Akron Public Library

"My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black -- black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking...

It tells the unlikely love story of Maddy, a smart, curious and imaginative eighteen-year-old who due to an illness cannot leave the protection of the hermetically sealed environment within her house, and Olly, the boy next door who won't let that stop them. Maddy is desperate to experience the much more stimulating outside world, and the promise of her first romance.

"The year is 1989 and Mark Doty's life has reached a state of enviable equilibrium. His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor, and, perhaps most important, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for HIV." "In Heaven's Coast - part memoir, part journal,...

For almost two years, day and night, Monette helped Roger Horwitz, his friend of twelve years, fight the AIDS calamity with courage and dignity. His is more than a testimony to the ravages of this plague, it is a love story -- one that explores the fullness of human connection and the pain of separation.

Examines the origins and effects of AIDS and dispels myths about the disease.

"AIDS brings together two powerful metaphors about illness. First, AIDS develops further the theme (seen earlier in cancer) of disease as invader: the enemy invades and destroys you from within. Thus, AIDS strengthens the use of military metaphors in medicine. The war against cancer is reincarnated as a war against AIDS. Secondly, because AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, it also evokes the theme of plague-as-punishment. Sontag's project in...