The Reluctant Author

As a teen growing up in an impoverished dysfunctional home environment, Laurine Schaffer realizes that she must be pragmatic and pursue a sustainable professional career path. At seventeen, she enrols in a traditional three-year Registered Nurse training program, where she quickly realizes that her perceptions of life and people are dramatically different from many of her classmates. Although Laurine ultimately forges a successful vocation as a college professor, at age fifty-seven she admits she is not being true to herself, or to her lifelong aspiration to write the story of her German Lutheran ancestors who fled Russia in 1892. Following an epiphany in an abandoned family cemetery on the original ancestral homestead in western Canada, Laurine begins to write. As one family history book follows another and another and yet another, her writing becomes a catalyst for a personal healing journey. The Reluctant Author is essentially a prequel to her three previous family memoirs and links the past to the present with poignant clarity.

From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Thirteen-year-old Henry's happy, ordinary life comes to an abrupt halt when his older brother, Jesse, picks up their father's hunting rifle and leaves the house one morning. What follows shatters Henry's family, who are forced to resume their lives in a new city, where no one knows their past. When Henry's therapist suggests he keeps a journal, at first he is resistant. But soon he confides in it at all hours of the day and night.

When a mysterious explosion destroys the bridge of His Majesty's Airship Daedalus, Chief Engineer Malcolm Robertson finds himself thrust into the role of Captain on a secretive mission to Russia. With an Airship full of British and Russian scientists, spies, and a saboteur, Malcolm must find a way to complete his mission and bring his crew home.

Two years have passed since my horrendous, soap-opera worthy split from my ex-fiancé, and I'm finally ready to give love another shot. I think. Maybe. What I'm not ready for is Alexander Hughes, a billionaire playboy with more charisma in one pinkie than my ex possessed in full. For some reason beyond logic, Alex is determined to have me - and not just my body, either. He wants to dissemble a lifetime of carefully constructed armor and shine light on what's beneath. My soft underbelly. My deepest secrets. My frightened heart. Despite my wishes, fate puts us on a collision course. Dominant, demanding, and disarmingly kind, Alex is an emotional hurricane I can't outrun. All I can do is try. Standalone. HEA. 18+

Robinson was mainly brought up by her grandparents. Her grandfather, known to her as Api, was an opthalmologist. Forty years after his death, she discovered a diary that he had kept beginning in April 1945, when he had left her and her grandmother in the countryside and returned to Berlin. Api had been an army doctor and as such, however reluctantly, he had had to join the Nazi Party. His diary is a heart-rending account of what is was like to live in Berlin as Hitler's Reich collapsed-- the hunger, the disease, the bombing, the threat of retribution from the occupiers-- and his struggle to survive, to shake off the stigma of being a Party member, to rebuild his life and to return to his beloved wife and granddaughter.

If you love Bridgerton, you'll love Georgette Heyer! 'The greatest writer who ever lived' Antonia Fraser 'Brims with elegance, wit and historical accuracy' Daily Mail 'Heyer's books are as incisively witty and quietly subversive as any of Jane Austen's' Joanne Harris _____________ When she steps inside the wrong carriage in a Sussex village, Elinor Rochdale little knows that she is about to embark on a thrilling and dangerous adventure. Overnight the would-be governess becomes the mistress of a ruined estate and partner in a secret conspiracy to save a family's name. By midnight she is a bride; by dawn a widow. _____________ Readers love The Reluctant Widow ... ***** 'I love Georgette Heyer - fun plots, fun characters,good dialogue. This is one of my favourites.' ***** '[The Reluctant Widow] made such an impression on me that I still remember it after all these years.' ***** 'This was an absolute delight.' ***** 'Fun, unexpected plot that continues through the whole book.' ***** 'Georgette Heyer is still the best; this has a real plot, an unusual one at that, characters that are interesting as individuals, and is still a really good read.'

The story of Deborah and Barak from the biblical book of Judges describes amazing courage and fortitude beyond modern comprehension. In this modern retelling of the old story, Herb Sennett brings to life the people of 1150 BC in such a way that their hopes, dreams, struggles, pain, and suffering help us face our own problems in the light of God's willingness to help his people whenever they are threatened with extinction. The Jewish people of that day knew little of warfare and tactics, but they were able to defeat the most powerful army of the day and then conquer the most heavily defended city in the area. This novel tells of their struggle to live free of oppression and fear through their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.