Dust to Dust


Timothy Findley - 1998
    literally, from dust to dust. Readers will remember Vanessa Van Home, the elderly detective from The Telling of Lies, now involved in a murder mystery where a corpse confounds the line between the magical and the mundane. And the unforgettable Rosedale couple from Findleys "Minna and Bragg" stories, who reappear in two more haunting tales. In the stories that make up "All Must Come to Dust," we are taken into the ancient cultures of Europe, and there confronted by our preconceived notions of what constitutes history and memory.Each work in Dust to Dust is a beautifully rendered showcase for Timothy Findley's immense talent in evoking a time, a place and a mood. With their European settings, these stories render a territory formerly unexplored by Findley in his Short Fiction repertoire.

The Complete Poems 1927-1979


Elizabeth Bishop - 1980
     Bishop was unforgiving of fashion and limited ways of seeing and feeling, but cast an even more trenchant eye on her own work. One wishes this volume were thicker, though the perfections within mark the rightness of her approach. The poems are sublimely controlled, fraught with word play, fierce moral vision (see her caustic ballad on Ezra Pound, "Visits to St. Elizabeths"), and reticence. From the surreal sorrow of the early "Man-Moth" (leaping off from a typo she had come across for "mammoth"), about a lonely monster who rarely emerges from "the pale subways of cement he calls his home," to the beauty of her villanelle "One Art" (with its repeated "the art of losing isn't hard to master"), the poet wittily explores distance and desolation, separation and sorrow.

Lunch Poems


Frank O'Hara - 1964
    Important poems by the late New York poet published in The New American Poetry, Evergreen Review, Floating Bear and stranger places.Often O'Hara, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware- or firehouse to limn his computed misunderstandings of the eternal questions of life, coexistence, and depth, while never forgetting to eat lunch, his favorite meal.

The Best American Essays 2015


Ariel LevyPhilip Kennicott - 2015
    “To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water.” This year’s writers are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants imbued with meaning are all unified by the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, “Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile—an idea you suspect is an insight—requires real audacity.”  The Best American Essays 2015 includes Hilton Als, Roger Angell, Justin Cronin, Meghan Daum, Anthony Doerr, Margo Jefferson, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit and others ARIEL LEVY, guest editor, has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008. She received the National Magazine Award for essays and criticism for her piece “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” which she is expanding into a book for Random House. Female Chauvinist Pigs, Levy’s first book, has been translated into seven languages. She teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and at Wesleyan University.ROBERT ATWAN, the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986, has published on a wide variety of subjects, from American advertising and early photography to ancient divination and Shakespeare. His criticism, essays, humor, poetry, and fiction have appeared in numerous periodicals nationwide.

Money-Smart Kids


Gail Vaz-Oxlade - 2011
    You work hard to provide every advantage you can. You want them to be safe, smart, and healthy. yet when it comes to money, it's a whole different story. If you're like most people, you'd rather run a mile through a desert with a camel on your back than talk financial realities with your children.Your parents told you that talking about money just wasn't polite. Look where that left you! A healthy, balanced attitude towards money begins when kids are just toddling, so pull you head out of the sand and help your child learn about money and how it works.Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Canada's #1 personal finance expert, will teach you everything your children need to know. Gail believes that building confidence and money skills begins with an age-appropriate allowance. In "Money-Smart Kids", she'll show you how to start an allowance and how to help your kids:- Make Saving a habit- Learn the difference between a need and a want- Use the "magic jars" to balance competing goals- Create lifelong money-management skillsWhat better gift could you give your kids than the confidence to control their money, rather thean letter their money control them? Whether your children are toddlers or teens, let Gail help you raise Money-Smart Kids.

How to Do Ecology: A Concise Handbook


Richard Karban - 2006
    While these are essential, many young ecologists need to figure out how to actually do research themselves. How to Do Ecology provides nuts-and-bolts advice on how to develop a successful thesis and research program. This book presents different approaches to posing testable ecological questions. In particular, it covers the uses, strengths, and limitations of manipulative experiments in ecology. It will help young ecologists consider meaningful treatments, controls, replication, independence, and randomization in experiments, as well as where to do experiments and how to organize a season of work. This book also presents strategies for analyzing natural patterns, the value of alternative hypotheses, and what to do with negative results.Science is only part of being a successful ecologist. This engagingly written book offers students advice on working with other people and navigating their way through the land mines of research. Findings that don't get communicated are of little value. How to Do Ecology suggests effective ways to communicate information in the form of journal articles, oral presentations, and posters. Finally, it outlines strategies for developing successful grant and research proposals. Numerous checklists, figures, and boxes throughout the book summarize and reinforce the main points. In short, this book makes explicit many of the unspoken assumptions behind doing good research in ecology, and provides an invaluable resource for meaningful conversations among ecologists.

How to Pronounce Knife: Stories


Souvankham Thammavongsa - 2020
    Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.How to pronounce knife --Paris --Slingshot --Randy Travis --Mani pedi --Chick-a-chee! --The universe would be so cruel --Edge of the world --The school bus driver --You are so embarassing --Ewwrrkk --The gas station --A far distant thing --Picking worms

Brave New Humans: The Dirty Reality of Donor Conception


Sarah Dingle - 2021
    Over dinner one night, her mother casually mentioned Sarah had been conceived using a sperm donor. The man who’d raised Sarah wasn’t her father; in fact, she had no idea who her father was. Or who she really was. As the shock receded, Sarah put her professional skills to work and began to investigate her own existence. Thus began a ten-year journey to understand who she was – digging through hospital records, chasing leads and taking a DNA test – that finally led her to her biological origins. What she discovered along the way was shocking: hospital records routinely destroyed, trading of eggs and sperm, women dead, donors exploited, and hundreds of thousands of donor-conceived people globally who will never know who they are. But there’s one thing this industry hasn’t banked on: the children of the baby business taking on their makers.In a profoundly personal way, Brave New Humans shines a light on the global fertility business today – a booming and largely unregulated industry that takes a startlingly lax approach to huge ethical concerns, not least our fundamental human need to know who we are, and where we come from.

40 Days for Life: Discover What God Has Done...Imagine What He Can Do


David Bereit - 2013
    Wade Supreme Court decision this year, abortion has become the leading cause of death in our nation and worldwide, ending the lives of more than 42 million children each year and harming millions of women and men. In the midst of this global crisis, there is new hope. Beginning with one hour of prayer in Texas in 2004, the groundbreaking 40 Days for Life movement of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigils, and community outreach has mobilized more than half a million volunteers in 481 cities around the world. Nearly 7,000 babies have been spared from abortion. 75 abortion workers have had a change of heart and quit their jobs. 25 abortion centers have closed. And every baby, every changed heart, every closure is an amazing story. This book contains forty of those stories: Hearts changed on the most controversial issue in our culture Babies and mothers spared from abortion at the last possible second Shocking secrets from inside the abortion industry revealed Abortion workers experiencing a change of heart and quitting their jobs Thriving abortion facilities shutting down for good There have been 11 coordinated 40 Days for Life campaigns since 2007. These efforts have mobilized people of faith and conscience across all 50 of the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Argentina, Armenia, Belize, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Poland, Puerto Rico, Spain and Uganda.

Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say about You-Know-What


Maggie Anton - 2016
    Seductive. Stimulating. We're talking about the Talmud? That's right. Take fifty actual Talmudic discussions, mix in pithy sayings (appropriate and inappropriate) by luminaries from Mae West and Amy Schumer to George Washington and Gandhi, add a few cartoons, and voila delighted and enlightened readers will come away with a new perspective on what the ancient Jewish sages say about our most intimate relationships. In this lighthearted, in-depth tour of sexuality within the Talmud, come eavesdrop at the first rabbis' locker-room door as they discuss every aspect of sexual relationshow, when, where, with whomoften in startlingly explicit fashion. Author Maggie Anton reveals how Jewish tradition is more progressive in many respects, and more bawdy, than one might think. The award-winning historical novelist's first foray into nonfiction is likely to leave her fans going OMG, WTF, and even LOL.

How to Write a Novel


Melanie Sumner - 2015
    Aristotle “Aris” Thibodeau, age 12.5, is writing the Great American Novel. According to Write a Novel in Thirty Days! it shouldn’t be that hard—all she needs to do is write what she knows. Conveniently, Aris’s world is full of people who are more fun to write about than live with, like her single mother, Diane. Diane is an adjunct English professor who flirts with unemployment more than her Match.com dates, and, regrettably, does not know the difference between hair that looks messy and hair that is messy. Aris knows that if Diane would just accept that the perfect man is already under her nose—Penn MacGuffin, handyman, nanny, and self-described PMI (“Positive Male Influence”)—their lives would change for the better. After all, nothing gets a novel off the ground like a budding romance. But when a random accident exposes Aris to a dark part of her family’s history, she’s forced to confront that fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as you hoped.

New Orleans Cookbook


Rima Collin - 1975
    The New Orleans cookbook whose authenticity dependability, and wealth of information have made it a classic.

Ambush at the Waterfall: Marines in Vietnam (No Safe Spaces)


Anthony H. Johnson - 2018
     After the TET offensive of 1968, the North Vietnamese Army forces fled back to their base camps in the jungle covered mountains where they lived, trained and prepared their attacks. During Operation Mameluke Thrust, Marines went into those mountains in search of the NVA. The Marines were hunting and the NVA were ready for them. During several battles, the NVA and Marines fought fiercely, with heavy casualties on both sides. This is the story of one of those battles told by a 19 year old Marine who fought in those battles. As the Marines swept along a river, the point platoon rappelled down a waterfall that then separated them from the main body of the Marine force. The NVA, who had been waiting in ambush, opened fire on both the point platoon and main body. The point platoon, isolated from the main body and in an open field surrounded by a numerically superior NVA force in fortified concealed positions, fought bravely. This story is dedicated to the 21 members of 3rd platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 7th Marines, who were killed or wounded at the waterfall in the mountains near Thuong Duc in Quang Nam province.

The Palm Beach Murder: The True Story of a Millionaire, Marriage and Murder


Marion Collins - 2004
    But when the reckless social climber and adulterer turned marriage in their Palm Beach mansion into a luxurious hell, the beautiful Georgia debutante wanted out--and half of her husband's fortune to take with her.Then in 1987, a hit man unloaded three bullets into Lita's head.Her family demanded justice. James had other plans--and the money to insure it. But it wasn't until eleven years later that a startling confession from a surprise witness would bring James Sullivan's comfortable life crashing down around him. The cold-blooded millionaire was indicted and fled the country turning hotspots across the globe into exotic private playgrounds before settling with his new fiancée in a sumptuous resort near Bangkok, where he was arrested four years later. From Palm Beach elite to life in a squalid Thailand jail cell, Marion Collins' Palm Beach Murder is the astonishing true story of one man's flight from justice and one family's burning desire to make him pay.

Where the Words End and My Body Begins


Amber Dawn - 2015
    By doing so, Dawn delves deeper into the themes of trauma, memory, and unblushing sexuality that define her work.Amber Dawn is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa and the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life (winner of the Vancouver Book Award). Her other awards include the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize.