Veteran hockey writer Ed Willes takes an irreverent look back at the sometimes thrilling, often infuriating and always fascinating history of the Vancouver Canucks.Cheering for the National Hockey League’s Vancouver Canucks over the last half century has required patience, commitment and a forgiving nature. It’s not that the Canucks have been uniformly awful or drearily predictable. Far from it (as this past season would attest). But every time they seemed close to...

Gretzky, Lemieux, Messier, Coffey, Fuhr, all on the same team — in their prime. The greatest collection of hockey talent ever assembled, playing the games of their lives.Three epic 6-5 contests between Canada and the Soviet Union decided the ’87 Canada Cup.Canada evened the series, after the Soviets won Game 1, when Gretzky’s fifth assist of the game set up Lemieux’s hat trick, ending Game 2 in double overtime. Game 2 is widely considered one of the greatest hockey games ev...

The wildest seven years in the history of hockeyThe Rebel League celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the fabled WHA. It is filled with hilarious anecdotes, behind the scenes dealing, and simply great hockey. It tells the story of Bobby Hull’ s astonishing million-dollar signing, which helped launch the league, and how he lost his toupee in an on-ice scrap. It explains how a team of naked Birmingham Bulls ended up in an arena concourse spoiling fo...

Wildcard Westerns have hand-picked twelve outstanding short stories of the Old Frontier for this edition of western classics. Owen Wister, Bret Hart, Ed Garron and Andy Adams are among the contributors, all masters of western adventure. The stories take you behind the guns of a Civil War howitzer battery, into the Rocky Mountains in search of outlaws, and across the wild country of old Arizona in the midst of the Indian Wars. Not to mention an encounter between feuding landowners, and a wo...

When it comes to the Gospel of Christ, it seems there are so many churches and opinions to choose from that faith becomes a bewildering mess. The Gospel is supposed to be Good News, but it is often presented as rules, personal requirements, and submission to a dubious personality. If that doesn't sound like "good news" to you, this short booklet may offer insight that brings peace and fulfillment. It is an excellent resource for those who have given up on the Church, or Christianity as the...

Church growth models have often been long on promises and short on disciple-making. We continue to watch consistent church attendance shrink, and our desire to reach the lost is infected with a need for self-validation by growing our numbers at any cost. If we believe that God wants his church to grow, where do we go from here? What is the future of the church?Drawing from his 20 years and 15,000 hours of consulting, author Will Mancini shares with pastors and ministry leaders the ...

A survey of life on earth, in all its variety and pagentry, by a very annoyed humorist.From early man, the Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, to irascible observations on mankind and the animal kingdom today (including “Birds I Could Do Without”), Will Cuppy, a perennially perturbed hermit, is your guide in these are very funny essays.For eight years, from 1921 to 1929, Will Cuppy lived alone on Jones Island, off Long Island’s South Shore. From that outpost, he gaine...

A survey of the animal kingdom in which the nocturnal and tunneling wombat is awarded the greatest praise.Will Cuppy was something like the Larry David of the mid-20th century. From his perch as a staff writer at The New Yorker, Cuppy observed the world and found a great deal that annoyed him. This collection of essays on animals includes “Birds Who Can’t Even Fly,” “Optional Insects,” “Octopuses and Those Things”, and “How to Swat a Fly,” which codifies t...

The Big Wander is a trip 14-year-old Clay Lancaster and his older brother Mike have planned for years. It's Clay's dream to find his ex-rodeo star uncle, who quit the tour and disappeared somewhere in the vast and colorful Monument Valley. But Mike-heartbroken and unfocused after losing his girlfriend-soon heads for home. Clay, however, will not give up. He finds a job in a remote trading post, and follows a lead on his uncle's whereabouts that takes him deep into Navajo country. There he ...

IRA/CBC Teachers' ChoiceJunior Library Guild SelectionALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult ReadersALA Best Fiction for Young AdultsAmerican Bookseller Pick of the ListsALA Popular Paperbacks for Young AdultsIRA/CBC Young Adults’ ChoiceJust fourteen, Rick Walder is alone, on the run, and desperate. Stowing away in the back of a truck, he suddenly finds himself at a dead end, out in the middle of nowhere. The Maze. In this surreal landsca...

'An ambitious, riveting and essential book that has much to teach us about the recent history of this region, and about the human impulse towards populism that continues to shape the world' Ben Rhodes, bestselling author of The World As It Is'A REVOLUTION IS A STRUGGLE TO THE DEATH BETWEEN THE FUTURE AND THE PAST.' FIDEL CASTROFor more than six decades, Fidel Castro's words have echoed through the politics of Latin America. His towering political influence still looms over t...

The next sizzling and swoonie rom-com from the author of the TikTok-hit A Brush with Love................................Chaotic, messy and madly in love.Lizzie Blake has made endless mistakes. Kitchen fires, pyramid schemes, you name it, she's done it . . . and made a mess of it too.One mistake she never makes? Risking anything more serious than a one-off hook-up. But after losing yet another bakery job du...