Download or read book The Garneau Block written by Todd Babiak and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A local phenomenon goes national! This sparkling novel has the warmth and wide appeal of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe and the wit of Will Ferguson. What Alexander McCall Smith did with 44 Scotland Street, Todd Babiak does with The Garneau Block. This addictive and charming, laugh-out-loud funny novel enchanted readers when it was serialized in the Edmonton Journal in the fall of 2005 — and now, The Garneau Block makes its national debut. The Garneau Block follows the knowable citizens of the adored and hated city of Edmonton, capturing what we connect to in local stories and what is universal about modern life. Here, in what can only be described as a storytelling tour-de-force, we meet the warm, endearing, and delightfully flawed residents of a fictional cul-de-sac in the city’s Garneau neighbourhood just after the scandalous death of a neighbour and the sudden news that their land is about to be repossessed by the university. When mysterious signs begin to appear duct-taped to trees saying only LET’S FIX IT, the block — including a sacked university professor, a once-ambitious, knocked-up haiku expert living in her parents’ basement, an aging actor whose dreams are slipping away, and a quiet but polite stranger — is galvanized to band together in a wild attempt to save their homes. And when regular people put their dreams in motion, anything can happen — namely, political machinations, personal revelations, a public uproar, and unforeseen love. From a young author whose name will soon be on everyone’s lips come the most lovable Canadian characters since Dave and Morley, and a page-turning-good story. Readers nationwide won’t be able to get enough of The Garneau Block. For the next while, David talked about the merits of joining the PC party. Why fight it, really? No political organization is perfect, of course, but by giving your support to the Liberals or the New Democrats, what are you doing? Further dooming the City of Edmonton. Further empowering Calgary and the rural caucus. “Nonsense, David,” said Abby. “That’s the sort of talk that leads to tyranny, and we’ve had plenty enough of it in this province.” “Tyranny she says! Tyranny!” David took a few steps in Tammy’s direction, so they formed a political triangle. “No wonder the left is so flabby.” –From The Garneau Block

Download or read book The Spirits Up written by Todd Babiak and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warm, witty, and unsettling all at once, here is an unforgettable story of a family desperate for something to believe in. Benedict is an inventor whose life’s work is a clean energy machine. It has just made him an overnight sensation and his family is suddenly wealthy. Benedict’s wife, Karen, and his teenage daughters, Charlotte and Poppy, are proud of him. But there are problems Benedict is too busy to see: Karen is deeply unhappy in the marriage and contemplating an affair, Charlotte, who is dealing with a chronic illness, is growing more and more distant, and Poppy is cracking under the pressures of her social circle. And there’s another problem. Benedict holds a rather terrible secret about his clean energy machine. Then, on Halloween night, an accident threatens to make everything far worse for the family. The accident kicks off a series of hauntings in their beautiful, historic home in affluent Belgravia, and the ghosts make it clear that they want something from them. Karen has to save her daughters — and herself. Meanwhile, Benedict is consumed by the knowledge that he has to achieve the impossible by Christmas. As time ticks ever closer to the revelation of his secret, he spirals further into despair . . . The Spirits Up is the story of a family haunted by the charmlessness of middle age and the cruelties of modern teenage life. Part social satire and part contemporary ghost story (with a hint of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol), it is an exploration of a timeless question: what happens when there’s nothing to believe?

Download or read book The Book of Stanley written by Todd Babiak and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riotous new novel from the #1 bestselling author of the hit sensation The Garneau Block. By all accounts, Stanley Moss is an average man. A retired florist, he lives quietly with his wife, Frieda, in a modest bungalow in Edmonton. Stricken with cancer, Stanley has few wishes for the time he has left, except perhaps for his son to call him back. But on the day of an appointment with the palliative care specialist, Stanley experiences a boom and a flash, and then, a remarkable transformation. He discovers he can read minds. He can fulfill people’s dreams. He has the strength of ten men. And, his illness has vanished. What could this mean? Could it be, as his New Age friend Alok believes, that Stanley’s powers are divine? Is Stanley, a confirmed agnostic, the new Messiah? With Alok and a reluctant Frieda in tow, Stanley heads to Banff (the most sacred place on earth) to look for answers and find a way to use his new powers for good. He encounters there his disciples — a Vancouver TV executive, a pro hockey player from the Prairies and a teenage girl from suburban Montreal — and together they start The Stan, a new religion, and invite the world to join. When the world shows up, along with the international media and an angry long-dead spiritualist, things take an unexpected turn. Satirical, fantastical, filled with humour and pointed observation about organized religion in the modern world, The Book of Stanley is a provocative comedy about life, love, and devotion in all its guises.

Download or read book Luck written by Joan Barfoot and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-01-29 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There is good luck, and there is bad luck, and then there’s the ambiguous sort of luck that’s a lot of this and some of the other.” Philip Lawrence, a robust and pleasure-loving furniture-maker, dies suddenly at the age of forty-six. Though that’s terribly young by most standards, he’s lucky to have passed presumably peacefully in his sleep. Less fortunate, however, are the three women he leaves behind to make sense of his loss. There’s Nora, his wife of seventeen years, who wakes up next to his dead body. A fiery visual artist, Nora’s feminist re-interpretation of biblical themes stoked fundamentalist outrage from her small-town neighbours. Now, as her emotions run the gamut, she must confront solo life in a place she despises. Nora shares the house with Sophie, a buxom and bossy redhead, who works as the couple’s housekeeper and personal assistant. A recovering virtue addict, Sophie turns to menial tasks as a way to suppress painful memories of her two-year stint as an overseas aid worker. Philip’s death leaves her quietly reeling. And then there’s the pliable and vacuous Beth, a former beauty queen, who serves as Nora’s live-in muse and model. She mourns not Philip so much as the loss of a haven from her own creepy past. The novel follows the three days immediately after Philip’s death. Privately, each woman deals with memories and emotions, secrets and uncomfortable revelations, while at the same time preparing for the public rituals of mourning (including a funeral like no other). The narrative moves seamlessly from one perspective to another with delicious dark humour and wry insight into the nature of death, love, mourning, fundamentalism and luck. Barfoot’s tenth novel, Luck was shortlisted for the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The jury citation reads as follows: “Joan Barfoot is at the peak of her powers with this splendidly realized tragicomedy about a household in the wake of an unexpected death. With its note-perfect narration, mordant wit and wonderfully neurotic cast of characters, Luck shows how death can reveal life in all its absurdity and complexity. This scintillating comedy of manners is also a profound meditation on fate, love, and artifice.”

Download or read book Toby written by Todd Babiak and published by HarperCollins Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-22 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TV presenter and man-about-town Toby Ménard has it all. But in the days after his father has a startling accident, Toby makes a series of terrible, wincing choices. As a result, he is fired from his job as an etiquette commentator and loses his superb condo, his beautiful girlfriend and his beloved BMW. Worse still, he must move back to the grey Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux and live in his parents’ basement. With his silent BlackBerry and a sudden absence of friends or saviours, Toby feels he has reached the limits of misery and humiliation. But his father’s increasingly frightening behaviour is where the real trouble—and risk—lies. Who is this man? What can Toby do? Then, in a moment of misplaced gallantry, Toby encounters an unstable francophone mother who disappears and abandons her two-year-old son, Hugo, to his care. Trapped with a toddler and forced to deal with his father’s tragedies, Toby emerges from the basement bungalow of his life—muddy, broke, bruised, heartbroken—but, finally, a man.

Download or read book The Empress of Idaho written by Todd Babiak and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling and award-winning author Todd Babiak returns with an immersive and affecting story about a teenager's fascination with an enigmatic new woman in town whose past is catching up with her. Monument, Colorado, July 1989. Fourteen-year-old Adam Lisinski is mesmerized the moment Beatrice Cyr steps into his life. Adam has a lot going for him: he's hoping to be a starter on his high school football team, he has a fiercely protective mom, a girlfriend, and a part-time job at Eugene's Gas Stop, where he works with his best friend. But he neglects everything that matters to him after Beatrice, his neighbour's enigmatic new wife, comes to town. Soon he finds himself alone with her--in the change room at Modern You, a clothing store on Second Street; in the back row of the theatre at Chapel Hill Cinema; in the front seat of her truck. He's confused about who she is, what she wants, and where she comes from. Adam is desperate, caught between wanting to spend time with Beatrice--whose past is catching up with her--and lying to everyone he cares about. The guilt overwhelms him. And when Beatrice convinces Adam's mom to quit her job and partner in a risky real estate venture, he has to do something before everything spins further out of control. The plan he comes up with tests his courage and leads him to an unshakable truth about loyalty and love. By turns riveting and tender-hearted, The Empress of Idaho is a story about the vulnerability and confusion of adolescence at the moment when it slams against adulthood. It's an unforgettable portrait of a boy's difficult coming of age.

Download or read book CCNP Security Firewall 642 617 Official Cert Guide written by Dave Hucaby and published by Cisco Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 767 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The official study guide helps you master all the topics on the CCNP Security Firewall exam, including: ASA interfaces, IP connectivity, ASA management, Recording ASA activity, Address translation, Access control, Proxy services, Traffic inspection and handling, Transparent firewall mode, Virtual firewalls, High availability, and ASA service modules"--Page 4 of cover

Download or read book Mosby s Pharmacology Memory NoteCards E Book written by JoAnn Zerwekh and published by Elsevier Health Sciences. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring key pharmacology topics to life in a flash! Mosby’s Pharmacology Memory NoteCards: Visual, Mnemonic, and Memory Aids for Nurses, 5th Edition uses humor, illustrations, and mnemonics, to help you retain challenging pharmacology concepts and drug information. This sturdy, spiral bound kit covers important nursing implications, frequent side effects, serious and life-threatening implications, and patient teaching skills. Whether you use it to prepare for class, clinicals, or the NCLEX® examination, you won’t find another study tool like this! UNIQUE! More than 100 full-color cartoons offer humorous and memorable presentations of key drugs. UNIQUE! Color-highlighted monographs make it easier for you to identify nursing priorities on common medications. Thick pages and a spiral-bound format create a portable tool that is durable enough for the clinical environment. Colored thumb tabs at the bottom of the page allow students to find topics quickly. UNIQUE! Mnemonics and other time-tested memory aids help you grasp and remember even the most complex concepts. What You Need to Know sections on each card cover key information in a quick and easy-to-review format. NEW! Additional cards cover medication safety, furosemide, hydrochlorothiazide, oral antidiabetic drugs and non-insulin injectable agents, and disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.

Download or read book Nunt written by Mingus Tourette and published by Zygote Pub.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Alternating between startling obscenity and tender humanity, Nunt careens through a world of sex, drugs, prostitutes, buggery, fist fighting, murder, God, death, literature, jazz, rock and roll, zen, and madness."--Back cover.

Download or read book Come Barbarians written by Todd Babiak and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Kruse has moved to the south of France with his wife and daughter to become a better man—to escape his past as a high-priced security agent and his guilt over old wrongs. But after a harrowing accident, he finds himself drawn into a web of political gamesmanship and murder. When his wife disappears, Kruse must draw on his old instincts to find her, ahead of the police and two sinister members of a Corsican crime family. His desperate search leads him closer to his wife, and deeper into the dangerous machinations of the most powerful leaders in the country. Come Barbarians is a gripping novel of love and loss, murder, revenge and political conspiracy. Todd Babiak has created a complex, magnetic character forced to confront his bleakest hour and his darkest impulses.

Download or read book You Are the Earth written by David Suzuki and published by Greystone Books. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively collection of fascinating facts and fables, colorful cartoons, and dynamic illustrations explains how everything on Earth is connected. Since its original publication, concern for the environment has grown, and although environmental damage has increased, so too have "green" strategies. This new edition reflects these changes, with expanded discussion of environmental issues and new technologies, as well as many more activities. New sidebars offer extra facts, tips, and real-life examples of things other budding ecologists have done to make the world a better place.

Download or read book The Urban Condition Literary Trajectories through Canada s Postmetropolis written by Eva Darias-Beautell and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the centrality of the city in Canadian literary production post-1960, this collection of critical essays presents an interdisciplinary representation of the urban from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. By analysing contemporary Canadian literature (in English), the contributors intend to produce not only an alternative picture of the national literary traditions but also fresh articulations of the relationship between (Canadian) identity, citizenship, and nation. Since the 1960s, metropolitan regions across the world have experienced radical transformation. For critical urban studies scholars, this phenomenon has been described as a ‘restructuring’. This study argues that in Canada this ‘restructuring’ has been accompanied by a literary rearrangement of its canon, consisting of a gradual shift of focus from the wild or rural to the urban. Alluding to the changes within contemporary Canadian cities, the term ‘postmetropolis’ locates the contributors’ shared theoretical framework within a critical postmodern paradigm. Centered on a particular selection of poetic or fictional texts, each essay pushes the theoretical framework further, suggesting the need for new tools of interpretation and analysis. This book presents an urban literary portrait of Canada that is both thematically and conceptually coherent. Using a range of interdisciplinary methodologies, it adeptly navigates a range of urban issues such as surveillance, asylum, diaspora, mobility, the queer, and the post-political. This book will be of interest to those studying or working on Canadian literature, both in Canada and internationally, as well as to those scholars engaged in investigations that intersect literature and urban studies.

Download or read book Choke Hold written by Todd Babiak and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After suffering a trauma that would eventually shape his outlook on life, Jeremy Little finishes high school and leaves for Boston. He becomes obsessed with martial arts training, eventually opening his own school. Things seem to be looking up until one of his students kills a gay man. The resulting publicity destroys Jeremy's business and he returns home where he is forced to confront his old demons.

Download or read book The Reluctant Author written by Corinne Jeffery and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a teen growing up in an impoverished dysfunctional home environment, Laurine Schaffer realizes that she must be pragmatic and pursue a sustainable professional career path. At seventeen, she enrols in a traditional three-year Registered Nurse training program, where she quickly realizes that her perceptions of life and people are dramatically different from many of her classmates. Although Laurine ultimately forges a successful vocation as a college professor, at age fifty-seven she admits she is not being true to herself, or to her lifelong aspiration to write the story of her German Lutheran ancestors who fled Russia in 1892. Following an epiphany in an abandoned family cemetery on the original ancestral homestead in western Canada, Laurine begins to write. As one family history book follows another and another and yet another, her writing becomes a catalyst for a personal healing journey. The Reluctant Author is essentially a prequel to her three previous family memoirs and links the past to the present with poignant clarity.

Download or read book Blocking Public Participation written by Byron Sheldrick and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) involves lawsuits brought by individuals, corporations, groups, or politicians to curtail political activism and expression. An increasingly large part of the political landscape in Canada, they are often launched against those protesting, boycotting, or participating in some form of political activism. A common feature of SLAPPs is that their intention is rarely to win the case or secure a remedy; rather, the suit is brought to create a chill on political expression. Blocking Public Participation examines the different types of litigation and causes of action that frequently form the basis of SLAPPs, and how these lawsuits transform political disputes into legal cases, thereby blocking political engagement. The resource imbalance between plaintiffs and defendants allows plaintiffs to tie up defendants in complex and costly legal processes. The book also examines the dangers SLAPPs pose to political expression and to the quality and integrity of our democratic political institutions. Finally, the book examines the need to regulate SLAPPs in Canada and assesses various regulatory proposals. In Canada, considerable attention has been paid to the “legalization of politics” and the impact on the Charter in diverting political activism into the judicial arena. SLAPPs, however, are an under-studied element of this process, and in their obstruction of political engagement through recourse to the courts they have profound implications for democratic practice.

Download or read book Roost written by Ali Bryan and published by Freehand Books. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claudia, single mom of two, pines for her past independent life. Her ex, after all, has moved on to a new wardrobe, new hobbies and—worst of all—new adult friends. But in Claudia’s house she’s still finding bananas in the sock drawer, cigarettes taped to wrestling figures, and colourful doodles on her MasterCard bills. Then Claudia receives the unexpected news that her mother has died. Shared through the hilarious, honest, and often poignant perspective of a single mother, Roost is the story of a woman learning about motherhood while grieving the loss of her own mother. And as she begins to mend, she’s also learning that she might be able to accept her home—even as it is.

Download or read book Public Interest Private Property written by Anneke Smit and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to urban planning, to what extent and under what conditions should the community’s interest prevail over the rights of private property owners? Public Interest, Private Property addresses this question at a time when pollution, urban sprawl, and condo booms are forcing municipal governments to adopt prescriptive laws and regulations. Case studies focus on spheres in which public values and private property rights collide – expropriation law, natural resources regulation, green development, and water provision – laying the groundwork for more active debates on the issues currently shaping our cities.