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Rick Kotani's 400 million dollar summer / by Brown, Waka T.;
"Rick Kotani is looking forward to spending the entire summer playing baseball. Sure, his team never wins, but he's been practicing a special pitch he knows is going to land him a 400-million-dollar major-league contract . . . someday. That all changes when his mother throws a curveball of her own: Instead of playing ball in California, Rick will be heading to Oregon to help keep an eye on Grandpa Hiroshi while they move him to a retirement home. Trading no-hitters to be a babysitter? Rick is beyond bummed. But once there, Rick discovers Grandpa is actually pretty cool, and the two bond over a Japanese folktale about a fisherman, Urashima Taro, who trades his life on earth for the riches of an underwater kingdom. And like the fisherman, Rick soon forgets about his team back home when he joins a supercompetitive local league that only cares about being the best--at any cost. As the team racks up the wins and Grandpa makes his final move, Rick must decide which ending he wants for his story: Will he fall in line with his ruthless teammates and their victory-obsessed coach in his own 'underwater kingdom,' or will family, true friendship, and integrity lead him back to shore?"--Amazon.Ages 8-12.
Subjects: Baseball; Grandparent and child; Tales;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last stand [videorecording] / by Coyote, Peter,narrator.; Davis, Wade,on-screen participant.; Puttkamer, Peter von,screenwriter,film director.; Salazar, Leila,on-screen participant.; Buffalo 8 Productions,publisher.;
Narrated by Peter Coyote ; Wade Davis, Leila Salazar.THE LAST STAND for Trees is about saving the world's last remaining ancient forests. Using the flash-point of British Columbia's "Battle for the Trees" at FAIRY CREEK- the documentary examines the importance of keeping intact forest ecosystems: here in North America, the Amazon and around the world. Experts like Wade Davis and Leila Salazar-Lopez speak about the impact trees/plants have on our atmosphere, including Carbon sequestration and providing Oxygen for us to breathe. Incorporating unique-access footage at the front-lines of Fairy Creek protests, to block Logging of the last 3% of BC's old growth, the film does not pull punches. We hear the impassioned words of front-line forest defenders, as well as global forestry experts. The film reveals the complexity of issues facing the world: the need to protect habitat, while balancing economies and jobs, while also recognizing the rights of First Nations' people controlling resources in their territories. Finally, The Last Stand for Trees looks at solutions ... both from cutting edge Silicon Valley companies building carbon-retaining technology, to things average citizens can do, to help save jungles/forests and the Planet.E.DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Environmental films.; Environmentalism.; Logging; Old growth forest conservation; Old growth forest ecology; Old growth forests;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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House of Trelawney / by Rothschild, Hannah,1962-author.;
"For more than seven hundred years, the vast, rambling Trelawney Castle in Cornwall--turrets, follies, a room for every day of the year, four miles of corridors and 500,000 acres--was the magnificent and grand "three dimensional calling card" of the earls of Trelawney. By 2008, it is in a complete state of ruin due to the dulled ambition and the financial ineptitude of the twenty-four earls, two world wars, the Wall Street crash, and inheritance taxes. Still: the heir to all of it, Kitto, his wife, Jane, their three children, their dog, Kitto's ancient parents, and his aunt Tuffy Scott, an entomologist who studies fleas, all manage to live there and keep it going. Four women dominate the story: Jane; Kitto's sister, Blaze, who left Trelawney and made a killing in finance in London, the wildly beautiful, seductive, and long-ago banished Anastasia and her daughter, Ayesha. When Anastasia sends a letter announcing that her nineteen-year-old daughter, Ayesha, will be coming to stay, the long-estranged Blaze and Jane must band together to take charge of their new visitor--and save the house of Trelawney. But both Blaze and Jane are about to discover that the house itself is really only a very small part of what keeps the family together"--Amazon.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Castles; Inheritance and succession;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The change room / by Connelly, Karen,1969-author.;
Eliza Keenan is the mother of two young sons, the owner of a flower studio that caters to the city's elite, and the loving wife of a deliciously rumpled math professor named Andrew. She's on the move from dawn until her boys are in bed, and after they're asleep she cleans her house. Her one complaint about her life is that the only time she has for herself is her twice-weekly swim in the local community centre pool, where sunlight shines in through a tall window and lights up the water in a way that reminds her of the year she spent as a footloose youth on an island in Greece. Then one morning into this life that is full of satisfactions of all kinds except sexual (because who has the time or the energy once the kids are asleep?) comes a tall, dark and lovely stranger, a young woman Eliza encounters at the pool and nicknames 'the Amazon.' The sight of this woman, naked in the change room, completely undoes Eliza, and soon the two of them are entangled in an affair that breaks all the rules, and threatens to capsize not only Eliza and her happy family, but her lover's world, too. And yet the sex is so all-encompassing, so intimate, so true ... how can it be bad?
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Married women; Adultery; Families; Lesbians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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This red line goes straight to your heart : a memoir in halves / by Anand, Madhur,1971-author.;
"We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments. And when we turn the book over, we find the daughter's tale--we see how the rupture of Partition, the asymmetry of a father's leg, the virus of a mother's rage, makes its way to the next generation. Told through the lenses of biology, physics, history and poetry, this is a memoir that defies form and convention to immerse the reader in the feeling of what remains when we've heard as much of the truth as our families will allow, and we're left to search for ourselves among the pieces they've carried with them." --Amazon.ca.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Upside-down books.; Anand, Madhur, 1971-; Anand, Madhur, 1971-; Immigrants; Panjabi Canadians; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Wiener-dog [videorecording] / by Burstyn, Ellen,1932-; Cooke, Keaton Nigel.; Culkin, Kieran.; Delpy, Julie,1969-; DeVito, Danny.; Gerwig, Greta.; Letts, Tracy,1965-; Mamet, Zosia,1988-; Mongrel Media.;
Ellen Burstyn, Keaton Nigel Cooke, Kieran Culkin, Julie Delpy, Danny DeVito, Greta Gerwig, Tracy Letts, Zosia Mamet.Wiener-Dog tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading a certain kind of comfort and joy. Man's best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted life lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip picking up some depressed mariachis along the way. Wiener-Dog then encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter--all longing for something more.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.MPAA rating: R.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.Official selection 2016 Sundance Film Festival
Subjects: Comedy films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Dachshunds; Dogs; Human-animal relationships; Man-woman relationships;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The favorite sister : a novel / by Knoll, Jessica,author.;
When five hypersuccessful women agree to appear on a reality series set in New York City called Goal Diggers, the producers never expect the season will end in murder ... Brett's the fan favorite. Tattooed and only 27, the meteoric success of her spin studio, and her engagement to her girlfriend, has made her the object of jealousy and vitriol from her castmates. Kelly, Brett's older sister and business partner, is the most recent recruit, dismissed as a hanger-on by veteran cast. The golden child growing up, she defers to Brett now, a role that requires her to protect their shocking secret. Stephanie, the first black cast member and the oldest, is a successful best-selling author of erotic novels. There have long been whispers about her hot, nonworking actor-husband and his wandering eye, but this season the focus is on the rift that has opened between her and Brett, former best friends, and resentment soon breeds contempt. Lauren, the start-up world's darling whose drinking has gotten out of control, is Goal Diggers' recovery narrative; everyone loves a comeback story. And Jen, made rich and famous through her cultishly popular vegan food line, plays a holistic hippie for the cameras, but is perhaps the most ruthless of them all when the cameras are off"--Amazon.com.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Psychological fiction.; Reality television programs; Sisters; Ambition; Family secrets; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Avoid the day : a new nonfiction in two movements / by Kirk, Jay,author.;
"Seeking to answer the mystery of a missing manuscript by Béla Bartók, and using the investigation to avoid his father's deathbed, award-winning magazine writer Jay Kirk heads off to Transylvania, going to the same villages where the "Master," like a vampire in search of fresh plasma, had found his new material in the folk music of the peasants. With these stolen songs, Bartók redefined music in the 20th Century. Kirk, who is also seeking to renew his writing, finds inspiration in the composer's unorthodox methods, but begins to lose his tether as he sees himself in Bartók's darkest and most personal work, the Cantata Profana, which revolves around the curse of fathers and sons. After a near-psychotic episode under the spell of Bartók, the author suddenly finds himself on a posh eco-tourist cruise in the Arctic. There, accompanied by an old friend, now a documentary filmmaker, the two decide to scrap the documentary and make a horror flick instead-shot under the noses of the unsuspecting passengers and crew. Playing one of the main characters who finds himself inexplicably trapped on a ship at the literal end of the world, alone, and under the influence of the midnight sun, Kirk gets lost in his own cerebral maze, struggling to answer his most plaguing question: can we find meaning in experience?"--Amazon.com.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Kirk, Jay;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Meganets : how digital forces beyond our control are commandeering our daily lives and inner realities / by Auerbach, David(David B.),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."David Auerbach's exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives. From corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit--to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming--to government systems such as China's Social Credit System and India's Aadhaar. As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: ever-changing systems that operate beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them. Meganets, Auerbach explains, have a life of their own, actively resisting attempts to control them as they accumulate data and produce spontaneous, unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not have even existed twenty years ago. They constantly modify themselves in response to user behavior, resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world, increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities"--
Subjects: Internet governance.; Metaverse.; Internet;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Red roulette : an insider's story of wealth, power, corruption and vengeance in today's China / by Shum, Desmond,author.;
Includes bibliographical resources and index."After the Communist Revolution, Desmond Shum's grandfather was marked as belonging to a "black category" that included former landlords and rich peasants--meaning the Shums would be stigmatized and impoverished. As Desmond was growing up, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity Shum earned an American college degree and returned to China to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of the red aristocracy, vaulted into China's billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she cannot tell it herself."---Amazon.
Subjects: Shum, Desmond.; Duan, Whitney.; Businesspeople; Political corruption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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