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In the current climate, most of us are undergoing an angst that sometimes can only be cured through self-reflection. In seeking a cure, we look to improve ourselves, especially during this anxious and uncertain time as we live a 'new normal' during this pandemic. Sometimes the journey begins in the hope to better ourselves as a human being and relieve the inner turmoil. Sometimes the journey develops a more spiritual path where we reach out to the Divine in some capacity. In either case, a feeling of contentment can be attained leading to an inner peace. Yet, we can only begin to do this once we identify those feelings that cause anxiety or negative emotions that lead to a sense of heaviness in our day-to- day lives. The Coronavirus outbreak has led to many industries and Government authorities promoting self-care and urging many to look after their mental well-being more than ever before. The virus has forced most of the world to slow down, which in turn has had an impact on many people's daily routines. Many of us are staying at home, spending time with family and now have some new-found time to reflect on ourselves. As a result of this, many of us experience moments of frustration on a daily basis, from being confined to social distancing, or have a fear of losing one's job (or indeed already have), or are unintentionally feeling ungrateful for what we do have. Prior to the pandemic taking over, we would still face similar thoughts and feelings towards something we had seen on social media perhaps, or heard about from family, a friend or colleague. This could include being envious of someone's belongings or achievements, which they have shared on social media, or indeed boasting about our own. Whilst these emotions make us human, it's our intentions and actions that decide whether we are a 'good' person, whether in the eyes of one's self, our friends and family, our colleagues, or in the eyes of the Divine. Pre-Coronavirus, many of us lost the capacity to sit still and reflect upon ourselves. Now that we have the time to look back and contemplate, perhaps we need to think about why we are feeling these negative emotions. Why do we feel a sense of loss within our workday grind or within our family relationships or friendships? A Handbook of Spiritual Medicine is arranged in a unique way, by breaking down the core maladies of the heart into bite size chunks that are much easier to reference for the layperson. It provides a clear presentation using modern management techniques: a tabulated and color-coded format that enables easy access to definitions and signs and symptoms of spiritual illnesses, their cures, and exceptions. The antidotes to our ailments are drawn from Qur'anic verses and authentic ahadith (Prophetic sayings),inspiring mindfulness of the Almighty Cherisher and His Beloved Prophet. This guidebook, drawing on the 11th and 12th Century works of the 'Proof of Islam' and wondrous sage, Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali can be applied to our busy lives in the modern, hi-tech era, and will prove accessible to people of all ages, all denominations: believers and non-believers alike. This book encourages us to continually self-analyse, in order to begin to experience the positive impact of such changes. It encourages us to look after ourselves during this time, acting as a guide on how to do this now and beyond the pandemic. Making this science accessible to a new generation is of utmost importance especially in times of a spiritual vacuum and great uncertainty.

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'There's a reason Pomare is called the king of the twist . . . You know from the outset this will be a twisty psychological thriller and it's all that, with the storyline taking a few left turns to keep the suspense tightly coiled' Herald Sun'Ratchets up psychological suspense with a cleverly constructed plot that can be devoured in one go' Sydney Morning Herald'A frantic domestic thriller . . . Along with Jane Harper and Liane Moriarty, J. P. Pomare is quickly becoming one of Australia's biggest literary exports' The GuardianMother's intuition or a deadly guilty conscience? A woman races against time to find her son in this tense and twisty thriller by the Top Ten bestselling author of The Wrong Woman.As the third wave of the virus hits, all inhabitants of Melbourne are given until 8 pm to get to their homes. Wherever they are when the curfew begins, they must live for four weeks and stay within five kilometres of. When Lou's son, Samuel, doesn't arrive home by nightfall, she begins to panic.He doesn't answer his phone. He doesn't message. His social media channels are inactive. Lou is out of her mind with worry, but she can't go to the police, because she has secrets of her own. Secrets that Samuel just can't find out about. Lou must find her son herself and bring him home.Includes an exclusive extract of the next J. P. Pomare thriller, Seventeen Years Later, publishing in 2024.Praise for Home Before Night:'J. P. Pomare has once again earned his place on my instant-read list. Home Before Night is twisty and brilliant - a highly addictive thriller!' CHRISTIAN WHITE'This grabbed me from the opening page and didn't let go' MICHAEL ROBOTHAM'The thrill and fear arrive early in Home Before Night and doesn't leave until the final pages. J. P. Pomare is the real deal; he has the skill to twist your heart' CANDICE FOX'From page one, J.P. Pomare effortlessly instils us with a tantalising sense of unease. In this page-turning thriller, all is not as it seems, and the truth is a lot darker and in many ways more human than we could ever imagine. Deftly written, lean in style, this is a gripping read from a true talent' Weekend Australian'Tense and twisty . . . A fast-paced mystery' Who Weekly'Compelling' The Australian Women's Weekly'A lean and terrifying thriller about a mother's desperate search for her missing son during a pandemic. Trust us, you'll devour it in one sitting!' Woman's Day'A page-turner with masterful plot twists. Deftly written, lean in style, this is a gripping read from a true talent' Better Reading'Twisty' West Australian'Propulsive. Compelling. Dramatic' Canberra Times'J.P. Pomare has proven his mastery of the slow burn and sleight of hand, putting both to good use in his latest novel' Better Homes & Gardens'It takes a special kind of genius to create twisty, thrilling novels that can be read in a single satisfying sitting' Good Reading Magazine'Pomare delivers twists, turns and secrets aplenty in his sixth novel' Geelong AdvertiserPraise for The Wrong Woman:'Keeps readers on their toes from the opening page. His is a rare talent that continues to turn out crime masterpieces' Herald Sun'Deftly plotted, pacey and sharply written. Twists come out of nowhere and the high drama of the final few chapters is edge-of-the-seat stuff' New Zealand Women's Weekly'A twisty small-town mystery with a protagonist I didn't want to let go' IAN RANKIN'The pay-off is criminally good . . . As always, Pomare keeps the best surprises until last. Prepare for a late night' Sydney Morning Herald

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With Little Savage, Emily Fragos delivers a magnificent collection in the American tradition of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. With clean, strongly wrought lines she builds poems that are elegant and powerful. Marie Ponsot calls the collection “remarkable. What separates Fragos from her contemporaries is her amazing ability to empathize with the characters she creates—the misfits, the artists, the children kept in a fifteenth century school, the composer going mad. She convincingly becomes a young girl in the Venetian conservatory for the abandoned: “Sofia del violino. Once I saw myself / in a clear puddle of rain / water. My teeth are very crooked, I / know. We are none of us / startled by the other. We are all / the same. To Heaven.” These moments ache with honesty, humility, and make us wish that every sentiment expressed by Fragos could be true. Deceptively simple poems written by an unostentatiously skilled poet, Little Savage is permeated with a reverence for nature, music, myth and dance—a veritable treasure trove of compassion and grace. Richard Howard's Foreword You are alone in the room, reading her poems. Nothing is happening, nothing wrong, but all at once, say around page 17 or 18, you hear – remember, no one is with you, no one else is there—a sigh. Or a whispered word: someone. You are not alarmed, but you had thought you were alone. Perhaps not. The sensation is what Freud used to call unheimlich, uncanny. That is the effect of the poems of Emily Fragos. Like their maker, her readers are accompanied, and not to their ulterior knowledge. It is not disagreeable to be thus escorted, attended, joined, but we had not expected it. And as Robert Frost used to tell us (“no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader”), Fragos too has not expected such visitations, as she will call them. This poet—these poems—endure otherness, they are haunted: “I remain, with one of everything.” Even as one is being saved…conjure the army of others” “What would happen to my life when all along there has been nothing but me?” “Did you not see how I was made to feel when you put me among others” “And my body—uninhabited—suffers and wonders: whose hands are these? whose hair?” The poems will reveal whose, though I do not think Emily Fragos herself ever finds out. Inevitably, we recall that old surrealist shibboleth, “Tell me by what you are haunted and I will tell you who you are;” it can be the password to indentity. But this poet has what she calls “luxurious mind” and her ghosts are legion: Alone in my odd-shaped room, I practice Blindness and the world floats close and away. I am uncertain of everything. I must walk slowly, carefully. She is acknowledging, with some uneasiness (“will you please tidy up?”), that it is not only the beloved dead, the proximate departed who are with her, who possess her, but others, any others. The remarkable thing about this poetic consciousness is that the woman’s body is inhabited—sometimes with mere habitude, sometimes joyously, more often with astonishing pain—by the prolixity of the real (and of the ‘unreal’); the poems are instinct with others: How dare you Care for me when all my life I have had this voltage to ignite me, this rhythm to drive me, when something inside your body dares me to touch my hands to yours… And quite as remarkable, of course, is the even tonality of such possession; there is nothing hysterical or even driven about the voice of the poems as it records, as it laments or exults in these unsought attendants. There is merely—merely!—a loving consistency of heedfulness; and one remembers Blake’s beautiful aphorism: unmixed attention is prayer. Of course such poetic staffage is not peculiar to Emily Fragos; like Maeterlinck, like Rilke, she exults in her discovered awareness: “I need the other/the way a virus/needs a host.” Rather, she imbues, she infects all of us with the consciousness that there are no single souls: we are not alone.

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