The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder by Charles Graeber

Paperback: After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favourite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Cullen's murderous career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him.

Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, The Good Nurse (2013) weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal.

Graeber's portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanour masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the hardboiled, unrelenting work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen's professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there's no telling how many more lives could have been lost.

In the tradition of In Cold Blood, The Good Nurse does more than chronicle Cullen's deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America's medical system. Harrowing and irresistibly paced, this book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.

About the author: Charles Graeber is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder (published by Twelve). He spent many childhood hours in hospitals, waiting in nursing stations and visiting patients with his physician father. He deferred Tulane Medical School to pursue a story in Cambodia and never returned to medical school.

He is also a contributor to numerous publications including Wired, The New Yorker, GQ, New York Magazine, Outside Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek and The New York Times. His writing has been honoured with the Overseas Press Club award for the year's Outstanding International Journalism, a New York Press Club Prize, several National Magazine Award-nominations, and inclusion in anthologies including The Best American Crime Writing, The Best American Science Writing, The Best American Business Writing, The Best of National Geographic Adventure and The Best of 20 Years of Wired.

A native Iowan, he now lives in Nantucket, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.

Lockdown Easing

The Mechanism (True Crime/Politics) by Vladimir Netto

Paperback: A gripping narrative of power, corruption and greed, The Mechanism is the true story of how a simple investigation into money laundering uncovered the biggest corruption scandal in human history.

When a small team of investigators discovered that a black market currency dealer was operating out of a Brazilian petrol station, they could never have imagined that their work would destroy the government and lead to the impeachment of two presidents. As the trail leads further and further into the centre of power, the search for the truth and pursuit of justice become ever more crucial.

Taut and riveting, with more plot twists than the most compelling political thriller, The Mechanism is an essential work of non-fiction that exposes the rottenness caused when politicians and big businesses believe they are above the law.

First published with the title Lava Jato in Brazil in 2016, The Mechanism (2019) is an extraordinary real story of power, corruption and greed of a crime network so deep it brought down a nation. It inspired the major Netflix series from José Padilha, the creator of Narcos.

The Mechanism is translated from the Portuguese by Robin Patterson.

About the author: Vladimir Netto has been a journalist for twenty-two years. He is a reporter for Globo TV and the vice-president of the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association. He has received several awards, most of which connected to scoops in big corruption cases. The Mechanism is his first book, and was the bestselling non-fiction book in Brazil in 2016.

About the translator: Robin Patterson came late to literary translating, having previously pursued a legal career in various parts of the world. He has participated in both the Birkbeck and the BCLT literary translation summer schools and, in 2013, was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa as part of the BCLT mentorship programme. He has translated or co-translated a variety of works by Portuguese, Brazilian and Angolan authors, including Luandino Vieira's Our Musseque, José Luis Peixoto's In Galveias, Lúcio Cardoso's Chronicle of the Murdered House (which won the 2017 Best Translated Book Award), and The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis.

The Way Of A Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues On His Way (2-in-1)

Paperback: I heard many very good homilies on prayer but they were all instructions about prayer in general: What is prayer, the necessity of prayer and the fruits of prayer? But no one spoke of the way in to succeed in prayer.

The 19th-century Russian spiritual classic on prayer, The Way of a Pilgrim and its sequel, The Pilgrim Continues On His Way, have long fascinated those who have stumbled on this winsome tale.

First published in Russian in 1884 under the title, Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father, this religious masterpiece recounts the adventures of an anonymous Russian pilgrim - who might be called Epifan - who roams the vast Siberian steppes reciting the Jesus Prayer in order to obey Christ's injunction to "pray without ceasing."

Apparently a wise old monk collected for posterity the captivating accounts of the pilgrim's exploits in which he delved into the value and power of prayer and his increasing understanding of God's providence as he commits himself to a life of prayer.

The manuscript, which began to circulate privately after the pilgrim disappeared headed for Jerusalem, is reissued here in an updated translation adapted for American readers.

The pilgrim's charming tales and dedicated lifestyle are an inspirational challenge for all who would discover their own spiritual roots, pursue the contemplative life or assimilate their piety to our modern society. Many keep this unique devotional book close at hand for they have found it a comforting source of hope when they encounter trials along life's way. It is a humble, simple and beautiful narrative.

This edition is published by Magdalene Press in 2015.

About the author: By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner, and by my calling a homeless wanderer of humblest origin, roaming from place to place. My possessions consist of a knapsack with dry crusts of bread on my back and in my bosom the Holy Bible. That is all!

Aim Higher! Spiritual and Marian Reflections of St Maximilian Kolbe

Paperback: When you are preparing to read about the Immaculata, do not forget you are entering into contact with a living being. She will reveal herself through the sentences and suggest thoughts and convictions of which the author probably did not think.

Such are the intimate rewards of reading Marian theology with an attitude of faith-filled expectancy, wrote St Maximilian Kolbe. How much more will a reader encounter Mary by pondering the thoughts of Kolbe himself, the great 20th century priest, publisher, theologian and matyr of charity.

May this be your experience with Aim Higher! (2019, fifth printing), a collection of spiritual insights by the saint Pope Paul VI called "clairvoyant" in his anticipation of the Marian theology of the Second Vatican Council.

An entire section of Aim Higher! is devoted to the interior development of religious. In this hyper-secularized age when priests and religious are pressured to adopt attitudes contrary to ones authentically Catholic and Christian, Aim Higher! could become an invaluable gift for a seminarian, sister or parish priest you may know and care about.

Enjoy the clear-sighted wisdom of the "patron of our difficult century" as Pope John Paul II proclaimed Kolbe. And don't be afraid to aim higher!

Aim Higher! is translated from the Polish by Father Dominic Wisz OFM CONV.

About the author: Raymund Kolbe was born in Poland in 1894. His family was very poor, but they were rich in spirit. In 1914, his father was captured and killed by the Russians for fighting for Polish independence.

Young Raymund had a great faith and strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. He went to school to be a Franciscan priest and was ordained in 1918, taking the name Maximilian Maria. After studying in Rome, Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919. He used modern printing presses to spread the Good News through monthly, and eventually daily, religious publications. He also spent six years as a missionary in Japan.

During World War II, Father Kolbe hid as many as 2000 Jewish people and Poles, who were also persecuted, in his Polish monastery. In 1941, Maximilian was arrested by the Nazis, who soon sent him to Auschwitz concentration camp. This was a terrible place where the Nazis killed many people.

In July of that year, several prisoners escaped, and as punishment, the camp commander picked 10 men to be starved to death. Franciszek Gajowniczek, a husband and father, was one of these sentenced to death. Father Maximilian Kolbe offered his life in the man's place. Each day, he celebrated Mass for the other starving prisoners and prayed and sang with them. When he outlived many of the other men, he was killed by lethal injection.

On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian Kolbe as a “martyr of charity.” Present at the ceremony was Franciszek Gajowniczek, the Auschwitz prisoner whose place Maximilian had taken in giving his own life. Gajowniczek lived for 54 years after St Maximilian Kolbe had taken his place in death.

Lockdown: Inside Brazil's Most Dangerous Prison by Drauzio Varella

Paperback: The Carandiru House of Detention, in the teeming city of Sao Paulo, was the largest and most crowded prison in Latin America. Known as the 'Old House', it was also highly unusual in the way it was governed.

Closed to the outside world, and even largely to the wardens, it was run almost entirely by the inmates themselves, who created a unique society complete with politics, hierarchies and a system of justice.

In 1989, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in Brazil, with only a handful of physicians attempting to treat an inmate population of over 7,000, the medical situation at Carandiru was dire. A city doctor and oncologist, Drauzio Varella, volunteered his time at Carandiru over the course of thirteen years, in an effort to combat the rampant disease.

As he gained the inmates' trust he was given access to their society, where he was overwhelmed by the profound humanity and freedom of spirit shown by these men, despite their terrible crimes and the inhuman conditions in which they lived.

Estação Carandiru (Lockdown) (1999) is Varella's powerful depiction of life on the inside, wherein he recounts the prisoners' colourful and surprising stories. The book ends with the massacre by the police of the prisoners that ultimately brought down the 'Old House'.

Lockdown won two prestigious Jabuti Prizes for the best work of non-fiction and the book of the year.

Lockdown is translated from the Brazilian by Alison Entrekin in 2012.

About the author: Dr Drauzio Varella was born in São Paulo in 1943. With a degree in medicine from the University of São Paulo, he worked at the Cancer Hospital for twenty years. He is a noted medical science popularizer and public commentator on issues such as prison conditions, social welfare and his professed atheism and scepticism, as well as the bestselling author of numerous books, for which he has received literary awards including the Prêmio Jabuti. He is a pioneer of HIV treatment in Brazil, and from 1989 to 2001, he volunteered to work as an unpaid physician in one of the largest jails of Brazil, the Casa de Detenção Carandiru, in order to combat the AIDS epidemic raging among the incarcerated population. He is chairman of the cancer research institute at Universidade Paulista in São Paulo and teaches and lectures around the world.

Fátima In Lúcia's Own Words by Sister Lúcia of Fátima OCD

Paperback: Fatima in Lucia's Own Words (Portuguese: Memórias da Irmã Lúcia, also known as Sister Lucia's Memoirs) is a 1976 collection of memoirs and letters written by Sister Lúcia of Fátima (OCD), the last surviving seer of Virgin Mary apparitions in Cova da Iria, Fátima, Portugal.

This book (the first of two volumes) describes the life of Sister Lúcia, as well as the characters, lives and deaths of the other two children – Francisco and Jacinta Marto. It includes the visions of the three little shepherds of Fátima, which included Hell, War, the Holy Father, the Three Secrets and the Angel of Peace and Marian apparitions themselves.

Photos include the uncorrupted body of Saint Jacinta Marto.

Edited by Fr Louis Kondor SVD, this book was originally introduced by Dr Joaquin M Alonso CMF, and was translated into English by the Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary. This copy is the 21st edition printed in July 2017. (Wikipedia)

About the author: Lúcia Dos Santos was born on 22 March 1907, also in Ajustrel. At the age of nine, she was sent with her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Matos to shepherd the sheep as usual. It was then that they received the visit of the Virgin in Cova de Iria. Lucia entered the Sisters of St Dorothy in 1921. She was with them in Tui and Pontevedra, Spain. In both cities she had important visits from Jesus and Mary. She received the Promises of the First Saturdays, the Vision of the Blessed Trinity and the petition to consecrate Russia in 1929. In 1946, she returned to Portugal, and two years later entered the Carmel of St Teresa in Coimbra, where she professed her vows as a Carmelite in 1949.

The Virgin told Francisco and Jacinta that they would go to heaven soon, but Lúcia was to stay on earth to propagate Her messages. This is precisely what happened. The Pope beatified Francisco and Jacinta Marto during the Jubilee Year 2000 in Cova de Iria, the sanctuary of the apparitions. Many people were present on one of the coldest days registered in Fátima. Next to Pope John Paul II stood Sister Lúcia. Sister Lúcia wrote two volumes of her "Memoirs" and the "The Callings of the Fátima Messages." She died on 13 February 2005 during the novena of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta, in her dear Carmel, where many believe that our Lady still visited her and where Pope John Paul II also visited.

Tuesday Lockdown

Murder In The High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy And Escape From Tibet by Jonathan Green

Hardback: Frequented by hundreds of climbers each year, Cho Oyu Mountain lies nineteen miles east of Mount Everest, on the border between Tibet and Nepal. To the elite mountaineering community, it offers a straightforward summit - a warm-up climb. To Tibetans, Cho Oyu promises a gateway to freedom through a secret glacial path: the Nangpa La.

On 30 September 2006, gunfire echoed through the thin air near Advance Base Camp on Cho Oyu Mountain. Climbers preparing to summit watched in horror as Chinese border guards fired at a group of Tibetans en route to India, via Nepal.

Murder in the High Himalaya (2010) is the unforgettable account of the brutal killing of Kelsang Namtso - a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun fleeing to Dharamsala to escape religious persecution in her homeland. Kelsang's death was an example of the oppression by China - and almost uniquely, it had been caught on film and witnessed by dozens of Western climbers.

Their moral dilemma was plain: Would they reveal to the world what they had seen and likely lose the chance to climb in China again or would they pass on by?

Adventure reporter Jonathan Green, who has gained rare entrance into this shadowland, introduces us to the disparate band of seekers and survivors who converged at the rooftop of the world on this fateful morning, as he seeks an answer for one woman's life. In his probing investigation, an affecting portrait of modern Tibet emerges - one which raises enduring questions about morality, and the lengths we go to achieve freedom.

Murder in the High Himalaya (PublicAffairs) won the Banff Mountain Book Competition in the Mountain and Wilderness Category. It also won the American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Non Fiction Book of the Year.

About the author: Jonathan Green is an award-winning investigative journalist specializing in narrative non-fiction. He has written for the New York Times, Men's Journal, Esquire, GQ, The Financial Times Magazine, Men's Health, and The Mail on Sunday, among others. Never shy of demanding assignments, he has reported in war-torn Sudan on jihadist-militias, on the cocaine trade from the guerilla-controlled jungles of Colombia, on the destruction of the rainforest in Borneo, on corruption in oil-rich Kazakhstan and on human rights abuses connected gang-controlled slums of Brazil, Africa and Jamaica and in the thin air of the high Himalaya, among many other places. He is a keen adventurer and writes regularly on the outdoors. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.

Green has been the recipient of the Amnesty International Media Award for Excellence in Human Rights Journalism, the American Society of Journalists and Authors award for reporting on a significant topic, Environment story of the year at the Foreign Press Association, the North American Travel Journalists Association for Sports in Conjunction with Travel and Feature Writer of the Year in the Press Gazette Magazine and Design Awards. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Crime Writing. On winning Exclusive of the Year at the Magazine Design and Journalism Awards the judges said, “It shows Green’s painstaking research and dogged determination and belief that a story must be followed to the bitter end.”

He has been interviewed about his work on CNN, the BBC, radio and television, and NPR among numerous other media outlets. He does speaking engagements at universities, colleges and companies on human rights and investigative journalism. His latest book, Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood and Betrayal (2018) tells the story of the infamous Bronx gang through inside access to gangsters and the federal agents, police officers and prosecutors who took them down.

He lives in Massachusetts with his wife.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Paperback: This special edition of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (2018) is a 75th anniversary edition purchased at the Strand Bookstore in New York. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century.

There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up and out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly...survives without sun, water and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

Betty Smith's debut novel is universally regarded as a modern classic. The sprawling tale of an immigrant family in early 20th-century Brooklyn, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of the great distinctively American novels.

The Nolan family are first-generation immigrants to the United States. Originating in Ireland and Austria, their life in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn is poor and deprived, but their sacrifices make it possible for their children to grow up in a land of boundless opportunity.

Francie Nolan is the eldest daughter of the family. Alert, imaginative and resourceful, her journey through the first years of a century of profound change is difficult - and transformative. But amid the poverty and suffering among the poor of Brooklyn, there is hope, and the prospect of a brighter future.

About the author: Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner in 1896 in New York to German parents. She grew up in relative poverty and attended Girls’ High School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These early experiences were the inspiration for the first novel that she wrote, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn which was published in 1943.

Shortly after getting married, she and her husband, George Smith, moved to Michigan so that he could study law. She had two twin daughters shortly after they moved and she waited until they were old enough to go to school before she completed her own education. She enrolled in classes at the university, despite having failed to complete her high school education. She took classes in literature, journalism, writing and drama. She worked hard and was rewarded with an Avery Hopwood Award.

Betty Smith divorced her husband and moved to North Carolina. Five years later, she married her second husband, Joseph Jones, in the same year in which her first novel was published. She worked alongside George Abbot to write the book for the stage musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which was finished in 1951.

After A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she wrote a further 3 novels. Tomorrow Will Be Better was published in 1947, Maggie-Now was published in 1958 and finally Joy in the Morning was published in 1963. This last novel was adapted into a film starring Yvette Mimieux and Richard Chamberlain.

Smith died in Connecticut in 1972 following a battle with pneumonia.

Rating: 5/5

In Word Or Deed

Sit Down To Write

God's Revelation To The Human Heart by Father Seraphim Rose

Paperback: What does man seek in religion, and what should he seek in it? How does God reveal Himself in order to bring man to a knowledge of the Truth? How does suffering help this revelation to occur?

These and other questions were discussed by Fr Seraphim Rose, an Orthodox Christian priest-monk, during a lecture he gave at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1981. The contents of this lecture comprise the present book, which includes Fr. Seraphim's answers to questions asked by the university students.

Drawing from a variety of sources - the Holy Scriptures, Patristic writings, the Lives of saints both ancient and modern, and accounts of persecuted Christians behind the iron curtain - Fr Seraphim goes to the core of all Christian life: the conversion of the heart of man, which causes it to burn with love for Christ and transforms one into a new being.

This is the seventh printing (second edition) of God's Revelation To The Human Heart (2019). The first printing was in 1987.

Visit www.sainthermanpress.com for more information.

About the author: Fr Seraphim Rose (1934-1982) dedicated his life to reawakening modern Western man to forgotten spiritual truths. From his remote monastic cabin in the mountains of northern California, he produced writings that have reached millions throughout the world. Today he is one of the best-loved spiritual writers in Russia and Eastern Europe. His books Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future and The Soul After Death have changed countless lives with their sobering truth.

Tell Edith Goodbye: A True Crime Story of Depravity and Obsession During the Great Depression by Michael Grimm

Paperback: For more than 50 years, Michael Grimm was both intrigued and bewildered by the mystery of his father’s childhood - a dark period in the family’s unfortunate past. With a background in forensic science and a love of historical research, Michael set out to learn all there was to know. In Tell Edith Goodbye (2019), he reveals the true story for the first time.

It’s the summer of 1935, and a stranger known simply as the Finn has arrived in the Skagit Valley. Like hundreds of other out-of-work men during the Great Depression, he is looking for employment. But what he finds is a family who welcomes him into their home—and into the life of an eleven-year-old girl…

Young Edith’s infatuation with a drifter who will stop at nothing to secure a permanent place in her fragile heart results in a tragedy that will rock a far Northwest community and continue to shape one family’s lives into the future.

This story should be considered for what it was at the time it occurred - a lesson in vigilance and a reminder that bad things do happen to good, God-fearing people.

About the author: Michael R Grimm is a retired forensic scientist with 38 years of service with both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. He spent most of his childhood in western Washington State in the same area where the events in this book took place. His devotion to family and lifelong admiration of law enforcement have culminated in the pages of this book. Throughout his professional career he has remained neutral on the subject of capital punishment even after testifying in dozens of death penalty cases throughout the United States. He now resides in rural Virginia with his beloved wife of 49 years, Judy.