Bøger af Drew Bridges

The training to become a psychiatrist is challenging and at times bewildering. Once trained, the practicing psychiatrist will continue to encounter people and situations for which he or she is not fully prepared. Some of these experiences are ultimately rewarding and show doctors and patients at their very best; others can overwhelm, lead to anger, or break your heart. All can be stories worth telling.Looking back on forty years of work, the author selects most of his "tales" to illustrate his own naivete and sometimes the shortcomings of his peers and teachers. Overall, this is a hopeful and respectfully entertaining book about those who suffer and those who try to help.

The ghost of a soldier turned writer joins a quest to save a human life. The ghost of Ambrose Bierce, American writer and civil war Union soldier, has been displaced from the home he had been haunting. Enlisting the aid of a "haunting agent," he finds a new residence that has the requisite dark history and terrible secret that makes it appropriate for haunting. Here he meets new spirits who reside in this version of the afterlife, a middle place between life and the ultimate destination. Against his intentions, Bierce becomes caught up in the unsolved mystery of his new haunt. In partnership with an old friend, a Buddhist priest named "Sid" who has inhabited the spirit world for 25 centuries, he reluctantly involves himself in the matters of still living people. Bierce and his friend also become aware of the presence of mysterious "others" who are spirits who never held human form. Bierce, Sid, and other new spirit friends ultimately find themselves as part of a quest to save a human life, rescue another spirit from oblivion, and discover the identity of the "others."

During March of each year, seventy million people fill out the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament bracket, either in national contests or office pools. The goal is to predict all the winners for a tournament of 68 teams. The odds against perfection are astronomical. A small group of social media marketers, led by mathematician Sinclair Dane, see this annual quest as an under-appreciated opportunity to make money on sports betting. For a two-dollar entry fee, they offer one billion dollars for anyone who can predict the winners of all the games. Their financial hopes are initially greatly exceeded as the contest goes global. Entry fees multiply their anticipated profit many times over. But disaster looms when a math professor from a small university has a perfect bracket with just four teams remaining. The professor has his own troubles. The NCAA opens an investigation into his use of the bracket contest to teach math concepts to a class that includes tournament athletes. As the "final four" approaches, Sinclair looks at the possibility of having to pay a billion dollars she does not have. The professor and his students may face charges of trying to influence the outcome of games.