The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal

In 1975, Helen Mendel married a widower and aircraft engineer, moved into his suburb in Los Angeles, 375 miles away from Area 51, and got herself merrily settled into a life of domestic bliss with nothing but her husband's pleasure on her mind. Ethel Ashlock, wife of her husband's colleague, a depressed alcoholic addicted to Valium with unfulfilled dreams of becoming a pilot, hates her on sight. She thinks Helen's just another boring, brain-washed housewife and doesn’t make any effort to hide how much she detests her. She doesn't realise Helen is not as commonplace as she appears; that she has synaesthesia—the ability to see sounds, hear images and taste feelings—and a past she's not telling anyone, not even her husband, about. Things change when Helen, having tolerated enough of Ethel's persistent hostility, lifts her veil of pretence. Ethel soon finds herself blackmailed, frightened, and also... irresistibly intrigued by her new neighbour. She becomes obsessed with getting Helen to like her and soon discovers they have more in common than she previously thought. Neither of them believe their husbands are truly aircraft engineers, for one, and neither of them believe Helen’s husband’s former wife, Violet, actually killed herself in the year before… Together, the two women work to uncover the truth about Violet’s sudden death, until they discover the truth, not out there, but closer than either of them ever thought possible… About the series: Those Strange Women is a series of six books about the lives of six ‘unusual’ women over nine decades. Amidst changing attitudes towards women and homosexuality, the women grow, adapt and find their own ways of existing in a world in which they don’t quite belong. A few of them learn to love but most learn to hate; a few of them fail to thrive but most survive and develop a taste for revenge.

Why do my jeans fit only in the morning? Why am I always guzzling Pepto-Bismol before a big meeting? Could my PMS cramps mean something serious? Here, finally, are the answers to these questions, and hundreds more, about the nagging stomach problems that plague so many women. In this reassuring guide, Dr. Jacqueline L. Wolf, a leading expert in the field of gastrointestinal health, explains the causes and cures for women's most common digestive ailments (including bloating, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, IBS) and more serious, life-altering conditions like Crohn's disease and endometriosis. This candid book deals with sensitive issues in a down-to-earth way and eradicates once and for all the secrecy and shame surrounding these urgent problems.

Karen Meadows had a normal, happy family until depression consumed her daughter, Sadie—a struggle that ended with Sadie’s suicide at age eighteen. In Searching for Normal, Meadows shares her family’s journey as she tries to help her daughter Sadie cope with her mental illness, expertly intertwining her own storyline with excerpts from her daughter’s diaries. The years Meadows chronicles are characterized by Sadie’s heartbreaking bouts of running away, cutting, and living with Portland street families while Karen and her husband desperately search for solutions—trying medication, hospitals, therapy, wilderness and residential treatment programs, and more. Ultimately, however, they find themselves confronted with the devastating shortcomings of the US’s mental health system. Including hindsight advice from Meadows, along with an extensive list of resources that she wishes someone had provided her when she was trying to help Sadie, this book will help parents of struggling teens feel less isolated and better equipped to navigate their teenager’s mental illness. : Meadows also describes recent developments that are paving the way for better diagnoses and treatment options.

Cesare Lombroso is widely considered the founder of the field of criminology. His theory of the “born” criminal dominated discussions of criminology in Europe and the Americas from the 1880s into the early twentieth century. His book, La donna delinquente, originally published in Italian in 1893, was the first and most influential book ever written on women and crime. This comprehensive new translation gives readers a full view of his landmark work. Lombroso’s research took him to police stations, prisons, and madhouses where he studied the tattoos, cranial capacities, and sexual behavior of criminals and prostitutes to establish a female criminal type. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman anticipated today’s theories of genetic criminal behavior. Lombroso used Darwinian evolutionary science to argue that criminal women are far more cunning and dangerous than criminal men. Designed to make his original text accessible to students and scholars alike, this volume includes extensive notes, appendices, a glossary, and more than thirty of Lombroso’s own illustrations. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson’s introduction, locating his theory in social context, offers a significant new interpretation of Lombroso’s place in criminology.

This book taps into the best elements of Chinese traditional culture to show respect to the pioneers of Hebei women’s education and to provide references to today’s education reform and development. It contains six chapters, describing the basic requirements for Chinese women of the Feudal Period, the development of women’s normal education, prominent educators in Home Economics, and the outstanding alumnae of Hebei Normal University. The book allows insights into the educational, social, cultural, economic and political movements from ancient China to the late Qing dynasty, the Republic of China, and the People’s Republic of China.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE© IN LITERATURE 2013 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction A Best Book of the Year: The Atlantic, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, AV Club In story after story in this brilliant new collection, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancée, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer. Illumined by Munro’s unflinching insight, these lives draw us in with their quiet depth and surprise us with unexpected turns. And while most are set in her signature territory around Lake Huron, some strike even closer to home: an astonishing suite of four autobiographical tales offers an unprecedented glimpse into Munro’s own childhood. Exalted by her clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, Dear Life shows how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.

NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan). “[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—The Washington Post ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t. WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country

A New York Times bestseller: The “magnificent” memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time—“A tour de force of literature and love” (Vogue). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Jeanette Winterson’s bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a “singular and electric” memoir about a life’s work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking. Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging—for love, identity, home, and a mother.