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We forgive murderers, not pedophiles.

Not since Lionel Shriver brought us We Need to Talk About Kevin has a writer delved into the complexities of a disturbed mother/son relationship. Until now.

Meet Noah—an A-honor roll student, award-winning swimmer, and small-town star destined for greatness. There weren’t any signs that something was wrong until the day he confesses to molesting little girls during swim team practice. He’s sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile sexual rehabilitation center.

His mother, Adrianne, refuses to turn her back on him despite his horrific crimes, but her husband won’t allow Noah back into their home. In a series of shocking and shattering revelations, Adrianne is forced to make the hardest decision of her life. Just how far will she go to protect her son?

Saving Noah challenges everything you think you know about teenage sexual offenders. It will keep you up at night long after you've read the last page, questioning beliefs you once thought were true.

When Becky Blades sent her firstborn daughter off to Harvard, she knew the world’s top-ranked college would not be covering the most important material: how to be kind, happy, and appropriate in public; how to protect oneself from sock monsters, boring conversations, and scary dates; and why you should keep your clothes clean. So the day before classes started, Blades emailed a good-bye letter with motherly advice she had kept to herself for a year. Just in time for her youngest daughter’s graduation from high school, Blades illustrated the prose with her signature mixed-media artwork, creating a thought-provoking, conversation-starting book. With warmth, wit, and a hint of motherly sass, Do Your Laundry, or You'll Die Alone: Advice Your Mom Would Give If She Thought You Were Listening blends bite-sized morsels of coming-of-age common sense such as "Keep at least one stuffed animal", and "A bad attitude makes your butt look big", with tiny essays on topics like forgiveness and phone etiquette.

The Beginner Books -- "Their cartoon format and irreverent wit make difficult ideas accessible and entertaining." -- NewsdayEverything you need to know about neurosis, libido, ego, and id -- but somehow it slipped your mind.Freud for Beginners is a perfect introduction to the life and thought of the man whose discovery of psychoanalysis revolutionized our attitudes towards mental illness, religion, sex, and culture. This documentary cartoon book plunges us into the world of late-nineteenth-century Vienna in which Freud grew up. We explore his early background in science, his work as a therapist, his encounter with cocaine, and his theories on the unconscious, dreams, the Oedipus Complex, and sexuality.We meet his family, his friend and enemies, and his patients -- The Rat Man, Anna O., Little Hans -- and we get an insider's view as the psychoanalytic movement is launched. The zany art and probing text do an extraordinary job of simplifying Freud without trivializing him.

I don’t know what to do with these stars anymore. I give stars to books and then I think, ‘god, you give five stars to everything, people will think you are terribly undiscriminating’ – so then I give four stars or even three stars to some books. Then I look back and it turns out that that I’ve given four stars to Of Human Bondage and honestly, how could I possibly have thought it was a good idea to give that book less than five stars? It is the absurdity of human conventions that has us doing such things.Now, that is what is called a segue, from the Italian ‘seguire’ – to follow. For the last thirty years I have studiously avoided reading this book. I have done that because for the last thirty years I have known exactly what this book is about and there just didn’t seem any point in reading it. In high school friends (one of them even became my ex-wife) told me it was a great book about a man condemned to die because he was an outsider. Later I was told that this book was a story about something much like the Azaria Chamberlain case. A case where someone does not react in a way that is considered to be ‘socially appropriate’ and is therefore condemned.But after 30 years of avoiding reading this book I have finally relented and read it. At first I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. It didn’t really get off to the raciest of starts and the character's voice – it is told in first person – was a bit dull. He is a man who lives entirely in the present, how terribly Buddhist of him – although, really there doesn’t seem to be all that much to him.My opinion of the book began to change at his mother’s funeral. I particularly liked the man who kept falling behind in the march to the cemetery and would take short cuts. Okay, so it is black humour, but Camus was more or less French – so black humour is more or less obligatory.I really hadn’t expected this book to be nearly so funny as it turned out. I’d always been told it was a ponderous philosophical text – and so, to be honest, I was expecting to be bored out of my skull. I wasn’t in the least bit bored.A constant theme in my life at present is that I read ‘classics’ expecting them to be about something and they end up being about something completely different. And given I’ve called this a ‘constant’ theme then you might think I would be less than surprised when a read a new ‘classic’ and it turns out to be completely different to my expectations. I’m a little more upset about this one than some of the others, as I’ve been told about this one before, repeatedly, and by people I’d have taken as ‘reputable sources’ – although, frankly, how well one should trust one’s ex-wife in such matters is moot.I had gotten the distinct impression from all of my previous discussions about this book that the guy ends up dead. In fact, this is not the case – he ends up at the point in his life where he has no idea if he will be freed or not. The Priest who comes to him at the end is actually quite certain that he will be freed. Let’s face it, he is only guilty of having murdered an Arab, and as we have daily evidence, Westerners can murder Arabs with complete impunity. The main point of the book to me is when he realises he is no longer ‘free’. He needs this explained to him – because life up until then had been about ‘getting used to things’ and one can 'get used to just about anything'. But the prison guard helpfully informs him that he is being ‘punished’ and the manifestation of that punishment is the removal of his ‘freedom’. Interestingly, he didn’t notice the difference between his past ‘free’ life and his current ‘unfree’ one. The most interesting part of the book to me was the very end, the conversation with the priest. The religious often make the mistake of thinking that Atheists are one thing – I’ve no idea how they ever came to make this mistake, but make it they do. Given that there are thousands upon thousands of different shades of Christians – from Jesuit Catholics to Anti-Disney Episcopalians – it should be fairly obvious that something like Atheism (without any ‘organised’ church or even system of beliefs) could not be in anyway ‘homogeneous’.I am definitely not the same kind of Atheist as Camus. To Camus there is no truth, the world is essentially absurd and all that exists is the relative truth an individual places on events and ideas. This makes the conversation with the priest fascinatingly interesting. To the priest the prisoner who is facing death is – by necessity – someone who is interested in God. You can play around with ideas like the non-existence of God when it doesn’t seem to matter (life is long and blasphemy can seem fun) – but surely when confronted with the stark truth of the human condition any man would turn away from their disbelief and see the shining light.Not this little black duck. Now, if I was in that cell I would have argued with the priest too – but I would not have argued in the same way that Meursault argues. No, I do not believe in God, but I do believe in truth, and so Camus’ arguments are barred to me.Meursault essentially says, “Look, I’m bored, I’m totally uninterested in the rubbish you are talking – now go away”. Now, this is a reasonable response. What is very interesting is that the priest cannot accept this as an answer. The world is not allowed to have such a person in it – if such a person really did exist then it would be a fundamental challenge to the core beliefs of the priest. So, he has to assume Meursault is either lying to him or is trying to taunt him. But it is much worse – he is absolutely sincere, he is not interested in this ‘truth’.I don’t know that the world is completely meaningless, it is conventional rather than meaningless. That those conventions are arbitrary (decided by the culture we grew up in) doesn’t make them meaningless, it makes them conventional. I don’t think I would like to live in a world where people go up and kill Arabs pretty much at random and with impunity, but then again, we have already established this is precisely the world I do live in. My point is that it would be better if we did adhere to some sort of moral principles and that these should be better principles than ‘he should be killed because he didn’t cry at his mum’s funeral’. Camus is seeking to say that all of our ‘moral principles’ in the end come to be as meaningless as that – we judge on the basis of what we see from the framework of our own limited experience. And look, yes, there is much to this – but this ends up being too easy.The thing I like most about Existentialism, though it isn’t really as evident in this book as it is in the actual philosophy – although this is something that Meursault is supposed to have grown to understand (sorry, just one more sub-clause) even though this wasn’t something I noticed at all while reading the book, was the notion of responsibility. I didn’t think in the end Meursault was all that much more ‘responsible’ for his actions than he had been at the start. But I do think that ‘responsibility’ is a key concept in morality and one that seems increasingly to be ignored.Better by far that we feel responsible for too much in our lives than too little – better by far that we take responsibility for the actions of our governments (say) than to call these governments ‘them’. I’m not advocating believing in The Secret - but that if one must err, better to err on the side of believing you have too much responsibility for how your life has turned out, rather than too little.So, what can I say? I enjoyed this much more than I expected – but I’m still glad I waited before reading it, I really don’t think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it at 15 as I did now.

A mentally-disturbed teenager kidnaps and brainwashes children into cannibalistic psychopaths - but not when the adults intervene.

A family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic, and possession.

2015 American supernatural horror film by Robert Eggers

An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity.

Sixteen-year-old Lilja and her only friend, the young boy Volodja, live in Russia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with Andrej, who is going to Sweden, and invites Lilja to come along and start a new lif

A scientist sends a man with extraordinary psychic powers to hunt others like him.

1981 horror film directed by David Cronenberg

James, a twenty-something New Yorker, struggles to take control of his self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges.

2015 American drama film directed by Josh Mond

A documentary filmmaker explores seemingly unrelated paranormal incidents connected by the legend of an ancient demon called the "kagutaba."

A portrait of the effects of schizophrenia on family life is the central focus.

Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at his new employer's country home, unaware that a second criminal has also targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps.

2009 American horror film directed by Marcus Dunstan

Two troubled adolescents chronicle the events that ultimately lead up to a terrifying assault on their school.

Teenagers Zach and Josh have been best friends their whole lives, but when a gruesome accident leads to a cover-up, the secret drives a wedge between them and propels them down a rabbit hole of escalating paranoia and violence.

Set in a surface mine, two boys sink into a seemingly innocent power game with Mother Nature as the sole observer.

Set over one summer, the film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadows of Walt Disney World

A thirteen-year-old girl's relationship with her mother is put to the test as she discovers drugs, sex, and petty crime in the company of her cool but troubled best friend.

When Greg Sestero, an aspiring film actor, meets the weird and mysterious Tommy Wiseau in an acting class, they form a unique friendship and travel to Hollywood to make their dreams come true.

2017 film directed by James Franco about The Room

Serving life in prison for murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez speak out in this documentary examining the shocking crime and ensuing trials.

In this eye-opening documentary expose, teens and parents reveal disturbing accounts of abuse and exploitation within the world of child influencers.

A female prison employee, Tilly (Patricia Arquette) in upstate New York becomes romantically involved with a pair of inmates and helps them escape.

Devil in Ohio is an American suspense thriller limited series created by Daria Polatin based on Polatin's book of the same name for Netflix. The series consists of eight episodes and was released on September 2, 2022.

An isolated island community experiences miraculous events - and frightening omens - after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.

Follows three priests dealing with cases of a demonic presence targeting a family and a foster home.

A comedy series following the lives of six 20- and 30-somethings living together as property guardians of a large, disused hospital.

When archivist Dan Turner takes a mysterious job restoring a collection of damaged videotapes from 1994, he finds himself reconstructing the work of documentary filmmaker Melody Pendras and her investigation into a dangerous cult.

When the McKellan family moves from Seattle to Georgia to be closer to extended family, the transition is like being a catfish out of water.

Medical docuseries focusing on patients with unique illnesses and their journeys to find a diagnosis and cure.

Follows the cast of the second season of '16 and Pregnant', giving viewers an intimate look at the challenges Chelsea, Leah, Jenelle, and Kailyn face raising a child as a teenager.

An anthology series centering on different characters and locations, including a house with a murderous past, an insane asylum, a witch coven, a freak show circus, a haunted hotel, a possessed farmhouse, a cult, the apocalypse, and a

American anthology horror television series

This true-crime series explores the 2013 murder of a 12-year-old who was adopted from China, her parents' arrest and the shock that left Spain reeling.

Struggling comedian and barman Donny meets a lonely woman claiming to be a lawyer. He offers her a cup of tea on the house, and she's instantly obsessed.

Ordinary people find themselves in extraordinarily astounding situations, which they each try to solve in a remarkable manner.

Gripping examination of the unsolved crimes of the Golden State Killer who terrorized California in the 1970's and 1980's.

2020 American true crime documentary TV miniseries

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