My Second Life

The first time I was born, I was Emma. I was beautiful. I had everything to live for. But I died. Now I have been born a second time, and my previous life haunts me. Because in it I think I did something very wrong. I must find out what I did to Catherine. I must uncover the truth about Emma... Intriguing, compelling, heartbreaking. What if your past life could shatter your future?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Before I Go to Sleep, a sensational new psychological thriller about a woman with a secret identity that threatens to destroy her. How well can you really know another person? How far would you go to find the truth about someone you love? When Julia learns that her sister has been violently murdered, she must uncover why. But Julia's quest quickly evolves into an alluring exploration of own darkest sensual desires. Becoming involved with a dangerous stranger online, she's losing herself . . . losing control . . . perhaps losing everything. Her search for answers will jeopardize her marriage, her family, and her life. A tense and unrelenting novel that explores the secret lives people lead—and the dark places in which they can find themselves—Second Life is a masterwork of suspense from the acclaimed S. J. Watson.

THE #1 FRENCH BESTSELLER MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE The feel-good #1 bestselling French novel about a woman whose mission to cure her "routine-itis" leads her to lasting joy and true fulfillment, for fans of The Alchemist and Hector and the Search for Happiness. At thirty-eight and a quarter years old, Paris native Camille has everything she needs to be happy, or so it seems: a good job, a loving husband, a wonderful son. Why then does she feel as if happiness has slipped through her fingers? All she wants is to find the path to joy. When Claude, a French Sean Connery look-alike and routinologist, offers his unique advice to help get her there, she seizes the opportunity with both hands. Camille's journey is full of surprising escapades, creative capers, and deep meaning, as she sets out to transform her life and realize her dreams one step at a time...

The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict. Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease. At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate. As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis. PRAISE FOR AMANDA SKENANDORE’S BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY “Intensely emotional…Skenandore’s deeply introspective and moving novel will appeal to readers of American history.” —Publishers Weekly

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

The author describes her return to the world after twenty years in a Moroccan jail, as she struggled to adjust to the modern world, understand the reality of freedom, fall in love, and experience an intimate relationship for the first time.

Samuel Tyne always believed he was destined for greatness. Emigrating to Canada from Ghana in the 1960'S was the first step on this path, but fifteen years later his grand plans have stalled. He now has a wife Maud, twin thirteen year old daughters Chloe and Yvette, and a mind-numbing job. But then he is thrown a life line. His uncle Jacob dies, leaving him a grand but crumbling house in the town of Aster, and Samuel persuades his reluctant family to seize this chance for a new beginning. At first Aster seems perfect, but soon the town's faultlines are revealed, and the family begins to feel the strain. Samuel opens an electrical shop, but the business falters as he falls victim to his own outlandish ambitions, trying to build computers when all the townspeople want is lightbulbs and radios. His wife is unhappy, and as for his daughters - they are drifting into a private world of two, their behaviour becoming ever more sinister and disturbing to everyone around them. When their school friend Ama comes to stay and nearly drowns in mysterious circumstances, and then a series of fires around the town go unexplained, Samuel and Maud must face up to the secrets within their own family, secrets that threaten to completely tear apart the life they have built.

Is it possible to start afresh when you’re thoroughly weighted down? A “timeless and entirely of-the-moment” (Publishers Weekly) novel from the author of The Secret Language of Girls. Seventeen pounds. That’s the difference between Abigail Walker and Kristen Gorzca. Between chubby and slim, between teased and taunting. Abby is fine with her body and sick of seventeen pounds making her miserable, so she speaks out against Kristen and her groupies—and becomes officially unpopular. Embracing her new status, Abby heads to an abandoned lot across the street and crosses an unfamiliar stream that leads her to a boy who’s as different as they come. Anders is homeschooled, and while he’s worried that Abby’s former friends are out to get her, he’s even more worried about his dad, a war veteran home from Iraq who is dangerously disillusioned with life. But if his dad can finish his poem about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, if he can recapture the belief that there can be innocence in the world, maybe he will be okay. As Abby dives into the unexpected role as research assistant, she just as unexpectedly discovers that by helping someone else find hope in the world, there is plenty there for herself, as well.