A teen girl, Aideen, makes a journey from self-protectively tough to ready and willing to face her main problem: her single mother's alcoholism. Aideen's best (and only) friend is pulling away. Her mother's drinking problem is a constant concern. She's running out of diseases to fake so she can skip PE. When she sees her nemesis, overachiever Meabh Kowalski, in the midst of a full-blown meltdown, she sees a problem that-- unlike her own disaster...

When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she's born; but as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can't do it alone. He has a caring network of friends and family, but a social worker is convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home.

Adventure therapy has been shown to improve self-esteem, enable healthy communication and increase levels of trust amongst its participants. The author postulates that when adventure-based intervention is used with families of alcoholic/addicts, its effects are analogous. In this thesis project, an adventure-based intervention is created for families participating in a "Four-Day Intensive Family Week" facilitated by the author at a chemical dependency...

The mysterious new tenant of Wildfell Hall is a strong-minded woman who keeps her own counsel. Helen 'Graham' - exiled with her child to the desolate moorland mansion, adopting an assumed name and earning her living as a painter - has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Narrated by her neighbour Gilbert Markham, and in the pages of her own diary, the novel portrays Helen's eloquent struggle for independence at a time when...

This tale, set during the Depression, tells about Francis Phelan and other inhabitants of skid row in Albany, New York. Ironweed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the best-known of William Kennedy's three Albany-based novels. Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally - and fatally...