Shirley McDowell, the owner of a Teddy Bear Hospital, meets Michael, a fireman who's planning a surprise marriage proposal to his girlfriend on Christmas Eve. Through a serendipitous mishap, Michael's engagement ring is misplaced inside a stuffed animal being repaired at the shop. Shirley and Michael work together tracking down the missing teddy bear in a quest to find the lost ring, becoming closer in the process.
Ava Fisher is a flamboyant flake. Kenny Summers is a recent high school graduate. Luvon Ramsey is a junk dealer. Marie Elrod is a handicapped sixteen year old. Their mutual error is saying Hello to a very charming psychopath. Each ends up strangled and holding onto a Teddy Bear with a knife in its back. The serial killer is hidden in plain sight and has his focus on Olivia Haines, an English teacher at Fairfield High School in West Los Angeles. She considers herself a stranger to these murders until one day someone leaves her an unusual calling carda strangled cat dangling in her classroom. She is suddenly aware she is being scheduled as murder victim number five. Olivia is rapidly convinced she is in a life and death struggle between the killer and herself and one of them will not survive. Using every teaching skill she possesses, she wages an all out battle for survival against a very lethal psychopath. If you like Agatha Christies Miss Marple, youll certainly relish Olivia Haines in Teddy Bear Murders.
Toronto Book Award Winner Cordelia Strube is back with another caustic, subversive, and darkly humorous book Stevie, a recovering alcoholic and kitchen manager of Chappy’s, a small chain restaurant, is frantically trying to prevent the people around her from going supernova: her PTSD-suffering veteran son, her uproariously demented parents, the polyglot eccentrics who work in her kitchen, the blind geriatric dog she inherits, and a damaged five-year-old who landed on her doorstep and might just be her granddaughter. In the tight grip of new corporate owners, Stevie battles corporate’s “restructuring” to save her kitchen, while trying to learn to forgive herself and maybe allow some love back into her life. Stevie’s biting, hilarious take on her own and others’ foibles will make you cheer and will have you loving Misconduct of the Heart (in the immortal words of Stevie’s best line cook) “like never tomorrow.”
The Llama Who Had A Hole Through His Head heralds an exciting new voice in the world of comic writing. Filled with quirky surrealism and inspired buffoonery, this debut collection of fantastical tales takes lives on the fringe of the familiar and, with an inventive and inimitable brand of humour, pushes them to the brink of the absurdly ridiculous and beyond. A young Peruvian sheep laments his unhappiness. A thespian experiences the highs and lows of Tinseltown. A bullied boy is granted three wishes by a fallen star. A famous detective is called upon to solve a curious and colourful case. A manicurist confronts a biblical colossus. A squirrel receives taxation advice from an unexpected source. And an infamous athlete seeks to have history rewritten. Each of the thirteen stories in this book shows that when the uncanny and the real collide, the world can be a truly weird, wonderful and exceedingly funny place.
The incredible story of how one man went from a hired hunter to becoming one of America’s top champions for this iconic animal. In this wonderous and eye-opening exploration, Steve Searles, the reknown and respected "Bear Whisperer" of Mammoth Lakes, takes the reader on a journey into the lives of these remarkable creatures and the world we share. In the late 1990s, the town of Mammoth Lakes, California hired Steve Searles as a hunter to cull half its troublesome bear population. But as he began to prepare for the grim task, the bears soon won him over, and Searles realized there had to be a better way. He soon developed non-lethal tactics to control their behavior and overpopulation that heralded a landmark moment in the care and handling of the American black bear. But change was not without its challenges. To some, his success was dismissed due to his lack of formal academic training. Yet Searles never wavered in his commitment, and eventually became not just local folk hero but a nationally recognized expert. This high school dropout saved not just the bears, but, in many ways, his community. In a tradition that runs from John Muir to Bear Grylls, Searles finds a fellowship with nature and a deeper meaning in the world of bears. Do bears understand things we don’t? Are they dialed in to some greater natural force? Unlike us, bears waste little time on unreasonable fears. Bears are fully in the moment. They have an inner peace that seems to offset their power and strength. That may explain why no other animal on the planet is as revered as the bear. As Searles shares his remarkable knowledge and we become immersed in the ursine world, you’ll never look at bears or nature the same way again. Warm and poignant, and perfect for anyone who has been fascinated by the natural world, What the Bears Know shows that wisdom and fulfillment can come from unexpected places.
Connecting with nature and nature beings to help heal us and the Earth • Provides experiential practices to communicate with nature and access the creative power of the Earth • Shares transformative wisdom teachings from conversations with nature beings, such as Snowy Owl, Snake, Blackberry, Mushroom, and Glacial Silt, exploring the role of each in bringing balance to the planet Nature and the Earth are conscious. They speak to us through our dreams, intuition, and deep longings. By opening our minds, hearts, and senses we can consciously awaken to the magic of the wild, the rhythms of nature, and the profound feminine wisdom of the Earth. We can connect with nature spirits who have deep compassion and love for us, offering their guidance and support as we each make our journey through life. Renowned shamanic teachers Sandra Ingerman and Llyn Roberts explain how anyone can access the spirit of nature whether through animals, plants, trees, or insects, or through other nature beings such as Mist or Sand. They share transformative wisdom teachings from their own conversations with nature spirits, such as Snowy Owl, Snake, Blackberry, Mushroom, and Glacial Silt, revealing powerful lessons about the feminine qualities of nature and about the reader’s role in the healing of the Earth. They provide a wealth of experiential practices that allow each of us to connect with the creative power of nature. Full of rich imagery, these approaches can be used in a backyard, in the wilderness, in a city park, or even purely through imagination, allowing anyone to communicate with and seek guidance from nature beings no matter where you live. By communing and musing with nature, we learn how to speak to the spirit that lives in all things, bringing balance to us and the planet. By tapping into the feminine wisdom of the Earth, we evoke a deep sense of belonging with the natural world and cultivate our inner landscape, planting the seeds for harmony and a natural state of joy.
This is an intimate portrait of Charlie Russell's philosophy of nature. Accompanied by stunning photography, the book is written in narrative form, the way Charlie spoke and shared his stories and knowledge with others. Each of the chapters describes some facet of Charlie's philosophy and experiences through the stories of individual bears and what they taught him: the meaning of trust, respect, attention, love, and much more.
In the tradition of the works of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, Timothy Treadwell offers an extraordinary account of the eight summers he spent alone with a pack of wild grizzlies along a remote stretch of the Alaskan coastline. After a misspent youth of drugs, alcohol, petty crime and brushes with suicide, Timothy Treadwell encountered some grizzly bears while tramping through the Alaskan outback one summer. In the eight years since, he has immersed himself in the society of these rare and fascinating animals, observing their culture, photo-graphing their antics and ever so gradually earning their trust. Crammed with little-known bear lore and facts, much of which Treadwell has gleaned from his own research, this is the first book to reveal the day-to-day behavior of bears in the wild. But it is more than an illuminating study of grizzlies. The young author's intimate association with these noble and complex creatures has inspired him to put his own life in order, and his personal story makes Among Grizzlies an exceptionally poignant and exhilarating reading experience.
With a new introduction on Werner Herzog’s film entitled The Grizzly Man Timothy Treadwell, self-styled “bear whisperer” dared to live among the grizzlies, seeking to overturn the perception of them as dangerously aggressive animals. When he and his girlfriend were mauled, it created a media sensation. In The Grizzly Maze, Nick Jans, a seasoned outdoor writer with a quarter century of experience writing about Alaska and bears, traces Treadwell’s rise from unknown waiter in California to celebrity, providing a moving portrait of the man whose controversial ideas and behavior earned him the scorn of hunters, the adoration of animal lovers and the skepticism of naturalists. “Intensely imagistic, artfully controlled prose . . . behind the building tension of Treadwell’s path to oblivion, a stunning landscape looms.”—Newsday
In In the Company of Bears, originally published in hardcover as Out on a Limb, Ben Kilham invites us into the world he has come to know best: the world of black bears. For decades, Kilham has studied wild black bears in a vast tract of Northern New Hampshire woodlands. At times, he has also taken in orphaned infants–feeding them, walking them through the forest for months to help them decipher their natural world, and eventually reintroducing them back into the wild. Once free, the orphaned bears still regard him as their mother. And one of these bears, now a 17-year-old female, has given him extraordinary access to her daily life, opening a rare window into how she and the wild bears she lives among carry out their daily lives, raise their young, and communicate. Witnessing this world has led to some remarkable discoveries. For years, scientists have considered black bears to be mostly solitary. Kilham's observations, though, reveal the extraordinary interactions wild bears have with each other. They form friendships and alliances; abide by a code of conduct that keeps their world orderly; and when their own food supplies are ample, they even help out other bears in need. Could these cooperative behaviors, he asks, mimic behavior that existed in the animal that became human? In watching bears, do we see our earliest forms of communications unfold? Kilham's dyslexia once barred him from getting an advanced academic degree, securing funding for his research, and publishing his observations in the scientific literature. After being shunned by the traditional scientific community, though, Kilham’s unique findings now interest bear researchers worldwide. His techniques even aid scientists working with pandas in China and bears in Russia. Moreover, the observation skills that fueled Kilham’s exceptional work turned out to be born of his dyslexia. His ability to think in pictures and decipher systems makes him a unique interpreter of the bear's world. In the Company of Bears delivers Kilham’s fascinating glimpse at the inner world of bears, and also makes a passionate case for science, and education in general, to open its doors to different ways of learning and researching–doors that could lead to far broader realms of discovery.
