The further adventures of Dave and Morley.

A brand new collection of Vinyl Cafe stories, from the inimitable Stuart McLean, featuring a worldlier and wiser Dave and Morley. Dave and Morley are growing older, Steph and Sam are growing up. Moving out and moving on. Dave and Morley's marriage has mellowed and deepened like a fine wine, Sam has developed a palate for girls and Gruyere, and Steph's found happiness with an artist who photographs roadkill. Everyone's growing wiser and worldlier--well, almost everyone. Yes, Dave still has trouble with the automatic car wash, defibrillators, and hot yoga, but he's come to appreciate Mary Turlington, and that's saying quite a bit. In this brand new collection of Vinyl Cafe stories, the more things change, the more things stay the same . . .

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Bestselling author and radio storytelling sensation Stuart McLean revisits the heartwarming and hilarious friends from his iconic Vinyl Cafe. Dave and his wife Morley would no doubt tell you that life is what you make it. Unfortunately for them, that means a compilation tape of mistakes, miscues, misunderstandings, and muddle. That's not to say that there is anything particularly unusual about the family and friends at the Vinyl Cafe. After all, who wouldn't try to toilet-train a cat? Who hasn't started a small home fix-it job only to set fire to the walls? Created mass hysteria at a school concert? Lost an aging relative while visiting our nation's capital? Vinyl Cafe Unplugged is a warm and delightful collection of stories following the common foibles and everyday absurdities of family life.

Eleven-year-old Zoé Badger, imaginative, carefree and adventurous, lives a transient life, moving with her mother from one town to the next—except for summers, when she stays with her granddad in Tenby, Wales. But when she and her cousin Ian discover a glass puzzle that's been hidden away for decades, ancient forces are unleashed that threaten to change their safe-haven summer town in sinister ways.

Full of never-before-seen illustrations, Life Sketches is an inspiring and elegant portrait of Robert Bateman’s life as an artist and of his belief that “Nature is an infinite source of reason, imagination, and invention.” From one of Canada’s most beloved painters comes an intimate, visually stunning memoir of the artist at work. Internationally acclaimed artist Robert Bateman has brought the natural world to vivid life with his unique perspective. His vast body of work—spanning species as large as the buffalo and as small as the mouse—has touched millions of hearts and minds, awakening a reverence for wildlife of all kinds. Bateman is perhaps best known for his gorgeous depictions of birds in flight and in repose, images that stir in the viewer a deep appreciation of colour, form and spirit. Life Sketches is a moving journey in both words and images that, for the first time, allows Bateman’s fans full access into his creative process, detailing his singular artistic vision and the inspiration behind his iconic art. What emerges is a portrait of a young boy enchanted by the natural world around him and called to record it in his sketches and paintings. Bitten by wanderlust, Bateman travelled the world and documented his real life experiences in journals, sketches, and paintings. In Life Sketches, he recounts the evolution of his style from abstraction to realism and the events that have shaped his art into a vocation over many decades. And through it all, Bateman shows how his keen sensibilities extend beyond art, to a passion for conservation and relentless advocacy for the natural world that underpins an incredible artistic legacy. Join Robert Bateman on this personal guided tour through his life and art.

A World Fantasy Award Nominee! The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.