This digital bundle of the Fiona Silk Mystery series presents Mary Jane Maffini’s celebrated sleuth stories Lament for a Lounge Lizard and Too Hot To Handle in a unique two-book edition.
Following the extraordinary and ongoing success of his 2004 book The Pagan Christ , scholar and author Tom Harpur was deluged with readers’ requests to go more deeply into the mythological, allegorical approach to the story of Jesus he took in that bestselling book. In Water Into Wine , Harpur sets out the powerful and transforming message that emerges when the Gospels are finally read as they were originally intended to be and as they were understood by the first Christians, such as Origen and Clement. Seen in their true mythological and symbolical meaning, the stories in the drama of Jesus’ life come alive in a totally fresh way – not as the account of a single, distant god-man working strange miracle like Superman or some other fictional magician, but as a description of the evolution of the soul in everyone of us. The theme of the Gospels parallels exactly the theme of the Old Testament, as well as every ancient sacred text, which is that a spark of the divine spirit incarnates in each and every human being. Tom Harpur shows how «the old, old story» is at the heart of every religion and how it is really our own personal story too. Water Into Wine is a tour de force written by a skilled and learned communicator that should excite and nourish every true seeker after spiritual fulfillment. As well, it has the enormous potential for furthering the goal of global understanding and peace.
What happens when we die? Will we simply dissolve into nothingness, or will we survive death in some other form? Issues of death and dying have consumed humanity from time immemorial. In our modern western culture, we have tended out of fear to deny and push death away. And yet, a healthy consideration of this issue can help us embrace and understand what happens to us when we die. There is Life After Death is Tom Harpur’s classic examination of death and dying. Now fully revised and updated, here is a new edition of a book that weighs the scientific, religious and anecdotal evidence of survival of death and what happens after we die. The likelihood of death being a portal to other forms of existence is argued persuasively. Tom Harpur looks at the witness of near-death experiences, and examines the idea of reincarnation, as well as the claims of channelers and spirit mediums. Most importantly, the author looks at how the great world religions from Christianity, Judaism and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism and Native Spirituality among others, deal with life after death. This book is a powerful summary of what we know and believe about death. There is Life After Death is both illuminating and comforting in its message and conclusions – and goes a long way in putting to rest one of the last great taboos of our culture.
2012 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize – Winner 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award – Finalist, English-Language Fiction In December of 1944, the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects were to be felt for decades afterward. Siege 13 is a collection of thirteen linked stories about this terrible time in history, both its historical moment, but also later, as a legacy of silence, haunting, and trauma that shadows the survivors. Set in both Budapest before and after the siege, and in the present day – in Canada, the U.S., and parts of Europe – Siege 13 traces the ripple effect of this time on characters directly involved, and on their friends, associates, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and adoptive countries. Written by one of this country’s best and most internationally recognized short story authors – the story «The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kallman Once Lived» won the 2011 O. Henry Prize for short fiction – Siege 13 is an intelligent, emotional, and absorbing cycle of stories about war, family, loyalty, love and redemption.
Roots of Empathy – an evidence-based program developed in 1996 by longtime educator and social entrepreneur Mary Gordon – has already reached more than 270,000 children in Canada, the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Now, as The New York Times reports that «empathy lessons are spreading everywhere amid concerns over the pressure on students from high-stakes tests and a race to college that starts in kindergarten», Mary Gordon explains the value of and how best to nurture empathy and social and emotional literacy in all children – and thereby reduce aggression, antisocial behavior, and bullying.
In 1996, successful businessman and certified pilot, Scott Griffin, decided to break from the comfortable routine of his life to go work for the Flying Doctors Service, an African organization that flies doctors to remote areas to administer medical assistance. Griffin also made the daring decision to fly his small, single-engine Cessna 180 solo from Canada to Africa and back again. My Heart is Africa is the engaging, personal story of Griffin’s two-year aviation adventure throughout Africa. Facing storms, equipment problems, fuel shortages and isolation, Griffin successfully made his way to Kenya – little did he know, his harrowing flight over the Atlantic was only the beginning of his adventure. Once in Africa, Griffin circumnavigated the continent, flying over deserts, mountains and jungles both as a medical volunteer and tourist. Throughout his journey – which included being arrested and crashing, then re-crashing, his plane – Griffin discovered the heartrending humanity and beauty of Africa. My Heart is Africa is an absorbing adventure story, but it is also the story of Africa – its problems and people, its landscapes and limitations, its culture and courage. Griffin’s intrepid flying odyssey not only takes the reader on a journey across Africa but into the lives of all the doctors, nurses, aid workers and eccentric characters that crossed his path along the way. My Heart is Africa is a fascinating and gripping account of one man’s quest to push beyond his personal limits in order to explore and experience a new way of life.
From the author of Macdonald, comes a new novel about an extraordinary love triangle set at the apex of Canada’s national life at the dawn of the twentieth century. A deeply absorbing novel of passion and politics, Laurier in Love reveals a side of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Canadians have never known him: romantic and idealistic, inspiring and seductive, yet conflicted and compromised, as he balances his time between his wife and his mistress. Elegant, silver-tongued Sir Wilfrid Laurier is just beginning his fabled career as one of the nation’s greatest leaders. Some Canadians revile him simply because he is French-Canadian and Roman Catholic, the first Prime Minister from Quebec. Keenly aware of the difficulties lying ahead, Laurier tells his devoted wife, Zoë Laurier, how much he needs her. At the same time, he assures his ambitious, literary lover, Émilie Lavergne, that she too is indispensable to him. Through the eyes of these two fascinating women, we see Laurier the orator, charming Americans in Chicago; Laurier the statesman, starring at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in London; Laurier the conciliator, walking the perilous line between demands of English and French as Canada fights her first foreign war in distant South Africa. The cast of characters includes the aging monarch, the doomed President McKinley, a young Winston Churchill, an even younger Mackenzie King. Both epic and intimate in scale, Laurier in Love gives readers the authentic sense of the man, the era, the politics and the complex personal life Laurier led behind the scenes.
How do you get someone else committed to reaching their fullest potential? It's a question that challenges new managers and seasoned executives alike, echoes through coaches' heads as they watch a gifted athlete underachieve, and keeps parents up at night. In Ignite the Third Factor , Peter synthesizes his life‘s work into the five core practices exceptional leaders use to ignite the Third Factor in themselves and others – whether it‘s in the locker room before a gold medal Olympic hockey game or at a routine performance review. Peter works through an easy-to-understand model, providing a clear view of what separates igniters from extinguishers and exploring a wealth of strategies you can put to use immediately in your world. Like the laws of physics, these principles apply in any environment. They may look different when used by a parent, a manager, or a coach, but the forces of work remain the same. Ignite the Third Factor is a fast-paced journey packed with familiar faces, engaging stories, and humour. As he moves from the dressing room to the corner office and back again, Peter weaves insights from well-known Canadian, American, and British coaches and executives with his personal experience to provide a practical guide to helping others excel – all set against the backdrop of an exciting thirty years of involvement in the Canadian Olympic Movement.
"The last time I talked to my mother, she announced that she hated my father." So begins Brian Fawcett’s compelling new book about happiness and a new way of looking at family. A public intellectual who will shame the devil in the interests of truth, Brian Fawcett has staunchly refused to buy into the prevailing techno-corporate ethos that defines our culture today. With Human Happiness , Fawcett has taken another leap into unexplored territory. Where previously Fawcett has explored such topics as globalization and the role of the media, this time he turns the lens inward to search for the meaning of happiness by examining the mysteries of marriage and family. Featuring prose that is often painfully candid and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, Human Happiness is a story-driven narrative centered around the seemingly happy marriage between Fawcett’s parents, about how families really work (or don’t), about the intergenerational conflicts that seem inevitable between headstrong fathers and sons, and how old hostilities can poison and distort through generations and – in extraordinary cases – can be resolved. For 25 years now, Brian Fawcett has been Canada’s most unconventional writer and public intellectual, a man Paul Quarrington described as our literature’s enfant terrible and eminence gris rolled into one. His true gift is for making readers laugh while raising the most fundamental questions that face us. He might be Canada’s most original writer.
From the author of the best-selling The Mother Zone , comes a comic narrative about an over-anxious mother and her twenty-something over-adventurous son. Home Free is about the last secret lap of parenting: getting through your kids’ twenties and learning how to let them go at the same time. The twentysomethings who invented the generation gap in the nineteen sixties have grown up to become hyperinvolved parents who can’t stop worrying about their adult kids. Many of the kids are still living in the basement, bussing tables instead of going to business school, and depending on their parents for emotional support. Just when they thought family life was on the wane, parents are back on deck with their children; at the same time many are often coping with their own frail or dying parents. Is this the new, improved face of family, where kids still depend on their parents for stability, friendship and guidance in an increasingly unforgiving world? Or has this era of over-invested parents, living vicariously through the achievements of their children, bred dependency in the new generation? Home Free is an intimate, candid, reflective and comic memoir that focuses on this new and undefined stage of family life: the challenges of helping our kids navigate their twenties – while learning how to let go of them at the same time.