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Like crazy : life with my mother and her invisible friends / by Mathews, Dan,author.;
"Dan Mathews knew that his eccentric mother, Perry Lawrence, was outspoken, foul-mouthed, and, at seventy-nine years old, unable to maintain her fiercely independent lifestyle--so he flew her across the country (with a gay man as her escort) to live with him in a dilapidated Victorian townhouse in Portsmouth, Virginia. What he didn't know was that she was schizophrenic. Over the next five years, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, experiments in drug use, and an unshakeable sense of humor as they faced down illness, natural disasters, and Perry's steady decline. With the help of an ever-expanding circle of friends--boyfriends new and old, strippers, DJs, gun nuts, Evangelical Christians, and everyone in between--they flipped the parent-child relationship on its head, with the globe-trotting animal rights activist finally learning to slow down and care for the woman who raised him. But it wasn't until after a kicking-and-screaming trip to the emergency room that Dan discovered that his mother's lifelong tendency to go it alone wasn't just a manifestation of her free spirit but was actually the inescapable element of a serious and undiagnosed disorder. Witty, emotionally powerful, and deeply moving, Like Crazy is a warm and engrossing memoir about mental illness, reinvention, and the remarkable power of community. Lovingly told, Mathews's memoir is also a profound meditation on the joys and pitfalls of caring for an aging family member and of the remarkable growth that takes place as a child steps into the role of the parent"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Mathews, Dan.; Mathews, Perry Lawrence; Mothers and sons; Schizophrenics; Schizophrenics;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The unexpected spy : from the CIA to the FBI, my secret life taking down some of the world's most notorious terrorists / by Walder, Tracy,author.; Blau, Jessica Anya,author.;
"A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs. When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists-men who swore they'd never speak to a woman-until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn't a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate-and thus change the world"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Walder, Tracy.; United States. Central Intelligence Agency; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation; Intelligence service; Terrorism; War on Terrorism, 2001-2009.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The water dancer [sound recording] : a novel / by Coates, Ta-Nehisi,author.; Morton, Joe,1947-narrator.; Random House Audio Publishing,publisher.;
Read by Joe Morton.Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, all Hiram wants is to return to the Walker Plantation to free the family he left behind--but to do so, he must first master his magical gift and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss. This is a bracingly original vision of the world of slavery, written with the narrative force of a great adventure. Driven by the author's bold imagination and striking ability to bring readers deep into the interior lives of his brilliantly rendered characters, The Water Dancer is the story of America's oldest struggle--the struggle to tell the truth--from one of our most exciting thinkers and beautiful writers.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Audiobooks.; Slavery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In the Upper Country / by Thomas, Kai,author.;
"Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist and activist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by veterans of the War of 1812 and refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south--whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border. One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned. But Cash doesn't want to confess--instead she proposes a barter: A story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of life stories that reveal the interwoven history of Canada and the United States; of Indigenous peoples from a wide swath of what is called North America and the Black men and women brought here into slavery and their free descendents on both sides of the border. As Cash's time runs out, Lensinda realizes she knows far less than she believed, not only about the complicated tapestry of her people's ancestry, but also of her own family history. And it seems that Cash may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda's destiny. Moving from Virginia to Kentucky, from Montreal to Indigenous communities on the shores of the Great Lakes and Black communties in southern Ontario and a fictionalized version of Owen Sound, these two women's life stories weave together love, tragedy, and survival, to map their own unexpected interconnections onto the history of North America in an entirely new and resonant way."--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Slavery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The dry season : a memoir of pleasure in a year without sex / by Febos, Melissa,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The award-winning author of Girlhood returns with a revelatory chronicle of her year of celibacy and its transformative impact on her relationships -- to others, and to herself. In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break -- for three months she would abstain from dating and casual sex. Ever since her teens, she'd been in one entanglement after another. As she puts it, she could trace a "daisy chain of romances" from her adolescence to her mid-thirties. And no matter where her partners identified on the gender spectrum, she always instinctively moulded herself to appeal to them. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy not knowing it would become the most sensual and satisfying year of her life. Unburdened by preoccupations that had consumed her for decades, she learned to relish the delights of solitude and the thrill of living on her own terms. A reckoning with lifelong patterns and dominant systems of power, The Dry Season puts Febos's experience into conversation with those of women throughout history -- from Sappho to mystic nuns to Virginia Woolf -- situating it within a lineage of queer and feminist role models in unapologetic pursuit of their ambitions and ideals. Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, Febos tells a story that's as much about celibacy as it is about its inverse: pleasure, desire, fulfillment. Infused with her fearless honesty and keen intellect, it's the memoir of a woman learning to live at the centre of her story, and a much-needed catalyst for a more radical conversation around sex and love"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Febos, Melissa; Authors, American; Celibacy.; Single women; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Wake Up and Open Your Eyes [electronic resource] : by Chapman, Clay McLeod.aut; Levine, Noah.nrt; Nankani, Soneela.nrt; Moore-Lambert, Charlotte.nrt; Tusing, Megan.nrt; narrators, various.nrt; Tager, Kelli.nrt; Hempel, Joe.nrt; Hite, Cary.nrt; Hellegers, Neil.nrt; Penning, Marni.nrt; Ochlan, P. J..nrt; cloudLibrary;
From Vulture’s “master of horror” Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless and emotionally charged social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media, for fans of The Last of Us and Where Evil Lurks Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reckoning” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help. Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him. But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes? This ambitious, searing novel from “one of horror’s modern masters” holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake listeners to the core.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Psychological; Occult & Supernatural; Horror;
© 2025., Blackstone Audio,
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How the word is passed : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America / by Smith, Clint,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nations collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, this book illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, here is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.
Subjects: African Americans.; History.; Discrimination.; Ethnology; Minorities; African Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Black ops : the life of a CIA shadow warrior / by Prado, Ric,author.;
"A memoir by the highest-ranking covert warrior to lift the veil of secrecy and offer a glimpse into the shadow wars that America has fought since the Vietnam Era. Enrique Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled their war-torn home for the hope of a better life in America. Fifty years later, the Cuban refugee retired from the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA equivalent of a two-star general. Black Ops is the story of Ric's legendary career that spanned two eras, the Cold War and the Age of Terrorism. Operating in the shadows, Ric and his fellow CIA officers fought a little-seen and virtually unknown war to keep USA safe from those who would do it harm. After duty stations in Central, South America, and the Philippines, Black Ops follows Ric into the highest echelons of the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia. In late 1995, he became Deputy Chief of Station and co-founding member of the Bin Laden Task Force. Three years later, after serving as head of Korean Operations, Ric took on one of the most dangerous missions of his career: re-establish a once-abandoned CIA station inside a hostile nation long since considered a front line of the fight against Islamic terrorism. He and his team carried out covert operations and developed assets that proved pivotal in the coming War on Terror. A harrowing memoir of life in the shadowy world of assassins, terrorists, spies and revolutionaries, Black Ops is a testament to the courage, creativity and dedication of the Agency's Special Activities Group and its elite shadow warriors"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Prado, Ric.; United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Cold War; Refugees; Special operations (Military science); War on Terrorism, 2001-2009;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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American cartel : inside the battle to bring down the opioid industry / by Higham, Scott,author.; Horwitz, Sari,author.;
"AMERICAN CARTEL is an unflinching and deeply documented dive into the culpability of the drug companies behind the staggering death toll of the opioid epidemic. It follows of a small band of DEA agents led by Joe Rannazzisi, a tough-talking New Yorker who had spent a storied 30 years bringing down bad guys, along with a band of lawyers led by West Virginia native Paul Farrell Jr. who fought to hold the drug industry to account in the face of the worst man-made drug epidemic in American history. It is the story of underdogs prevailing over corporate greed and political cowardice, persevering in the face of predicted failure, and how they found some semblance of justice for the families of the dead with the most complex civil litigation in American history. The lawyers and investigators discovered hundreds of thousands of confidential corporate emails and memos during courtroom combat with legions of white-shoe law firms defending the opioid industry. One breathtaking disclosure after another-from emails that mocked addicts to invoices chronicling the rise of pill mills--showed the indifference of big business to the epidemic's toll. Its narrative approach echoes work such as A Civil Action and The Insider, moving dramatically between corporate boardrooms, courthouses, lobbying firms, DEA field offices and Capitol Hill while capturing the human toll of the epidemic on America's streets. AMERICAN CARTEL is the story of those who were on the front lines of the fight to stop the human carnage. Along the way, they suffer a string of defeats, some of their careers destroyed by the very same government officials who swore to uphold the law, before they finally prevail over some of the most powerful corporate and political influences in the nation"--
Subjects: United States. Drug Enforcement Administration.; Drug control; Opioid abuse; Pharmaceutical industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Mind Games A Novel [electronic resource] : by Roberts, Nora.aut; LaVoy, January.nrt; cloudLibrary;
"Narrator January LaVoy brings a richly layered performance to a story.... She expertly handles the large cast of multigenerational characters" —AudioFile on Hideaway The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Identity presents a suspenseful new novel of tragedy and trauma, love and family, and the evil that awaits. As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother’s. Here, twelve-year-old Thea can run free and breathe in the smells of pine and fresh bread and Grammie’s handmade candles. But as her parents head back to suburban Virginia, they have no idea they’re about to cross paths with a ticking time bomb. Back in Kentucky, Thea and her grandmother Lucy both awaken from the same nightmare. And though the two have never discussed the special kind of sight they share, they know as soon as their tearful eyes meet that something terrible has happened. The kids will be staying with Grammie now in Redbud Hollow, and thanks to Thea’s vision, their parents’ killer will spend his life in supermax. Over time, Thea will make friends, build a career, find love. But that ability to see into minds and souls still lurks within her, and though Grammie calls it a gift, it feels more like a curse—because the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability. Thea can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away. He knows it, and hungers for vengeance. A long, silent battle will be waged between them—and eventually bring them face to face, and head to head… A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Contemporary Women;
© 2024., Macmillan Audio,
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