Two absolutely cracking books tokeep you reading until all hours. The onlydownside is you get to the end and wantmore. Fortunately there is more.

    Bonnie Henry has been called one of the most effective public health figures in the world by The New York Times. She has been called a calming voice in a sea of coronavirus madness, and our hero in national newspapers. But in the waning days of 2019, when the first rumours of a strange respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China began to trickle into her office in British Colombia, these accolades lay in a barely imaginable future.Only weeks later, the whole world would look back on the previous year with the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for the distant past. With a staggering suddenness, our livelihoods, our closest relationships, our habits and our homes had all been transformed.In a moment when half-truths threatened to drown out the truth, when recklessness all too often exposed those around us to very real danger, and when it was difficult to tell paranoia from healthy respect for an invisible threat, Dr. Henry's transparency, humility, and humanity became a beacon for millions of Canadians.And her trademark enjoinder to be kind, be calm, and be safe became words for us all to live by.Coincidentally, Dr. Henry's sister, Lynn, arrived in BC for a long-planned visit on March 12, just as the virus revealed itself as a pandemic. For the four ensuing weeks, Lynn had rare insight into the whirlwind of Bonnie's daily life, with its moments of agony and gravity as well as its occasional episodes of levity and grace. Both a global story and a family story, Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe combines Lynn's observations and knowledge of Bonnie's personal and professional background with Bonnie's recollections of how and why decisions were made, to tell in a vivid way the dramatic tale of the four weeks that changed all our lives.Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe is about communication, leadership, and public trust; about the balance between politics and policy; and, at heart, about what and who we value, as individuals and a society.The authors' advance from the publisher will be donated to charities with a focus on alleviating communities hit particularly hard by the pandemic: True North Aid with its Covid-19 response in Northern Indigenous communities, and First Book Canada, with its focus on reading and literacy for underserved, marginalized youth.

    Subterranean Press bundles together all of their John Scalzi titles into one easy-to-buy special this November:How I Proposed To My Wife: An Alien Sex StoryAn ElectionJudge Sn Goes GolfingQuestions for a SoldierThe Sagan DiaryThe Tale of the WickedThe God EnginesYou're Not fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to the Coffee Shop

     Step into the hidden world of death care and explore the challenge of removing the deceased from the often-difficult, regularly awkward, and sometimes downright bizarre circumstances in which they die, the art and science of embalming, and the intrigue of forensic pathology. Sias is a veteran death investigator, former funeral director/embalmer intern, and paramedic with twenty-eight years of emergency response experience.

     Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection If You Liked School, You'll Love Work.

    A story of friendship set in nineteenth-century China follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes dreams joys and tragedies through a unique secret language

    Nicholas Perricone’s advice, care, and transformative eating plan–and all with the welcome yet unexpected benefit of losing excess weight along with the wrinkles! Building on this discovery, Dr. Perricone breaks new ground with his trademark anti-inflammatory program based on the foods, supplements, and lifestyle changes with the proven ability to accelerate fat loss by increasing metabolism and building and maintaining muscle mass.Consider this staggering fact: As we age, we can expect to gain ten pounds of fat and lose five pounds of muscle each decade. In three easy steps, Dr. Perricone shows how to fight this weight gain and rebuild muscle mass, and avoid the haggard, aging, and drawn appearance that results from other weight-loss programs.Inside The Perricone Weight-Loss Diet discover• the rejuvenating and slimming secrets of the anti-inflammatory diet• which foods, supplements, and lifestyle changes enable us to lose fat while maintaining muscle• how to control hormones such as insulin and cortisol to lose weight • how to maintain youthful, firm, and radiantly toned skin on the face and body during weight lossAs an added bonus, as you follow Dr. Perricone’s program you’ll sleep better, have more energy and less stress, and experience greater mental clarity without the food cravings. Lose the weight, the wrinkles, and the years!

    Coming to, he realizes he’s hypothermic—shivering cold—trapped inside a stasis tube, shrouded in darkness. Escaping his capsule, he lights a lantern, only to discover the locker containing his heating supplies is empty. Freezing to death now, he reflects on the last memory of his pregnant wife, beside him still, suspended in a tube. Just as Connor slips out of consciousness, two strangers arrive...Another gripping, wholly absorbing chapter of the bestselling Wayward Pines series, Jordan Crouch’s Exit Vertigo explores the dangerous netherworld existence of caretakers who emerge from stasis every two decades to ensure the facility that houses all that remains of mankind continues to function. While others hibernate, Connor and a select team of maintenance workers stumble through the Ark’s darkened hallways, racing against time in search for a clue to an apocalypse no one can remember.

    As recently as 1918, a pandemic of influenza claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. The advent of drugs and vaccines led to an era of hope when we thought our battles with infectious disease were won, but our optimism has been eroded by the recognition that many pathogens have the capacity to transform themselves and escape our efforts to eradicate them. Are we now facing an inevitable repeat of a calamity such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the Black Death? Can we anticipate and thwart such an event, or are we wilfully creating the conditions that would promote the emergence of new and highly virulent human infectious disease?Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford specialising in infectious diseases. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She has been awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research. She is also a novelist whose books have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for the Crossword Award, and longlisted for the DSC and Orange Prizes.

    The Sound of Gravity is a harrowing, dramatic and powerful tale of love, loss and redemption as that haunting split-second memory changes the course of a lifetime. Trapped high on a stormbound mountain face in the icy depths of winter, the stricken young man is forced to fight for his life. Half a lifetime later, haunted by grief and guilt, Patrick is freed from his self-imposed vigil when at last the mountain releases his heart-rending secret.

    

    Who! This Mad Libs is 48 pages with 21 original stories.

    

    . . as if that's the easiest thing in the world and praying through hard things doesn't feel like a high-risk undertaking. Jarrett Stevens has been helping people find language for prayer over the course of a few decades. He's discovered along the way that prayer is more straightforward than we make it out to be. With helpful starting practices to make prayer a more natural rhythm for your life, Jarrett helps you to find your voice when words of prayer are hard to come by, to settle into the silence when God seems quiet, and to bring all your cares and celebrations to God because He longs to walk with you in and through them.