By Afshin rad

The document The Inner Beams by Afshin Rad is a historical novel set in East Berlin during the final years of the Cold War, focusing on the brutal atmosphere created by the East German Ministry of State Security, the Stasi. The narrative combines political history with a deeply personal story, illustrating how authoritarianism corrodes ordinary lives. It opens with a preface explaining the power and reach of the Stasi, an organization that employed nearly a hundred thousand agents and twice as many informants under the chilling slogan that anyone who “thinks differently” is an enemy.

The story follows Nadia, a young, marginalized woman surviving on the fringes of society through prostitution while raising her daughter Maya. Despite her poverty, stigmatization, and abuse at the hands of neighbors and strangers, she displays resilience and a rebellious spirit. Her life becomes entangled with the violence and hypocrisy of both the state and the church. She is alternately vilified and desired, caught between accusations of being a spy and exploitation by priests who hide their own corruption.

As events unfold, Nadia becomes a victim of the Stasi’s cruelty. She is imprisoned, tortured, and left for dead, only to be saved by a compassionate old man who hides her and helps her plan to reclaim her daughter, who has been taken by Party officials. Their efforts culminate in a daring but tragic attempt to rescue the child from a powerful regime family. The old man sacrifices his life to protect Nadia, while she herself endures near-death encounters in the collapsing state.

Against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall’s fall and the chaos of 1989, Nadia’s fate is sealed in both tragedy and symbolic triumph. Though she dies violently, her memory and sacrifice become a posthumous inspiration. Her grave, once marked with disdain, is later reclaimed as a shrine to freedom, with an epitaph honoring her rebellious spirit.

The work blends history, fiction, and allegory to show how individuals—especially the marginalized and forgotten—resist oppression and become unwilling martyrs of liberty. Through Nadia’s story, the book captures the human cost of totalitarianism while leaving readers with a sense of dignity, defiance, and the enduring value of freedom.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 77p.

By Alexandre Dumas (Author), G. Staal (Illustrator), J.A. Beauce (Illustrator), & 2more Format: Kindle Edition

Few novels have captured the imagination of readers across generations as powerfully as The Count of Monte Cristo. First published in 1844, this sweeping tale of betrayal, revenge, and redemption is the work of Alexandre Dumas, one of France’s most celebrated literary figures. Set against the backdrop of post-Napoleonic France, the novel follows the transformation of Edmond Dantès, a young sailor whose promising future is shattered by the treachery of those he trusted. Wrongfully imprisoned in the Château d’If, Dantès emerges years later not as the man he once was, but as the enigmatic and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo—determined to exact justice on those who wronged him. At once a thrilling adventure and a profound exploration of human nature, The Count of Monte Cristodelves into themes of vengeance, justice, mercy, and the enduring power of hope. Dumas weaves a rich tapestry of characters and subplots, each contributing to the novel’s intricate moral landscape. His storytelling is both grand in scope and intimate in detail, offering readers a journey that is as emotionally resonant as it is exhilarating.
This two volume edition is based on the five volume 1888 English edition. It retains all text as in the original and includes most of the illustrations preserving the spirit and elegance of Dumas’s original edition, while making the novel accessible to contemporary readers. This version is most likely that of an anonymous translator who translated the work from the French for the publisher Chapman and Hall in 1846. There have been many translations in dozens of languages, and some in the 20th century basically rewriting the novel in modern prose and almost always considerably abridged.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 501 p.

By Alexandre Dumas (Author), G. Staal (Illustrator), J.A. Beauce (Illustrator), & 2more Format: Kindle Edition

Few novels have captured the imagination of readers across generations as powerfully as The Count of Monte Cristo. First published in 1844, this sweeping tale of betrayal, revenge, and redemption is the work of Alexandre Dumas, one of France’s most celebrated literary figures. Set against the backdrop of post-Napoleonic France, the novel follows the transformation of Edmond Dantès, a young sailor whose promising future is shattered by the treachery of those he trusted. Wrongfully imprisoned in the Château d’If, Dantès emerges years later not as the man he once was, but as the enigmatic and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo—determined to exact justice on those who wronged him. At once a thrilling adventure and a profound exploration of human nature, The Count of Monte Cristodelves into themes of vengeance, justice, mercy, and the enduring power of hope. Dumas weaves a rich tapestry of characters and subplots, each contributing to the novel’s intricate moral landscape. His storytelling is both grand in scope and intimate in detail, offering readers a journey that is as emotionally resonant as it is exhilarating.
This two volume edition is based on the five volume 1888 English edition. It retains all text as in the original and includes most of the illustrations preserving the spirit and elegance of Dumas’s original edition, while making the novel accessible to contemporary readers. This version is most likely that of an anonymous translator who translated the work from the French for the publisher Chapman and Hall in 1846. There have been many translations in dozens of languages, and some in the 20th century basically rewriting the novel in modern prose and almost always considerably abridged.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 456 p.

By Paul McGorrery

In sentencing an offender, courts take many factors into account, such as the seriousness of the offence, the offender’s prior record, their age, whether they pleaded guilty and many others. In Australia, courts do this through an approach known as instinctive synthesis, meaning they consider all the factors that can justify a sentence being more or less severe and then arrive at a final outcome. One of the factors that courts may take into account is whether the offender has already been punished in some fashion outside the criminal justice process. Known as extra-curial punishment3 (or extra judicial or natural5 punishment) this can take various forms such as visa cancellation,6 loss of chosen career, injury to the offender8 and hardship to the offender’s family. This report is concerned with just one form of extra-curial punishment: adverse media coverage, in particular, of people. The media and the courts have an important and symbiotic relationship, but sometimes their interests can diverge. The media have an interest in reporting on criminal justice matters because they are often stories of considerable interest to their audiences. In reporting on those stories, the media often concentrate their attentions ‘on the exceptional and unusual among serious crimes’, which can lead to ‘intense and often emotive media reporting’ about sentencing. This can run the risk of undermining, rather than promoting, confidence in the justice system.

Courts in turn have an interest in having their decisions reported. Confidence in the judicial arm of the criminal justice system relies on a combination of community awareness about what courts do, the transparency of their work, and the apparent fairness of their decisions, which can only be scrutinised if there is transparency and community awareness. Moreover, the sentencing purpose of general deterrence – whereby the sentencing of one offender is thought to deter other people from engaging in similar behaviour – is realistically only achievable (if at all) if the media and/or government operate as the conduit between the courts and the community. While some courts have taken the very laudable step of making most of their sentencing remarks publicly available, many people do not even have time to read media summaries, let alone original source material like sentencing remarks, especially in the social media age. So the community realistically only becomes aware of sentencing decisions through the media. The difficulty is balancing the need for fair coverage (the courts’ priority) with the need for interesting coverage (the media’s priority). Justice Harper has described the relationship as like a ‘Greek tragedy’ because ‘[e]ach is forced by its circumstances to face the other off, with neither having the flexibility necessary to reach a satisfactory working compromise’.

Malbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2022. 24p.

By Martha Grace Duncan

An ex-convict struggles with his addictive yearning for prison. A law-abiding citizen broods over his pleasure in violent, illegal acts. A prison warden loses his job because he is so successful in rehabilitating criminals. These are but a few of the intriguing stories Martha Grace Duncan examines in her bold, interdisciplinary book Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons.
Duncan writes: "This is a book about paradoxes and mingled yarns - about the bright sides of dark events, the silver linings of sable clouds." She portrays upright citizens who harbor a strange liking for criminal deeds, and criminals who conceive of prison in positive terms: as a nurturing mother, an academy, a matrix of spiritual rebirth, or a refuge from life's trivia. In developing her unique vision, Duncan draws on literature, history, psychoanalysis, and law. Her work reveals a nonutopian world in which criminals and non-criminals--while injuring each other in obvious ways--nonetheless live together in a symbiotic as well as an adversarial relationship, needing each other, serving each other, enriching each other's lives in profound and surprising fashion.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1996. 284p.