Special Collections
Blindness and Visual Impairment Special Collection
Description: A collection featuring biographies, memoirs, fiction and non-fiction by and about members of the blind community. #disability
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South of Surrender
by Laura KayeShe's the only one who can see through his golden boy façade to the broken god within...Chrysander Notos, Supreme God of the South Wind and Summer, is on a mission: save Eurus from his death sentence, and prove his troubled brother can be redeemed. But Eurus fights back, triggering vicious summer storms that threaten the mortal realm, dangerously drain Chrys, and earn the ire of the Olympic gods who ordered Eurus dead.Laney Summerlyn refuses to give up her grandfather's horse farm, despite her deteriorating vision. More than ever, she needs the organized routine of her life at Summerlyn Stables, until a ferocious storm brings an impossible-and beautiful-creature crashing down from the heavens.Injured while fighting Eurus, Chrys finds himself at the mercy of a mortal woman whose compassion and acceptance he can't resist. As they surrender to the passion flaring between them, immortal enemies close in, forcing Chrys to choose between his brother and the only woman who's ever loved the real him.
Dr. Devereux's Proposal
by Margaret McdonaghIt's the sexy French accent that captures physiotherapist Laurie's attention-even before she's seen the gorgeous new doctor in Penhally Bay!Dr Gabe Devereux has come to the idyllic Cornish town to escape life-instead he walks straight into the heart of the community. And there's one woman who intrigues him more than most.Laurie is overawed by Gabe's attention. But she doesn't want her secret to force him to stay. Little does Laurie realize that, as her sight declines, Gabe is ready to lead her up the aisle and be her one and only guiding light...forever.
Adam & Eve - The Garden of Sins
by Francesco Falconi and Georgiana BulanceaTwo different worlds, two lonely souls that are going to meet. Sofia is the last descendant of the Spanish family of Alvarez. For years she has lived segregated in a villa in Florence. Rarely does she leave the house, she spies the world from the window of her room. She dreams it, wishes it, and yet she hates it. But mostly she hates The Left Sofia. So does she call that part of her face which was disfigured because of a fire in the garden of the villa when she was just a child. A silly game with her brother Alejandro, a small fire burning near a dry scrub. Terrible consequences that forever changed her future. Because in that garden Sofia has not only lost the perfection of her beauty, but also her brother Alejandro. Lorenzo lives on the outskirts of Florence with his father. At the age of eight he contracted a terrible degenerative disease that, day after day, made him blind. Since then, the world of Lorenzo became a chiaroscuro of light and shadow that vibrate to the music. Music, in fact, is his only reason for living. The cello is his only voice. One day, Lorenzo and Sofia meet in the Boboli Gardens, just in front of the statues of Adam and Eve. They get to know each other, they befriend. Day after day, their relationship turns into something deeper and more complicated. A perfect and inviolable feeling. A blind and sincere love. But the world around them, the desire to see beyond the shadows and enjoy the beauty is too great temptation that can disrupt even that Eden of love ...
Snowfall (Novella)
by Mary Ann RiversMary Ann Rivers delivers the moving story of a woman who must confront a life-changing event, and the man who helps her view the world in a different light--just in time for Christmas. When Jenny Wright becomes involved in an online romance with someone she knows only as "C," she can't get enough of their erotic conversation. Flirting online helps Jenny temporarily escape confronting the innumerable changes to her life as she slowly loses her vision. It's easier having a relationship with someone behind a computer screen, someone with whom she doesn't have to share every intimate detail of her life. Jenny's occupational therapist, Evan Carlisle-Ford, is helping her prepare for the challenges ahead. But the forthright, trustworthy man can no longer ignore his growing attraction to his fiercely intelligent client. His only option is to end their professional relationship . . . and embrace a romantic one. Now Jenny must choose between the safe, anonymous "C"--or the flesh-and-blood Evan, whose heated kisses can melt snow faster than it can fall. And after receiving an unexpected present for Christmas, Jenny just may find the courage to let down her defenses and trust--in herself, and in the possibility of lasting love. Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.
What Milo Saw
by Virginia MacgregorA BIG story about a small boy who sees the world a little differently.
Milo curled his thumb and forefinger together to make a small hole and held his fingers up to Al's eyes.
'Look through here. That's what I see. Kind of, only worse.''Wow, that must be amazing.'Milo shrugged. 'Not really.''I mean, it makes you focus, doesn't it? I bet you see all kinds of stuff that other people miss.'
Nine-year-old Milo Moon has retinitis pigmentosa: his eyes are slowly failing and he will eventually go blind. But for now he sees the world through a pin hole and notices things other people don't. When Milo's beloved gran succumbs to dementia and moves into a nursing home, Milo soon realises there's something wrong at the home. So with just Tripi, the nursing home's cook, and Hamlet, his pet pig, to help, Milo sets out on a mission to expose the nursing home and the sinister Nurse Thornhill.
Insightful, wise and surprising, What Milo Saw is filled with big ideas and simple truths. Milo sees the world in a very special way and it will be impossible for you not to fall in love with him and then share his story with everyone you know.
Dante's Poison
by Lynne RaimondoBlind psychiatrist Mark Angelotti has just enrolled in a drug trial that holds out hope of restoring his eyesight when he again becomes entangled in a case that is rocking the Chicago legal community. After defending the manufacturer of the powerful antipsychotic drug Lucitrol against product-liability claims, attorney Jane Barrett has become somewhat of an expert on the controversial medication. So when her lover, investigative journalist Rory Gallagher, collapses from a fatal dose of the same drug, it falls to Hallie Sanchez, Barrett's oldest friend, to defend her on murder charges. Amid growing doubts about her friend's innocence, Hallie recruits Mark Angelotti to help her discredit the testimony of a crucial eyewitness. The pair succeeds in obtaining Barrett's release, but at a dreadful price. Mark sets out to investigate who else may have wanted the journalist out of the way. As he gets closer to the truth, he realizes the killer is still on the loose. But two questions remain for Mark: Will the drug trial succeed in restoring his eyesight? More important, will he live long enough to see this case to its end?From the Trade Paperback edition.
Enticed
by Kathleen DanteSpecial ops agent Dillon Gavin is taking a break from his demanding schedule when his life takes an unexpected-and complicated-turn. Her name is Jordan Kane, a beautiful artist. Legally blind, she paints with her inner eye-which affords her an uncanny, and sometimes breathtaking, clairvoyance. What she sees in Dillon-comfortable in an unpredictable world of intrigue, espionage, and brute violence-is the kind of man that an artistic, gentle soul like Jordan never experienced before. Her sixth sense tells her that Dillon wants her. Her common sense says stay away. But from his first sensuous touch in the dark comes an irresistible urge that dares to take Jordan where's she's never gone before.
Little By Little
by Jean LittleJean Little, award winning Canadian author, writes her first book of memoirs. Written with vivid recall of emotions and events, Little's autobiography begins with her early childhood in Taiwan, covers her growing up legally blind, dealing with public school and social problems, and ends with the publication of her first book, Mine for Keeps. Jean Little's work has mainly consisted of children's literature, but she has also written two autobiographies: Little by Little and Stars Come Out Within. Little has been partially blind since birth as a result of scars on her cornea and is frequently accompanied by a guide dog.
Flash
by Michael CadnumWhen two teenage brothers bungle a bank robbery, their attempt to hide the evidence is witnessed—aurally—by Terrence, a legally blind neighbor. Terrence tells his girlfriend, Nina, and her brother, who then disappears with a handgun. Nina is afraid of what he might do to the brothers. But she also has every reason to fear what the brothers will do to Terrence. Flash ingeniously interweaves the stories of two who are hellbent on a destructive path, two who stand in their way, and one whose actions may be the spark to set the whole thing off.
Max Carrados
by Ernest BramahLegendary blind detective Max Carrados doesn't need his eyesight to see the crook in a tough case Max Carrados is the greatest detective you've never heard of. He may be blind, but what Carrados lacks in sight he more than makes up for in perception. He can pick out a voice in a crowded room and read a book by running his fingers over the print. Those who underestimate his abilities are soon surprised by the keen Carrados. In one story, Carrados tracks down a criminal by analyzing a coin without ever leaving his study. Another finds him solving the mystery of a train accident that has far more to it than anyone expected. Bramah's stories of Carrados regularly appeared in the Strand magazine, receiving top billing even over those of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
The German Numbers Woman
by Alan SillitoeBlind Howard, an ex-RAF veteran, possesses an acute sense of #awareness, and can see almost better than the sighted. Morse code patterns his universe and keeps his #mind tuned to the big and sometimes bad world. Noble Laura, his doting wife, is loveliness personified. Then Howard becomes acquainted with the nefarious Richard, and soon the idyll of his life with Laura starts to crack. Morse is the common denominator in the alliance. But before long, Howard and his world of dots and dashes, dits and dans, takes on new darker horizons when he clicks into a drugs racket. Howard, the codebreaker, becomes Howard the buccaneer. He leaves lovely Laura for a wild voyage in search of a woman whose voice he has fallen in love with: and a sea-journey with maverick sailors on a heroin heist. Siletoe inhabits Howards unseeing world with absolute conviction, providing a wealth of telling detail about a blind persons skilful negotiation of his everyday surroundings
The Manual of Darkness
by Enrique De HerizThe world's best magician is going blind, but is there a story in his past that can save him? Victor Losa has spent his life studying magic. His mentor, Mario Galvan, taught him not only the practical aspects of the art, but also its history and the lives of famous Victorian magicians such as Hoffman, Maskelyne, and Cooke, and the most enigmatic historical figure of all, Peter Grouse, a pickpocket who decided to challenge the best magicians of the day. But suddenly things change for Victor Losa, just as he is proclaimed the world's best magician. A light appears in his eye, but this is no magic trick - he is diagnosed with a rare degenerative condition of the optical nerve. In short, he is rapidly going blind. As he loses his sight, Victor finds that there are new ways to conjure the world through stories of the past, present and future. And finally he learns the secret behind his mentor's teachings.
How Late It Was, How Late
by James KelmanA raw, wry vision of human survival in a bureaucratic world, How Late It Was, How Late opens one Sunday morning in Glasgow, Scotland, as Sammy, an ex-convict with a penchant for shoplifting, awakens in a lane and tries to remember the two-day drinking binge that landed him there. Then, things only get worse. Sammy gets in a fight with some soldiers, lands in jail, and discovers that he is completely blind. His girlfriend disappears, the police probe him endlessly, and his stab at Disability Compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare system.
A masterpiece of black humor, subtle political parody, and Scottish lower-class vernacular.
Man Booker Prize winner
Poor Miss Finch
by Wilkie CollinsWilkie Collins's intriguing story about a blind girl, Lucilla Finch, and the identical twins who both fall in love with her, has the exciting complications of his better-known novels but it also overturns conventional expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth-century realist fiction, Collins gives one of the best accounts in fiction of blindness and its implications.
Beyond the Night
by Marlo SchaleskyThey say love is blind. This time they're right...As a woman lies unconscious in a hospital bed, her husband waits beside her, urging her to wake up and come home.
Between them lies an ocean of fear and the tenuous grip of memories long past. Memories of wonder. Of love. Memories of a girl named Madison and a boy named Paul...
Madison Foster knew she was going blind. But she didn't want pity-not from her mother, not from her roommate, and especially not from her best friend Paul-the man she secretly loved.
Paul Tilden knew a good thing when he saw it. And a good thing was his friendship with Maddie Foster. That is, until he started to fall in love.
With the music of the seventies as their soundtrack and its groovy fashions as their scenery, Maddie and Paul were drawn together and driven apart. Then one night changed everything...forever.
Senses Vol.1
by Andrew GreySometimes the heart is the most important sense. Caring for a young daughter with cancer is almost enough to make Ken Brighton give up, in Love Comes Silently, but former singer and next-door neighbor Patrick Flaherty brings hope for both of them--if he can manage to break his silence. In Love Comes in Darkness, Howard Justinian has always had to fight for his independence, in spite of his blindness, but when tragedy strikes, he may have to accept help in the form of unassuming Gordy Jarrett. In Love Comes Home, Greg Hampton's son Davey is losing his eyesight, but Tom Spangler isn't going to let that stop a boy from playing his favorite game.See excerpt for individual blurbs.
Odyssey
by Walter MosleyIn this gripping and provocative eBook original novel celebrated bestselling author Walter Mosley explores the mind of an African-American man who is forced to re-examine his most closely held beliefs about race and about himself. Sovereign James wakes up one morning to discover that he's gone blind.Sovereign's doctors can't find anything wrong with him, nor does he remember any physical or psychological trauma. Unless his sight returns, Sovereign has reached the end of his 25-year career in human resources. A couple of weeks later he is violently mugged on the street. His sight briefly, miraculously returns during the attack: for a few seconds, he can see as well as hear a young female bystander's cries of distress. Now he must grapple with two questions: What caused him to lose his vision--and, perhaps more troubling, why does violence restore it? As Sovereign searches for the woman he glimpsed, he will come to question everything he valued about his former life.
Together
by Tom Sullivan and Betty WhiteFrom the book "If this dog loves me enough to lay down his life for my survival, how can I just give up?" One misstep on a mountain climbing trip plunged Brenden McCarthy into darkness by stealing his sight and everything else he held dear. But a too-independent guide dog named Nelson just might lead him back to life . . . if they don't kick him out of guide dog school first. Brenden can't accept the fact that he's lost his sight. And Nelson can't accept that he's been paired with someone other than his former master. Just as Brenden starts to live again, a devastating setback causes him to try to end it all. Brenden releases Nelson and sits down in the middle of an intersection. At that moment, everything changes when Nelson freely decides he'd rather join Brenden in death than live without him. Now they need a leap of faith and a love beyond words to make it.
The Best Max Carrados Detective Stories
by Ernest Bramah and E. F. BleilerSightless detective Max Carrados solved his first cases in Edwardian London, in the early days of the 20th century when the city was the beating heart of the vast British Empire. This collection contains the very best tales of the blind sleuth, 10 adventures that range from his first challenge, "The Coin of Dionysus," to mysteries set during the World War I era and the early 1920s. Like Sherlock Holmes, Max Carrados debuted in The Strand magazine, and his stories rivaled those of the Baker Street detective in popularity. Since then, compilation volumes of the frequently anthologized tales have long been out of print and hard to find. This collection offers an excellent introduction to the suave private investigator whose deductive skills are surpassed only by his perceptive powers, which enable him to hear a heartbeat from across the room. Carrados' creator, Ernest Bramah, was one of the few authors in the early days of detective fiction who could combine physical and intellectual thrills with imagination and stylistic brilliance. Brimming with charm and humor, these vintage stories are utterly unique in the field of detective literature.
Lights Out
by L SubramaniAn inspirational book about one man's (L Subramani) descent into blindness and his fight to live a normal life after it.
The Book of Memory
by Petina GappahThe story that you have asked me to tell you does not begin with the pitiful ugliness of Lloyd's death. It begins on a long-ago day in August when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my father and mother sold me to a strange man.Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, after being sentenced for murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers?Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between past and present, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award-winning writer Petina Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.
Sugar Pop Moon
by John FlorioJersey Leo is the quintessential outsider--an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father-a former boxing champ with his own secrets-disapproves of Jersey's work at a dive owned by one of New York's most notorious gangsters. So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money-a potentially fatal mistake-he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in. The clues lead to Philadelphia, where he runs into a cleaver-swinging madman out for his femurs and a cold-blooded gangster holed up on a Christmas-tree farm. Now with a price on his head in two cities, Jersey seeks help from the only man he can trust, his father. As the two delve into the origins of the mysterious sugar pop moon, stunning secrets about Jersey's past come to light. To ensure his future, Jersey must face his past, even if it means that life will never return to normal.
Blind Moon Alley
by John FlorioIt's Prohibition. It's Philadelphia. And Jersey Leo doesn't fit in. Jersey is an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he tends bar at a speakeasy the locals call the Ink Well. There, he's considered a hero for having saved the life of a young boy. But when his old grade school buddy, Aaron Garvey, calls from death row and asks for one last favor, all hell breaks loose.Jersey finds himself running from a band of crooked cops, hiding an escaped convict in the Ink Well, and reuniting with his grammar school crush--the now sultry Myra Banks, who has shed a club foot and become a speakeasy siren. Through it all, Jersey tries to safeguard the Ink Well with no help other than his ragtag group of friends: his ex-boxing-champion father, Ernie Leo; the street-savvy Johalis; a dim-witted dockworker named Homer; and the dubious palm reader Madame Curio. With them, Jersey digs for the truth about his friend Aaron Garvey--and winds up discovering a few things about himself.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Blackmoor
by Edward HoganBeth is an albino, half blind, and given to looking at the world out of the corner of her eye. Her neighbours in the Derbyshire town of Blackmoor have always thought she was 'touched', and when a series of bizarre happenings shake the very foundations of the village, they are confirmed in their opinion that Beth is an ill omen. The neighbours say that Beth eats dirt from the flowerbeds, and that smoke rises from her lawn. By the end of the year, she is dead. A decade later her son, Vincent, treated like a bad omen by his father George is living in a pleasant suburb miles from Blackmoor. There the bird-watching teenager stumbles towards the buried secrets of his mother's life and death in the abandoned village. It's the story of a community that fell apart, a young woman whose face didn't fit, and a past that refuses to go away.