Our Game

With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress Emma. But when both Emma and Cranmer's star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappear, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left...

If every hockey player’s dream begins on a frozen pond, it reaches its pinnacle in a packed arena facing off against a bitter international rival. Could be the mighty Soviets. Could be the vainglorious Americans. Doesn’t matter, as long as the guys, and more recently, the women, who come from the farming villages, logging towns, and bustling cities of Canada show up to play the game the way we invented it to be played. That’s the way it’s been for a hundred years. No game matters more than the one that pits our best against the world’s best. From the earliest days of the past century, when milkmen still did their rounds in horse-drawn carts each morning, to the Sochi Olympics, where both the men and women stood on their blue lines with gold medals around their necks as the Canadian flag was raised. This beautiful book, with rare archival images, celebrates a hundred of the greatest moments from Hockey Canada, the organization that has given Canada its most cherished hockey memories. It’s Our Game is the definitive account of a century of Canadians working to be the best at the sport they love most.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the “twisty-mystery” (Vulture) novel In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, and The Turn of the Key comes Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game. Isa Wilde knows something terrible has happened when she receives a text from an old friend. Why would Kate summon her and their two friends to the seaside town where they briefly attended the Salten House boarding school together seventeen years ago? The four friends had quickly bonded over the Lying Game—a risky contest that involved tricking fellow boarders and faculty with their lies. Now reunited, Isa, Kate, Thea, and Fatima discover that their past lies had far-reaching effects and criminal implications that threaten them all. In order to protect their reputations, and their friendship, they must uncover the truth about what really happened all those years ago. Atmospheric and twisty, with just the right amount of chill, The Lying Game will have readers at the edge of their seats, not knowing who can be trusted in this tangled web of lies.

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

'Will Storr is one of our best journalists of ideas ... The Status Game might be his best yet' James Marriott, Books of the Year, The Times What drives our political and moral beliefs? What makes us like some things and dislike others? What shapes how we behave, and misbehave, in groups? What makes you, you? For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are. From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health - and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It's an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides. But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it's taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the 'culture wars' of today? On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others - and how you see yourself.

This entertaining history blends anecdote, incident, and analysis as it chronicles the story of our national pastime. Charles C. Alexander covers the advent of the first professional baseball leagues, the game's surge in the early twentieth century, the Golden Twenties and the Gray Thirties, the breaking of the color line in the late forties, and the game's expansion to its current status as a premier team sport. He describes changing playing styles and outstanding teams and personalities but also demonstrates the many connections between baseball--as game, sport, and business--and the evolution of tastes, values, and institutions in the United States.

From the Forum to the backyard rink, the Original Six to the expansion teams, heroes to has-beens, the 30 tales in this collection are a glorious celebration of hockey. In the three periods between first word and last, accomplished writers such as Morley Callaghan, Hugh MacLennan, Audrey Thomas, Wayne Johnston, Paul Quarrington and more show us familiar--and unforgettable--characters who are forever haunted by the sounds, smells, roughness, rhythm and romance of hockey.