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Inferno: A Memoir by Catherine Cho

Paperback: My psychosis, for all its destruction and wrath, was a love story. - Catherine Cho

When Catherine left London for the US with her husband James, to introduce her family to their newborn son, she could not have envisaged how that trip would end. Catherine would find herself in an involuntary psych ward in New Jersey, separated from her husband and child, unable to understand who she was, and how she had got there.

It is difficult to know where the story of psychosis begins.

Was it the moment I met my son?

Or was it decided in the before, something rooted deeper in my fate, generations ago?

In an attempt to hold on to her sense of self, Catherine had to reconstruct her life, from her early childhood, to a harrowing previous relationship, and her eventual marriage to James.

The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Inferno (2020) is an unadulterated and highly accomplished memoir by a debut writer/literary agent.

About the author: Catherine Cho grew up in Kentucky and Virginia. She studied English Literature at New York University. After graduating from university, she took a detour into corporate law and received her JD from the University of Hong Kong. She worked in public affairs before pursuing a career in publishing.

Catherine is currently a Literary Agent specialising in adult fiction and non-fiction. She is also the Digital Rights Manager overseeing digital strategy at Madeleine Milburn Ltd. A believer in the power of story, Catherine is passionate about discovering new voices. She currently lives in London.

Two Weeks Behind The Fridge

Stay Home by Wendell Berry

The Recovery Of Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel

Hardback: Rose Gold Watts believed she was sick for eighteen years.

She thought she needed the feeding tube, the surgeries, the wheelchair...

Turns out her mother is a really good liar.

After five years in prison, Patty Watts is finally free. All she wants is to put old grievances behind her, reconcile with the daughter who testified against her - and care for her new infant grandson.

When Rose Gold agrees to have Patty move in, it seems their relationship is truly on the mend. And she has waited such a long time for her mother to come home.

But is she still the pliable young girl she once was? And is Patty still as keen on settling an old score?

Because if mothers never forget then daughters never forgive.

The Recovery of Rose Gold (2020) is a gripping tale of obsession, reconciliation and revenge from an incredible new talent in 2020's must-read thriller.

About the author: Stephanie Wrobel was born and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in the United States. A voracious reader as a child and a later fascination with language led to work as a copywriter at various advertising agencies. She has an MFA from Emerson College, has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review, and was nominated for the 2018 PEN/Robert J Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. After a move to the UK in 2014, she set to work writing The Recovery of Rose Gold. She now lives in London - with her husband and dog, Moose Barwinkle - where she writes full-time.

Rating: 4/5

Christ Vere Latitat

Some Form Of Isolation

On A Positive Note (Miriam Escofet)

Blessed

Our Lady Of Silence: The Devotion of Pope Francis by Fr Emiliano Antenucci

Paperback: In the Vatican offices, placed in pride of place, is a relatively unknown Marian icon in which our Blessed Mother has her finger pressed to her lips. Commissioned and gifted to the Holy Father by Capuchin Friar Fr Emiliano Antenucci, this icon is known as Our Lady of Silence, a Marian devotion which promotes the importance of silence.

This devotion symbolises much of what is important to Pope Francis, such as not speaking ill of others, and the value of listening to God in the silence of our hearts. By embracing this devotion, we can embrace these values which are so dear to the Holy Father.

This booklet offers an introduction to this devotion, as Fr Antenucci himself explains the history of this icon and its importance. A rich selection of devotions to Our Lady of Silence follows, helping us to recall the importance of thinking about what we are saying, welcoming silence, and enabling us to pray this devotion along with the Holy Father.

About the author: Fr Emiliano Antenucci is a Capuchin from Vasto, Italy. He is an author and retreat leader specialising in the spirituality of Christian silence.

Broken Faith: Inside The Word Of Faith Fellowship, One Of America's Most Dangerous Cults by Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr

Hardback: An explosive investigation into Word of Faith Fellowship, a secretive evangelical cult whose charismatic female leader is a master of manipulation

In 1979, Jane Whaley, a fiery preacher with a thick Southern drawl, attracted a small group of followers - twenty-two men and women drawn in by her passion, and promise that through prayer and deliverance, they could turn their lives around.

In the years since, Whaley's following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. In the eyes of her followers, she is a prophet - to disobey her means eternal damnation. It could also mean hours of physical abuse. The control she exerts is absolute: she decides what her followers study, where they work, whom they can marry - even when they can have sex.

Broken Faith (2020) is the meticulously reported story of a singular female cult leader, a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Broken Faith offers both a cautionary tale and a deeply emotional examination of faith, resilience, and family. It is the story of an entire community's descent into darkness - and for some, the winding journey back to the light.

Broken Faith (2020) is a PopSugar Best True Crime Book of 2020.

About the authors: Mitch Weiss is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for the Associated Press and the coauthor of numerous books, most recently The Heart of Hell: The Untold Story of Courage and Sacrifice in the Shadow of Iwo Jima. He lives in South Carolina.

Holbrook Mohr is an award-winning investigative journalist for the Associated Press. He has covered natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, judicial bribery schemes, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and mass shootings. He lives in Mississippi.

Writers And Lovers

"Just A Present For A Friend," She Explained

Gone At Midnight: The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam (A True Story) by Jake Anderson

Hardback: A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting history. A missing young woman. A disturbing video followed by a shocking discovery. A cold-case mystery that has become an internet phenomenon - and for one determined journalist, a life-changing quest toward uncomfortable truths.

 

Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on 31 January 2013, after she checked into downtown L.A.’s Cecil Hotel - a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa’s nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only apparent clue was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa, uploaded to YouTube in hopes of public assistance.

 

As the eerie elevator video went viral, so did the questions of its tens of millions of viewers. 

Was Elisa’s death caused by murder, suicide, or paranormal activity? 

Was it connected to the Cecil’s sinister reputation? 

And in that video, what accounted for Elisa’s strange behaviour? 

With the help of web sleuths and investigators from around the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the facts behind a death that had become a macabre internet meme, as well as a magnet for conspiracy theorists.

 

In poring through Elisa’s revealing online journals and social-media posts, Anderson realized he shared more in common with the young woman than he imagined. His search for justice and truth became a personal journey, a dangerous descent into one of America's quiet epidemics. Along the way, he exposed a botched investigation and previously unreported disclosures from inside sources who suggest there may have been a corporate conspiracy and a police cover-up. 

In Gone at Midnight (2020), Anderson chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who Elisa Lam really was and what - or whom - she was running from, and presents shocking new evidence that may re-open one of the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of the century. Gone at Midnight is an excellent and informative read, very well-researched and well-written.

About the author: Jake Anderson is a writer, filmmaker, investigative journalist, activist and web publisher. He runs the popular website The Ghost Diaries and is a contributing journalist for The Anti-Media and multiple alternative media outlets. He has been a featured guest on Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, Spaced Out, Nocturnal Frequency, West of the Rockies, and Common Ground. Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, he is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and currently lives in Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, Mexico. 

Find more of his work at Theghostdiaries.com where he analyzes cold cases and unexplained mysteries. Follow him on twitter @OverTheMoonSF.

Crime Queen P D James' Home In Holland Park

Definition: Mysa (Swedish)

An Ignorant Man!

Happy Weekend

Modern Times

Man

Forever And Five Days (True Crime) by Lowell Cauffiel

Paperback: Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. - 1 Corinthians 13.

Alpine Manor was the finest nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Clean, efficient, and safe, elderly patients and their loved ones could always rely on the care they received there.

Until 29 November 1988, when the shocking news exploded in the local media. Alpine Manor nurses' aides, Catherine May Wood, a twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother, and Gwendolyn Gail Graham, her lover, were arrested in connection with the horrible suffocation murders of five female patients.

Cunning and evasive, Wood finally confessed to police about her bizarre relationship with Graham and claimed that the killings were part of their eternal love pact to spell M-U-R-D-E-R with the victims' names.

The sensational trial stunned the nation with its lurid details of the obsessive sexual violence and blind jealousy that led to the slaughter of innocent women. Wood and Graham were convicted for murder and sentenced to prison. Graham received five consecutive life sentences; Wood a total of twenty to forty years.

In the bestselling tradition of Small Sacrifices and Fatal Vision, Lowell Cauffiel's account of the Alpine Manor murders - Forever and Five Days (1992) - is a chilling saga of inhuman crimes and insights into the minds of the psychopaths driven to commit them.

About the author: Lowell Joseph Cauffiel (born 1951 in Michigan) is an American true crime author, novelist, screenwriter and film and television producer. An award-winning reporter with the Detroit News and Detroit Monthly Magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, Cauffiel began his bookwriting career in 1988 with Masquerade: A True Story of Seduction, Compulsion and Murder. That title and his 1997 New York Times bestseller House of Secrets have appeared on many critics' lists of the best works in American true crime. As a nonfiction author, he is known for his meticulous research and accuracy, delivered in novel-like, page-turner style. Thematically, Cauffiel's books often explore how people embrace popular trends and exalt American values to hide their dark intentions and destructive acts.

Cauffiel is an avid surfer and motorcyclist. He has also worked in alcohol and drug rehabilitation circles as a volunteer and headed a research grant about alcohol problems among young people for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA) for the National Institutes of Health.

He is the father of actress Jessica Cauffiel.

World Book and Copyright Day 2020

Three A Day

The Holy Rosary Through The Visions Of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich edited by Father Mark Higgins

Paperback: The German Mystic born in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, was privileged by Almighty God with sensory visions disclosing the earthly life of God Incarnate, of His Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary and of the progression of salvation history from Genesis to the Apocalypse.

In this short book, the reader will find a carefully collated set of rosary meditations faithfully drawn from the texts of these visions. Meditations taken directly from our saint’s writings are provided for every bead of the rosary, allowing you to ponder at greater depth the secrets revealed to Blessed Anne Catherine and enable you to truly immerse yourself in the marvellous historical events which occurred in the life of Our Divine Redeemer and His Holy Mother.

This work is a work of prayer and was revised multiple times in order to offer golden nuggets of contemplative material in every bead of Our Lady’s Psalter.

For the benefit of the reader, meditations have also been offered, once again, drawn entirely from Our Saint’s writings, for the Mysteries of Light, which are popular among many Catholics, as well as five additional mysteries, entitled “the Hopeful Mysteries”, which cover events in Salvation History and in the life of Our Blessed Mother prior to the Incarnation.

Blessed Anne offers a wealth of detail for each of these mysteries and these details have been collated for you in The Holy Rosary (Catholic Way Publishing, 2019).

The Holy Rosary is compiled and edited by Father Mark Higgins and translated from the German by The Very Reverend K E Schmoger, CSSR.

About the author: Anne Catherine Emmerich was born to poor parents at Westphalia, Germany in 1774. When she was twenty-eight years old, she became an Augustinian nun at Dulmen, and apparently began to experience ecstasies as a result of spiritual favours. She received the Stigmata in 1813, confined to her bed, and reportedly convinced a vicar-general, Overberg, and three physicians of her sanctity. She later reported that she had seen visions of Christ and the souls in purgatory as a child, as well as a circular core with three sections representing the Trinity. She is the author of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, and The Bitter Passion and the Life of Mary.

Anne Emmerich died on 9 February 1824 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004.

Life Of The Blessed Virgin Mary by Anne Catherine Emmerich

Paperback: Life Of The Blessed Virgin Mary (2009) is an incredibly revealing and edifying background of Our Lady, her parents and ancestors, St Joseph, plus other people who figured into the coming of Christ. Included are many descriptions about the Nativity and the early life of Our Lord, as well as the final days of the Blessed Mother - all from the visions of this great mystic.

Clemens Brentano was a well-known and well-to-do German poet and writer. After he had met the German nun and mystic, Anna Emmerich, on 24 September 1818, he was so amazed, he decided to be her stenographer. He later wrote, "I feel that I must stay here, that I must not leave this admirable creature before her death. I feel that my mission is here, and that God has heard the prayer I made when I begged him to give me something to do for His glory that would not be above my strength. I shall endeavour to gather and preserve the treasures of grace that I have here before my eyes." So, daily, for six years, this writer sublimated his career to take dictation. Why? Because he could see that this was God's work.

Beginning in 1818, Anna Katharina Emmerich dictated to Clemens Brentano over a period of 6 years various details about the life of Jesus Christ in chronological order. She had additional visions of "celebrated" events such as Christmas, Easter, and Saints Holidays when those feast days occurred in the Catholic Church. Anna's visions, as the reader will see, are quite detailed.

The primary additions to this new edition of Life Of The Blessed Virgin Mary are

1. Woodcut figures that were included in the German 1852 edition have been included.

2. Archaic word usage and all spelling has been revised to modern American English.

3. All place names and proper names have been updated to modern spelling norms.

4. Textual omissions of previous editions have been corrected.

5. German section titles, omitted by the English translator, have been translated and included.

6. Some new footnotes have been added.

About the author: Anne Catherine Emmerich was born to poor parents at Westphalia, Germany in 1774. When she was twenty-eight years old, she became an Augustinian nun at Dulmen, and apparently began to experience ecstasies as a result of spiritual favours. She received the Stigmata in 1813, confined to her bed, and reportedly convinced a vicar-general, Overberg, and three physicians of her sanctity. She later reported that she had seen visions of Christ and the souls in purgatory as a child, as well as a circular core with three sections representing the Trinity. She is the author of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, and The Bitter Passion and the Life of Mary.

Anne Emmerich died on 9 February 1824 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004.