Isabel's life is turned upside down when a big earthquake strikes on her first day of school. Isabel and her family are safe, but could she have forgotten someone in all the turmoil? Based on the real life experiences of Isabel Rowney. Includes factual information about the Napier earthquake. Suggested level: primary.

Much of the critical writing on the fiction of Alice Munro has explored and emphasized Munro's 'realism'. But her stories frequently turn on what has been left out; they are rife with unsent (unfinished) letters, with things people mean to, but do not, say or tell. Ajay Heble's study focuses on Munro's involvement with a 'discourse of absence' and suggests that our understanding of these texts often depends not only on what happens in the fiction, but also on what might have happened. Munro's stories confer their meaning not simply by referring to an outer reality, but also by bestowing upon the reader a stimulating wealth of possibilities taken from what we might call a potential or absent level of meaning. Characteristically, they articulate an unresolvable tension between variants on these positions: between, on the one hand, her delineation of a surface reality - a world 'out there' which we are invited to recognize as real and true - and, on the other, her involvement with a discourse of absence that challenges the very conventions within which her fiction operates. Drawing on structuralist and post-structuralist theories of language and its relation to meaning, knowledge, and systems of power, and on theories of postmodernist fiction, Heble offers both a careful reading of Munro's stories and a theoretical framework for reading meanings in absence. His book extends recent revisionist analysis and makes a valuable and original contribution to the criticism on Munro.

Cats of all kinds get into and out of scrapes of all kinds in Peggy McGookin's animal neighborhood, in this series of short tales, Isabel's Whiskers. Take the title story, "Isabel's Whiskers," for instance. The trouble a cat named Isabel gets into after losing two whiskers and trying to put them back on, so as to look more glamorous, will have readers smiling. Then there's "The Mischievous Three"—Scrapper, Chloe, and Peanut—trying to make a batch of cookies but ending up making a mess instead. There are other adventures, too, such as one with a cat named George, in "The Cat Who Wanted to Fly," and with Boz and his friend, Jack the dog, in "The Halloween Cat." These are amusing children's stories that teach lessons in friendship, the value of knowing and accepting oneself and of looking before one leaps. The cats' pride, longing, and high jinks get them into some very comical situations.

Definitions and illustrations of an upside down day when everything is reversed and "bells don't ring, " and "bees don't sting."

An early morning hotel fire turns out to be anything but routine, and firefighter Reid Webb's best friend and partner, Jimmy Grant, dies. Guilt-ridden and grieving, Reid feels responsible for her partner's young son, Chase. She would do anything for him, even if that means spending far too much time in the company of the woman she's harboured feelings for since high school. Isabel Grant doesn't know anything about raising children. But when she returns to her hometown to assume custody of her orphaned nephew, she gets a crash course. Isabel's struggle to keep her footing in the midst of chaos is further complicated by her growing attraction to Reid, a woman whom Isabel blames for her brother's death.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this novel set in Hollywood Hills after the 2003 Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Thousand Acres delivers “a blazing farce, a fiery satire of contemporary celebrity culture and a rich, simmering meditation on the price of war and fame and desire.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review In the aftermath of the 2003 Academy Awards, Max and Elena—he's an Oscar-winning writer/director—open their Holywood Hills home to a group of friends and neighbors, industy insiders and hangers–on, eager to escape the outside world and dissect the latest news, gossip, and secrets of the business. Over the next ten days, old lovers collide, new relationships form, and sparks fly, all with Smiley's signature sparkling wit and characterization. With its breathtaking passion and sexy irreverence, Ten Days in the Hills is a glowing addition to the work of one of our most beloved novelists.