Haunting Memories

"Oh, no-" the anguished cry rang out. For a sister and her brothers, it was terrible news-of a death in the family-the death that left them dumbfounded. Broken hearted, here they were, a grand family suddenly bereft of a great part. It made no sense. "...Sorry to inform you," the awful words struck like a thunderbolt. Mom and dad had crashed on their vacation trip. -So unfair, so unreal, so jarring...so final. All the siblings could think of was how much love was lost to them. Their parents were the linchpins; they were the finest; they were the most revered. At a loss due to a loss. So much love and affection was denied them in an unpredictable moment. What was to become of them? Mom with her daily wisdom. Dad with his usual counsel. Mom with her laugh. Dad with his wry humor. Mom with her catering and caring. Dad with his hugs and counsel. What will they do without them? The sister and her husband, the brothers and their wives, succumbed to the pain, weakening them. Where would the strength come from that was required to survive such a tragedy? When ravaged by happenstance, What holds the family together when hope and promise lose some of their dash? In the moments of crisis, inevitably, people are hanging on by hanging tough. That courage comes from their heritage, which is the real force, the saving grace. It's not just what they have inherited in family lore, but the bond that ties endowment and legacy together in a triumvirate that can spark the spirit. Haunting Memories says something about how desire can influence perception; by allowing-or causing-us to see what we want to see. We wonder when they're gone, Did we do enough for them? Did we express our love and affection often enough? Were we good to them? We aren't going to be able to answer yes to all such questions without some reservation. -Because we're never going to think we've done all that we could have or should have done for our loved ones. We can't get our minds off them. We can't let them go. We want them back. But we can't have them back. They are where they are. -And we can't get there from here.

"The Hall of Haunting Memories" is less a collection of poems than a testament of a decade-long unrequited love: a feeling not uncommon for us all. The writer takes readers through seasons of emotions—the exciting first feelings, the painful longing, the tormenting desperation, the inevitable relapse, and the eventual acceptance of the truth. Through this work, readers are invited to revisit their memories of such love on a hopeful note of being able to grow from that experience.

A doctor's memoir in the best tradition of William Carlos Williams, Marc Flitter recreates the life-or-death drama of brain surgery as he has practiced it for more than twenty years, filling an imaginary hospital wing with the true stories of the patients and colleagues whose fates will haunt him forever. "His prose is as elegant and delicate as his surgery, and his characters come to life as those from the best short stories do, and yet their power derives from our realization that these are actual people whose lives have transformed the physician who encountered them" (The New York Times Book Review).

Explores the forgotten history and lost folklore of “America's Most Beautiful City,” which has a haunting history that will captivate the reader with the secrets it holds from its intriguing past, while mystery and mystique follow Tulsa's urban legends and prove that truth can be stranger than fiction. Original.

Postcolonial Haunting and Victimization: Assia Djebar's New Novels treats one of the central problems within the current geo-political conflict between Islam and the West: how the memory of imperialism fuels fundamentalist claims to territory and creates a paradigm of victimization through which martyrdom and terrorism prevail. Through an examination of the most recent works by the award-winning Algerian author Assia Djebar, this book considers how the culture of victimization prevails in postcolonial thought and practice, not only in the West but in formerly colonized territories as well. It examines the work of important postcolonial critics, such as Achille Mbembe and others, in dialogue with the works of Djebar, one of the most popular international postcolonial authors treating these questions from within the contemporary framework. Both in theory and in practice, this book reveals how pervasive haunting and victimization are in the wake of September 11th and provides an alternative way of responding to them. It demonstrates how Djebar's reticence to explore the details of colonialism marks an important shift in postcolonial literature and criticism and an important attempt to address the dynamics of victimization. Postcolonial Haunting and Victimization will be a great resource to all those interested in the question of Islam and the West as well as to a wide array of readers in the fields of literary and postcolonial studies.

Settling into a new home in a ghost-filled community at the Jersey Shore, Sara experiences a psychic vision of a cute stranger whom she meets days later, only to be thwarted by the young man's hostile ghostly companion.