Snow Job

In bestselling Deverell’s latest hilarious mystery, Arthur Beauchamp moves to Ottawa, and all hell breaks loose Arthur Beauchamp has followed his wife, the leader and first elected member of the Green Party, to Ottawa. But he hates it there: the cold, the politics, and his place in his wife’s shadow. So when a delegation of government officials from Bhashyistan is blown sky high on Bronson Avenue and the shares of a Calgary-based oil company promptly drop like a stone, Arthur is only too happy to jump to the defence of the missing suspected assassin. Deverell’s latest Arthur Beauchamp novel cranks the wily old lawyer’s adventures up several notches, and then some. It’s wildly imaginative, utterly Canadian, and irresistibly funny.

Does who you are in high school brand you for life? Nick sure hopes not. It’s senior year, and he has decided that his loser friends may be going nowhere fast, but he isn’t. Instead, Nick has created the perfect list of rules for remaking his life. But meeting dark-eyed Dawn and hanging out with teen thug Zod are nowhere on that list. And making illegal deliveries definitely isn’t on it. So why is Nick caught up with these people and their dangerous schemes? Will Nick's list help him to be a hero—or turn him into a fall guy?

Sebastian Prescott once had it all. A promising career as an Olympic-bound snowboarder, money, youth, and a bright future. But after a devastating knee injury, everything came off the rails for Sebastian, sending him on a ten year downward spiral capped off by losing his job. And Sebastian places the blame for getting fired entirely on the shoulders of Kayla Bristowe, the woman who'd been working directly under him—and the subject of his fantasies—for the past three years. So when a corporate retreat brings Kayla face to face with Sebastian, who's now working as a snowboarding instructor at the resort hosting the retreat, to say she's shocked to see him is an understatement. His anger over what happened is palpable. So is the chemistry still sizzling between them. Chemistry that Kayla tries desperately to ignore because she's on the hunt for Mr. Perfect. And while Sebastian is a lot of things--sexy, arrogant, and a walking train wreck come to mind--her ex-boss is most definitely not Mr. Perfect. But mother nature has other plans, and Kayla and Sebastian end up snowed in together with only one bed. Alone with Kayla, Sebastian's fantasies come roaring back to life, despite the lingering animosity between them. But she's no longer off limits because he's not her boss anymore. At least, not out of bed...

If all humor does indeed come from pain, then American educational policymaking has been a petri dish brimming with hilarity. Even before Betsy DeVos ascended to her perch atop the U.S. Department of Education, her predecessors had offered up an excruciating decade of fodder for satire. Ably assisted by a bevy of billionaires, foundations, and advocacy think tanks, these policymakers unleashed a torrent of rhetorical gibberish and evidence-free “innovations” on the nation’s children and their schools. Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable is one researcher’s attempt to laugh instead of cry. The book will bring back memories of policymakers from more innocent times, from Michelle Rhee to Arne Duncan to Chris Christie. Sit back and relax with fond thoughts of your favorite policies, from testing to school choice to “parent trigger.” Or maybe just smile and imagine a day when policymakers turn to research evidence and knowledgeable educators to build a sound future for our children. Praise for Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable: "Kevin Welner deftly skewers every phony reform fad of the past twenty years with a sharp blade, neatly removing head from body without leaving a trace. He says in a few cleverly chosen anecdotes what many of us have tried to prove in laborious tomes. The so-called "reform" movement is a hoax. Read it and laugh!" Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University, and author of Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools "During these days of grim headlines, Potential Grizzlies provides welcome relief. With clever twists about "reformers" and their projects, Welner captures the tragic hilarity of what friends of public schools have lived through for the past decades. Every time I thought I read the most hilarious "tweak" of ed reform, I would find a new favorite a few pages later. A must-read for those who have waged the fight against NCLB, Race to the Top, privatization, and of course Betsy DeVos." Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, and author of On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First-Century Struggle against Resegregation "Welner expertly jumbles satire, research and education reform into this must-read book, which simultaneously covers where we’ve come from, why, and where we are going with education reform. Honestly I’m angry that my blog is not as funny as this. Read it, unless you don’t have a funny bone." Julian Vasquez Heilig, Dean and Professor, University of Kentucky College of Education

"A collection of 65 brand-new, gorgeously staged black and white portraits of people performing their odd jobs, and short descriptions of their work"--Provided by publisher.

From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).

Skiing in movies, like the sport itself, grew more prevalent beginning in the 1930s, when it was a pastime of the elite, with depictions reflecting changes in technique, fashion and social climate. World War II saw skiing featured in a dozen films dealing with that conflict. Fueled by postwar prosperity, the sport exploded in the 1950s--filmmakers followed suit, using scenes on snow-covered slopes for panoramic beauty and the thrill of the chase. Through the free-spirited 1960s and 1970s, the downhill lifestyle shussed into everything from spy thrillers to beach party romps. The extreme sports era of the 1980s and 1990s brought snowboarding to the big screen. This first ever critical history of skiing in film chronicles a century of alpine cinema, with production information and stories and quotes from directors, actors and stuntmen.