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Acceptance : a memoir / by Nietfeld, Emi,author.;
"A brilliant, funny, generation-defining memoir about the double bind of crafting perfect adversity narratives for highly selective institutions, while fumbling through the far murkier reality of actual life in foster care and inpatient mental health treatment As a child, Emi Nietfeld was caught between a hoarder mother who got her put on antipsychotic medication, but was also the only person to believe she was exceptional, and a state system exemplified by a foster mom who tried to ban her art history flash cards because they had naked pictures (of Michelangelo's David). Even after wresting free of grim inpatient mental health institutions and getting into a prestigious boarding school, Emi scrambled for places to sleep during breaks. Realizing that her path to true independence lay in reinventing herself as a talented overcomer deserving of a full ride, she became obsessed with college admissions. While taking on the sad challenge of presenting herself as resilient to gain authorities' approval, Emi lived the untidy version of actual adversity at the same time- literally drafting her Common App statement while living out of her '92 Corolla. She found herself "trading my past for my future" in college admissions essays and scholarship applications, in an extreme example of the immense pressure on teenagers from all backgrounds to build the foundations of their entire lives. Emi's story is a harsh illumination of the near-impossible challenge set by societal expectations of coming from nothing, the brokenness of our child welfare system, and the reality that congratulatory letters from top schools couldn't keep her safe - as she found when she was raped while on a trip following her Harvard admission. Though Emi learns that entering the Ivy League, working in Big Tech, and living in a fancy apartment doesn't mean her life turns into gold, her reflections on her unlikely history, and her journey in confronting trauma and injustice, hold powerful lessons. Candid and frequently harrowing, with a ribbon of dark humor, Acceptance is a stunning human story and an invaluable view of the actual cost of upward mobility"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Nietfeld, Emi.; Child welfare; Foster children; Social mobility;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Such a pretty smile / by DeMeester, Kristi,author.;
"A biting novel from an electrifying new voice, Kristi DeMeester's Such a Pretty Smile is a heart-stopping tour-de-force about powerful women, angry men, and all the ways in which girls fight against the forces that try to silence them. There's something out there that's killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don't know when to shut up. 2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can't share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she's seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother-the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice-until she is punished for using it. 2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape-both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waives her "problem" away with pills. But Caroline's past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can't understand. As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty"--
Subjects: Horror fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Family secrets; Mothers and daughters; Murder; Serial murderers; Teenage girls; Women;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Castle Rock. [videorecording] / by Abrams, J. J.(Jeffrey Jacob),1966-television producer.; Holland, André,actor.; King, Stephen,1947-television producer.; Levy, Jane,1989-actor.; Lynskey, Melanie,actor.; Newman, Thomas,1955-composer (expression); Rutkowski, Richard,1966-director of photography.; Shaw, Sam,screenwriter,television producer.; Skarsgård, Bill,actor.; Spacek, Sissy,actor.; Sweet, Robin(Producer),television producer.; Thomason, Dustin,screenwriter,television producer.; Westlake, Chris,composer (expression); Bad Robot (Firm),production company.; Old Curiosity Shop (Firm),production company.; Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Firm),publisher.; Warner Bros. Television,production company.;
Directors of photography, Richard Rutkowski, Jeffrey Greeley ; editors, Trevor Baker, Matthew Colonna, David Bilow ; music, Chris Westlake, Thomas Newman.André Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Bill Skarsgård, Jane Levy, Sissy Spacek.A psychological horror anthology series set in the Stephen King multiverse, it is an original story that combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King's best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland.14A.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Horror television programs.; Television programs.; Castle Rock (Me. : Imaginary place); Good and evil; Supernatural;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Shanghai Grand : forbidden love and international intrigue on the eve of the Second World War / by Grescoe, Taras,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."On the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily 'Mickey' Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China. At the height of the Depression, Hahn arrived in Shanghai after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she will never love again. After checking in to Sassoon's glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and a colourful gangster named Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen. But when she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium-smokers, displaced Chinese peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees--places her innate curiosity will lead her to explore first hand. Danger lurks on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung's Communists rise to power"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographies.; Hahn, Emily, 1905-1997; Hahn, Emily, 1905-1997; Sassoon, Elias Victor, 1881-1961; Cathay Hotel (Shanghai, China); Adventure and adventurers; Aliens; Americans; Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In a different key : the story of autism / by Donvan, John(John Joseph),1955-author.; Zucker, Caren(Caren Brenda),1961-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Nearly seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett of Forest, Mississippi became the first child diagnosed with autism. Beginning with his family's odyssey, In a Different Key tells the extraordinary story of this often misunderstood condition, and of the civil rights battles waged by the families of those who have it. Unfolding over decades, it is a beautifully rendered history of ordinary people determined to secure a place in the world for those with autism--by liberating children from dank institutions, campaigning for their right to go to school, challenging expert opinion on what it means to have autism, and persuading society to accept those who are different. It is the story of women like Ruth Sullivan, who rebelled against a medical establishment that blamed cold and rejecting "refrigerator mothers" for causing autism; and of fathers who pushed scientists to dig harder for treatments. Many others played starring roles too: doctors like Leo Kanner, who pioneered our understanding of autism; lawyers like Tom Gilhool, who took the families' battle for education to the courtroom; scientists who sparred over how to treat autism; and those with autism, like Temple Grandin, Alex Plank, and Ari Ne'eman, who explained their inner worlds and championed the philosophy of neurodiversity. This is also a story of fierce controversies--from the question of whether there is truly an autism "epidemic," and whether vaccines played a part in it; to scandals involving "facilitated communication," one of many treatments that have proved to be blind alleys; to stark disagreements about whether scientists should pursue a cure for autism. There are dark turns too: we learn about experimenters feeding LSD to children with autism, or shocking them with electricity to change their behavior; and the authors reveal compelling evidence that Hans Asperger, discoverer of the syndrome named after him, participated in the Nazi program that consigned disabled children to death. By turns intimate and panoramic, In a Different Key takes us on a journey from an era when families were shamed and children were condemned to institutions to one in which a cadre of people with autism push not simply for inclusion, but for a new understanding of autism: as difference rather than disability"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Autism spectrum disorders; Autism spectrum disorders.; People with disabilities.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Black dove : a novel / by McAdam, Colin,author.;
"In a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father's impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief. Running from a bully one night, Oliver finds refuge in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor's closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder. Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver decides to follow the shop-owner down the path of genetic editing. As he begins his transformation he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out. A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood's end"--
Subjects: Magic realist fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Authors; Boys; Fathers and sons; Genetic engineering; Revenge; Storytelling; Victims of bullying;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Lytton Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire [electronic resource] : by Edwards, Peter.aut; Loring, Kevin.aut; cloudLibrary;
From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, BC, the town that burned to the ground in 2021, comes a meditation on hometown―when hometown is gone. “It’s dire,” Greta Thunberg retweeted Mayor JanPolderman. “The whole town is on fire. It took a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.” Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heatwave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest placeon Earth, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, “It was a dark and stormy night,” Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, organized-crime journalist and author of seventeen non-fiction books, spent his childhood. Although only about 500 people lived in Lytton, Peter liked to joke that he was only the second-best writer to come from his tiny hometown. His grade-school classmate’s nephew Kevin Loring, Nlaka’pamux from Lytton First Nation, had grown up to be a Governor General’s Award–winning playwright.         The Nlaka’pamux called Lytton “The Centre of the World,” a view Buddhists would share in the late twentieth century, as they set up a temple just outside town. A gold rush in 1858 saw conflict with a wave of Californians come to a head with the Canyon War at the junction of the mighty Fraser and Thompson rivers. The Nlaka’pamux lost over thirty lives in that conflict, as did the American gold seekers. In modern times, many outsiders would seek shelter there, often people who just didn’t fit anywhere else and were hoping for a little anonymity in the mountains.         Told from the shared perspective of an Indigenous playwright and the journalist son of a settler doctor who pushed back against the divisions that existed between populations, Lytton portrays all the warmth, humour and sincerity of small-town life. A colourful little town that burned to the ground could be every town’s warning if we don’t take seriously what this unique place has to teach us.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Canada; Rural; Native Americans;
© 2024., Random House of Canada,
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The applicant : a novel / by Koca, Nazli,author.;
"A singular debut from an exciting new voice, The Applicant explores with scorching wit and startling brevity what it means to be an immigrant, woman, and emerging writer. It's 2017 and Leyla, a Turkish twentysomething living in Berlin, is scrubbing toilets at an Alice in Wonderland-themed hostel after failing her thesis, losing her student visa, and suing her German university in a Kafkaesque attempt to reverse her fate. Increasingly distant from what used to be at arm's reach-writerly ambitions, tight-knit friendships, a place to call home-Leyla attempts to find solace in the techno beats of Berlin's nightlife, with little success. Right as the clock winds down on the hold on her visa, Leyla meets a conservative Swedish tourist and-against her political convictions and better judgment-begins to fall in love, or something like it. Will she accept an IKEA life with the Volvo salesman and relinquish her creative dreams, or return to Turkey to her mother and sister, codependent and enmeshed, her father's ghost still haunting their lives? While she waits for the German court's verdict on her future, in the pages of her diary, Leyla begins to parse her unresolved past and untenable present. An indelible character at once precocious and imperiled, Leyla gives voice to the working-class and immigrant struggle to find safety, self-expression, and happiness. The Applicant is an extraordinary dissection of a liminal life between borders and identities, an original and darkly funny debut"--
Subjects: Diary fiction.; Novels.; Families; Immigrants; Man-woman relationships; Students; Women authors; Women, Turkish;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Castle Rock. [videorecording] / by Abrams, J. J.(Jeffrey Jacob),1966-television producer.; Holland, André,actor.; King, Stephen,1947-television producer.; Levy, Jane,1989-actor.; Lynskey, Melanie,actor.; Newman, Thomas,1955-composer (expression); Rutkowski, Richard,1966-director of photography.; Shaw, Sam,screenwriter,television producer.; Skarsgård, Bill,actor.; Spacek, Sissy,actor.; Sweet, Robin(Producer),television producer.; Thomason, Dustin,screenwriter,television producer.; Westlake, Chris,composer (expression); Bad Robot (Firm),production company.; Old Curiosity Shop (Firm),production company.; Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Firm),publisher.; Warner Bros. Television,production company.;
Directors of photography, Richard Rutkowski, Jeffrey Greeley ; editors, Trevor Baker, Matthew Colonna, David Bilow ; music, Chris Westlake, Thomas Newman.André Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Bill Skarsgård, Jane Levy, Sissy Spacek.A psychological horror anthology series set in the Stephen King multiverse, it is an original story that combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King's best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. In Season two, a feud between warring clans comes to a boil when budding psychopath Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan), Stephen King's nurse from hell, gets waylaid in Castle Rock.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Horror television programs.; Television programs.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Castle Rock (Me. : Imaginary place); Good and evil; Supernatural;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The morning star / by Knausgård, Karl Ove,1968-author.; Aitken, Martin,translator.; translation of:Knausgård, Karl Ove,1968-Morgenstjernen.English.;
Includes bibliographical references."A major new work from the author of the renowned My Struggle series, MORNING STAR is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonetheless Last night a new star appeared in the sky. The Morning Star. I know what it means. It means that it has begun. One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Their friend Egil has his own place nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky. It brings with it a mysterious sense of foreboding. Strange things start to happen as nine lives come together under the star. Hundreds of crabs amass on the road as Arne drives at night; Jostein receives a call about a death metal band found brutally murdered in a Satanic ritual; Kathrine conducts a funeral service for a man she met at the airport - but is he actually dead? The Morning Star is about life in all its mundanity and drama, the strangeness that permeates our world, and the darkness in us all. Karl Ove Knausgaard's astonishing new novel, his first after the My Struggle cycle, goes to the utmost limits of freedom and chaos, to what happens when forces beyond our comprehension are unleashed, and the realms of the living and the dead collide"--
Subjects: Paranormal fiction.; College teachers; Interpersonal relations; Life change events; Stars;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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