"Splendid" —New York Times "Mind-bending." —Wall Street Journal "Brilliantly original. The best new novel I've read this year." —Salman Rushdie A daring, kaleidoscopic novel about the clash of empires and ideas, told through a tennis match in the sixteenth century between the radical Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, played with a ball made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn. The poet and the artist battle it out in Rome before a crowd that includes Galileo, a Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw the world into flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII execute Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into those most-sought-after tennis balls. Across the ocean in Mexico, the last Aztec emperors play their own games, as the conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, fight and f**k, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the course of history. In a remote Mexican colony a bishop reads Thomas More’s Utopia and thinks that it’s a manual instead of a parody. And in today’s New York City, a man searches for answers to impossible questions, for a book that is both an archive and an oracle. Álvaro Enrigue’s mind-bending story features assassinations and executions, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bawdy criminals, carnal liaisons and papal schemes, artistic and religious revolutions, love and war. A blazingly original voice and a postmodern visionary, Enrigue tells the grand adventure of the dawn of the modern era, breaking down traditions and upending expectations, in this bold, powerful gut-punch of a novel. Game, set, match. “Sudden Death is the best kind of puzzle, its elements so esoteric and wildly funny that readers will race through the book, wondering how Álvaro Enrigue will be able to pull a novel out of such an astonishing ball of string. But Enrigue absolutely does; and with brilliance and clarity and emotional warmth all the more powerful for its surreptitiousness.” —Lauren Groff, New York Times-bestselling author of Fates and Furies "Engrossing... rich with Latin and European history." —The New Yorker "[A] bawdy, often profane, sprawling, ambitious book that is as engaging as it is challenging.” —Vogue

This issue of Cardiac Electrophysiology Clinics, edited by Drs. Mohammad Shenasa, N. A. Mark Estes III, and Gordon F. Tomaselli, will cover Contemporary Challenges in Sudden Cardiac Death. Topics covered in this issue include Pathophysiology; Basic electrophysiological mechanism; Channelopathy and Myopathy as causes of sudden cardiac death; Public access to defibrillation; Sudden cardiac death in children adolescence; Sudden cardiac death in specific cardiomyopathies; Ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death; lessons learned from cardiac implantable rhythm devices; future directions, and more.

Following systematic development of technical aspects and physiological understanding, and clinical applicability of cardiac autonomic testing, this book provides a detailed guide to performing individual autonomic tests in both research and clinical settings. The book is structured in three parts covering the physiological background of cardiac autonomic regulations, description of technology and interpretation of individual autonomic tests, and applicability of the individual tests under various clinical circumstances and in defined populations of patients. The book is intended to serve both research and clinical cardiologists as well as research and clinical specialists of other medical fields who use the assessment of cardiac modulations to investigate the autonomic nervous system.

Living Life While Navigating the Death of a Loved One If you recently lost a loved one, How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies is the lifeline you are seeking. Dr. Therese Rando’s compassionate and comprehensive guide will help you navigate the storm and find your way back to solid ground. Whether dealing with sudden loss or mourning a long-anticipated passing, this book acknowledges that each person’s journey through grief is unique. It equips its readers with the tools to understand and address their grief, communicate with children about death, attend to any unfinished business, and find support and other resources to help them move forward with their lives. Dr. Rando emphasizes the importance of self-care and encourages the acceptance of appropriate help and support from others. She provides practical strategies for managing grief during difficult times like the holidays, for planning funerals, and for creating meaningful personal rituals. First published in the late 1980s, Dr. Rando’s book is an enduring guide to the emotional, practical, and spiritual aspects of loss. With decades of clinical experience and international acclaim, she is a leading expert on the grieving process. While this guide is intended for people who have lost a loved one, it is also a resource for carers, or anyone else, who wish to support someone navigating the path of bereavement. In the face of loss, this book is not just about surviving, but about living—truly and fully.

A state-of-the-art reference on contemporary and challenging issues in electrocardiography. Amazingly, over a century after the first use of the electrocardiogram, new ECG patterns are being discovered. And in the last few decades, several new electrocardiographic phenomena and markers have emerged that are challenging to physicians and allied professionals who read and interpret ECGs such as early repolarization, ECGs of athletes, Brugada Syndrome, short and long QT syndrome, various channelopathies, and cardiomyopathies. Internationally recognized experts discuss the most recent evidence-based information on these new observations, complemented with detailed ECG tracings, to provide essential guidance for the optimal interpretation of ECGs in the 21st century. Audience: Physicians who are involved in sports medicine, emergency department physicians, internists, ECG readers, and pediatric and adult cardiologists.

The field of cardiovascular genetics has tremendously benefited from the recent application of massive parallel sequencing technology also referred to as next generation sequencing (NGS). However, along with the discovery of additional genes associated with human cardiac diseases, the analysis of large dataset of genetic information uncovered a much more complex and variegated landscape, which often departs from the comfort zone of the monogenic Mendelian diseases image that clinical molecular geneticists have been well acquainted with for many decades. It is now clear that, in addition to highly penetrant genetic variants, which in isolation are able to recapitulate the full clinical presentation when expressed in animal models, we are now aware that a small but significant fraction of subjects presenting with cardiac muscle diseases such as cardiomyopathies or primary arrhythmias such as long QT syndrome (LQTS), may harbor at least two deleterious variants in the same gene (compound heterozygous) or in different gene (double heterozygous). Although the clinical presentation in subjects with more than one deleterious variant appears to be more severe and with an earlier disease onset, it somehow changes the viewpoint of clinical molecular geneticists whose aim is to identify all possible genetic contributors to a human condition. In this light, the employment in clinical diagnostics of the NGS technology, allowing the simultaneous interrogation of a DNA target spanning from large panel of genes up to the entire genome, will definitely aid at uncovering all such contributors, which will have to be tested functionally to confirm their role in human cardiac conditions. The uncovering of all clinically relevant deleterious changes associated with a cardiovascular disease would probably increase our understanding of the clinical variability commonly occurring among affected family relatives, and potentially provide with unexpected therapeutic targets for the treatment of symptoms related to the presence of “accessory” deleterious genetic variants other than the key molecular culprit. The objective of this Research Topic is to explore the current challenges presenting to the cardiovascular genetics providers, such as clinical geneticists, genetic counselors, clinical molecular geneticists and molecular pathologists involved in the diagnosis, counseling, testing and interpretation of genetic tests results for the comprehensive management of patients affected by cardiovascular genetic disorders.

Palliative care has evolved rapidly in recent years. Not only is the field dealing with an increasingly elderly and multi-morbid population, it is also addressing a wider variety of complex diagnoses such as heart failure, renal failure, advanced lung disease, frailty, and dementia. Challenging Cases in Palliative Care is unique, as it uses examples of real-world cases from palliative care practices. It also includes expert commentary to support modern clinicians in managing the 'messiness' of clinical care, as well as the increasingly complex needs of patients today. As part of our Challenging Cases series, the cases in this book not only cover a range of physical and psychosocial problems seen in palliative care, they also reflect the core curriculum for UK speciality trainees. Each case brings together expert interpretation of the available evidence, management strategies, guidelines and best practice, while discussing complexities in clinical decision-making and controversies in approach.