Dirty

In late 2008, as the world's economy crumbles and Barack Obama ascends to the White House, the remarkably unremarkable Milton Ontario - not to be confused with Milton, Ontario - leaves his parents' basement in Middle-of-Nowhere, Saskatchewan, and sets forth to find fame, fortune, and love in the Euro-lite electric sexuality of Montreal; to bask in the endless twenty-something Millennial adolescence of the Plateau; to escape the infinite flatness of Saskatchewan and find his messiah - Leonard Cohen. Hilariously ironic and irreverent, in Dirty Birds, Morgan Murray generates a quest novel for the twenty-first century-a coming-of-age, rom-com, crime-farce thriller-where a hero's greatest foe is his own crippling mediocrity as he seeks purpose in art, money, power, crime, and sleeping in all day.

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Clique comes Lisi Harrison's debut adult novel about four modern-day strangers who inherit a dirty book club that was started in the 1960s. M.J. Stark's life is picture-perfect—she has a dream job as a magazine editor, a sexy doctor boyfriend, and a glamorous life in Manhattan. But behind her success, she can't shake a deep sense of loneliness, so when her boyfriend offers her a completely new life in California, she decides to give it a try. Once there, M.J. is left to fend for herself in a small California beach town, with only the company of her elderly neighbor, Gloria. One day M.J. receives a mysterious invitation and a copy of Prim: A Modern Woman's Guide to Manners. She recognizes the book as an outdated classic, but when she opens it, she discovers that it's actually a copy of Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and the invitation is to join Gloria's secret book club—one that only reads erotic books. Out of curiosity, M.J. goes to the meeting at a local bookstore, and discovers three other women who have also been selected by the club's original members—who have suddenly left the country to honor a fifty-year-old pact. As these unlikely friends bond over naughty bestsellers, each woman shares not only the intimate details of her own sex life, but all areas of her life. Inspired by the characters in the novels they read—and the notes passed down by the club's original members—the new members of The Dirty Book Club help each other find the courage to rewrite their own stories and risk it all for a happy ending.

In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition. William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers. Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present. This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.

One of the keys to a happy and creative classroom is getting out of it and this book will give you the confidence to do just that. Drawing on academic research, Juliet explains why learning outdoors is so beneficial and provides plenty of tips and activities to help you to integrate outdoor learning into your teaching practice, providing a broad range of engaging outdoor experiences for your students. There is no need for expensive tools or complicated technologies: all you need is your coat and a passion for learning - oh, and you'd better bring the kids too! Topics covered include: forest schools, learning outside the classroom, outdoor education, nature activities, caring for the environment, play in schools, investigative play, urban outdoor activities, problem solving, creative thinking and strategies for supporting curriculum objectives. For all primary practitioners who want to shake up their usual classroom routine and discover the benefits of teaching outdoors. Dirty Teaching was a finalist in the Non-Fiction People's Book Prize Winter 2014 collection.

Fighting Dirty tells the story of how one small group of farmers, small-town residents, and Indigenous people fought the world’s largest waste disposal company to stop them from expanding a local dumpsite into a massive land fill. As one of the experts brought in to assess the impact the toxic waste would have on the community, Poh-Gek Forkert was part of the adventures and misadventures of their decades-long fight. “Fighting Dirty is an inspiring read for all activists battling against the money and power of corporations. It shows that when a small group of determined, committed citizens don’t give up, leaders and unexpected opportunities will emerge. When the cause is just, good people can win.” —David Suzuki, internationally-renowned environmentalist.

Struggling barista Katie Bloom doesn't even know who Jesse Mayes is until she inadvertently wins the coveted role of sex kitten in his hot new music video. But by the time she's in bed with him, she knows his reputation as a love maker and heartbreaker. Making out with a stranger in front of a camera crew isn't how Katie imagined herself getting over a broken heart but when Jesse touches her, sparks fly. The sex is fake but the chemistry is real and soon the steamy video is blazing up the charts. Then Jesse makes Katie an irresistible offer: act as his girlfriend for six weeks while he promotes his new album. The only catch is that their sizzling make-out sessions will be for the cameras only.

This scorching novel from the celebrated urban fiction author of "Let That Be the Reason" and "Imagine This" tells a provocative tale of love, lies, loss, and the indomitable spirit of a woman called Red.