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Birds art life / by Maclear, Kyo,1970-author.;
"For fans of When Breath Becomes Air and H is for Hawk, an elegant and exuberant memoir about a year of bird-watching, reflection and art -- a field guide to things small and significant. For Vladimir Nabokov, it was butterflies. For John Cage, it was mushrooms. For Sylvia Plath, it was bees. Each of these artists took time away from their work to become observers of natural phenomena. In 2012, Kyo Maclear met a local Toronto musician with an equally captivating side passion -- he had recently lost his heart to birds. Curious about what prompted this young urban artist to suddenly embrace nature, Kyo decides to follow him for a year and find out. Intimate and philosophical, moving with ease between the granular and the grand view, this memoir is an unconventional field guide that celebrates the particular madness of loving and chasing after birds in a big city. It celebrates the creative and liberating effects of keeping your eyes and ears wide open, and explores what happens when you apply the core lessons of birding to other aspects of life. In one sense, this is a book about disconnection -- how our passions can buckle under the demands and emotions of daily life -- and about reconnection: how our distractions can also sustain us. On a deeper level, it takes up the questions of how we are shaped and nurtured by our parallel passions, and how we might come to love (and protect) not only the world's pristine natural places but also the blemished urban spaces where most of us live. Birds art life follows two artists on a year long adventure"--
Subjects: Maclear, Kyo, 1970-; Bird watching; Birds; Nature;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Beneath dark waters : the legacy of the Empress of Ireland shipwreck / by Lazarus, Eve,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."On May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,057 passengers and a crew of 420. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves. Over a thousand people died that night, claiming the lives of more passengers than either the Titanic or the Lusitania, and the tragedy stands as the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history. Investigative journalist and author Eve Lazarus draws on a trove of historical documents, including small-town newspaper reports, the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, and first-hand accounts passed down through personal letters and family lore, to tell the story of the wreck and its aftermath through the eyes of the Canadian survivors. Through these records, as well as interviews with experts and descendants of the passengers, Lazarus recounts the story from both a Canadian and a Norwegian perspective and investigates why many of the stories regurgitated in newspapers and books for over a hundred years are wrong. The result is an absorbing and utterly stirring narrative that uncovers stories of heroism and sacrifice, human endurance, and modern-day shipwreck hunters. Beneath Dark Waters is an epic narrative that restores the Empress of Ireland--largely forgotten in the shadow of the Titanic disaster--as well as its survivors and victims to their rightful place in maritime history."--
Subjects: Empress of Ireland (Steamship); Shipwrecks;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Battle sight zero / by Seymour, Gerald,author.;
A searing novel of trust and betrayal in the fight against terrorism. The Kalashnikov AK47 is a weapon with a unique image, symbol of freedom fighters and terrorists across the globe. In a fanatic's hands, inside a crowded shopping mall, it can bring death and mutilation to scores of people in a matter of seconds. MI5 have struggled for years to keep this rifle out of Britain. Andy Knight is a young truck driver. Last year he was doing something different and had another name. Next year, if he survives, he'll be someone else again. That is the dangerous, lonely life of an undercover officer. Andy has befriended Zeinab, a young Muslim student from a small Yorkshire town who is a central part of a murderous, extremist plot. Connections have been made through a veteran Manchester gangster with a source of AK47s in the impoverished, drug-ridden, high rise estates of Marseilles. If Zeinab can find a driver and bring one rifle home on a test run, many more will follow: this is the nightmare scenario for the security forces - with them would come killing on an horrendous scale. Zeinab is both passionate and attractive, and Andy had had drilled into him that the golden rule of undercover work is not to get emotionally close to the target. But, sometimes rules are difficult - impossible - to keep to. Battle Sight Zero follows Andy and Zeinab on their path to the lethal badlands of the French port city, simultaneously tracking the extraordinary life journey of the veteran blood-soaked weapon they are destined to be handed there.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Great Britain. MI5; Undercover operations; Illegal arms transfers; Intelligence officers; AK-47 rifle; Terrorism; Man-woman relationships;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Chasing shadows : cyber espionage, subversion, and the global fight for democracy / by Deibert, Ronald,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this real-life espionage thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert uncovers the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance and reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of spy cases targeting innocent citizens around the world. He recounts how the Lab exposed the world's pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group -- the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus -- in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Today, NSO Group, once valued at over a billion dollars, faces plummeting worth and an irretrievably tarnished reputation. Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, sabotage, and subversion where autocrats and dictators peer into their targets' lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, invasive by design, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The brave activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered. From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab, a pioneering digital watchdog, as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counter-intelligence for civil society and whose exploits are routinely covered in the world's media. But as this small team of sleuths disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success came with a price. The Citizen Lab's dogged investigations ultimately brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect. Like a John Le Carré novel brought to life and updated for the digital age, this book is a powerful tale of high-stakes espionage, transnational intrigue, and the inevitable toll exacted when one dares to defy oligarchs and dictators. You'll never look at your smartphone the same way again"--
Subjects: Munk Centre for International Studies. Citizen Lab.; Computer crimes.; Computer security.; Disinformation.; Electronic surveillance.; Espionage.; Intelligence service.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Behind the pickle jar / by McQuaig, Wendy,author.;
Amy Hewston, Assistant Manager of Ultra Luscious Relaxation Spa, is so stressed she can barely function. Her anxiety on overdrive, she finds herself forced to take some time off work, despite her Type A, goal-oriented personality. Her well-meaning husband Matt decides the best road to recovery would be to rent a farmhouse north of the city, where the whole family can relax and regroup. Their two teens are far from onside when their family van pulls into the old farmhouse on Concession 5. While fixing a broken window in the cellar, Amy and Matt come across a diary behind a long-forgotten jar of pickles. The diary belonged to Isabel Huntly who lived in the farmhouse at the turn of the 20th century. As Amy gradually reads through its pages, the history of the century home and the family who lived there takes hold of her psyche. Fascinated by the simple farm lifestyle and the intricate community, in contrast to her own harried existence, there is something about the diary that speaks to her. Suddenly her life choices, which once seemed so clear, are put to the test. She finds herself torn between the need to return to her stressful, high-paced career and her desire to live a simpler life, following her passion for opening a piano bar in a small town. Fraught with indecision, whichever choice Amy makes at this crossroad will affect herself and her family forever. This historical fiction, partially narrated by the old farmhouse itself, takes the reader on a journey through yesteryear, from horse-drawn buggies and church socials to Instagram and iPhones. Many people today can relate to Amy Hewston's hectic life. Her daily struggles, eventual crisis and life-altering decisions, would lead to great discussions over a glass of wine at any book club.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Diary fiction.; Novels.; Diaries; Families; Farmhouses; Women;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The night shift / by Finlay, Alex,author.;
"From the author of the breakout thriller Every Last Fear, comes the electrifying new novel about a pair of small-town murders fifteen years apart--and the ties that bind them. "The night was expected to bring tragedy." So begins one of the most highly-anticipated thrillers of 2022. It's New Year's Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in New Jersey, four teenagers working late at the store are attacked. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, more teenage employees are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who's forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who's convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller who must delve into the secrets of both nights-stirring up memories of teen love and lies-to uncover the truth about murders on the night shift. Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; City and town life; Murder; Secrecy; Serial murder investigation; Year 2000 date conversion (Computer systems);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Daughters of Shandong / by Chung, Eve J.,author.;
"A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story. Daughters are the Ang family's curse. In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother-abused by the family for failing to birth a boy-finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed. Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family's crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them. From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they've known also comes new freedom-to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story. Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Mothers and daughters; Patriarchy; Rich people; Sisters; Torture; War victims; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Beautiful country : a memoir / by Wang, Qian Julie,1987-author.;
"An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's five years living undocumented after immigrating with her parents from China to New York City in 1994. In Chinese the word for the United States, Mei Guo, translates directly to "beautiful country," but when seven-year-old Qian is plucked from her warm and happy childhood surrounded by extended family in China, she finds a world of crushing fear and poverty instead. Unable to speak English at first, Qian is isolated and disregarded, put into special education classes because she doesn't speak the language and humiliated by teachers and classmates when she struggles to pay attention because of hunger or exhaustion. She encounters racism, and people of other races, for the first time, shocked at where her family fits in comparison to their status as educated elites in China. After school she works shifts alongside her mother in Chinatown sweatshops. There is so much about Qian's new home that doesn't make sense, but the rules of survival are drilled into her head: If you see a policeman, you must run in the other direction. If anyone asks--or even if they don't--you tell them you were born here. Do as you're told or we could be separated forever. Understanding impliclity the toll this has taken on her parents, Qian tries desperately to cheer them up and mediate their increasingly heated arguments, certain that if she is good enough, she can hold the family together. In remarkable, unsentimental prose Wang channels her childhood perspective, illuminating the cruelty and indignity of America's immigration system, while also crafting a narrative of resilience from her family's small moments of joy: their first slice of pizza, "shopping days" when the family would unearth unlikely treasures in Brooklyn's trash, and the necessary escape she found in books at the local library. Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential book about the cost of making a home in a hostile land from an astonishing new talent"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-; Wang, Qian Julie, 1987-; Chinese Americans; Illegal aliens; Immigrants;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tell me lies : a novel / by Lovering, Carola,author.;
"A thrilling, sexy coming-of-age story exploring toxic love, ruthless ambition, and shocking betrayal, Tell Me Lies is about that one person who still haunts you -- the other one. The wrong one. The one you couldn't let go of. The one you'll never forget. Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college, and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother, whom she's never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer -- new friends, wild parties, stimulating classes. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco. Charming. Attractive. Complicated. Devastating. Confident and cocksure, Stephen sees something in Lucy that no one else has, and she's quickly seduced by this vision of herself, and the sense of possibility that his attention brings her. Meanwhile, Stephen is determined to forget an incident buried in his past that, if exposed, could ruin him, and his single-minded drive for success extends to winning, and keeping, Lucy's heart. Alternating between Lucy's and Stephen's voices, Tell me lies follows their connection through college and post-college life in New York City. Deep down, Lucy knows she has to acknowledge the truth about Stephen. But before she can free herself from this addicting entanglement, she must confront and heal her relationship with her mother -- or risk losing herself in a delusion about what it truly means to love. With the psychological insight and biting wit of Luckiest girl alive, and the yearning ambitions and desires of Sweetbitter, this keenly intelligent and staggeringly resonant novel chronicles the exhilaration and dilemmas of young adulthood, and the difficulty of letting go, even when you know you should"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Man-woman relationships; Secrets; Relationhsip addiction;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 3
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Lucky loser : how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success / by Buettner, Russ,author.; Craig, Susanne,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 457-500) and index."Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump [said] ... that life 'has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.' Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever. Drawing on over twenty years' worth of Trump's confidential tax information -- including the tax returns he tried to conceal -- alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money-losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he'll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant -- the public image that will carry him to the White House"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump, Donald, 1946-; Trump family.; Trump Organization (New York, N.Y.); Businesspeople; Corporations; Fathers and sons; Presidents; Presidents; Wealth;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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