Washoe County Library System

A historical assessment of cancer addresses both the courageous battles against the complex disease and the misperceptions and hubris that have compromised modern understandings, providing coverage of such topics as ancient-world surgeries and the developments of present-day treatments.

"We all know, intellectually, that our time on earth is limited. What would we change if we knew it viscerally? Kate Bowler was thirty-five when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Now that she's responded to immunotherapy Kate has to figure out how to make a new life between CT scans. Before she got sick, she'd accepted the very American idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities. Now she has to figure out what to do within...

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

"One summer in Seaside, steps away from the bustling boardwalk, the Dunne family faces an unknowable future and copes with loss through hard work and dark humor, sisterhood and friendship, romance and escape. Brian and Margot Dunne live in Seaside year-round, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, quickly turning over rental houses to keep a roof over their heads. Together the family must navigate the unimaginable...

Reflections of a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who lectured on "Really achieving your childhood dreams," shortly after having been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His advice concerned seizing the moment while living, rather than dying.

"At twenty-two, Bibi Blair's doctors tell her that she's dying. Two days later, she's impossibly cured. Fierce, funny, dauntless, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she was spared because she is meant to save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell. This proves to be a dangerous idea. Searching for Ashley Bell, ricocheting through a Southern California landscape that proves strange and malevolent in the extreme, Bibi is plunged into a world of...

"While the amount of information regarding a breast cancer diagnosis is vaster than ever, online and off, what continues to be missing is the explanation behind the options. Most of the data online on medical sites is generic and often comes from the samesource. Then there are the patient sites as well as many social media outlets that provide peer to peer support and information. This is important for emotional support but still leaves out the full...

"In love for the first time, a son's decisions about the future divides his family in this fearless and thought-provoking novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author of the 'heart-tugging and emotional' (Romantic Times Book Reviews) Baxter Family books. In the shadow of very great loss, the only way to live with passion is truly, madly, deeply. When eighteen-year-old Tommy Baxter declares to his family that he wants to be a police officer after...

After her mom gets cancer, June Bailey discovers that Wonderland, the amusement park she always imagined, has come to life and she must work together with the animals who run the park in order to save it from forces that threaten to destroy it.

Just as Magda is diagnosed with breast cancer, she meets Arturo, a devoted husband and father in the midst of unspeakable loss. Their chance encounter leads both down a path of strength, grace, love, and rebirth