mental health

When my friends started raving about the TV series, Outlander, I was more, meh. It sounds a bit outlandish, frankly. A twenty-something combat nurse from England finishes her tour of duty in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. On vacation in the Scottish Highlands with a husband she barely knows, after having been separated for five years during the war, she gets sucked back in time to the 18th century. Great. Another military conflict. Only this time, being English, she's on the side of the occupier in occupied lands. She eventually falls in love with a hunky (and educated, and

Attempting to understand the human experience, and dealing with the aftermath of tragedy is something to which all people can relate. Mary Beth Keane’s novel Ask Again, Yes explores this phenomenon through the Gleeson and Stanhope families- neighbors in a suburb of New York City. The reader is introduced to the parents of both families at the beginning of the novel, and walks through life with their youngest children, Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope. We see the way various characters react to experiences with marriage, mental health, love, betrayal, and forgiveness. I found myself struggling

I think I would have come around to romance novels years earlier if I had only realized how much angst could precede the genre's requisite happy endings. Hate To Want You nailed both angst and satisfaction.

This steamy tale follows Livvy and Nicholas, once-lovers separated by family disapproval and time, who find that years of miscommunications and misunderstandings loom as large as ever . . . but so does the sizzling chemistry between them. I started out feeling somewhat lukewarm toward the characters but had heard enough praise of Alisha Rai's books to keep me going. I was a little afraid

It's been a long time since a book has transported me so completely. Has taken me so deeply into myself that I become oblivious to the world around me and my head spins with disconnection when I try to regain awareness. Just me and the book, and nothing else. I started reading and was supposed to stop because life was still going on around me, but I didn't. I couldn't find my way back. So life moved on without me until I finished the book. Now I must figure out how to catch up, but that's okay. It was worth stopping at a special place for a while.

That's not entirely different than what

Calvin was born on the day the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published. His parents claim that they didn’t name him after it, that’s it’s just a fluke. They don’t understand what’s the big deal about his grandfather putting a stuffed tiger named Hobbes into baby Calvin’s crib, either. Calvin understands the significance. He is special: eternally bound to Bill Watterson, the creator of the beloved comic strip.

Then his mom accidentally washes Hobbes to death and everything changes.

When I was nine or so, Mom washed Hobbes to death. She threw him into the washing machine with a few

If you've read Jenny Lawson's first book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, or if you follow her online, you know that her head is a very, very strange place--in all the best ways, assuming your head is also a very strange place. I don't generally think my head is a strange place, but I do love the way Jenny Lawson's mind works and the way she writes about it, so maybe I'm stranger than I think I am.

Furiously Happy is much less autobiographical than her first book. She still tells stories about her life, but it's more about what she's been doing in recent years. Like in her first book

There are two things you know. One: You were there. Two: You couldn't have been there.

Wondering how that can be? So is Caden. Sometimes. When he stops to think about it. Often he just goes along and doesn't question things, just accepts that's the way they are. But other times he feels out of sync with his family, friends, and others around him. He feels confused.

Readers sharing Caden's story from inside his head will feel confused almost all of the time. It skips around from one place to another--one reality to another. Caden is a high school student living a typical life. Caden is on

I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read this masterful literary homage. I'm not the only one who sees the connection. Margaret Wappler writes in the October 23, 2015 issue of the New York Times Book Review: "King’s devotion to a passionately experimental style, in a genre often beholden to formula, is inspiring. Kurt Vonnegut might have written a book like this, if he had ever been cyber-bullied on Facebook." 

I'm telling you: get your hands on this book. RIGHT NOW. Make yourself a drink and some snacks, grab your favorite blanket, and get ready for a sensational, surreal ride in which you

Molly is driving back, but she doesn't know from where. And she doesn't know to where.  All she knows is that she should be in school, but she's in her car instead. Suddenly she sees a motorcycle speeding up behind her. Somehow she knows that he is coming for her. She passes through the intersection as the light turns red. The motorcycle keeps coming; it runs the red light. A truck enters the intersection, catching the back tire of the motorcycle, sending is spinning.  The rider flies through the air, over Molly's car and lands on the asphalt right in front of her. She brakes, screaming. She

Mysti Murphy is not having a good 7th grade year. Her only friend, Anibal Gomez, has developed a crush on a Cheer Squad girl and has decided to change his image in an effort to be noticed. Part of Anibal's "social experiment" is to develop a hipster persona that he thinks his new crush will admire. To see if his experiment works, he needs to ditch Mysti. Anibal decides that he and Mysti can talk and text in the evenings and on weekends, but they must have NO contact during school. Mysti has no other friends, so she now sits alone at the Loser Island in the cafeteria at lunchtime. At home

When Haley calls home and no one answers the phone by the 2nd ring, she is figures her dad is sleeping. When no one picks up by the 10th ring, she hopes he is mowing the lawn. When no one picks up by the 20th, she knows something is wrong. Something is horribly wrong. She begs a ride from Finn, the editor of the school newspaper who has been nagging her to write for him. But the car is too small, Finn drives to slow, and something is wrong at home. Haley can't breathe, she can't think, she needs out! When a police car pulls up beside them at a stop-light, Haley is down to her last thread of

Pepper (we only ever know him as Pepper) gets into a fight with three police officers who admit him to Hyde Park mental hospital in Queens, New York because a trip to the precinct would involve too much paperwork. Pepper isn’t crazy. He’s just unlucky, and he gets less lucky as things go. The Devil in Silver while billed as a Horror/Thriller – and yes it is terrifying - is at its heart a book about how bad luck has a way of following those on the bottom rungs of society. Hyde Park mental patients are stuck within an institution that doesn’t just allow bad luck but helps to create it. This isn

Dr. Erik Maria Bark has sworn never to hypnotize a patient again.  Then Detective Joona phones about a triple homicide in which a single survivor may be able to identify the killer and save another possible target.  Joona and the boy’s doctor believe that hypnotism may be the only way to get at the truth.   This is just the beginning of a roller coaster ride through murder, kidnapping, abuse and mental illness.  The short-chapter style lends itself to the story’s fast-paced narrative in which even the Swedish landscape plays a part in the plot.  Back stories are not told just for information

Patrick Hamilton is best remembered for his plays Rope and Gaslight which were made into well-known films. However, he also wrote a number of novels and due to a resurgence of interest in his work, they are now being re-issued. Set in London's Earl's Court before the outbreak of World War II, Hangover Square is about a shy, schizophrenic loner named George Harvey Bone who has a profound infatuation with small time actress, Netta Longdon. Netta and her friends are a cruel and dissipated lot who treat George with contempt and sponge off him. George tolerates these cruelties with the hope that

Patrick Cockburn, a globe trotting journalist covering the war in Afghanistan, receives a phone call that his beloved son has suffered a breakdown. Twenty-year old Henry has dived fully clothed into the freezing waters near his home and nearly drowned. This is not the first bizarre behavior Henry has exhibited but it is the most desperate. Doctors soon diagnosis Henry with schizophrenia. This story is told in turns by Patrick, his son Henry and includes journal entries by Henry's mother. Nothing remains intact in this family except their steadfast love for their son and their

I read It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini years ago but the story has always stuck with me, I think it was something I could really relate to. It's about a guy who is at the top of his class at his public school. He is a pretty competitive person (at least academically) and he desperately wants to get into this very elite prep school, probably more for the challenge of getting accepted than actually going.

Well he makes it into the school, but unlike his public school this one is filled with geniuses. This is when he begins to think that perhaps he isn't all that smart, isn't all that

I’m generally a big fan of depressive ruminations, so you can imagine my dismay in discovering Nathan Rabin’s memoir The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture is funny and a fast read. Rabin’s memoir focuses on his involuntary commitment to a mental hospital after a suicide attempt, followed by getting dumped in a group home as an adolescent after his mother abandons him and his father, who is disabled, can no longer care for him. Rabin is a film critic and head writer for The Onion’s AV Club, so his memoir is organized with chapter headings that refer to movies and other pop