Kreotopia

The Degeneratron is an international research project to send probes to distant galaxies. It is also a money-sucking white elephant. After six years and two hundred and twelve billion dollars its only accomplishment is a tenuous connection to a single, boring planet. That planet, a foggy, smelly gravel pile supports a single life form: smelly Kreote plants. Nothing else. No insects. No bacteria. Not even a lousy virus. Trevor Tarklington has drawn the short straw and is taking new equipment to squeeze further knowledge from the planet before the connection is lost forever. Trevor's daily reports form the first part of this story. Trevor's capsule arrives off target and crushes the foot of Aaron Hurleman, the person waiting to help him from the transport capsule. In his panic to leave the cramped cylinder, Trevor also breaks Aaron's nose. Aaron's injuries send him back to Earth, leaving the team short-handed. The two remaining members are Dan Dennison, project manager and expert at everything, and Deborah, a short, round, silent woman with no patience for clumsy new arrivals. Dan explains that with Aaron gone it would be best it Trevor remained for the duration. That solves two problems. The first is manpower. The second is that Dan has been keeping a secret from the controllers back on Earth, and he doesn't want Trevor to return and give it away. The secret is that there is a another form of life, one that makes even less sense than the smelly Kreote plants. It consists of an army of cartoon-like bugs who parade in columns while humming marching tunes. Dan intends to solve the problem of the planet's bizarre life forms himself. He wants no interference from Earth. The disgusting smell of the planet is due to the oil produced by the Kreote plants. The first explorers reported that it has a mild narcotic effect. It causes dreams. The oil has another property. If one oil molecule develops a flaw, other oil molecules copy the flaw. Dan suspects that the planet is a giant library, constantly storing and refreshing memories. The plants produce the oil that copies and stores the memories. The bugs cultivate the plants, but where do the memories originate? During their explorations, they discover portals to a real world, one rich with plants, animals and clear skies, but their connection to Earth is failing. They have to return immediately. Dan tells Trevor and Deborah that they must go back to report what they've discovered so far, but he is going to remain. There is an unexplored world right at his finger tips. Trevor and Deborah return to the cylinder, but at the last moment, Deborah decides that she can't abandon Dan. As soon as Trevor crawls inside, she slams the hatch shut and sends him back alone. Trevor realizes that all of their records are back on the fog world. He has nothing to back up his tales of marching bugs and alternate worlds. Worse, the people on Earth will have to take his word for it that he didn't deliberately abandon the rest of the team to slow starvation on a hellish planet.....

When the day comes that you are tested, will you be equal to the challenge? Jon Jameson, investment advisor, has always wondered if he'd have the courage to rescue someone by racing into a burning building. Not that he's likely to be called on to do so. He leads an easy life: a good job, a beautiful wife and one financial indulgence. Jon collects houses. House collecting is an expensive hobby, but he's not greedy. A bit of patience, an eye for a good deal and careful negotiation will bring the collection together. The rent he collects from his small collection is re-invested, one hundred percent, to bring his properties to the state he believes they deserve. One hundred percent. Not one penny for anything else, not even for his wife, Frieda, who handles the day-to-day business of maintaining those properties. That is not what she signed up for. When Jon's test comes it has nothing to do with burning buildings. One of his co-workers has crossed the line legally, and Jon is dragged down with him. Through no fault of his own, Jon Jameson is not only unemployed, he is unemployable. Frieda is not supportive. Jon screwed up. Jon can solve it. She continues to live and spend as usual, including her habit of purchasing twenty lottery tickets per week. While checking them for her, Jon discovers one worth sixty-million dollars. He should tell her, but they're not legally married. Frieda and her spoiled daughter getting rich while he remains a pauper? Unthinkable. He palms it. Life becomes complicated. Frieda buys lottery tickets. Jon never does, and everyone knows it. How to claim it? He needs to get Frieda and her daughter to go away - far away. He also needs a junior partner, someone with enough nerve to cash the ticket and someone who won't arouse Frieda's suspicions when the winner's name hits the media. A real-estate agent he met once, Adriana Compote, seems perfect. She agrees. There's a lot of work to do, but they need to avoid any kind of contact until well after the ticket is cashed. They need a go-between and someone to do the leg work. Fife, the man who accidentally caused Jon's downfall, and who is just as unemployable, is brought on board. Adriana will collect the money, use it to create a high-end, real-estate company and then hire Jon as vice-president and Fife as manager. All three will draw overly-generous salaries (plus bonuses). What could go wrong? Despite his desperate financial condition, Jon cannot get Frieda to leave. The morning of the day that Adriana is going to surrender the ticket, Frieda discovers a note from Jon to someone called "Adriana Compote", a name that will be all over the news by evening as a lottery winner who bought at the same kiosk and in the same quantity that Frieda did. Jon calls Fife and tells him to call it off, but it's too late. Adriana has already submitted the ticket. She sends back a message telling Jon to grow a pair and "handle it". He does. To the surprise of the three conspirators, their business, Vintage Properties, makes money buying and renovating high-end houses. Jon looks forward to adding the best to his collection, which at the time consists of nothing, because he had to sell his modest collection to cover expenses. As a joke, a business acquaintance tells him about a mansion north of Toronto that "needs work". The mansion is a ruin. Built at the end of the nineteenth century, it was the domain of Randolph Cranshaw a tyrant who liked to keep his wife and daughters isolated in a place where he had them under his control. Money came easily, but social status and a career in politics eluded him because of his reputation. Frustrated by those failures, Cranshaw poured his money into the house and, above all, into the extensive gardens that spread south to a cottage that he built to house a series of extra-marital affairs. Long after the era of the Cranshaws, a highway bypass cut the former estate in half. The rotting ruins of the mansion lie at the top of the north section. The cottage, still occupied, remains at the bottom edge of the severed southern part. The garden has gone wild for a century. The decayed mansion is beyond rescue, but the cottage is in good shape. Nestled deep in the trees along a secluded lane, it calls out to Jon offering seclusion and safety. He feels the need for both, because he is being followed. Is it because of the lottery win or is it the unexplained disappearance of Frieda and her daughter? Perhaps leaving their bodies in the deep-freeze of a basement apartment wasn't the best long-term solution. He carries their frozen remains to the remote mansion property for burial but discovers that digging among trees is impossible; there are too many roots. Instead he buries them in the cellar of the mansion. The graves will remain undisturbed as long as the land remains a wood lot. No sooner has the mansion been turned into a cemetery then a client turns up at Vintage Properties to ask about the property. Jon becomes even more paranoid. He convinces Fife to purchase the cottage property and rent it to him. Not only will it give him an untraceable place to rest, it will also allow him to keep an eye on the property to the north without attracting attention to himself by buying it. He investigates the history of the estate and concludes that the cottage was Cranshaw's love nest. More investigation turns up a name: Elizabeth Levisham. Elizabeth first visited the Cranshaw estate at the age of fourteen. Five years later, at the age of nineteen, she appeared in a picture of a skating party on the garden pond. In the picture, Randolph Cranshaw stands behind her, smiling and with one hand resting on her shoulder. Mrs Cranshaw stands off to the side, not smiling. In nineteen twenty-nine, at the age of twenty three, Elizabeth stayed in the cottage for an extended period. When she left, a gossip column in the local paper commented that she would be "much missed" by the Cranshaws. The columnist was fired the next day. Despite an extensive search, Jon can find no record of Elizabeth Levisham after the day she left the cottage. He becomes suspicious that she never did leave...... .

Build your English-speaking skills by simply watching and listening. The DVD shows speakers of English from different regions talking about their families, their homes, what they do for fun, and other everyday topics. These chats are unscripted and unrehearsed, so you'll hear how people in your community really talk. The book includes transcripts of the DVD conversations, vocabulary words and phrases, and skill-building questions at the end of each chapter.

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) allocates vast sums of money each year, providing vital assistance to countless individuals across the developing world. Yet many observers and insiders have sharply criticized CIDA for its lack of concrete results. Presenting a range of work by scholars and practitioners, this collection offers the most comprehensive examination of CIDA's efforts in over a decade. Contributors explore recent trends in Canadian foreign aid, including topics such as its place in Canadian politics, gender and security concerns, advocacy and public engagement, the complexity of CIDA policies, and CIDA's relationship with non-governmental organizations. The perspectives assembled in Struggling for Effectiveness bring clarity to the issue of foreign aid while judiciously gauging Canada's record and offering concrete suggestions for strengthening CIDA's efforts to help people living in poverty. Extensively researched and comprehensive in scope, Struggling for Effectiveness will be indispensable to anyone interested in Canadian assistance abroad and Canada's place in a rapidly changing world. Contributors include Stephen Baranyi (University of Ottawa), David Black (Dalhousie University), Elizabeth Blackwood (Simon Fraser University), Stephen Brown (University of Ottawa), Dominique Caouette (Université de Montréal), Adam Chapnick (Canadian Forces College), Denis Côté (Canadian Council for International Cooperation), Molly den Heyer (Dalhousie University), Nilima Gulrajani (Oxford University), Hunter McGill (University of Ottawa), Anca Paducel (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva), Rosalind Raddatz (University of Ottawa), Ian Smillie (independent scholar and consultant), Veronika Stewart (Simon Fraser University), and Liam Swiss (Memorial University of Newfoundland).

Following the success of Glitterville's Handmade Halloween, Glitterville is back for the sparkliest holiday of all! Glitterville's Handmade Christmas is as bursting as a mantle-hung stocking with twenty new whimsical, winter-wonderful craft projects that will fill your home with sleighfuls of cheer. Hundreds of beautiful, easy-to-follow, step-by-step full-color photos and how-tos make the crafting fun and the results foolproof. From a Jolly Dolly Holly Wreath or a charming Glittery Village you can nestle into its own Sparkle Forest, to the frostiest Magic Snow and the jolliest pine-cone-bodied Glitter Gnome, "yule" find everything you need to make your home glisten and shine this holiday season!

Working with my ex-boyfriend is no easy taskÑespecially when he looks good enough to eat. Flirting with the past is like playing with fire, and IÕm bound to get burned.Ê I should ignore my feelings for him, but I canÕt when our happily ever after is finally so close. Threats and ultimatums are made, and revelations nearly bring me to my knees. Since we canÕt stay away from each other, heÕs determined to fight to be with me until the end. Tyler will be mineÑno matter who stands in my way. NEEDING YOU CLOSE is book 2 in the Tyler & Gemma duet and must be read in order.