ATTRACTION de Ruby Porter

                                       ‘A melancholic and haunting meditation on postcolonial guilt

                                                                           ATTRACTION
                                                                                By Ruby Porter
                                                                                                                    Text publishingr, May 2019

In lyrical fragments, Ruby Porter explores what it means to be and to belong, to create and to destroy.
ATTRACTION is a meditative novel of connection, inheritance and the stories we tell ourselves.
Three women are on a road trip, navigating the motorways of the North Island of New Zealand, their relationships with one another, and the country’s colonial history. Our narrator doesn’t know where she stands with Ilana, her not-quite girlfriend. She has a complex history with her best friend, Ashi. She’s haunted by the memory of her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend. And her period is late. Ruby Porter was born in 1993 and is a tutor of creative writing at the University of Auckland. She has been published in Geometry Journal, Aotearotica, Spinoff and Wireless, and a selection of her poetry is available on NZEPC. In 2018 she won the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest.

AUF DEM SEIL de Terézia Mora

Is life an eternal balancing act?

Auf dem Seil
by Terézia Mora
Luchterhand, September 2019

Darius Kopp threatened to break his misfortune. Three years have passed since his wife, Flora, his great love, died. The IT expert traveled through Europe with Flora’s ashes and finally landed in Sicily. One day his unexpected 17-year-old niece appears there. The girl is on her own and does not give way to him anymore. Lorelei needs Darius’ help – and he needs her. With her he goes back to Berlin. And learn to measure your (c)Peter Van Felbert happiness by what you can and can not change by your own will.

18 TINY DEATHS de Bruce Goldfarb

The fascinating story of the forgotten woman who pioneered forensic science

18 TINY DEATHS: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
by Bruce Goldfarb
Sourcebooks, February 2020

As World War II rages across the Atlantic, Frances Glessner Lee stands at the front of a wood-paneled classroom within Harvard Medical School and addresses the young men attending her seminar on the developing field of forensic science. A grandmother without a college degree, Lee may appear better suited for a life of knitting than of investigation of unexpected death. Her colleagues and students, however, know her to be an extremely intelligent and exacting researcher and teacher—the perfect candidate, despite her gender, to push the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.

Lee’s decades-long obsession with advancing the discipline of forensic science was a battle from the very beginning. In a time when many prestigious medical schools were closed to female students and young women were discouraged from entering any kind of scientific profession, Lee used her powerful social skills, family wealth, and uncompromising dedication to revolutionize a field that was usually political, often corrupt, and always deeply rooted in the primal human fear of death.

18 Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman, who should never have even been allowed into the classrooms she ended up teaching in, changed the face of science forever.

GENIALE KINDSKÖPFE de Sebastian Berger

A new look at human learning

GENIALE KINDSKÖPFE
(Brilliant Baby Brain)
by Sebastian Berger
Kösel, April 2019

Babies truly are miracles in learning: Sebastian Berger introduces us to the fascinating world of early infant learning, describes the development in the brain areas that enable learning, and gives insights into the respective cognitive research. He shows that babies not only learn much faster than adults, but  similar to scientists  explore the world experimentally, draw their conclusions from statistical information and deduce generally valid regularities from it. From individual observations, the child gains clues to the physical laws of nature and acquires important skills such as trust and the ability to cooperate. Within only a few years, children are able to understand and navigate the physical, psychological and social world perfectly. The book opens our eyes to a new view of the fascinatin world of early infant learning, thus allowing us to better understand and appreciate children.
Professor Sebastian Berger gained his PhD in business and social psychology at the University of Cologne. This was followed by research projects at the universities in Cologne, Stanford and Lausanne, and since 2015 he has been assistant professor for organisation research at the University of Bern. His research work has been discussed globally in such media as the New York Times, Washington Post, FAZ, SZ and NZZ. The birth of his child brought the focus of his research interest to early infant development.

OUTSMARTING THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR de Martha Stout

Hope and concrete solutions for those who are currently dealing with a sociopath

OUTSMARTING THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator
by Martha Stout’s
Crown/Harmony Avril 2020

Stout’s 2005 bestseller The Sociopath Next Door (534,000 copies sold to date) showed readers how to identify a sociopath. In this new work, she takes a step further by examining the personal and global implications of sociopathy, providing hope and concrete solutions for those who are currently dealing with a sociopath.Bringing together the countless e-mails, phone calls, and letters that she has collected from readers since the publication of The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout mines these accounts for their inherent instruction and fascination, and makes the issue of conscience, or the lack thereof, riveting and relevant to a wide audience.

Organized around categories such as destructive narcissism, violent sociopaths, sociopathic coworkers, and the sociopath in your family, each chapter contains representative stories from « everyday people, » as well as Stout’s detailed explanation and commentary on how best to react in these situations to keep the sociopath at bay. Uniting these categories is Stout’s discussion of changing psychological theories of personality and sociopathy and the enduring triumph of conscience over those who operate without empathy or concern for others. With Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door, Stout aims to help readers navigate their interactions with the ruthless people in their personal lives and to inform society’s broader interest in character and conceptions of normality.

MARTHA STOUT, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice, served on the faculty in psychology in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for 25 years. She is the author of The Sociopath Next Door and The Myth of Sanity.