In Search of Nice Americans


Geoff Steward - 2017
    From New York to Alaska, he tries to fend for himself without his trusty PA and life support, the unflappable Charmaine, for whom contentment lies in Jesus Christ and custard creams.With his blend of waspish wit and mischievous charm, Steward seeks out normal Americans, such as Joe le Taxi, the former NYPD officer who was one of the first on the scene at the Twin Towers and now runs an extortionate executive taxi service; Pam and Bob, a paranoid psychiatrist and a failed actor who once saw the back of Meryl Streep s head; Taylor the Alaskan bushwhacker who was raised by wolves and revels in their scat; Jeb the Yosemite inn-sitter who lives his life at the pace of a Ford Model T; Kacey Musgraves, the controversial country music star staying at the farm in Tennessee; and Sheriff Duke of Calhoun County, South Carolina, who reintroduces Steward to the long (and armed) arm of the law.For anyone at a crossroads, contemplating a temporary or permanent career break, this affectionate travel romp is essential reading. Journeying coast-to-coast across the US with Steward might just remind you that, despite the post-Trump hysteria, there are many normal and decent Americans out there

Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War


Peter Edwards - 2015
    A master diplomat, he won the respect of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal business thrived on his turf. His family prospered and his empire grew--until one of North America's true Teflon dons finally lost his veneer. As he watched helplessly from his Colorado prison, the murders of his son and father made international headlines; the killings of his lieutenants and friends filled the pages of Canadian news; and the influence of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, spread across Montreal faster than the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In 2012, Vito Rizzuto emerged from prison, a 66-year-old man who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody revenge and damn the consequences. From the events leading to his imprisonment to his shocking death in December 2013, Business or Blood is the final chapter of Vito's story.From the Hardcover edition.

You Suck, Sir


Paul Bae - 2014
    Based on his popular blog of the same name, this is a "Best Of..." collection. Ranging from outrageously funny to touchingly poignant, these collected vignettes into the lives of high school students are an inspiring peek into the connection one teacher has with his students.

Twirty-Something: A Young Woman's Guide to Giant Underwear


Ingrid Reinke - 2013
    Twirty-Something: A Young Woman's Guide to Giant Underwear is a hilarious new Kindle Single from Award-Winning and Amazon Best-Selling author and humorist Ingrid Reinke.On the cold January day when Ingrid Reinke turned 30, she looked back upon the last decade of her life in deep thought before finally shaking her head and mumbling to herself the following insight: "Wow, what a shit show."So, she sat down, braless and alone, and penned a collection of laugh-out-loud essays about the ridiculous, shocking and occasionally horrifying things that happen to us as we ungracefully age from 20 to 30, try, semi-successfully, to leave our clueless years behind and become mature, responsible grown-up women.From weird hairs to boob sweat, OCD to weddings, Twirty-Something swings between a no-holds-barred conversation and a cautionary tale about aging and all the crap that comes along with it.Sometime instruction manual, sometime commiseration partner, get ready for Reinke's honest and occasionally potty-mouthed accounts of this tumultuous decade.So hike up your yoga pants, plop another ice cube in your Pinot Grigio and get ready to laugh at the author, young women in general, and most of all at yourself.

Building the Orange Wave: The Inside Story Behind the Historic Rise of Jack Layton and the NDP


Brad Lavigne - 2013
    He was also a key architect of Layton’s overnight success that was ten years in the making. In Building the Orange Wave, Lavigne recounts the dramatic story of how Layton and his inner circle developed and executed a plan that turned a struggling political party into a major contender for government, defying the odds and the critics every step of the way. The ultimate insider’s account of one of the greatest political accomplishments in modern Canadian history, Building the Orange Wave takes readers behind the scenes, letting them eavesdrop on strategy sessions, crisis-management meetings, private chats with political opponents, and internal battles, revealing new details of some of the most important political events of the last decade.

Parking the Moose: One American's Epic Quest to Uncover His Incredible Canadian Roots


Dave Hill - 2019
    The idea that their country is the best. But this never stuck with Dave Hill, even though he was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His grandfather, you see, was from Canada (Clinton, Ontario, to be exact). And every Sunday at dinner he'd remind Dave and anyone else within earshot that it was in fact Canada, this magical and mysterious land just across the mighty Lake Erie, that was the best.It was an idea that took hold. While his peers kept busy with football, basketball and baseball, hockey became the only sport for Dave. Whenever bacon was served at home, he'd be sure to mention his preference for the Canadian variety. Likewise, if a song by Triumph came on the radio, he'd be the first to ask for it to be cranked up as loud as it would go. And he was more vocal about the vast merits of the Canadian healthcare system than any nine-year-old you'd ever want to meet. (That last part is a lie, but hopefully it makes the point that he was so into Canada that it was actually kind of weird.)In later years he even visited Canada a couple of times. But now, inspired by a publisher's payment of several hundred dollars (Canadian) in cash, he has travelled all over the country, reconnecting with his heritage in such places as Montreal, Moose Jaw, Regina, Winnipeg, Merrickville and of course Clinton, Ontario, meeting a range of Canadians, touching things he probably shouldn't and having adventures too numerous and rich in detail to be done justice in this blurb.The result, he promises, is the greatest Canada-based literary thrill ride of your lifetime.

All At Sea: One man. One bathtub. One very bad idea.


Tim FitzHigham - 2009
    The book follows the author's death-defying 200-mile journey in his antique Thomas Crapper bath - not just across the Channel, but around Kent - right up to the tremendous reception and huge media attention which awaited him under Tower Bridge. Tim met the Queen, and his bath now resides in the National Maritime Museum of Great Britain.

Cricket Kings


William McInnes - 2006
    With these characters William will make us laugh and cry. And never again will we think that someone is just a regular bloke - everyone can be a king or a queen in their own suburb.

Savage Chickens: A Survival Kit for Life in the Coop


Doug Savage - 2011
    I never miss a meal."-Dan Piraro, cartoonist of Bizarro We've all been forced to endure jobs we don't like. We get up, go to work, go to bed, and do it again. No one knows these pains better than Doug Savage, whose dream of being a cartoonist was eclipsed by his ho- hum office job. That is, until he started doodling chicken cartoons on Post-its and turned them into one of the Internet's most popular cartoon blogs. "Savage Chickens" is a collection of cartoons starring Doug's beloved chickens and their officemates that will get a laugh out of even the most jaded number-crunching colleague. Doug blends cynicism, optimism, and interactive activities to create a portable pep talk for the overworked and underappreciated that will keep you sane-and amused- during the morning bus ride, the meeting-filled Monday, the tenth load of laundry, the bathroom break, or the red-eye to the coast.Watch a Video

"Until You Are Dead": Steven Truscott's Long Ride into History


Julian Sher - 2001
    That summer, Canada lost its innocence and the shocking story of Steven Truscott became imprinted on the nation’s memory. First published in 2001, “Until You Are Dead” revealed new witnesses, leads and evidence never presented to the courts. Now this national bestseller is fully revised and updated, and takes readers from that fateful night in 1959 up to the new appeal granted to Truscott in 2006. Julian Sher’s award-winning and insightful chronicle details Steven Truscott’s dramatic final battle – with the help of his family, investigative journalists and lawyers – to clear his name once and for all.

Passage Across the Mersey


Robert Bhatia - 2017
    Later in life, Helen wrote a ground-breaking series of memoirs, starting with Twopence to Cross the Mersey, which told the harrowing account of her family’s struggles in Depression-era Liverpool. It was a story filled with tragedy and small triumphs but many readers wondered what happened to Helen when she grew up; what became of the fragile young girl who had so much responsibility heaped on her shoulders?Now for the first time, her son Robert recounts the unexpected life that Helen went on to live; of the remarkable love story with a young man from a background a million miles away from everything a Lancashire Lass like Helen would have known and of the astonishing lengths she went to in order to achieve happiness. Full of new revelations and fascinating detail never before revealed, Passage Across the Mersey is a story of an extraordinary woman, and of the journey that took her thousands of miles from the place she called home…

The Oil Man and the Sea: A Modern Misadventure on the Pacific Tanker Route


Arno Kopecky - 2013
    This region is home to the largest tract of temperate rainforest on earth, First Nations who have lived there for millennia, and some of the world’s most biodiverse waters—one spill is all it will take to erase ten thousand years of evolution.Arno Kopecky and his companions travel aboard a forty-one-foot sailboat exploring the pristine route—a profoundly volatile marine environment that registered 1,275 marine vessel incidents—mechanical failures, collisions, explosions, groundings, and sinkings—between 1999 and 2009 alone. Neither Kopecky nor the boat’s owner have ever sailed before, yet they brave these waters alone when their captain leaves them part way through the journey.Written with Kopecky’s quick humor and deft touch, this is a rich evocation of a mythic place and the ecology, culture, and history of a legendary region with a knife at its throat.

Before the Lights Go Out: A Season Inside a Game on the Brink


Sean Fitz-Gerald - 2019
    It's become more expensive, more exclusive, and effectively off-limits to huge swaths of the potential sports-loving population. Youth registration numbers are stagnant; efforts to appeal to new Canadians are often grim at best; the game, increasingly, does not resemble the country of which it's for so long been an integral part. These signs worried Sean Fitz-Gerald. As a lifelong hockey fan and father of a young mixed-race son falling headlong in love with the game, he wanted to get to the roots of these issues. His entry point: a season with the Peterborough Petes, a storied OHL team far from its former glory in a once-emblematic Canadian city that is finding itself on the wrong side of the country's changing demographics. Fitz-Gerald profiles the players, coaches and front office staff, a mix of world-class talents with NHL aspirations and Peterborough natives happy with more modest dreams. Through their experiences, their widely varied motivations and expectations, we get a rich, colourful understanding of who ends up playing hockey in Canada and why. Fitz-Gerald interweaves the action of the season with portraits of public figures who've shaped and been shaped by the game: authors who captured its spirit, politicians who exploited it, and broadcasters who try to embody and sell it. He finds his way into community meetings full of angry season ticket holders, as well as into sterile boardrooms full of the sport's institutional brain trust, unable to break away from the inertia of tradition and hopelessly at war with itself. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald's warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it's not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?

I Am a Conservative: Uncensored, Undiluted and Absolutely Un-PC


Kurt Schlichter - 2012
    Too often, conservatives have kept silent in the face of insanity, inanity, and outright idiocy. That ends here!From mocking Democrat poobahs and Hollywood nitwits to beating on the wimps at the helm of the GOP, "I Am a Conservative" goes straight for the throat and says what everyone else only dares to think.

Falling for London: A Cautionary Tale


Sean Mallen - 2018
    Not unlike the plaster in his crappy, overpriced London flat. The veteran journalist was ecstatic when he unexpectedly got the chance he’dalways craved: to be a London-based foreign correspondent. It meant living in agreat city and covering great events, starting with the Royal Wedding of Williamand Kate. Except: his tearful wife and six-year-old daughter hated the idea ofuprooting their lives and moving to another country. Falling for London is the hilarious and touching story of how he convincedthem to go, how they learned to live in and love that wondrous but challengingcity, and how his dream came true in ways he could have never expected.