A picture book that celebrates local shops and building communities. Anna Maria takes great pleasure and pride in her grandparents’ corner grocery store. Every Saturday she spends the day helping to arrange fruits and vegetables, greet the customers, and keep things neat and tidy. Through her day we meet the neighbors and learn what an important part the corner grocery store plays in the community. Nonno Domenico, Nonna Rosa, and Anna Maria supply more than goods as the steady stream of customers arrives. Lunches are made, news is shared, bargains are purchased, recipes are traded, and cheerful ciaos are called. By the end of a long day, Anna Maria has a true sense of just how wonderful the sights and smells within the store are and how much they mean to everyone. Charmingly illustrated in great detail, Our Corner Grocery Store pays tribute to the small independent grocers who supply color and atmosphere to city streets. Young readers will particularly enjoy finding and naming the wide array of produce, breads, candies, and dry goods that abound in this friendly establishment.

By the time of the Armistice, Villers-Bretonneux - once a lively and flourishing French town - had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an active front line, at which Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it holds a significant place in Australian history. Villers-Bretonneux has since become an open-air memorial to Australia's participation in the First World War. Successive Australian governments have valourised the Australian engagement, contributing to an evolving Anzac narrative that has become entrenched in Australia's national identity. Our Corner of the Somme provides an eye-opening analysis of the memorialisation of Australia's role on the Western Front and the Anzac mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians' understanding of themselves. In this rigorous and richly detailed study, Romain Fathi challenges accepted historiography by examining the assembly, projection and performance of Australia's national identity in northern France.

Here is a spellbinding autobiography by a Canadian author who has gone through a multitude of frank yet honest experiences that would qualify his lifetimes to rival at least half a cat’s allotment of nine. How does one experience at least six major concussions without any of them being sports related? What’s it like to be the only Protestant principal of a more than one room Roman Catholic school in the province for three years and loving every day of it? During the times of trial in Ontario and Quebec with the terrorist bombings and kidnappings by the FLQ (Front de Liberation de Quebec ) how did this intrepid officer in Her Majesty’s Service more or less, almost, foil an attack upon an active military base? How does one of Santa’s major helpers remember all the children’s names for more than ten years? What’s it like painting the underside of the centre-span of a suspension bridge across a mile of the St. Lawrence River? What’s it like spending a total of two and a half years’ time over a period of twenty years in psychiatric wards across the province and coming out better for the experience?

Devil In Your Corner continues where Life After Death left off, as Matthijs van Guilder, the erstwhile mercenary, adapts to his new, retired life, revealing more of the history and core character that propelled him to now be able to reinvent, reclaim, and rediscover a life. While their home on upper Ridge Road is far from an exotic locale, and the action does not require any special effects, his old skills continue to serve them both. And the body count continues to rise.

In this warm and funny portrayal of life in a simpler time the author creates a vivid story line about one boy s quest to be the best. Even though young David Lee hasn t a clue about how to manage it, he s determined to be declared the smartest boy in school. The lengths to which he goes, and the depths to which he falls in pursuit of his goal frame an intimate tale set against the backdrop of life in the 1950s in the greatest city in the world.

Most people struggle with change at some point. Sometimes, the change is easy to make; at other times, it is extremely difficult. Letting Go tells the story of two ordinary, but very different, people, each with a difficulty that must be surmounted before they can move on with their lives. What happens as they work through their individual dilemmas has an impact on each of them, and also influences the lives of those who are closest to them.