Books Collection

An award-winning novelist of the unexpected fulfillment she found in New England, living, loving, cooking, and eating “at the end of the world.” In this exuberant, unabashedly gourmand-esque follow-up to Blue Plate Special, Christensen celebrates the land, food, and people of Maine. The state became her home after she and her partner, Brendan, decided to leave a beloved New Hampshire farmhouse owned by the Fitzgerald family and buy a house of their own. They settled in the quietly cosmopolitan city of Portland, where they discovered restaurants that, in their excellence and diversity, rivaled those in larger cities like New York. As she got to know actual Mainers, Christensen also found herself appreciating their unpretentiousness and rugged individualism, and she admired their “quiet work ethic…that is somehow never puritanical or self-righteous, as well as the lack of judgment, the mind-your-own-business attitude, and the fierce pride of place.” This was especially true where foo...

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, Nell Scovell (Co-Writer) Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in.   The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world ...

Phoebe MacIntire, who is a servant to her father and sisters in her own house in Scotland in 1855, is an ordinary girl, with no big dreams for the future. She's perfectly happy in her humble life, with her cot in the basement and her little garden in the backyard. But when her father up and sends her to Newfoundland to be the lifelong servant to Lord Jacobs, she finds her life gets turned upside down. When she arrives at the manor on a small island, she finds the beautiful place abandoned and only a note waits for her explaining her duties, the strange dietary requirements, and sleeping habits of her new master. The very first night in her new home she's haunted in her dreams by a woman who clearly does not want her there and a strange blue-eyed man-wolf creature that follows the woman. Her dreams become more and more violent and mysteries start to be uncovered about a woman who was killed in a fire on the island, a creature that preys on anyone that comes to the island a...

Central to Stephanie Kallos’ Language Arts is the notion of stimming—repetitive, self-stimulating, physical movements and behaviors considered therapeutic for people with developmental disabilities. Cody Marlow, a low-functioning autistic boy, derives calm and balance from ritually crumbling bricks of Ramen noodles.  His father, Charles, nurses a lifelong preoccupation with drawing repeated loops, and an imprecise faith in the transcendent power of stimming binds father and son. A deeply absorbing, magnificently wrought look inside the stories a man tells himself about life, Language Arts overflows with insight and mesmerizing twists. Even with the remarkably high standard set by Kallos’ two previous novels, she shows no sign of faltering. Improbably enough, she keeps getting better. —Steve Nathans-Kelly

Harry Potter is due to start his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His best friends Ron and Hermione have been very secretive all summer and he is desperate to get back to school and find out what has been going on. However, what Harry discovers is far more devastating than he could ever have expected... Suspense, secrets and thrilling action from the pen of J.K. Rowling ensure an electrifying adventure that is impossible to put down.