Only The Eyes Say Yes

On a July morning ten years ago, Philippe Vigand, a young, vigorous, handsome publishing executive, was walking to work when he heard "a gigantic explosion." Strangely, nobody else seemed to have heard it ... for the simple reason that it was in his head. For two months he lay in a coma. When he awoke, he was completely paralyzed, but his mind was intact. He was suffering from locked-in syndrome. After months of hospital care, Philippe was brought home where an infrared Camera enabled him to "speak" and "write" by blinking his eyes. Written in two parts, the first by Philippe using the magic camera, the second by his wife, Stephane, this moving work traces the evolution of the illness and their relationship and shows how love and devotion can overcome almost anything.

This is the first book of its kind to include the personal accounts of people who have survived injury to the brain, along with professional therapists' reports of their progress through rehabilitation. The paintings and stories of survivors combine with experts' discussions of the theory and practice of brain injury rehabilitation to illustrate the ups and downs that survivors encounter in their journey from pre-injury status to insult and post-injury rehabilitation. Wilson, Winegardner and Ashworth's focus on the survivors' perspective shows how rehabilitation is an interactive process between people with brain injury, health care staff, and others, and gives the survivors the chance to tell their own stories of life before their injury, the nature of the insult, their early treatment, and subsequent rehabilitation. Presenting practical approaches to help survivors of brain injury achieve functionally relevant and meaningful goals, Life After Brain Injury: Survivors’ Stories will help all those working in rehabilitation understand the principles involved in holistic brain injury rehabilitation and how these principles, combined with theory and models, translate into clinical practice. This book will be of great interest to anyone who wishes to extend their knowledge of the latest theories and practices involved in making life more manageable for people who have suffered damage to the brain. Life After Brain Injury: Survivors’ Stories will also be essential for clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, and anybody dealing with acquired brain injury whether they be a survivor of a brain injury themselves, a relative, a friend or a carer.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull over the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have . . . and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Two recently orphaned siblings embark on an unforgettable cross-country road trip in search of their place in the world. When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Mari is desperate to avoid being caught up in the foster system....again. And to complicate matters, she is now the only one who can take care of her super-smart and on-the-spectrum nine-year-old stepbrother, Conor. Is there anyone Mari can trust to help them? Certainly not her mother's current boyfriend, Dennis. Not the doctors or her teachers, who would be obliged to call in social services. So in a desperate move, Mari takes Conor and sets out to find their estranged grandmother, hoping to throw themselves at the mercy of the only person who might take them in. On their way to New England, the duo experiences the snarls of LA traffic, the backroads of the Midwest, and a monumental stop in Missouri where they witness the solar eclipse, an event with which Conor is obsessed. Mari also learns about the inner workings of her stepbrother's mind and about her connections to him and to the world...and maybe even a little about her own place in it. This heartwarming, fast-paced, and engaging middle grade novel is a beautiful exploration of identity and family.

Eighteen authors share dark mysteries set on the sunny Caribbean island in this anthology. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book is compromised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographic area of the book. As reflected herein, the Caribbean provides no shelter from the delicious terror of noir fiction. Features brand-new stories by Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, Vahni Capildeo, Willi Chen, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Keith Jardim, Reena Andrea Manickchand, Tiphanie Yanique, and more. Praise for Trinidad Noir “The volumes in Akashic’s locale-based noir anthology series set outside North America (Dublin Noir, etc.) offer more variety than those set in different major U.S. cities, and this one is no exception. The editors’ brief but insightful introduction makes clear that the sun and sea tourist image of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is at odds with the country’s political climate of excess and corruption and an element of society afloat in drugs and guns . . . . The two standouts are Keith Jardim’s mystical “The Jaguar” and Lawrence Scott’s “Prophet,” in which a series of child disappearances in a small but corrupt community builds to an appropriately bleak ending.” —Publishers Weekly

Can time be our friend? At first glance the question seems ridiculous, because the apparent scarcity of time is a constant source of stress in our busy lives. There are not enough hours in the day, we say as we collapse late at night. Deep down we know that we cannot go on like this. Father Stinnisen's book dares us to see time with new eyes. The insight that eternity is written in the depths of our hearts helps us to live in time in a way that leads us deeper into God's joy. We are like children in a land of fairy tales where everything is exciting and exploration never ends.We therefore should rejoice that everything around us is great and mysterious and that we can live in eternal wonder. His intention is not to explain what time is and thus take away its mystery. Instead, his aim is to show us how to see time from different perspectives and to discover how rich and multifaceted it is. Above all, he demonstrates how we can make use of the tremendous possibilities that time offers to us.