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House Rules (novel)
''House Rules'' (2010) is the eighteenth novel by the American author, Jodi Picoult. The novel focuses on a young adult male, Jacob Hunt, with Asperger syndrome, Asperger's syndrome living in Townshend, Vermont, Townsend, Vermont, who is accused of murder. The novel follows the struggle between Jacob and his family (consisting of his mother, Emma, and his younger brother, Theo), the law, and his disability.Picoult, Jodi. (2010). ''House Rules''. NYC, NY: Atria. Plot Eighteen-year-old Jacob Hunt lives with his mother Emma and his younger brother, Theo. Jacob has Asperger's syndrome, then considered a form of high-functioning autism. Jacob lives by a highly structured schedule and feels comfortable when all of his daily activities are pre-planned. Jacob thrives when he is able to engage in structured, focused activities, and he particularly enjoys things that are incredibly intellectual and academic. Emma is able to ensure that Jacob's anxiety and outbursts are infrequent by cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jodi Picoult
Jodi Lynn Picoult () is an American writer. Picoult has published 28 novels, accompanying short stories, and has also written several issues of Wonder Woman. Approximately 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide, translated into 34 languages. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult writes popular fiction which can be characterised as family saga. She frequently centres storylines around a moral dilemma or a procedural drama which pits family members against one another. Although she is often characterised as an author of chick-lit, over her career, Picoult has covered a wide range of controversial or moral issues, including abortion, assisted suicide, race relations, eugenics, LGBT rights, fertility issues, religion, the death penalty, and school shootings. She has been described as, "a paradox, a hugely popular, at times controversial writer, ignored by academia, who questions notions of what constitutes literature simply by d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
My Sister's Keeper (novel)
''My Sister's Keeper'' (2004) is the eleventh novel by the American author Jodi Picoult. It tells the story of thirteen-year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is told to donate a kidney to her elder sister Kate, who is gradually dying from acute leukemia. Summary The story takes place in the fictional town of Upper Darby, Rhode Island in 2004. Anna Fitzgerald's older sister, Kate, suffers from acute promyelocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer. Anna was born as a savior sister specifically so she could save Kate's life through the donation of her umbilical cord blood. At first it is successful, but the cancer continues to relapse throughout Kate's life. Anna is usually willing to donate whatever Kate needs, but when she turns 13, she is told that she will have to donate one of her kidneys due to Kate's kidney failure. The surgery required for both Kate and Anna would be major; it is not guaranteed to work, as the stress of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2010 American Novels
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. In conventions of sign where zero is considered neither positive nor negative, 1 is the first and smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by 2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following 0. The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 equals the same number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; this was not universally accepted until the mid-20th century. Additionally, 1 is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Ridgway
Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer and sex offender. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. He killed many teenage girls and women in the U.S. state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s. Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known. He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Rader
Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to police and media outlets describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. Life and background Rader was born on March 9, 1945, to Dorothea Mae Rader () and William Elvin Rader, one of four sons. Sources give Rader's place of birth as either Columbus, Kansas, or Pittsburg, Kansas. He grew up in Wichita. Both parents worked long hours and paid little attention to their children at home; Rader later described feeling ignored by his mother in particular and resenting her for it. From a young ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothea Puente
Dorothea Helen Puente (; January 9, 1929 – March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing their Social Security checks. Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady". Background Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae () and Jesse James Gray. Her parents were both alcoholics and her father repeatedly threatened to commit suicide in front of his children. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1937; her mother, who worked as a sex worker, lost custody of her children in 1938 and died in a motorcycle accident by the end of the year. Puente and her siblings were subsequently sent to an orphanage, where she was sexually abused. Gray's first marriage at age sixteen, in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stella Nickell
Stella Maudine Nickell (née Stephenson; born August 7, 1943) is an American woman who was sentenced to ninety years in prison for product tampering after she poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence were the first under federal product tampering laws instituted after the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders. Early life Stella Maudine Stephenson was born in Colton, Oregon, to Alva Georgia "Jo" (née Duncan; later changed her name to Cora Lee) and George Stephenson, and grew up poor. By age 16, she was pregnant with her daughter Cynthia Hamilton. Nickell then moved to Southern California, married, and had another daughter. She began to have various legal troubles, including a conviction for fraud in 1968, a charge the following year of beating Hamilton with a curtain rod, and a conviction for forgery in 1971. Nickell served six months in jail for the fraud charge, and was o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeffrey MacDonald
Jeffrey Robert MacDonald (born October 12, 1943) is an American former medical doctor and United States Army captain who was convicted in August 1979 of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters in February 1970 while serving as an Army Special Forces physician. MacDonald has always proclaimed his innocence of the murders, which he claims were committed by four intruders—three male and one female—who had entered the unlocked rear door of his apartment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and attacked him, his wife, and his children with instruments such as knives, clubs and ice picks. Prosecutors and appellate courts have pointed to strong physical evidence attesting to his guilt. He is currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. The MacDonald murder case remains one of the most litigated murder cases in American criminal history. Early life Jeffrey MacDonald was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York, the second of three children bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murder Of Imette St
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.") This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of ''malice'',This is "malice" in a technical legal sense, not the more usual English sense denoting an emotional state. See malice (law). brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. ''Involuntary'' manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness. Most societies consider murder to be an extremely serious crime, and thus that a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helle Crafts
Helle Crafts (; born Helle Lorck Nielsen; July 7, 1947 – November 19, 1986) was a Danish flight attendant who was murdered by her husband, Eastern Air Lines pilot Richard Crafts. Her death led to the state of Connecticut's first murder conviction without the victim's body. Disappearance Helle Nielsen married Richard Crafts in 1975 and settled with him in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. Helle continued working as a flight attendant while raising their three children. In 1986, Helle began to suspect that Richard was engaged in extramarital sexual activity, and confronted him about suspicious long-distance phone calls, which angered Richard. Helle met with a divorce attorney and hired a private investigator, Keith Mayo, who snapped photos of Richard kissing another flight attendant outside her New Jersey residence. On November 18, 1986, friends dropped Helle off at the couple's Newtown residence after she had worked a long flight from Frankfurt, West Germany. She was ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Bundy
Theodore Robert Bundy ( born Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown and likely significantly higher. Bundy was regarded as charismatic and handsome, and exploited this to win the trust of both his victims and society as a whole. He would typically approach his victims in public places, either feigning a physical impairment such as an injury, or impersonating an authority figure, before bludgeoning them into unconsciousness and taking them to secondary locations to be raped and strangled. Bundy often revisited his victims, grooming and performing sexual acts with the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made any further interactions impossible. He decapitated at l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handle With Care (novel)
''Handle with Care'' (2009) is the 17th novel by the American author Jodi Picoult. It debuted at #1 on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list. Plot The story follows the life of a young girl, Willow O'Keefe, and her family. Willow has Type III osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a disease also known as brittle bone syndrome. To her parents, Sean and Charlotte O'Keefe, the disease has meant many sleepless nights, mounting hospital and insurance bills, and the pitying stares of "luckier" parents. After a disastrous vacation to Walt Disney World that results in Willow severely breaking both of her femora, Sean and Charlotte visit a lawyer to inquire about a lawsuit against the park and hospital after park and hospital staff thought that Willow's broken bones indicated child abuse. The lawyer, Marin Gates, mentions a different possibility: a wrongful birth lawsuit against the OB/GYN that treated Charlotte during her pregnancy. Essentially, if the O'Keefe's had known earlier that their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
