Arcadia Public Library

A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's...

"For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked...

This star-studded drama follows the story of Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park, The Grand Budapest Hotel), a charismatic patient at a mental institution for Holocaust survivors in Israel, in 1961. He reads minds and confounds his doctors, lead by Dr. Nathan Gross (Derek Jacobi, The King's Speech, Gladiator). Before the war, in Berlin, Adam was an entertainer--cabaret impresario, circus owner, magician, musician--loved by audiences and Nazis...

When her parents confine her to a mental hospital, an overweight teenaged girl, who suffers from panic attacks, describes her experiences in a series of letters to a friend.

The intertwining stories of four teenagers who find themselves haunted beyond imagining in the depths of a Kentucky mental institution.

After battling a supernatural sleeping sickness that early claimed two of their own, the Diviners have had enough of lies. They're more determined than ever to uncover the mystery behind their extraordinary powers, even as they face off against an all-new terror. Out on Ward's Island, far from the city's bustle, sits a mental hospital haunted by the lost souls of people long forgotten--ghosts who have unusual and dangerous ties to the man in the stovepipe...

After her best friend, Agnes, goes into a coma as a result of a game of Truth or Dare, rising senior Hannah's secrets begin to escape while she is locked in a psychiatric hospital.

"The Maude is outside. It wants to come in. It wants to sit on your chest. The mentally ill patients in Beechway High Secure Unit are highly suggestible. A hallucination can spread like a virus. When unexplained power cuts lead to a series of horrifying incidents, fear spreads from the inmates to the staff. Amidst the growing hysteria, AJ, a senior psychiatric nurse, is desperate to protect his charges. Detective Inspector Jack Caffery is looking...

"Two girls find friendship on their path to mental health in a story of acceptance, recovery, and resilience"--

Asylums used to be places of great suffering and misery. See what secrets are buried in some of these abandoned buildings.