Silent Fire

Hidden inflammation lies behind many modern diseases. Shilpa Ravella, an expert in nutrition and the gut, explains why our immune systems are turning against us and what we might do about it. 'Controlling inflammation is the key to good health and this beautifully written and researched book is the best way to understand it' TIM SPECTOR, #1 bestselling author of Food for Life ___ Inflammation is the body's response to injury and foreign microbes. But as our environments and diets have changed, low-level inflammation, simmering quietly and undetected, has been identified behind everything from heart disease and cancer to mysterious autoimmune conditions. Shilpa Ravella is a doctor at the forefront of this field, specialising in gut transplants, nutrition and the microbiome. In A Silent Fire she interweaves the latest research with unusual case studies from her own practice and the history of immunology to explain what we know about this elusive phenomenon. She debunks common myths about 'anti-inflammatory' lifestyles and explains the simple principles by which we can reform our relationship with food and our microbiomes to benefit our health. ___ 'As gripping as a mystery story and as useful as a self-help book' BEE WILSON, author of First Bite 'Compelling, thoughtful and rigorously researched' The Times

"In meditation the journey of an entire life will be manifest as a state of relaxation and a state of activity, forever a balancing act between sleeping and waking. In life, meditation will form a daily practice that will permeate all your actions until one day you will feel unspeakable joy while standing in line at the bank." --From the Prologue Twenty-five years ago, James Connor, a newly ordained Jesuit priest, was called in to console a couple whose baby had been killed in a freak accident. At a loss for words to explain this cruel blow and comfort the anguished parents, he began to question his faith, and eventually retreated to a lonely cabin in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, to try to reestablish his relationship to God. In this luminous memoir, Connor has found the words to describe the indescribable: his circuitous, sometimes faltering, always passionate journey into the heart of humanity, its darkness and its light. With stubborn curiosity, touching humility, and raucous imagination, Connor gropes for meaning in percolating coffee and washing dishes as well as in the rising sun; in the arrhythmic companionship, sick sense of humor, eager gossip, or drunken belligerence of his eccentric neighbors; with the native bats, loons, bears, salmon, and stars; and in the encroaching fire that's been burning for months in the hills, no less than the piles of books he's stacked around himself and the ancient traditions of Eastern and Western spirituality. Ultimately, Connor searches silence and solitude for a way to rekindle his faith, feeding his spirit with simple breath and contemplation, to find that just as the flame jumps up and consumes his grief, anger, shame, and other unwelcome, all-too-human intruders upon Nirvana, it throws into light the blessedness of ordinary things. The story of Connor's lurching spiritual quest will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to climb to higher ground or been humbled by the challenges of meditation. The good-natured instruction woven seamlessly into his tale will introduce fellow seekers to the healing power of silence and encourage them to keep climbing.

Inspector Ashish Bharadwaj is arrogant and hot-tempered, but he’s usually right about things. His brother, Manav, is quiet and intuitive. He is also brilliant at solving cases. When Shravya Chandra, wife of Arun Chandra the film star, goes missing – Ashish and Manav have their own hunches. Ashish is out to prove Arun Chandra’s guilt. But Manav wants to know more about Shravya’s old friend, Anchal because he’s certain that she is hiding something big. They both can’t be right, of course. Ashish doesn’t want to be wrong; he’s never wrong. And Manav would give anything to snatch a victory from under his brother’s nose. Who’s right? And at what cost are they going to win? Since everyone’s looking only for what they want to see, will they ever actually find out what happened to Shravya Chandra? And so begins the battle of egos, the endless search for a killer and the unravelling of secrets…

In the silent era, American cinema was defined by two separate and parallel industries, with white and black companies producing films for their respective, segregated audiences. Jane Gaines's highly anticipated new book reconsiders the race films of this era with an ambitious historical and theoretical agenda. Fire and Desire offers a penetrating look at the black independent film movement during the silent period. Gaines traces the profound influence that D. W. Griffith's racist epic The Birth of a Nation exerted on black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, the director of the newly recovered Within Our Gates. Beginning with What Happened in the Tunnel, a movie that played with race and sex taboos by featuring the first interracial kiss in film, Gaines also explores the cinematic constitution of self and other through surprise encounters: James Baldwin sees himself in the face of Bette Davis, family resemblance is read in Richard S. Robert's portrait of an interracial family, and black film pioneer George P. Johnson looks back on Micheaux. Given the impossibility of purity and the co-implication of white and black, Fire and Desire ultimately questions the category of "race movies" itself.

“Fascinating.…[Ravella’s writing] breathes life into biological functions.” —Grace Wade, New Scientist A riveting investigation of inflammation—the hidden force at the heart of modern disease—and how we can prevent, treat, or even reverse it. Inflammation is the body’s ancestral response to its greatest threats, the first line of defense it deploys against injury and foreign pathogens. But as the threats we face have evolved, new science is uncovering how inflammation may also turn against us, simmering underneath the surface of leading killers from heart disease and cancer to depression, aging, and mysterious autoimmune conditions. In A Silent Fire, gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella investigates hidden inflammation’s emerging role as a common root of modern disease—and how we can control it. We meet the visionary nineteenth-century pathologist who laid the foundation for our modern understanding of inflammation, the eccentric Russian zoologist who discovered one of the cells central to our immune system, and the dedicated researchers advancing the frontiers of medical and nutritional science today. With fascinating case studies, Ravella reveals how we can reform our relationships with food and our microbiomes to benefit our own health and the planet’s. Synthesizing medical history, cutting-edge research, and innovative clinical practice, Ravella unveils inflammation as one potential basis for a unifying theory of disease. A paradigm-shifting understanding of one of the most mysterious, buzzed-about topics in medicine and nutrition, A Silent Fire shows us how to live not only long but well.

This book is a guided journey on the path of prayer that is built on faith that leads to a unique but accessible way of knowing.

LAURA PURCELL'S THRILLING NEW NOVEL THE WHISPERING MUSE IS AVAILABLE TO PREORDER NOW Winner of the W H Smith Thumping Good Read Award As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club and the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club '[An] extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book' Jojo Moyes '[It] shone, for originality for the sheer quality of the writing, the characters and some masterly chills' Peter James Some doors are locked for a reason... Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge. With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure – a Silent Companion – that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...