Hounded by God, the author writes about his struggle to integrate his homosexuality with his personality and his Catholic-Christian spirituality. Born in 1948, he grew up in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s when homosexuality was considered either a mental illness or a major sin. In 1968, he had his first homosexual experience. Feeling shame and trying to repress his feelings, he spent over six years in therapy. Raised a strict Roman Catholic, Joseph confessed his many “sins” to a priest and attended Mass daily. He felt hopeless in accepting his homosexuality and living happily as a gay man, repeating nightly, “If it gets too bad, I can always kill myself.” By 1974, he knew that therapy was not changing his sexual orientation and felt desperate. Joseph experienced God as hounding him to accept his gay identity and to believe that God loves him as he is. His autobiographical journal reveals his gradual awakening to live his vocation, not only as a gay man in relationship with his partner and with God, but also as someone willing to share his journey with those who struggle with their homosexuality and their faith.

This book looks at why and how states should legally ban LGBTQ+ 'conversion therapy'. Few states have legislated against the practice, with many currently considering its legal ban. Banning 'Conversion Therapy' brings together leading academics, legal and medical practitioners, policymakers, and activists to illuminate the legislative and non-legislative steps that are required to protect individuals from the harms of 'conversion therapy' in different contexts. The book considers how best to address this complex and interdisciplinary legal problem which cuts across human rights law, criminal law, family law, and socio-legal studies, and which represents one of the key contemporary problems of LGBTQ+ equality and national and international human rights activism.

A twelve-year-old boy goes on his first hunt with Blackie, the hound-dog man, and is granted his fondest wish

An Agatha Christie short story from the collection The Golden Ball and Other Stories. A young Englishman visiting Cornwall finds himself delving into the legend of a Belgian nun who is living as a refugee in the village. Possessed of supernatural powers, she is said to have caused her entire convent to explode when it was occupied by invading German soldiers during World War I. Sister Angelique was the only survivor. Could such a tall tale possibly be true?

“I think my wife might be right. I am going slightly mad.” Hounded is an escape from the anxiety of reaching a half-century, written during the pandemic of 2020 and into the spring of 2021, during which comedy writer Vince Stadon experienced every film, TV, audio drama, spoken word reading, documentary, stage play, pastiche, graphic novel, animation, kids cartoon, and PC game version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. A quirky, funny and unique memoir about Spectral Hounds, Consulting Detectives, panic attacks and way too many cats, Hounded is a bewildered middle-aged man’s silly odyssey through a binge experience of every conceivable version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated novel. As the world darkens and he gleefully immerses himself in the fiction of the fog-drenched mystery, Vince Stadon undertakes a marathon of the most famous Sherlock Holmes story of them all; he makes deductions, adopts disguises, sends anonymous ‘Beware the moor’ letters to Canadians, steals footwear, learns Sherlock Holmes’s favoured martial art, and he tracks the Hound across the melancholy moor during those dark hours when the forces of evil are exalted. Along the way, Vince remembers his childhood, tries to understand his mysterious and troubled father, gets to grip with chronic anxiety, and strives to keep sane and calm during a pandemic. Written in tweets, poems, songs, extracts from proposed 80’s Hollywood blockbuster action films, prog rock lyrics, very silly stage plays, and far too many irrelevant and irreverent footnotes*, Hounded is the funniest book you’ll ever read about a bloody big ghost hound that’s dogged a man all his life. * A ridiculous number of footnotes.