Truth can be illusive, choices disconcerting; the promise of moral certitude, irresistible.In the Midwestern offices of Secure Star Insurance, Rebecca, efficient and distant, seeks only to survive another day. Sally, earnest and devout, views the workplace as a fertile mission field. Into the agency comes a new employee, Gladys, gregarious, unorthodox and twice divorced. When an intuitive HR manager arrives, veneers begin to crack.To move beyond her smouldering est...

Understanding Children and Childhood examines how and why children develop, and how they interact with the people and events in their lives. Emphasising that children grow up in diverse cultural contexts, Anne Smith’s book builds an understanding of childhood in New Zealand based on childhood studies and sociocultural theory.The voices and experience of children are central to this book. The varied contexts within which children learn and come to understand the world are explored; case stu...

Three teens register at Riverbank High during their junior year-three among two thousand. The new students show up for classes, take notes and hand in assignments.Unnoticed, they walk among the crowds of young people that hustle through the corridors and pack into classrooms.But underneath their outward appearance, hidden adversities threaten to topple what little security they have.When a crisis hits, their lives are upended, and their growing friendship, indeed, t...

When Emily Patterson arrives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children in 1862, she finds herself worlds away from Bath, Maine, the staunchly pious township of her birth. Up the remote reaches of Vancouver Island’s Alberni Canal, Emily learns much about self-reliance in a fledgling milltown where pioneer loggers and the native Tseshaht community share an often tempestuous co-existence. In search of their ideal homestead, the Pattersons next travel to Oregon’s fertile Willamett...

For fans of This Was Our Pact and Hayao Miyazaki films comes a breathtaking graphic novel about siblings who risk everything to return their grandmother's ashes to her home inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.Osamu hasn't been the same since that day. When the tsunami hit Fukushima prefecture, it killed his parents, destroyed his home, and triggered one of the world's worst nuclear disasters. Now, all Osamu has left is his grandmother, Bā-chan, and his big...

In the summer of 1865, when Captain Edward Stamp began to organize the construction of a small sawmilling operation on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, he likely never realized that a future metropolis was in the making.The fledgling Stamp’s Mill, later to become Hastings Mill, was Vancouver’s first community — a townsite inhabited by an eclectic mix of colourful characters from widely diverse backgrounds. Life centered around the iconic Hastings Mill Store, where...

Often through the shadows we more clearly see the light.Andrew Covick, young and naïve, is offered a scholarship and leaves home for the first time. On campus, friendly senior students invite him to barbeques and other get-togethers. “This is great!” he thinks. “New friends, free food!” Andrew assumes there are no strings attached . . . until he begins to feel the tendrils.As Andrew seeks to disentangle himself from what he once thought to be a benign student organ...

Though they come from very different worlds, Violet Yardley and Joseph Davenport are in love . So much so that Joseph intends to propose, but the untimely death of Joseph's mother tears them apart and Violet's family are forced to flee for their lives having been accused of using witchcraft.When Joseph discovers that she has returned to clear her name he seeks her out, hoping that she will be able to forgive him and maybe learn to love him again. But Violet has her own path to foll...

Carolyn’s parents did not, after all, make genomics history by synthesizing her genome in a lab. She has known she is the "Human Hoax" ever since a high school genetics exercise revealed she has trisomy X—a chromosomal abnormality—yet no synthetically constructed genome would have such clear traces of natural conception. Many years later, as molecular biologist, she hopes her colleagues never learn of her embarrassing origins. But when someone ransacks her office and lab, she finds profess...

People always say, "Life is about the journey, not the destination." What they don't tell you is that the destination changes. Learn how having the heart of an entrepreneur helped me survive, and even thrive, through disability, chronic illness, job loss, identity crisis, and, yes, business ownership. What's more, discover the same entrepreneurial spirit inside of you. Even if you never own a business.Here are some reasons why you should buy "Destination Changes" by Jamie Anne Smit...

On the morning of June 13, 1886, a rogue wind fanned the flames of a small clearing fire—and within five hours, the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, had been reduced to smoldering ash. Vancouver is Ashes: The Great Fire of 1886 is the first detailed exploration of what happened on that pivotal, yet seldom revisited day in the history of Canada’s third-largest city. Lisa Anne Smith tells the story with numerous archival photographs. She uses eye-witness accounts to de...

A life for a life....With the fates standing beside her Violet has successfully fought against those who sought to harm Joseph and she has cleared her own name in the process. Her future with Joseph and the safety of their families now seems secure but as the wheel continues to turn there are still lives to be mourned and wounds to be healed if resolution is ever to be found. Peace, Violet soon comes to realise, is not easily earned.As Amelia begins to make her own mark on ...