Too Far from Perfect


Book Description

"While this is a personal journal of just two people, it feels familiar. We see ourselves as students recalling those teachers that have faded from memory-for some, good riddance, for others, the memory of a teacher who may have turned your life around is indelible. While these personal connections stoke memories, the reader gradually gets introduced into bigger policy matters. Enjoy it. Learn from it. Act on it." - Michael Fullan, OC. Professor Emeritus, OISE, University of Toronto Too Far from Perfect is based on the reflections of a Toronto high school student about her learning journey from pre-school to grade 12. Through a dialogue with her father, educator Charles Pascal, Tai Notar describes the lessons learned about what has made the big difference to her learning and the educational aspirations of her peers. While Tai's focus in on catching teachers and others doing things right, her narrative also calls attention to things that need to change. In this regard, Tai provides some provocative ideas about how public education can move closer to perfect. This father-daughter conversation is a must read for teachers and parents who believe that we need to listen more carefully to the authentic stories of our children and students.




Too Far to Say Far Enough


Book Description

Allison Chamberlain has done everything God required of her—but as He continues to nudge her in the third and final book of The Reluctant Prophet series, she is ready to say, “Enough!”Even with two Sacrament Houses open, the Sisters’ second hand clothing boutique making its debut, and the orphaned Desmond legally adopted, Allison Chamberlain receives the divine Nudge to Go another mile. Eventually responding with her usual reluctant obedience, she finds herself caring for a very young prostitute and facing the deepest roots of evil. Despite the adversaries who threaten those closest to her, Allison finds that she has not gone far enough until she conquers hate and learns to love as God does. No matter what the consequences.




Far From You


Book Description

Don’t miss Tess Sharpe’s new novel, 6 Times We Almost Kissed (and One Time We Did). The truth won't let her go. Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice. The first time, she's fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that'll take years to kick. The second time, she's seventeen, and it's no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina's murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods that night for a meeting shrouded in mystery. After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina's brother won't speak to her, her parents fear she'll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina's murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina---and about the secret they shared.




Everybody (Else) Is Perfect


Book Description

From the former editor-in-chief of Nylon comes a provocative and intimate collection of personal and cultural essays featuring eye-opening explorations of hot button topics for modern women, including internet feminism, impossible beauty standards in social media, shifting ideals about sexuality, and much more. Gabrielle Korn starts her professional life with all the right credentials. Prestigious college degree? Check. A loving, accepting family? Check. Instagram-worthy offices and a tight-knit group of friends? Check, check. Gabrielle’s life seems to reach the crescendo of perfect when she gets named the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of one of fashion’s most influential publication. Suddenly she’s invited to the world’s most epic parties, comped beautiful clothes and shoes from trendy designers, and asked to weigh in on everything from gay rights to lip gloss on one of the most influential digital platforms. But behind the scenes, things are far from perfect. In fact, just a few months before landing her dream job, Gabrielle’s health and wellbeing are on the line, and her promotion to editor-in-chief becomes the ultimate test of strength. In this collection of inspirational and searing essays, Gabrielle reveals exactly what it’s truly like in the fashion world, trying to find love as a young lesbian in New York City, battling with anorexia, and trying not to lose herself in a mirage of women’s empowerment and Instagram perfection. Through deeply personal essays, Gabrielle recounts her struggles to reconcile her long-held insecurities about her body while coming out in the era of The L Word, where swoon-worthy lesbians are portrayed as skinny, fashion-perfect, and power-hungry. She takes us with her everywhere from New York Fashion Week to the doctor’s office, revealing that the forces that try to keep women small are more pervasive than anyone wants to admit, especially in a world that’s been newly branded as woke. From #MeToo to commercialized body positivity, Korn’s biting, darkly funny analysis turns feminist commentary on its head. Both an in-your-face take on impossible beauty standards and entrenched media ideals and an inspiring call for personal authenticity, this powerful collection is ideal for fans of Roxane Gay and Rebecca Solnit.




Perfect


Book Description

In Perfect, Cecelia Ahern's thrilling sequel to Flawed, Celestine must make a choice: save just herself or risk her own life to save all Flawed people. Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine's life has completely fractured--all her freedoms gone. Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public, she has been a ghost, on the run with Carrick--the only person she can trust. But Celestine has a secret--one that could bring the entire Flawed system crumbling to the ground. A secret that has already caused countless people to go missing. Judge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for Celestine. With tensions building, can she prove that to be human in itself is to be Flawed?




Before We Were Strangers


Book Description

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M




The Thing Around Your Neck


Book Description

These twelve dazzling stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — the Orange Broadband Prize–winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun — are her most intimate works to date. In these stories Adichie turns her penetrating eye to the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the United States. In “A Private Experience,” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman, and the young mother at the centre of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Adichie’s prodigious literary powers.




One Step Too Far


Book Description

This “twisted psychological thriller” about a woman who escapes her own life by assuming a new identity “will keeps readers guessing . . . until the end” (US Weekly). No one has ever guessed Emily’s secret. Will you? A happy marriage. A beautiful family. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life—to start again as someone new? Now, Emily has become Cat, working at a hip advertising agency in London and living on the edge with her inseparable new friend, Angel. Cat’s buried any trace of her old self so well, no one knows how to find her. But she can't bury the past—or her own memories. And soon, she’ll have to face the truth of what she's done—a shocking revelation that may push her one step too far. . . . “One of the world's leading experts at pulling the wool over readers' eyes until the very end.” —Sophie Hannah, New York Times–bestselling author of The Monogram Murders “A skillfully done novel by a writer to watch.” —Booklist “Taut, compelling . . . a storming read.” —Bookseller “Seskis reverses the classic methods of such predecessors as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy by distancing us from her characters in order to keep us ignorant of the driving force behind their actions until the climactic conclusion.” —Library Journal “Excellent, dramatic pacing, dialogue, and prose, culminating in poignant concluding chapters which examine Emily's decisions without sentimentality. An evocative, skillful novel about the price of escape.” —Kirkus Reviews




Fallen Too Far


Book Description

Blaire Wynn left her small farmhouse in Alabama after her mother passed away to move in with her father and his new wife in their sprawling beach house along the Florida Gulf Coast. She isn't prepared for the lifestyle change and she knows she'll never fit into this world. Then there's her sexy stepbrother Rush, who's as spoiled as he is gorgeous: she knows he's anything but good for her and that he'll never be faithful to anyone.




Happy Girl Lucky (The Valentines, Book 1)


Book Description

Introducing The Valentines – Happy Girl Lucky, the first book in the hilarious new romantic-comedy series by Holly Smale, author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Geek Girl books.