Off Track

A breathtaking mountain adventure, in which a boy finds his inner strength, from the author of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning novel The Heart Paul is ten years old and lives with his aunt and uncle. Bruce, an old family friend, suddenly reappears after three years of silence, eager to keep a promise he made to Paul to take him on a three-day mountain trek. Paul longs for Bruce’s friendship and wants badly to prove himself. But he is also timid and unsure, and Bruce—who is better at doing than explaining—doesn’t make it any easier. A dramatic event gives Paul the chance to find his inner strength, and to show himself and everyone else what he is capable of. This uniquely illustrated coming-of-age story for teens can help create thought-provoking discussion about: Finding independence, resiliency, and self-confidence The importance of guidance and mentorship from trusted adults An Aldana Libros Book, Greystone Kids

Milford loves Sage Eden. She's one of their own, coming home as CEO of the long-awaited hospital. But the small Utah town isn't sure about Sage's husband, Zeke. He brought trouble with him when he did the unthinkable and involved four of Milford's best kids. When a Minnesota railroad scandal with a missing corpse rips across the Rockies and plummets to earth smack-dab in Utah, where else could tracks lead but to Zeke Eden, the mystery writer also-known-as Kiel Nede? The viewpoint from Milford to Rochester is this: Anyone who created as terrifying a hero as Raven Crowley is smart enough to pull off the murder someone dared to lift from the pages of Kiel Nede's latest book. When the body isn't found where his best-seller said it should be, Zeke realizes what really happened. He wishes Raven weren't just a figment of his imagination. Zeke's life derails while he seeks to reveal what only he and the murderer know: The truth.

Two buddies steal over a million dollars from the trunk of a horseplayer's car during the middle of the night. How they knew about the money is a mystery in itself. They celebrate over a couple of Lumberjack Slams at Denny's when suddenly they spot their own vehicle leaving the parking lot with a teenager at the wheel and the stolen money in the trunk. Oh, boy! Soupy Jefferson and Hank Hawkins are not the sharpest tacks in the box but they are loveable characters who dig at each other like siblings squabbling over the last piece of cake. Operating under the radar of the FBI, Soupy and Hank turn a heist into a puzzle with missing pieces.

How horse racing's pioneering use of communication and information networks helped shape the modern media, information, and leisure environment. The horse racing industry has been a pioneer in interactive media, information networks, and their deployment. The race track and the off-track betting parlor offer interactive media environments that reconfigure the relationships among private and public space and presence and copresence. In this book, Holly Kruse explores how horse racing has used media over the last several decades, arguing that examining the history and context of horse racing and gambling gives us a clearer understanding of the development of data networks, media complexes, public entertainment, and media publics. Kruse describes an enormous industry that depends on global information and communication flows made possible by a network linking racetracks, homes, off-track betting, farms, and auction sites. Racetrack architecture now allows for the presence of screens, most showing races from other locations. Online betting sites enable bettors to wager from home. Off-track betting facilities collect wagers on races from all over the country. Odds are set interactively through the pari-mutuel market system. Kruse considers the uses of public space, and its redefinition by public screens; the effect of interactive media on the racing industry, including networked, in-home betting; the “technopanic” over online poker and the popularity of in-home pari-mutuel wagering; and the use of social media by racing fans to share information and creative work with no financial payoff.

The identification of poor readers as "learning disabled" can be the first of many steps toward consigning students to a lifetime of reading failure. The very label that is meant to help children often becomes a burden that works against effective learning throughout their schooling. In this book, the authors identify the dangers of labeling children as reading or learning disabled, contending that a "reading disability" is not a unitary phenomenon. In order to diagnose and help children, educators and parents need to understand the multiple sources of reading difficulty before they can choose appropriate means to correct it. Drawing on recent research in cognitive psychology, the authors present a new theoretical model of reading disability that integrates a wide variety of findings across age and grade spans. Laid out in terms that are readily comprehensible to parents and practitioners, the model outlines the phases that are characteristic of the path to proficient reading, then describes four ways in which disabled readers may stray from this path. The key to the authors' work lies in the fact that youngsters who stray from the path of typical reading acquisition often are not distinguishable from other children who are classified as "poor readers" rather than as "learning disabled." This model is an especially useful one for practitioners because it both provides a broader view of reading disability than have many previous models and shows how reading disability relates to typical reading acquisition. Using illustrative case studies, the authors describe the four patterns of reading disability, explain how to properly assess them, and suggest ways to conquer them.

Publisher Description

Newshound Kate Messenger has visions, a touch of Aspergers, and a penchant for asking just too many questions. She's a bit of an oddball - obsessed with biology, botany, birdwatching, science, music, and so many other things. When a friend gets murdered, she takes on the difficult task of finding the killer. She's pretty sure she knows who it is, but there needs to be good solid forensic evidence. The proof points this way and that until finally, the answer is there. Or is it? It's tough running a small town newspaper and fending off arch nemesis Chelsea Darling. At the same time, there's drugs, illicit sex, policing problems, and a whole stew of issues that complicate everything going on. Thank goodness Kate has help from her good friend, retiree Dorothy Anguish, and a cast of quirky characters. Book 1 in a series.

Natasha Roy, a Forensic data analyst with a firm that investigates financial crime, finds her perfect life crumbling to pieces when the love of her life, Neil, is brutally murdered right after an ugly separation. It is then that she discovers that Neils friend, Ranveer, an ex-army Intelligence Bureau officer who is embittered by a heinous act during a classified mission that left him physically unfit for a field job, is the investigator on the case, with a personal vendetta to incarcerate her. It is then that she decides to take matters in her own hand instead of watching her life fall apart like a mute spectator, by putting to use the particular set of skills that she had acquired while investigating the major financial institutions of the world. She launches a crusade that leads her to find out that the man she loved was not whom she thought he was and with every stone she turns, she finds a buried secret darker than the one before. Exploring their unconventional ways for finding answers, they cross paths and stumble upon the truth that neither of them could have ever imagined to be the reason behind the murder.