Her street name is Maybe She lives with a tribe of homeless teens -- runaways and throwaways, kids who have no place to go other than the cold city streets, and no family except for one another. Abused, abandoned, and forgotten, they struggle against the cold, hunger, and constant danger. With the frigid winds of January comes a new girl: Tears, a twelve-year-old whose mother doesn't believe her stepfather abuses her. As the other kids start to disappear -- victims of violence, addiction, and exposure -- Maybe tries to help Tears get off the streets...if it's not already too late. Todd Strasser, author of the powerful and disturbing Give a Boy a Gun, again focuses on an important social issue as he tells a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching story of young lives lost to the streets, and of a society that has forgotten how to care.

When a journalist sets out on a round-the-globe adventure, she hopes to meet those that live outside mainstream society, only to find that even on the fringes, the unstoppable forces of globalization encroach on daily life. 30,000 first printing.

Urban passenger rail patronage in Auckland and Wellington is now booming after many years of decline. Outside these two centres, however, the situation is quite different: intercity and regional passenger rail services are scarce, and no other city possesses suburban rail. Can't Get There from Here traces the expansion and the contraction of New Zealand's passenger rail network over the last century. What is the historical context of today's imbalance between rail and road? How far and wide did the passenger rail network once run? Why is there an abject lack of services beyond the North Island's two main cities, even as demand for passenger transport continues to grow? This book seeks to answer these questions. In this fascinating study, Andre Brett argues that the trend away from passenger rail might appear inevitable and irreversible but it was not. Things could have been - and still could be - very different. We need to understand the challenges that brought passenger rail to the brink of extinction in order to create policy for future transport that is efficient and sustainable.

Rather than reading small-town representations in Canadian literature as portraits of a parochial past or a lost golden age, this book claims that they are best understood as sophisticated statements on the effects of modernity in an ever-more cosmopolitan world. In Ontario, as urbanization increased over the past century, small towns became a popular literary trope, and Ryan Porter argues that literary small towns are reflections, and even sublimated explorations, of contemporary life. Referencing the theories of heritage scholars, who view popularly understood pasts as constructions shaped by changing sensibilities, You Can't Get There from Here argues that the literary small-town Ontario past is malleable, consisting of attempts to come to terms with the present in which the narrators find themselves. The book focuses on four key Ontario authors - Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, and Jane Urquhart - as well as many secondary authors, and links the readings to much broader trends in actual Ontario towns and in popular culture.

A very funny, very deadpan, and very poignant comedy of romance, featuring the classic romantic trio of mad scientist, monster, and bride of monster, presented in the same elegant format as Jason's previous popular graphic novel The Iron Wagon, a two-color process (black and grayish blue) on tinted paper with an uncoated cover stock printed in three simple colors, complete with flaps. Also includes a running commentary by the loyal hunchbacked assistant.

Todd Strasser’s acclaimed account of school violence that Kirkus Reviews calls “vivid, distressing, and all too real.” For as long as they can remember, Brendan and Gary have been mercilessly teased and harassed by the jocks who rule Middletown High. But not anymore. Stealing a small arsenal of guns from a neighbor, they take their classmates hostage at a school dance. In the panic of this desperate situation, it soon becomes clear that only one thing matters to Bendan and Gary: revenge.

Your hard work is paying off. You are doing well in your field. But there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits.Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you where you are - like the drive to win at all costs - is what's holding you back. As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them-and need a "to stop" list rather than one listing what "to do". Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become more successful. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag - but in this book you get his great advice for much less. Recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes, he has worked with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams at the world's top businesses. His clients include corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson and GE.

"Not just another business autobiography, this is a fascinating and uplifting look into one man's leadership journey through poverty, hardship, racism, and betrayal to becoming one of the most inspirational business leaders of our time." -Jane Marvin, former SVP human resources, Ross Stores, Inc. Bob Knowling is respected by many of America's most admired executives, from Jack Welch to Michael Bloomberg. He has led large organizations through periods of dramatic transformation; management guru Noel Tichy calls him "a change agent's change agent." But even more impressive than Knowling's résumé is the road he took to the top. He grew up as one of thirteen children in Indiana, shuttling between the homes of his divorced parents, surrounded by crime, poverty, drug abuse, and racism. Later he lived and worked on his grandparents' farm in Missouri. No one encouraged him to have big ambitions or even bothered to ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" But Knowling used his athletic and academic talents to earn a college scholarship and later an MBA. He became an expert at leading change-helping others see a better future, then work hard to make it real. Knowling's story proves that almost any disadvantage can be overcome with persistence and a passion for excellence. And it teaches us how to embrace change rather than cling to the past. It is easy to lose sight of our potential in a time of economic turmoil, joblessness, and confusion. Knowling reminds us that none of those conditions is permanent and, more important, that none of them excuses us from making a concerted effort at whatever we try to do. As he puts it, "You turn around organizations, in most cases, by turning around individuals. . . . The real lesson of transformation is that it happens not in companies and not in offices, but in lives." Knowling believes that we do not define ourselves by our upbringing or the external conditions of our lives. It's our response to those conditions that counts. It's not where you came from; it's what you do with your potential. You'll be amazed to learn where Knowling came from and how he got from a really distant "there" to a very inspiring "here."

Robert Dean Lurie’s biography is the first completely researched and written since R.E.M. disbanded in 2011. It offers by far the most detailed account of their formative years—the early lives of the band members, their first encounters with one another, their legendary debut show, touring out of the back of a van, initial recordings, their shrewdly paced rise to fame. The people and places of ‘the South’ are crucial to the R.E.M. story in ways much more complex and interesting than have been presented thus far, says Lurie, who explores the myriad ways in which the band’s adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia, and the South in general, have shaped its members and the character and style of their art. The South is more than the background to this story; it plays a major role: the creative ferment that erupted in Athens and gripped many of its young inhabitants in the late 70s and early 80s drew on regional traditions of outsider art and general cultural out-thereness, and gave rise to a free-spirited music scene that produced the B-52’s and Pylon, and laid the ground for R.E.M.’s subsequent breakout success. Lurie has tracked down and interviewed numerous figures in the band’s history who were under-represented in or even absent from earlier biographies, and they contribute previously undocumented stories as well as casting a fresh light on the familiar narrative.