Psychological Science

After the successful reception of the book Psychological Aspects in Times of Pandemic, where a number of issues from the perspective of psychological science are addressed related to the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of citizens, and after listeners' insistent requests for a book focused on healthcare personnel, came this book. The purpose of it is to offer updated information on the psychological aspects of those whom have been described as the battlefront against the advance of COVID-19 from a perspective of scientific psychology.

Seven strange stand-alone tales involving unusual people caught in disturbing circumstances are presented in this collection.

Rick Timber was a small-time con-artist living in either high-end hotels or out of his car. He was a loner. Who needs friends when you have split personalities to keep you company? One of Rick's alter egos, Tim Bricker, was fearless. He had an eye for curvy women and nerves of steel when it came to the short con. Tim wasn't afraid to put Rick into dangerous, even deadly circumstances. Egor, on the other hand, was more cynical, always looking for a fight. Rick created the characters to help him, but now they seemed more interested in helping themselves.

Dr. Marie Bartek enjoys a simple life as the veterinarian of Sullivan's Island - until her psychic abilities suddenly return after 18 years. Shaken by the spirits that now haunt her every moment, Marie confides in her best friend. Together, they form the Sullivan’s Island Paranormal Society: SIPS. As new and unlikely friendships begin, Marie learns to channel her powers. When they find out that the spirits are trying to warn her of an evil presence on the island, Marie and her friends set out to bring a vicious serial killer to justice.

Adam, a successful young real estate investor, spends nearly two months in a coma after surviving a motorcycle accident. During his deep state of unconsciousness, Adam dreams up a whole new life - new friends, new clients, a hot new girlfriend. Adam does not wake just because it's morning. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for his sister Julie waking him daily, he wouldn't wake up at all. Whenever he falls back asleep, Adam’s life in his comatose world continues to expand, and he finds himself confusing reality with his dream world whenever he is awake.

Amelia Rothman, a foreign rights editor from New York, has a turbulent personal life. Adele Durand, a young French woman, marries the wrong man in 18th century revolutionary France. What do these two women have in common? Is it possible that an apprentice medicine man in 15th century Africa and an ancient sword hold the answers to a question that transcends time itself?

Jon Gunnarson never meant to transform humanity. He just wanted a normal life. A life where he doesn't absorb other people's emotions, lose himself, and have to live like a hermit. So he jumps at the chance to help develop a scam telepathy app because it will get him to Bhutan, where he hopes an old friend will teach him how to disconnect. The problem is, working with others is the least of his worries because Jon and Ella unwittingly trigger the onset of mass telepathy. As if that isn't enough, they must run for their lives when they discover a way Venn can avoid arrest.

When Jared refuses to kill for his gang, they beat him nearly to death. Comatose, his world splits in two. In one, Jared battles to wake from unconsciousness. In the other, he becomes a ruthless gang member known as J-Rock. After three years in darkness, Jared finally opens his eyes and is bombarded by visions of the horrible crimes J-Rock is committing in a parallel world. As Jared struggles to wake, he realizes his soul has been switching places with his criminal counterpart. Jared must find a way to eliminate J-Rock before the next switch.

Dr. Leonard Wise, now an associate professor of parapsychology at Garden State University, is requested by a pair of grieving parents to examine the case of their deceased grown son. Harold Stoller was depressed and had thrown himself from the roof of his palatial home. Was it due to his unhappiness, or was he seduced by a female spirit, a succubus, that tempted him to his doom? As Leonard seeks answers, he comes in conflict with Dr. Anika Vanya, a specialist in unusual hypnotherapy. Was Harold’s death merely an accident, or did she program him to destroy himself?

Twelve-year-old Spencer embarks on a hunting trip with his abusive father, until a tragic accident leaves him alone and lost, deep in the woods. After a horrific bear encounter, Spencer stumbles upon Stu, a bald man who refers to the forest as his domain and claims it's inhabited by otherworldly creatures he calls "the crazies". Next thing he knows, Spencer is locked up in Stu's cabin. But is it imprisonment or salvation?

In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, where a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery. On a clandestine trip to new volcanic island The Inch, to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery, a secret. Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she’ll be exposed, Surtsey’s life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact - someone who claims to know what she’s done....

By the end of the Corporate War, Dallas Blake had lost everything: his wife, his daughter, his whole family. He was a man in need of far more than just a new beginning. What Dallas needed was a resurrection. Dallas went to the Union Fleet space docks to buy a war-surplus scout-class ship. Instead, he unknowingly buys the Tesseract, a ship with many secrets. It does not take Dallas long to find out that its crew of artificials seems way more human than they should be and every bit as much in need of a resurrection as Dallas.

One of the world's most famous intellectual ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting tale of suspected supernatural possession. A governess at a country house claims that Miles and Flora, two orphaned children in her care, are being controlled by spirits for some evil purpose. No one else can see the ghosts, and the children themselves are silent. Are they being dominated by spectral forces, or are they hiding something? Is the governess simply paranoid, or is something else going on?

Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg, with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him, has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile.

Ex-GI Will Gardestang just wanted to go to college on the GI Bill and get on with his life. After a chance meeting, he befriends Tommy Gatchell and Rico Challoner, two young men who share his love for philosophical debate, and soon all three participate in an ESP experiment. After Will and Rico display apparent psychic abilities, Rico begins to become panicky and in short order is killed before their eyes, seemingly long distance by his superiors in a devil-worshipping cult. Enraged over the death of their friend, Will and Tommy vow to track down the killers and unmask their diabolic plans.

Laid low by a tropical disease and an accompanying malaise, Crispin Clare returns to his ancestral home in East Anglia. Local folklore seeps into his fever dreams and into his writing, and the lines between reality and myth soon start to blur. In this finely woven tale of illness and recovery, family and fable, Randolph Stow creates a unique, imaginative landscape, populated by figures from old English myths and legends, and from Clare’s present.

Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light. Flying in Place is such a book. As unflinching as The Lovely Bones, as startling as Beloved, it is a work to bear witness - with bravery and compassion - for the experience of millions of readers and their loved ones. Emma is 12, a perfectly normal girl, in a perfectly normal home. With a perfectly normal father...who comes into her bedroom every night in the hours before dawn. Emma will do anything to escape.

What is it that drives a man from the light and into the dark? What force has the ability to take a man from sound of mind to muddled and confused in less than a year's time? Nick Hines wishes he knew because he has just completed the trip from husband and family man to convicted wife killer, child killer, and suspect in the investigation into the accidents that took his own two children's lives. In less time than it takes to wean a puppy, Nick has gone from sane to crazy, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.

Celia Bones is a girl existing in two different moments in time. In 1983, she is enjoying summertime and the meeting of a new friend. In 2001, Celia has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a form of cancer, and is haunted by dreams of a future that she may not live to see. Fireflies in Winter is the story of how there is nothing more tragic than the passage of time, and how time can change the way we look at the world around us.

When successful Psychotherapist, Theodore Bond, discovers that two of his patients are appearing in each other's night terrors, yet they've never met he decided to use Past Life Regression, and the detail of their nightmares is shocking.