The true happenings of the time in the life of Nellie May born in April. A little joke we shared with Nellie regarding when she was born. Nellie did not have a happy childhood with a dad who beat her, she went through traumatic times when she had to go in the air raid shelter during the war when she was growing up. She went to a comprehensive school and started work at the age of 14. When Nellie was in her fifties, she liked to have a drink. I remember one day a taxi driver came to our house and asked if Nellie was at home I said no, he said I think I have her in my car (and he had). Looking back, we had some very funny times. Nellie was the life and soul of the party. She was feisty, head strong, not afraid to speak her mind, funny, loving, caring and beautiful she would do anything for anyone. She loved to dance and sing and play the organ. Nellie was in her eighties when she developed the terrible disease dementia, of which these diaries are about to tell. There were sad times but also some happy times. Nellie would always pronounce the word baby as babby as that is how she would say it. These diaries tell of what happened during her time with dementia.

Some people who take in interest in genealogy discover that they are Irish when they thought they were Scottish. Others find a long-lost cousin. When Craig Calcaterra began looking at his family history he found out that his great-great grandmother murdered his great-great grandfather with an axe on a snowy winter's night in Detroit, Michigan in 1910. Nellie Kniffen's violent rampage and her husband Frank's grisly demise was front page news in Detroit for several weeks, but she and her crime were soon forgotten, both by the public and by her family. Those who remembered it tried hard to forget it and those who came after knew nothing about it at all.Through research of public records, personal interviews and a review of the sensationalistic newspaper stories written before Frank Kniffen's body grew cold, Calcaterra unearths a chapter which had been torn out of his family's history. And begins to better understand the ghosts and demons which have haunted his family for over a century.

A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.

A journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today—guided by the owner himself. Bestselling author Daniel Tammet (Thinking in Numbers) is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head. He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man. Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it’s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human—our minds.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Louisa May Alcott is known universally. Yet during Louisa's youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. He desired perfection, for the world and from his family. Louisa challenged him with her mercurial moods and yearnings for money and fame. The other prize she deeply coveted—her father's understanding—seemed hardest to win. This story of Bronson and Louisa's tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.

Miss Read introduces the inhabitants of the lovely village of Thrush Green during the course of one pivotal day--May Day.