Often seen as a magical paradise at the end of the world, Bhutan is inaccessible to most travellers. Set against the dramatic scenery of the Himalaya, this beguiling memoir recalls hardships and happiness in a land almost untouched by the West. When Britta Das goes to work as a physiotherapist in a remote village hospital, her good intentions are put to the test amid monsoons, fleas, and startling conditions. But as she visits homes in the mountains and learns the mysteries of Tantric Buddhism, the country captivates her very soul. Gaining insights into the traditions of the mystical kingdom, Britta makes friends, falls in love, and battles illness. Throughout it all, as she writes, she worries about the "destructive nearness of technology" and fears that Bhutan’s charm and innocence may soon be lost. Still, Bhutan has endured for centuries, and there is no denying that the country has transformed her life forever.

What happens when a 56-year-old fiction writer decides to ditch it all and attend professional pastry chef school for a year? In writing that brings to mind the work of journalist/chef Michael Ruhlman, Butter Cream: A Year in a Montreal Pastry School tells the story of eleven months of whipping, spreading and creaming in the pursuit of perfection. When Denise Roig set out to do this -- a lark, she thought -- she had no idea what it would cost and what it would give back. Butter Cream is the chronicle of an intense year of learning and tasting, dramas at the stove and in the locker room. It's about fights, friendship and competition, fallen cakes and rising doughs. And sometimes, unexpectedly, it's about the sheer joy of baking. It's a memoir that also includes trips back to Roig's mother's and grandmother's kitchens and to her own complicated relationship with all things sweet.

Emmy Award-winning international journalist Hala Gorani weaves stories from her time as a globe-trotting anchor and correspondent with her own lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants. What is it like to have no clear identity in a world full of labels? How can people find a sense of belonging when they have never felt part of a "tribe?" And how does a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who's never lived in the Middle East honor her Arab Muslim ancestry and displaced family - a family forced to scatter when their home country was torn apart by war? Hala Gorani's path to self-discovery started the moment she could understand that she was "other" wherever she found herself to be. Born of Syrian parents in America and raised mainly in France, she didn't feel at home in Aleppo, Seattle, Paris, or London. She is a citizen of everywhere and nowhere. And like many journalists who've covered wars and conflicts, she felt most at home on the ground reporting and in front of the camera. As a journalist, Gorani has traveled to some of the most dangerous places in the world, covering the Arab Spring in Cairo and the Syrian civil war, reporting on suicide bombers in Beirut and the chemical attacks in Damascus, watching the growth of ISIS and the war in Iraq - sometimes escaping with her life by a hair. But through it all, she came to understand that finding herself meant not only looking inward, but tracing a long family history of uprooted ancestors. From the courts of Ottoman Empire sultans through the stories of the citizens from her home country and other places torn apart by unrest, But You Don't Look Arab combines Gorani's family history with rigorous reporting, explaining - and most importantly, humanizing - the constant upheavals in the Middle East over the last century.

When Tamara Levine received her breast cancer diagnosis, in a state of shock, she decided to inform her friends and colleagues by writing to them. That letter was the first of thirteen communications she calls her healing journey. As well as sharing the letters, Tamara tells us what she learned maneuvering through the black hole of cancer treatment. Tamara discusses vulnerabilities and fears, the impact of both financial and personal supports, the need to make choices, and the necessity for advocacy. A key addition are the voices of Tamara’s health care providers, including her oncologist, who wade in further, outlining options and critiquing the system. This combines with Tamara's insights and strategies to form a resource that individuals and families struggling with cancer will find invaluable.

At fourteen he became the head of his impoverished family, responsible for feeding eleven on the rough American frontier. By thirty-nine he had established himself as a successful plantation owner worth over $1 million. And at forty years old, Nathan Bedford Forrest enlisted in a Tennessee cavalry regiment'and became a controversial Civil War legend. The legacy of General Nathan Bedford Forrest is deeply divisive. Best known for being accused of war crimes at the Battle of Fort Pillow and for his role as first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan'an organization he later denounced'Forrest has often been studied as a military figure, but never before studied as a fascinating individual who wrestled with the complex issues of his violent times. Bust Hell Wide Open is a comprehensive portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest as a man: his achievements, failings, reflections, and regrets.

It takes a special recipe-one part courage, one part skill, a big dash of crazy-to make a bush pilot. These unique aviators, flying over the vast wildernesses of the United States, Canada and Australia, often reach the status of legends. In this Canadian bestseller, Peter Boer looks at famous bush pilots, many of them former fighter pilots of the Second World War. These brave young men and women took to the skies to bring food, medicines and mail to isolated communities. The names of men such as Wop May and Punch Dickins are synonymous with courage in the face of hardship. The remarkable stories of May and Dickins, as well as those of Doc Oaks, Fred Stevenson, James Caldwell, Chuck McAvoy, Vi Milstead, Con Farrell and many others, are told in this entertaining collection.

Burqa of Skin is a dense collection of writings from Nelly Arcan, channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture’s vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: the draw of death. Now beyond the ripples of scandal Arcan’s work has caused, here are the last echoes of her work, and it is as stunning as it is brief. Burqa of Skin, with its gruesome title, catapults her work into contemporary debates on culture and gender. The book collects three previously unpublished works: “The Dress,” “The Child in the Mirror” and “Shame.” The first two are written in the first person, in that turbulent, suffocating language that was Arcan’s singular brand, that of a writer on the edge. In the third text, she analyses with inexhaustible ferocity her humiliating experience on the set of a TV talk show. Two lesser-known non-fiction pieces are also included in this collection: a reflection on speed dating and a column published in 2004 titled “Suicide Can Be Harmful to Your Health.”

Praise for Burqa of Skin: "A masterpiece, a rare and poisonous plant whose posthumous publication makes [the work] all the more striking." (Juliette Einhorn, Le Figaro) "... When Arcan’s writing is at its sharpest—as it nearly always was, and as Melissa Bull’s translation convincingly conveys—practically every sentence can serve as a jumping-off point for sustained contemplation and/or heated debate. ..." (The Montreal Gazette) "... the writing is genuine and lived, giving an almost real-time picture of the author's philosophical wrestlings ... stylishly translated by Melissa Bull … Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion—and honesty—her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work—Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit—so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer." (The Times Literary Supplement)

“Burning Man, Slaying Dragon is an exciting, high stakes, spiritual adventure that spans decades, continents, cultures and generations. As a young, headstrong hippie, Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski leaves her home at her beloved Shuswap Lake in BC seeking meaning and enlightenment in an astounding, dangerous quest that takes her overland from Europe to India, only to find that heaven may be back from whence she came. Decades later, as a grown woman and mother, Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski embarks upon another journey, in the company of her own headstrong daughter, this time to the notorious Burning Man Festival in the scorched Nevada desert. In Burning Man, Slaying Dragon Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski effortlessly weaves together these two stories of past and present in a highly descriptive and page-turning style that will have you reaching for your World Atlas in wonderment. Throughout the adventure the author manages to face her own inner fears while under constant threat of staggering sexism, highly questionable transportation, murderous nomads, engulfing sand storms, transformative drugs, and elusive love.”

Grant Lawrence, CBC Radio Personality, author of Adventures

Winner of the 2009 British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, short-listed for the 2008 Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize Thousands of boys dream of becoming firefighters. Some get the chance, and for some of those, the dream becomes a nightmare. Burning Down the House is the story of Wangersky's eight-year career as a volunteer firefighter, an experience that wound up reaching into every facet of his life and changed the way he saw the world forever. Written in vibrant, luminous prose, the book traces his years from rookie to veteran firefighter and the toll it took on his personal life. Offering a rare glimpse into physical dangers and psychological costs of trying to save strangers' lives, Wangersky paints a harrowing and sometimes heartbreakingly vivid portrait of the fires, medical calls, and automobile accidents that are the standard fare of the profession. Visceral and affecting, Burning Down the House is an insightful insider's account of the perilous world of firefighting and an unforgettable memoir of how, in finding his passion, Wangersky lost himself.