Little & Lion- Brandy Colbert

Demons of the Night: Tales of the Fantastic, Madness, and the Supernatural from Nineteenth-Century France​

Calvin - Martine Leavitt

Summary: Born on the day the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published, seventeen-year-old Calvin, a schizophrenic, sees and has conversations with the tiger, Hobbes, and believes that if he can persuade the strip's creator, Bill Watterson, to do one more strip, he will make Calvin well.

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* In this YA answer to Harvey, 17-year-old Calvin suffers from schizophrenia, causing him to see and hear a large, invisible tiger: Hobbes, of course. It's a quick hop from imaginary tiger to psych ward, where Calvin grows convinced his cure lies not in medication but in persuading cartoonist Bill Watterson to write one more Calvin and Hobbes strip—one where a healthy teenage Calvin exists without Hobbes. All hinges on making a dangerous pilgrimage across frozen Lake Erie to Watterson in Cleveland. Accompanied by his best friend Susie, the teens' icy trek is punctuated by philosophical discussions, random encounters, realizations of love, and Hobbes' humorous comments. Though he is highly intelligent, Calvin's sense of reality is blurred, casting the journey in a slightly surreal light. Allusions to Calvin and Hobbes and a lighthearted tone blanket cracks in the plan and mounting tensions resulting from Calvin's illness, as when he wastes limited supplies to feed Hobbes. Written as if addressed to Watterson himself, the novel has a fresh, funny voice that never diminishes the seriousness of schizophrenia. National Book Award finalist Leavitt (Keturah and Lord Death, 2006) delivers an imaginative exploration of mental illness, examining what's real and what's true in this magical world. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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The harder they come - T.C. Boyle

The harder they come - Boyle, T.C.

Summary: Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people -- an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son's paranoid, much older lover -- as they careen towards an explosive confrontation.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* T. C. Boyle's love and mastery of language are matched by a vehement imagination and a profound fascination with the glory and ruthlessness of nature and the paradoxes of humankind. How can a species be at once so brainy and so destructive? Boyle's virtuoso short stories fill 10 volumes, and he now has 15 novels to his name, some linked to controversial historical figures, such as Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle (2004) and Frank Lloyd Wright in The Women (2009). Boyle is equally inspired by the struggles of less-well-known individuals, such as the hardy few who attempted to settle California's Northern Channel Islands, the inspiration for When the Killing's Done (2011) and San Miguel (2012). The Harder They Come, Boyle's latest high-adrenaline tale of American individualism gone psychopathic, is pegged to the jaw-dropping story of the original mountain man, John Colter. Recruited by Lewis and Clark, Colter was an exceptional hunter, trapper, and scout. Believed to be the first white man to have seen the wonders of Yellowstone, he became legendary for his escape from a group of riled Blackfeet in Montana, who stripped him naked, let him go, then gave chase, intending to hunt him down. But Colter ran for his life through severe cold for some 300 miles and survived. In today's abused and pillaged wilds of California's Mendocino County, Adam, 25, worships Colter, and even takes his name. Prone to aberrant and violent behavior, Adam is in the grip of militant survivalist mania and raging, untreated schizophrenia. Camped out in the hills, he is growing his own medication, opium poppy. His parents are on a cruise. When they join a group onshore in Costa Rica, three armed men surround them and demand their valuables. While the others cower, his father, Sten, a Vietnam vet and retired high-school principal, becomes so enraged, he kills one of the bandits with his bare hands. Back in Mendocino, we meet another outlaw, one who does more harm to herself than to others. Sara is 40 or so, devoted to her dog, and supporting herself as a substitute teacher and a farrier, tending to the hoofs of the region's horses and, in a private nature preserve for endangered African wildlife, zebras and antelopes. Sara is also a fine gardener, a darn good cook, and a rabid member of the so-called sovereign citizen movement, which considers the U.S. government illegitimate. Recklessly rebellious, Sara picks up Adam when he's hitchhiking and seduces him. There is no doubt that renegades Adam, Sara, and Sten are racing toward a conflagration. As the body count and public hysteria rise, an enormous manhunt is launched. Riffing on actual events, Boyle intensifies both suspense and provocation as he delves into the question of violence as an inherited malady not only within a family but throughout American society. He further widens the frame to take in the terror and environmental havoc wrought by illegal drug operations on state and federal land, the hate and hysteria aimed at undocumented immigrants, and the collision between mental instability and violent anti-government extremism. Boyle's illumination of minds in the grip and whirl of overwhelming fear, fury, and madness as well as stubborn and courageous love blazes in its specificity and empathy. Then there's this seizing view of nature channeled through Adam's poisoned senses: "So what he did was wait while everything alive spoke to him from the deep grass and the bushes and the hollows in the dirt. . . . They were saying Make War, Not Love. Because they were at war down there, too, war that began the minute they hatched from their eggs . . . eat or be eaten and then go ahead and sing about it." And what might they sing? Boyle's title leads us to reggae star Jimmy Cliff's indelible lyrics: Well, the oppressors are trying to keep me down Trying to drive me underground And they think that they have got the battle won I say forgive them Lord, they know not what they've done 'Cause, as sure as the sun will shine I'm gonna get my share now, what's mine And then the harder they come The harder they fall, one and all. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Boyle taps into urgent national questions in a novel primed to make literary headlines as he tours the country in sync with a substantial publicity campaign. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Garnethill - Denise Mina

Garnethill - Mina, Denise

Summary: On returning home in a drunken state after discovering her boyfriend has been married for twelve years, Maureen O'Donnell finds the body of her boyfriend tied to her kitchen chair with his throat cut, and becomes the prime suspect in his murder - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
Maureen O'Donnell wakes up hung over and finds her married boyfriend tied to a chair with his throat cut. Sexually abused as a child and unstable as an adult, Maureen, a prime suspect and on the verge of a second breakdown, isn't sure where to turn for support. Her mother is an alcoholic, and her brother peddles dope. Between sessions with the Glasgow police, off-the-wall friends, and dysfunctional relatives, she embarks on some desperate sleuthing of her own and uncovers frightening information about people she thought she knew and happenings at the psychiatric clinic where she'd been a patient. This debut novel from an author who has worked in health care and taught criminology and criminal law provides a fascinating look at the seamier side of life in Glasgow. It also provides insights into some who treat mental illness and some of the treated. ((Reviewed April 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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House of leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

House of leaves - Danielewski, Mark Z.

Summary: A family relocates to a small house on Ash Tree Lane and discovers that the inside of their new home seems to be without boundaries - (Baker & Taylor)


Library Journal
When Johnny Truant attempts to organize the many fragments of a strange manuscript by a dead blind man, it gains possession of his very soul. The manuscript is a complex commentary on a documentary film (The Navidson Record) about a house that defies all the laws of physics. Navidson's exploration of a seemingly endless, totally dark, and constantly changing labyrinth in the house becomes an examination of truth, perception, and darkness itself. The book interweaves the manuscript with over 400 footnotes to works real and imagined, thus illuminating both the text and Truant's mental disintegration. First novelist Danielewski employs avant-garde page layouts that are occasionally a bit too clever but are generally highly effective. Although it may be consigned to the "horror" genre, this novel is also a psychological thriller, a quest, a literary hoax, a dark comedy, and a work of cultural criticism. It is simultaneously a highly literary work and an absolute hoot. This powerful and extremely original novel is strongly recommended for all public and academic libraries.--Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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The memory palace - Mira Bartok

The memory palace - Bartok, Mira


Summary: A gorgeous memoir about the 17 year estrangement of the author and her homeless schizophrenic mother, and their reunion.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Bartók's mother, Norma Herr, was a pianist who suffered from schizophrenia and was homeless for much of her life. When Bartók was a child, her unpredictable mother tried to jump out of a second-floor window. After enduring years of painful uncertainty, Bartók and her sister made the difficult decision to cut off all ties to their mother, with only a post office address as a tenuous connection. They changed their names, too, and had unpublished telephone numbers and addresses. Only after Bartók suffered a debilitating brain injury in an automobile accident and discovered her mother's stored artifacts were she and her mother able to re-connect. After the accident, Bartók covered her computer with Post-it notes of "things I can't remember anymore," yet memories of her childhood fill these pages as images come flooding back and she tries valiantly to make sense of them within a contemporary context that bridges the past and the present. By the time mother and daughter meet again, some 17 years later in 2006, her mother is dying from cancer. Poignant, powerful, disturbing, and exceedingly well-written, this is an unforgettable memoir of loss and recovery, love and forgiveness. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The sociopath next door - Martha Stout

The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us - Stout, Martha

Summary: "[The author] reveals [in this book] that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people--one in twenty-five--has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. ... They can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt. ... Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win. ... To arm us against the sociopath, [the author] teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game."--BooksInPrint.

Kirkus Reviews
From the author of The Myth of Sanity (2001), a remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations.Readers eager for a tabloid-ready survey of serial killers, however, will be disappointed. Instead, Stout (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) busies herself with exploring the workaday lives and motivations of those garden-variety sociopaths who are content with inflicting petty tyrannies and small miseries. As a practicing therapist, she writes, she has spent the past 25 years aiding the survivors of psychological trauma, most of them "controlled and psychologically shattered by individual human perpetrators, often sociopaths." Antisocial personality disorder, it turns out, occurs in around four percent of the population, so it's not too surprising that treating their victims has kept Stout quite busy for the past quarter-century. Employing vivid composite character sketches, the author introduces us to such unsavory characters as a psychiatric administrator who specializes in ingratiating herself with her office staff while making her patients feel crazier; a captain of industry who killed frogs as a child and is now convinced he can outsmart the SEC; and a lazy ladies' man who marries purely to gain access to his new wife's house and pool. These portraits make a striking impact, and readers with unpleasant neighbors or colleagues may find themselves paying close attention to Stout's sociopathic-behavior checklist and suggested coping strategies. In addition to introducing these everyday psychopaths, the author examines why the rest of us let them get away with murder. She extensively considers the presence or absence of conscience, as well as our discomfort with questioning those seen as being in power. Stout also ponders our willingness to quash our inner voice when voting for leaders who espouse violence and war as a solution to global problems-pointed stuff in a post-9/11 political climate.  Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical.Agent: Susan Lee Cohen Copyright Kirkus 2004 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Batman. The killing joke – Alan Moore

Batman. The killing joke. - Moore, Alan

Summary: "One bad day. According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as The Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point. And he's going to use Gotham's top cop, Commissioner Jim Gordon, and his brilliant and beautiful daughter Barbara to do it. Now Batman must race to stop his archnemesis before his reign of terror claims two of the Dark Knight's closest friends. Can he finally put an end to the cycle of bloodlust and lunacy that links thes two iconic foes before it leads to a fatal conclusion? And as the horrifying origin of the Clown Prince of Crime is finally revealed, will the thin line that separates Batman's nobility and The Joker's insanity snap once and for all? ''--Dust jacket.

Library Journal Reviews
This classic, infamous story in the Batman saga has been recolored with a more effectively cooler palette and set into context with an introduction and an afterword. Escaped from Arkham Asylum, villain deluxe Joker shoots Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon as part of his plan to drive her police commissioner father insane. Intending to prove that anyone can go mad after "one bad day" as he describes in his putative origin story, the Joker also kidnaps and torments Commissioner Gordon. But Gordon remains sane, and Batman recaptures the Joker—the two actually share a laugh at the ambiguous ending. With Barbara Gordon now a paraplegic, the story stands as a chilling profile of madness. The Killing Joke provoked fury among many readers who lamented the disposal of Barbara Gordon as a mere pawn to testosterone; yet Gordon reinvents herself later as superinfohacker Oracle, poster girl for disability empowerment (see Birds of Prey, LJ 7/08). A bonus story at the end paints the quieter, equally chilling madness of a Batman fan fantasizing about killing the superhero—a perfect foil for the publicly gaudy Joker. For adult collections.—M.C.
[Page 41]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

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