Once Were Warriors

Once Were Warriors

Alan Duff

Fiction / Contemporary / Nonfiction

A New Zealand classic, this novel is a raw and powerful portrayal of Maori in New Zealand society.Alan Duff's groundbreaking first novel is one of the most talked-about books ever published in New Zealand and is the basis of a major New Zealand film. This hard hitting story is a frank and uncompromising portrait in which everyone is a victim, until the strength and vision of one woman transcends brutality and leads the way to a new life.
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The Fruit Hunters

The Fruit Hunters

Adam Gollner

Nonfiction

Tasty, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal – fruits have led nations into wars, fueled dictatorships, and even lured us into new worlds. Adam Leith Gollner weaves business, science, and travel into a riveting narrative about one of earth's most desired foods.Readers will discover why even though countless exotic fruits exist in nature, only several dozen varieties are vailable in supermarkets. Gollner explores the political machinations of multinational fruit corporations, exposing the hidden alliances between agribusiness and government and what that means for public health. He traces the life of mass-produced fruits – how they are created, grown, and marketed, and he explores the underworld of fruits that are inaccessible, ignored, and even forbidden in the Western world.Gollner draws readers into a Willy Wonka-like world with mangoes that taste like piña coladas, orange cloudberries, peanut butter fruits, and the miracle fruit that turns everything...
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Her Desert Dream

Her Desert Dream

Liz Fielding

Contemporary / Romance / Nonfiction

Lydia Young has landed her dream assignment! Used to stacking shelves, she's now jetting off to a desert kingdom for a holiday as a media darling's look-alike. All Lydia has to do is enjoy a week of pampered bliss in a luxury oasis – and not blow her cover by falling for her host, dangerously out-of-her-league Sheikh Kalil al-Zaki. Hmm, this might just be trickier than she first thought! Lydia wanted the spotlight. Annie wanted anonymity.
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About Matilda

About Matilda

Bill Walsh

Leadership / Business / Nonfiction

A stunning novel about a small girl's experiences in an orphanage run by nuns. Funny and heart-breaking in equal measures it is a story for readers who were moved by the true life stories Kathy's Story and Suffer the LIttle Children, and the film, The Magdalene Sisters.When five-year-old Matilda arrives in her grandmother's house she's not sure what to expect. She never had a grandmother before. Or a grandfather. Or uncles. Her mother ran away so her father has brought Matilda and her sisters and brothers from Australia to live with his family in Ireland. At first it's lovely in her grandmother's, but it's not long before everything goes wrong and Matilda and the others are on the move again.It seems that her heart's desires - her mother, a home and a hug - are just too much to expect, and Matilda learns to make the best of things. Despite her father's increasing craziness, and despite the half-understood...
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Spirit Dance

Spirit Dance

Douglas Smith

Science / Mathematics / Nonfiction

AURORA AWARD WINNER A Heroka story The Heroka are an ancient race of shape shifters, drawing vitality from their animal totems. Gwyn Blaidd, a Heroka of the wolf totem, has been a recluse ever since a deadly battle with the Tainchel, the covert government agency that hunts his kind—a battle that cost him the woman he loved. But to save an old friend, Gwyn must again face the Tainchel—and his own dark past. “A vivid and wonderfully written tale about Native Canadian spirits, in the vein of Thomas King.” —Challenging Destiny “Draws on North American Indian myths, particularly the idea of shapeshifters... Smith once more creates a credible and sympathetic protagonist, Gwyn Blaidd, [who] returns to his old stomping ground to help out some fellow shapeshifters who have become embroiled in a conflict with a large logging concern.” —The Fix
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The Boy Who Could Change the World

The Boy Who Could Change the World

Aaron Swartz

Nonfiction / Politics / Writing

In his too-short life, Aaron Swartz reshaped the Internet, questioned our assumptions about intellectual property, and touched all of us in ways that we may not even realize. His tragic suicide in 2013 at the age of twenty-six after being aggressively prosecuted for copyright infringement shocked the nation and the world.Here for the first time in print is revealed the quintessential Aaron Swartz: besides being a technical genius and a passionate activist, he was also an insightful, compelling, and cutting essayist. With a technical understanding of the Internet and of intellectual property law surpassing that of many seasoned professionals, he wrote thoughtfully and humorously about intellectual property, copyright, and the architecture of the Internet. He wrote as well about unexpected topics such as pop culture, politics both electoral and idealistic, dieting, and lifehacking. Including three in-depth and previously unpublished essays about education, governance, and...
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Leisureville

Leisureville

Andrew D. Blechman

Nonfiction / Animals / Science

When his next-door neighbors in a quaint New England town suddenly pick up and move to a gated retired community in Florida called The Villages, Andrew Blechman is astonished by their stories, so he goes to investigate. Larger than Manhattan, with a golf course for every day of the month, two downtowns, its own newspaper, radio, and TV station, The Villages is a city of nearly one hundred thousand (and growing) missing only one thing: children.In the critically acclaimed Leisureville, Blechman delves into life in the senior utopia, offering a hilarious firsthand report on everything from ersatz nostalgia to the residents’ surprisingly active sex life. But this is more than just a romp through a retirement paradise; Blechman traces the history of the age-segregated retirement phenomenon, and travels to Arizona to show what has happened to the pioneering developments after decades of segregation. A fascinating blend of serious history, social commentary, and...
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