Profiles of works of fiction and non-fiction worthy of at least one hour of group discussion.

This edition of Reading Group Choices was produced by Pax & Associates, and lists titles which have been popular sellers and stimulating for group discussion.

“Unless you’re lucky, unless you’re healthy, fertile, unless you’re loved and fed, unless you’re offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair.” Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy: Her three almost grown daughters. Her twenty-year relationship with their father. Her work translating the larger-than-life French intellectual and feminist Danielle Westerman. Her modest success with a novel of her own, and the clamour of her American publisher for a sequel. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner, with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck. GOODNESS. With the inconceivable loss of her daughter like a lump in her throat, Reta tackles the mystery of this message. What in this world has broken Norah, and what could bring her back to the provisional safety of home? Reta’s wit is the weapon she most often brandishes as she kicks against the pricks that have brought her daughter down: Carol Shields brings us Reta’s voice in all its poignancy, outrage and droll humour. Piercing and sad, astute and evocative, full of tenderness and laughter, Unless will stand with The Stone Diaries in the canon of Carol Shields’s fiction.

What do we know about literature circles now that we didn't understand eight or ten years ago? What new resources and procedures can help teachers organize their classroom book clubs better? What are the most common pitfalls in implementing student-led discussion groups? And getting beyond the basics, what do mature or advanced literature circles look like? In this thoroughly revised and expanded guide, you will find new strategies, structures, tools, and stories that show you how to launch and manage literature circles effectively. Advanced variations are explored and include alternatives to role sheets and flexible new guidelines for their use. The second edition includes: four different models for preparing students for literature circles using response logs, sticky notes, and newly designed role sheets;dozens of variations on the basic version of student-led bookclubs;new models and procedures for primary, intermediate, and high school grades;new materials for assessing and grading literature circles;an inventory of common management problems and solutions;new scheduling patterns for group meetings and reading time;ideas for using literature circles with nonfiction texts across the curriculum;research on literature circles, including correlation with increased achievement on standardized tests;an explanation of how literature circles match with the national standards for literacy education.With detailed examples provided by twenty practicing teachers, Harvey Daniels offers practical and concrete suggestions for each aspect of book club management and proven solutions for problems that arise.

Inspiring, profound, intimate, and moving, this updated edition of the classic self-help book brings solace, hope, and advice to anyone who has suffered loss. Everyone experiences grief, but few books offer real help with the debilitating emotions of bereavement. Now, an internationally respected authority on personal change maps the terrain between life as it was and life as it can be. Readers can move at their own pace through the seven distinct phases of loss and can work towards a stronger, more balanced self. The author's own story of the loss of a young husband, combined with the tales of dozens of individuals, and the most recent research on coping with loss, helps readers to become happier, healthier, and wiser beings.

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIESSpine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics.A haunting and affecting meditation on love from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved.May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L - all are women obsessed wit[Bokinfo].