The Meaning of Maggie (Sneak Preview)


Book Description

A free sneak preview of The Meaning of Maggie by Megan Jean Sovern. Download now and enjoy this extended excerpt before the book goes on sale on May 6, 2014. As befits a future President of the United States of America, Maggie Mayfield has decided to write a memoir of the past year of her life. And what a banner year it's been! During this period she's Student of the Month on a regular basis, an official shareholder of Coca-Cola stock, and defending Science Fair champion. Most importantly, though, this is the year Maggie has to pull up her bootstraps (the family motto) and finally learn why her cool-dude dad is in a wheelchair, no matter how scary that is. Author Megan Jean Sovern, herself the daughter of a dad with multiple sclerosis, writes with the funny grace and assured prose of a new literary star. A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this book will be donated to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.




Son of a Trickster


Book Description

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize: With striking originality and precision, Eden Robinson, the author of the classic Monkey Beach and winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fellowship, blends humour with heartbreak in this compelling coming-of-age novel. Everyday teen existence meets indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics, and cannibalistic river otters . . . The exciting first novel in her trickster trilogy. Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead. Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat...and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don't.




Parental As Anything


Book Description

A common-sense guide to raising happy, healthy kids - from toddlers to tweens How much screen time should you let your children have? How and when do you talk about sex? What can you do when your kid throws a tantrum? Why should you let your children just play? Maggie Dent, queen of common-sense parenting, has answers to your real-world parenting dilemmas. Focusing on the most engaged-with topics from her popular ABC Parental As Anything podcast, Maggie tells us what the experts have to say, relates the experiences of other parents, and offers her own reassuring guidance to provide practical solutions to the challenges parents and caregivers face today. This book will give you the means to be the parent you'd like to be, and help you in your quest to raise happy, healthy, thriving, resilient children.




I Love You, Dad


Book Description

Daniel makes something special for his dad to say "I love you".




Meeting For A Lifetime


Book Description

Meeting for a Lifetime tells the story of Maggie Heath, a 31-year old, creative, highly successful Meeting Planner. She is an attractive, independent, capable, and intelligent red head, who has a good sense of humor, loves outdoor sports, nature, children, cooking, and gardening. This novel shows what is involved in being a Meeting Planner-the frustration, the excitement, and the glamour. It also involves Maggie's personal life, her closeness with her family, her relationships with three different men at different times, and her search for the right man. Set in the Tampa Bay area, this novel develops as Maggie accepts a challenge from the arrogant Lawrence T. Chadway, son of the founder of Chadway Motors, to create the best event she has ever done and the best Chadway Motors has ever held- an event that must be planned and produced in a seemingly impossible time frame. Before her second meeting with Chadway, Maggie is injured in a sailing accident. She arrives with a black eye, a bandage on her forehead, and a cast on her left arm. During this meeting, she is dizzy and holds onto the edge of a table to steady herself. Chadway does not seem to notice her looks or condition. It's business as usual. Enthusiastically, Maggie attempts to present her ideas, but Chadway nixes each one before Maggie can complete her explanation. She leaves his office frustrated, thinking she should cancel her involvement in his big event. She really wants no more to do with this man. Before Chadway leaves for a five-week trip to Europe, he introduces Maggie to John Vaughn who is to assist her in planning and coordinating the event. However, Vaughn resents Maggie and sees her as a threat to his position at Chadway Motors. His resentment impedes her progress. Other conflicts in the story result from Maggie's desire to have a home and family, yet still have her career. One man in her life who




Maggie's Breakfast


Book Description

The son of dysfunctional and destitute parents secures employment as a member of the morning breakfast staff in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. The job affords the boy a respite from his father’s profound apathy and his mother’s obsession with religion. His father Paddy, an ex-British army soldier, considers his marriage to Molly to be a greater threat to his existence than his life and death struggles in the trenches during the Great War. Molly considers her life with the unemployed Paddy and ten children a crucifixion that will ensure her a place in Heaven among her favourite martyrs. In the Shelbourne, the boy encounters Margaret Burke Sheridan, a retired opera diva who in her prime sang at La Scala and Covent Garden. She was Puccini’s favourite Madame Butterfly and a protégé of Marconi, the inventor of the radio. In her present sad and lonely retirement Maggie is considered just a thorn in the side of the hotel staff. But one morning, when the new breakfast boy attempts to serve her breakfast (under the bed), Maggie has an attitude change. She senses she has one last aria to sing in the opera of her life. One that will change the boy’s life forever.




Home Before Dark


Book Description

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls? What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism. Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father's death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.




Maggie's Monkeys


Book Description

When Maggie reports that pink monkeys have moved into the refrigerator, her mother and father play along and accomodate the invisible visitors, much to the frustration of Maggie's older, reality-obsessed brother.




Everyday Use


Book Description

Presents the text of Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use"; contains background essays that provide insight into the story; and features a selection of critical response. Includes a chronology and an interview with the author.




Daddy's Little Soldier


Book Description

Quiet and polite, obsessively neat, clean and tidy, eight-year-old Tom is unlike any child Maggie has ever fostered before. Tom has been taken into care following concerns that his dad is struggling to cope after the death of Tom's mum. At first, Maggie doesn't know what to make of this shy, nervous little boy who never cries and is terrified of getting dirty. But as Tom's cleaning rituals start to get more extreme, Maggie fears that there's something more sinister going on beneath the surface. When she meets Tom's dad Mark, a stern ex-soldier and strict disciplinarian, it's clear that Tom's life at home without his mummy has been a constant battlefield. Can Maggie help Mark to raise a son and not a soldier? Or is little Tom going to lose his daddy too? A true story of hope from Sunday Times bestselling author Maggie Hartley, a foster carer for over 20 years. 'Such a moving story' 5* Amazon reader review