Sleep was taking over Anna’s life. Despite multiple alarm clocks and powerful stimulants, the young Atlanta lawyer could sleep for thirty or even fifty hours at a stretch. She stopped working and began losing weight because she couldn’t stay awake long enough to eat. Anna’s doctors didn't know how to help her until they tried an oddball drug, connected with a hunch that something produced by her body was putting her to sleep. The Woman Who Couldn’t Wake Up tells Anna’s story—and the broader story of her diagnosis, idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), a shadowy sibling of narcolepsy that has emerged as a focus of sleep research and patient advocacy. Quinn Eastman explores the science around sleepiness, recounting how researchers have been searching for more than a century for the substances that tip the brain into slumber. He argues that investigation of IH could unlock new understandings of how sleep is regulated and controlled. Eastman foregrounds the experiences of people with IH, relating how publicity around Anna’s successful treatment helped others form a community. He shows how a group of patients who felt neglected or dismissed united to steer research toward their little-known disorder. Sharing emerging science and powerful stories, this book testifies to the significance of underrecognized diseases and sheds new light on how our brains function, day and night. It is essential reading for anyone interested in sleep and sleep disorders, including those affected by or seeking to treat them.

A harrowing psychological thriller debut about a woman who awakens after an assault with no physical proof of the attack and who must try to convince everyone of what really happened. When Dr. Alex Taylor opens her eyes, she is hooked up to an IV, is bound to an operating table, and her legs are raised in stirrups. Disoriented and alarmed, she assumes she's been anesthetized and brought to surgery after being in an accident. But the man standing over her, with his face hidden behind a surgical mask and wielding instruments, is no doctor she recognizes at the hospital where she works as a successful and respected doctor. He’s a stranger—and he’s calmly and methodically telling her how he's about to attack her. Before Alex can even scream for help, she succumbs to another dose of anesthesia, rendering her unable to defend herself…. When she comes to on a gurney, she finds herself surrounded by her colleagues and immediately reports the attack and rape. The police are skeptical of her bizarre story. And after a physical exam reveals no proof of any attack, even her boyfriend has doubts. Despite Alex's adamant claims, no one believes her, leaving her to wonder if she has, in fact, lost her mind. Until she meets the next victim… An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller, Don't Wake Up is also a provocative, timely exploration of victimhood, abuse, and the discrediting of women in our culture.

Lucid dreams are dreams in which a person becomes aware that they are dreaming. They are different from ordinary dreams, not just because of the dreamer's awareness that they are dreaming, but because lucid dreams are often strikingly realistic and may be emotionally charged to the point of elation. Celia Green and Charles McCreery have written a unique introduction to lucid dreams that will appeal to the specialist and general reader alike. The authors explore the experience of lucid dreaming, relate it to other experiences such as out-of-the-body experiences (to which they see it as closely related) and apparitions, and look at how lucid dreams can be induced and controlled. They explore their use for therapeutic purposes such as counteracting nightmares. Their study is illustrated throughout with many case histories.

"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

When our tyrannical CEO fires every wake-up-call service on the planet, what's a lowly admin to do? I secretly start making the calls myself. Luckily he doesn't seem to mind my get-your-ass-out-of-bed attitude. But now the calls are turning hot, like pay-by-the-minute hot, and he wants to take me out on a date. He's scouring Manhattan to find the sexy vixen who wakes him up every morning. No way can I let him know it's me!

Julie Flygare was on an ambitious path to success, entering law school at age 22, when narcolepsy destroyed the neurological boundaries between dreaming and reality in her brain. She faced terrifying hallucinations, paralysis and excruciating sleepiness - aspects of dream sleep taking place while wide awake. Yet, narcolepsy was a wake-up call for Julie. Her illness propelled her onto a journey she never imagined - from lying paralyzed on her apartment floor to dancing euphorically at a nightclub; from the classrooms of Harvard Medical School to the start line of the Boston Marathon. Wide Awake and Dreaming is a revealing first-hand account of dreams gone wrong with narcolepsy. It's the brave story of one woman trampling over barriers and finding light in the darkest of circumstances.

When Cuban Expatriate, and Washington DC resident Zulma Ibanyez arrives home for her son, she finds the babysitter bound, and Lucas missing. This sets off a chain of events that hurls her into a frantic race against time and two governments to find him. Unsure, but suspecting the boys father Marcus Parrilla. A Minister in the Castro Regime, as the kidnapper. She must now risk everything to return to Cuba and retrieve her son before he succumbs to the symptoms of a life threatening illness, and facilitating the forced recruitment of an ex Navy pilot named Kyle Cordel. Set during present time, THE HAVANA SUN is about several things. The unshakable Love of a mother for a child, and of how the drastic actions we take, whether for good or bad, always have a ripple effect thats unpredictable. It is also about trust, betrayal and redemption. However, ultimately it shows how unwavering determination plus a little luck can sometimes make the impossible happen.