The suburbs of the 1970s promised to be Heaven on Earth--new houses, new status, happiness guaranteed. But in a Scarborough subdivision populated by newcomers from all over the world, a series of sudden catastrophic events reveals that not everyone's dreams come true. Moving from house to house, Carrianne Leung explores the inner lives behind the tidy front gardens and picture-perfect windows, always returning to June, an irrepressible adolescent Chinese-Canadian coming of age in this shifting world. Through June and her neighbours, Leung depicts the fine line where childhood meets the realities of adult life, and examines, with insight and sharp prose, how difficult it is to be true to ourselves at any age.

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Shuswap Chief Bev Sellars recounts her residential school childhood at the St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, British Columbia and the lasting effects her treatment there had on her later life.

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After the death of the author's senile father, and cantankerous ninety-three-year-old mother, she and her three younger brothers must empty and sell the beloved family home. Twenty-three rooms full of history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. The author remembers her loving but difficult parents who could not have been more different: the British father, a handsome, disciplined patriarch who nonetheless could not control his opinionated, extroverted Southern-belle wife who loved tennis and gin gimlets. The task consumes her, becoming more rewarding than she ever imagined. Items from childhood trigger memories of her eccentric family growing up in a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario in the 1950s and 60s. But unearthing new facts about her parents helps her reconcile those relationships with a more accepting perspective about who they were and what they valued.

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In this inspiring, empowering book, Jay Shetty draws on his time as a monk to show us how we can clear the roadblocks to our potential and power. Combining ancient wisdom and his own rich experiences in the ashram, this book reveals how to overcome negative thoughts and habits, and access the calm and purpose that lie within all of us. He transforms abstract lessons into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, live a less anxious and more meaningful life, improve relationships, and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world. Shetty proves that everyone can - and should - think like a monk.

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The turn of the 20th century finds fourteen-year-old Batya in the Russian countryside, fleeing with her family endless pogroms. Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America. Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon she discovers that she's entered a waking nightmare. Her new 'husband' does indeed bring her to America: Buenos Aires, a vibrant, growing city in which prostitution is not only legal but deeply embedded in the culture. And now Batya is one of thousands of women tricked and sold into a brothel. As the years pass, Batya forms deep bonds with her 'sisters' in the house as well as some men who are both kind and cruel. Through it all, she holds onto one dream: to bring her family to America, where they will be safe from the anti-Semitism that plagues Russia. Just as Batya is becoming a known tango dancer, she gets an unexpected but dangerous opportunity-to help bring down the criminal network that has enslaved so many young women and has been instrumental in developing Buenos Aires into a major metropolis. A powerful story of finding courage in the face of danger, and hope in the face of despair, The Third Daughter brings to life a dark period of Jewish history and gives a voice to victims whose truth deserves to finally be told.

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ROMANCE FICTION - BETRAYAL "Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She's a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion. But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She's too busy keeping a roof over her daughters' heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise. But then an unlikely man enters the picture--the forbidden one, the one she shouldn't want but can't seem to resist. She's lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself? After all she's lost ... and found ... can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?"--

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SCIENCE FICTION - TIME TRAVEL Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters--and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked "Burn before reading. Signed, Blue." So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space. Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common--save that they're the best, and they're alone. Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning's what you do in war. Isn't it? A tour de force collaboration from two powerhouse writers that spans the whole of time and space.

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ROMANCE FICTION - HOLIDAYS As strangers and seatmates Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson fly to Toronto over the holidays--Maryam to her sister's impromptu wedding, and Anna to meet her boyfriend's wealthy family for the first time--neither expect that severe turbulence will scare them into confessing their deepest hopes and fears to one another. At least they'll never see each other again. And the love of Maryam's life, Saif, wasn't sitting two rows behind them hearing it all. Oops. An emergency landing finds Anna, Saif, Maryam, and her sister's entire bridal party snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town, where fate has Anna's actor-crush filming a holiday romance. As Maryam finds the courage to open her heart to Saif, and Anna feels the magic of being snowbound with an unexpected new love--both women soon realize there's no place they'd rather be for the holidays.

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A homage to Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility", this is a story of three women: Betty, who has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years, and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, who all regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut beach cottage. Miranda, the impulsive sister, is a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister. Much mischief ensues over these romantic relationships as the women figure out how to survive and thrive.

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Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

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