at the O2 arena in Summer 2017. This photographic book
documents the hard work and determination, trials and tribulations
that goes into pulling off a spectacle of this magnitude. The
images are interspersed with written word by the author, expressing
his reactions to this very difficult process of retraining their
minds, body and talent, to say thank you to their extreemly loyal
fans and to show the world that they truely know how to put on a
show.
The album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sold over 420,000 copies
in its first week, received ten Grammy nominations (winning five).
Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader
critically engages the work of Ms. Hill, highlighting the
interdisciplinary nature of the album. Beyond the album's
commercial success, Ms. Hill's radical self-consciousness and
exuberance for life led listeners through her Black girl journey of
love, motherhood, admonition, redemption, spirituality, sexuality,
politics, and nostalgia that affirmed the power of creativity,
resistance, and the tradition of African storytelling. Ms. Hill's
album provides inspirational energies that serve as a foundational
text for Black girlhood. In many ways it is the definitive work of
Black girlhood for the Hip Hop generation and beyond because it
opened our eyes to a holistic narrative of woman and mother. Twenty
years after the release of the album, we pay tribute to this work
by adding to the quilt of Black girls' stories with the threads of
feminist consciousness, which are particularly imperative in this
space where we declare: Black girls matter. Celebrating Twenty
Years of Black Girlhood is the first book to academically engage
the work of the incomparable Ms. Hill. It intellectually wrestles
with the interdisciplinary nature of Ms. Hill's album, centering
the connection between the music of Ms. Hill and the lives of Black
girls. The essays in this collection utilize personal narratives
and professional pedagogies and invite students, scholars, and
readers to reflect on how Ms. Hill's album influenced their past,
present, and future.
The fire was visible seventy miles away as a distant, flickering
flame on the horizon. The heat generated was so intense that a
helicopter could only circle at a perimeter of one mile. Flying at
a height of 200 feet, the air crew saw that the tongues of flame
extended high above the rotor blades. On the surface a converted
fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the
vessel's hull blistered and burnt, and the rope handrails began to
smoke. In the water surrounding the inferno, men's heads could be
seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the
heat. At the centre stood, at least for now, the Piper Alpha oil
platform, 110 miles northeast of Aberdeen, once the world's single
largest oil producer. On 6 July 1988, its final day, it was ablaze
with 226 men onboard. Only sixty-one would survive. Fire in the
Night tells, for the first time and in gripping detail, the
devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with
survivors, witness statements and transcripts from the official
enquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of
what happened on that fateful night inside an oil rig inferno.
The 1931 excavation season at Olynthus, Greece, ushered a sea
change in how archaeologists study material culture-and was the
nexus of one of the most egregious (and underreported) cases of
plagiarism in the history of classical archaeology. Alan Kaiser
draws on the private scrapbook that budding archaeologist Mary Ross
Ellingson compiled during that dig, as well as her personal
correspondence and materials from major university archives, to
paint a fascinating picture of gender, power, and archaeology in
the early twentieth century. Using Ellingson's photographs and
letters as a guide, Kaiser brings alive the excavations led by
David Robinson and recounts how the unearthing of private
homes-rather than public spaces-emerged as a means to examine the
day-to-day of ancient life in Greece. But as Archaeology, Sexism,
and Scandal clearly demonstrates, a darker story lurks beneath the
smiling faces and humorous tales: one where Robinson stole
Ellingson's words and insights for his own, and where fellow
academics were complicit in the theft.
|
|