Books

Jennifer Waller, a teacher and housewife, is living an ordinary life. She loves her husband, her job, her friends, and the sailing hobby she and her husband share. She is devastated when she finds out her truck driving husband has been living with another, younger woman while driving on long hauls away from home. He wants to leave the marriage to ‘find himself.’ At the age of fifty-nine, she is terrified of having to start again. Then something happens that changes her life forever. She signs on as a crew member on a boat about to cross the Atlantic. The captain is a total stranger. Suddenly her life is filled with interesting people, adventurous experiences, and fun with a capital F! Her journey takes her through the magical Mediterranean, into exciting Morocco, the scenic Canary Islands to the exotic Caribbean. She finds her true passion. Talk about finding yourself! Who says divorce has to be the end? Sometimes it is just the beginning. 

Barrie Gilbert's fascination with grizzly bears almost got him killed in Yellowstone National Park. He recovered, returned to fieldwork and devoted the next several decades to understanding and protecting these often-maligned giants. He has spent thousands of hours among wild grizzlies in Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, Alberta, coastal British Columbia, and along Brooks River in Alaska's Katmai National Park, where hundreds of people gather to watch dozens of grizzlies feast on salmon. His research has centered on how bears respond to people and each other, with a focus on how to keep humans and bears safe.

Drawn from his decades of experience, One of Us: A Biologist's Walk Among Bears explodes myths that depict grizzlies as bloodthirsty beasts that "kill for pleasure" and reveals the intelligent, adaptable side of these astonishingly social animals. He also explains their pivotal role in maintaining and protecting their fragile ecosystems. Accordingly, Gilbert pulls no punches when outlining threats to bear conservation. Most importantly, this book extolls a new way of appreciating grizzly bears, the same way we regard wolves, whales, chimpanzees, and gorillas. 

95-year-old Freya Anna Bergman is madly in love with her best friend Leslie and has been for as long as she can remember. Unfortunately, on a bright July morning long ago, while standing on the windswept deck of the Wolfe Island Ferry, Leslie met and then fell in love with Marshall, shattering Freya's world. It is now a lifetime later, and Freya has been commissioned to write the family history. Freya is a real character, arrogant and opinionated but someone you will com to love. She often digresses but always returns to the subject of her love for Leslie and the family that grew up around them. It is all very entertaining as well as moving. In the end, The Girl on the Ferry is about love, love of the purest kind. It is guaranteed to make you smile and perhaps shed a tear or two. 

The one that got away.

Meg’s heard the expression before, but now she truly understands it.

She wishes she didn’t.

Because the one that got away was the horse that tugged at Meg’s heartstrings.

Meg’s going to need the help of best friend, Slate, and brother, Cam, to make sure she doesn’t miss out on her next heart-horse, and to set her up for her first fateful appaloosa summer on the island.

Meg has never known loss. Until her heart-horse drops dead underneath her in the show ring.

Jared has been living with loss ever since his father died in a tragic farming accident.

Meg escapes her grief by changing everything about her life; moving away to spend the summer on an island in the St. Lawrence River. New place. New job. No horses.

Once there, she meets Jared; working hard to keep anything else in his life from changing.

When Jared offers Meg a scruffy appaloosa mare out of a friend’s back field, it’s the beginning of a journey that will change them both by summer’s end.

Giving up her pony didn’t make Austen’s sister better. Sacrificing her social life hasn’t done it either. But with her sister’s life at stake, Austen’s never good at saying no. So, when their mom decides a move to the island is just what Eliot needs, Austen says good-bye to her perfect summer plans.

Rand’s not on the island by choice, either. After drinking, driving, and crashing his neighbour’s car, he’s been sent to live with his uncle until a spot opens up for him at boarding school.

If too-nice Austen, and too-much-trouble Rand are opposites maybe that’s why they’re so attracted to each other.

New characters mix with familiar faces – not to mention plenty of horses and dogs – in this fourth book of the much-loved Island Series. 

11-year-old Heather is arrestingly beautiful. 

She is also unusually perceptive.

Her mother is dark vermillion.

Her aunt coral blue.

Her uncle yellow and black

Like the dead cat

In the ditch after the rain.

She speaks aloud to her dead father

The moon, the sun, and the stars.

​And the river.