Ashley's Picks
Free days with George : life's little lessons learned from one very big dog
Campbell, Colin, author
2016
Marketing executive and surfer Colin Campbell writes about his life with his Newfoundland dog George with a particular focus on their surfing adventures.
The good nurse : a true story of medicine, madness, and murder
Graeber, Charles, author
2018
After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen's murderous career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in this piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, the author, a journalist presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, this book weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal. The author's portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanor masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen's professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there's no telling how many more lives could have been lost. This work does more than chronicle Cullen's deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America's medical system. This book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.
Indian Horse : a novel
Wagamese, Richard, author
2012
Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother--and then his home itself. Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey. His intuition and vision are unmatched. His speed is remarkable. Together they open doors for him: away from the school, into an all-Ojibway amateur circuit, and finally within grasp of a professional career. Yet as Saul's victories mount, so do the indignities and the taunts, the racism and the hatred--the harshness of a world that will never welcome him, tied inexorably to the sport he loves.
Invisible chains : Canada's underground world of human trafficking
Perrin, Benjamin
2010
Just outside Toronto, a 14-year-old Canadian girl was auctioned on the Internet for men to purchase by the hour. A young woman was taken by slave traders from an African war zone to Edmonton to earn greater profits by exploiting her in prostitution. The global problem of human trafficking is only beginning to be recognized in Canada, even though it has been hidden in plain sight. Benjamin Perrin, an award-winning law professor and policy expert, exposes cases of human trafficking, recording in-depth interviews with people on the front lines and bringing to light government records released under access-to-information laws.