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Memoirs of a Failure
Tormented by an impoverished childhood, plagued by incessant bullying, and damaged by an abusive and violent relationship. Homelessness and broke, following failure after, failure, how does someone find the strength to keep coming back?
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Me and My Shadow
Me and My Shadow – Memoirs of a Cancer Survivor is a brutally honest account of one teenager’s struggle to understand and deal with the most feared diagnosis known to society: cancer.
At 18 years of age, John Walker Pattison was thrust onto a roller coaster ride of emotional turbulence – his innocence cruelly stripped from him; his fate woven into the tapestry of life.
After years of failed chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments that ravaged his physical frame and almost destroyed his psychological stability – his parents were told that he would not survive. Yet, today, he is one of the longest surviving cancer patients in the UK.
Eight years after his unexpected recovery, the news that all parents fear, his daughter is diagnosed with terminal leukaemia. Yet like her father, she too would defy the odds and go on to become an international swimmer.
Pattison turned his life full circle and became a cancer nurse specialist at the same hospital that made his diagnosis decades earlier. He prescribes chemotherapy and cares for individuals with the same cancers experienced by both him and his daughter.
Throughout his journey, Pattison’s inspirations were the space rock legends, Hawkwind. He would get to play on stage with his heroes at the Donnington Festival in 2007.
More significantly, he found solace throughout his cancer journey in the history and spirituality of the Lakota Sioux Nation. In 2018, he would spend time on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the indigenous people of South Dakota. The same people who, unknowingly, supported him through life's greatest challenge: cancer.
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Me
Ron Pearson was born in Bramley, Leeds on August 12, 1924. He began writing this book on August 12, 2021, his 97th birthday. After a childhood beset by illness, he left school at 14, and took a job packing parcels in a multiple tailoring factory, not for him. He moved on to packing parcels general muggins at an advertising agency at 50 pence a week, which he loved. His career in advertising was interrupted by a four-and-a-half-year spell in the army on ‘Special Operations’. Returning to civvy street, his career culminated in being appointed Managing Director and then Chairman of one of Yorkshire’s most respected advertising agencies. He was a local actor for almost 50 years including the renowned Bradford Alhambra and Playhouse.
There are some sad moments outnumbered by many hilarious ones. Ron’s beloved wife, Pat, died in 2017 after 66 years of happy marriage.
The list of ‘celebrities’ he has met is impressive, including Princess Margaret, Prince Charles, Hollywood’s Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, Sir Ralph Richardson, George Best, Jackie Charlton, Harry Worth, Alan Bennett etc.
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Love Beyond Love
This very personal and moving love story takes us from the anticipation of the very first date through to the moment of the very last breath. It encompasses sheer joy, romance, fortitude and sadness. But love and memories live on forever because this is a Love Beyond Love. – Jan Smith (a friend)
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Lives of the Luberon
Stanislas Yassukovich is an investment banker who spent some 20 years visiting and living with his family in the Luberon, the region of France made famous by the late Peter Mayle's seminal work, A Year in Provence. In his new book, Yassukovich chronicles his experiences, impressions and adventures in this unique corner of La Belle France, together with reminiscences of the fascinating and cosmopolitan characters who reside there permanently or part time. His anecdotal evocation of the great variety of elements that make this region one of the most sought after, in a country rich in holiday destinations, will entertain both those who know the area and those who don't yet. Malika Moine is a Provençal artist who has published several books of her water colours in Marseille. Her illustrations of the villages of the Luberon make the book, and the region, even more irresistible.
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Lines from New Zealand
On a dull Tuesday morning in early October 2008, I lost my battle to save our business and property—a French provincial styled restaurant and homestead on a vineyard estate—and with it my job, my reputation, my balance, my clout, my life’s savings, my mind—my life as I knew it. Afterwards, I began writing like a madwoman, and in time a book took shape describing a myriad of experiences and the long journey back to just being me.
After our epic loss, we lived for a year in one of the highest houses in Christchurch with an unparalleled view of the Pacific Ocean and the curved coastline. That house of Up Above Down Under and those mercurial skies saved my life. We now live in The House of Cluck-Cluck where I still spend endless hours in our rambling country garden as I dig in the soil tenaciously for answers about my life.
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Life After Reconstruction
Life After Reconstruction is my story after genital reconstructive surgery. It follows the events of what happened in my life after I wrote my first book, Wings for the Butterfly, published in Germany and in Poland. After the book came out, I thought I would be famous on the spot. Instead, I ended up in a worse situation than I was in; from living in my own flat to being in a refugee home. In the refugee home, which was not supportive for the process of sexual healing after reconstruction, I met up with other forms of traumas, perhaps worse than my own. The result of the hostile environment in the refugee home was the tension that heightened the already frightened sexual restoration, leading to numbness once again and even more rage which eventually became uncontrollable. In order to understand myself better, I became involved with trying to understand the people I came to live with, trying to understand their problems, to the point of understanding that we are all looking for pure love that was denied to us in the formative years.
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Letters from Canada
Andrew Glen was born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada in 1912. Initially he worked as an engineer in Toronto, but in 1923 bought a small farm on the outskirts of Pickering. He continued to work on the land for the remainder of his active life and for a period in the 1930’s he contributed a regular column to the ‘Toronto Star’. He recorded his detailed observations of the changing seasons and farming activities related to the time of year. This book presents a selection of these rural essays, originally written between 1931 and 1938. As social history, these essays presented a vivid picture of a way of life unfamiliar to city dwellers at that time, and now provide a reminder of farming skills, implements such as ‘The Old Binder’, and procedures no longer witnessed by current country folk. His descriptive skills were extended to his animals and we meet amongst others ‘Trotsky the Pup’, The Crazy Cow’ and ‘Lazy Lou’, one of his horses.
Many of the articles contain a sprinkling of philosophy and politics. Andrew and his wife Dorothy had been staunch members of the Toronto Labour party and he became one of the founder members of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1932, precursor to the National Democratic Party of Canada. This amalgam of talents and interests resulted in his ability to link up the moods of nature with his own hopes and aspirations for the future.
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Just One Word, Just One Smile: Life and Love After an Aneurysm
Just One Word, Just One Smile – A Memoir
An empty-nester couple, Sue and Tony, are travelling independently through South America when Sue endures a brain aneurysm. No one chooses Bolivia – the poorest country in South America – for brain surgery, but Sue has no choice. Weeks pass in South American hospitals, waiting on surgeries that threaten the very life that they try to save. Eventually, Sue is well enough to be transported back to Australia and spend further weeks in hospitals. When Sue is able to return to her home, Tony’s new role as the carer of a person with a dementia-like condition is glimpsed.
“A good mix of heartfelt emotion and facts about stroke and associated recovery. It’s also a beautiful tribute to Sue that left me reaching for the tissues.”
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Jumper
A Message from My Brain (to the Auckland Medical School)
This is the brain of a male-female transgender person. I expect it to conform to that of a normal male, but probably not in every respect. For instance, my reading has suggested that the ‘bed nucleus of the stria terminalis’ may be more consistent with that found in the female brain, hence the peculiar phenomenon that has afflicted me all my life. Also note that I received total gender reassignment surgery in November 1991 at age 52. At that point, I’d already been on female hormones for some ten years, and I don’t know what ‘feminising’ effects have occurred in the brain as a result.
I believe that the establishing of a sense of gender identity consistent with the physical is prime in a child’s socialisation. I can’t speak for other TGs, but my awareness (around age 4) of the disjunction between my clear physical identity as a male (capable of fathering two children in adulthood) and a mental conviction that I should’ve been born female caused me significant misery throughout my life. My transition at 52 at least brought a kind of release from the fantasising, agonising, and guilt. Whatever, I can’t regret the only life I’ll ever have. There has been much pleasure and some achievement despite the rigours of a life with mind and body at war. Certainly, no prenatal intervention, or anything else, was possible in 1939, but it would be comforting to know that my brain, at some point, might contribute to research in the area. However, I believe that little or no research is undertaken in New Zealand into transgender-related brain structure anomalies currently, and I’m happy to accept that the medical school will use my brain as is appropriate to its purposes. Sincerely, I’m happy to contribute whatever to the host of men and women who have lived with gender dysphoria and ultimately found… and those who perhaps never did.
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Jesus In My Corner
Jesus in My Corner, written by Andy Flute, chronicles his struggle to overcome a myriad of life-long challenges with violence and alcohol. For over 30 years, violence and alcohol were Andy's daily bread until, one day, by the power of prayer, he managed to achieve what no amount of alcohol or prison incarceration could ever achieve. When he was at the point of death, intoxicated with alcohol following a ten-day binging session, I went to see my old mate and prayed for him with Pastor Steve.
Andy was fighting the demon of alcohol and he was on the ropes, down for the count. Andy, a former captain of the English boxing team and British Middleweight title challenger alongside sparring partner Chris Eubank and other world class fighters, knew what brutal fighting was all about. This fight was different, one he couldn't win on his own strength. Andy felt the intense grip and destructive downward spiral alcohol had on his life. Battered and bleeding, with no more strength, he cried out to Jesus.
In a truly miraculous turnaround, Andy found Jesus in his corner and almost instantaneously gave up alcohol. During the bleakest of moments, he experienced a spiritual awakening. Slowly, he found his way through darkest era of his life. He came to believe a power greater than himself in Jesus.
Now with Jesus in his corner, Andy is an active member of Sedgley Community Church. The Bible employs the analogy of wrestling in reference to our warfare with Satan and his hosts. Andy had a fight that only Jesus could referee, this gigantic battle played out until he was baptised in water.
Andy Flute's willingness to share the most intimate aspects of his life was born out of a deep desire to help others addicted to alcohol and violence.
Despite these daunting events, Andy now works hard to live a normal life and raise a family of his own. He regularly attends prison workshops and shares his testimony in local schools. The Lord has made an amazing transformation in his life, He could do the same for you!His good friend, John Cramphorn
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It's Hard to Be Good
Times were hard in the 1940s and early '50s: kids went hungry and food was rationed; some families had to beg, steal or borrow to survive. But Charlie found his own way out. On a routine basis, together with his childhood gang, they became kid grafters (bang into crime). They did what they had to do, providing food to put on their family's table amongst other things.
In 1953, aged 13, Charlie and his gang were always bunking off school. He went on to make further progress with his life. With his baby face and dressed as an office boy in a blazer, shirt, and tie, he was darting in and out of buildings in the city centre of Liverpool, buildings which provided rich pickings as he raided their cash drawers and safes.
Charlie meets his mentor: an older woman, who was a professional in the business. She teaches him how to rob high-class jewellers of their expensive diamond rings: a well planned-out scene which is typical of the classic, highly rewarding cases of jewellery robberies of the time.
Here's what Charlie has to say about his younger self: 'In 1954 and at the age of fourteen, I was earning more money than a professional adult. I was the richest poor teenager in Liverpool.'
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