“I was the only woman.” These words appear again and again in the stories of women planners working in Canada from the 1940s to the 1970s. Despite their small numbers, women were active in the Community Planning Association of Canada and the Town Planning Institute of Canada (later called the Canadian Institute of Planners) during those years. This book tells their stories, expanding our understanding of what constitutes “planning” and who counts as “planners.” It challenges us to re-evaluate not only the profession’s past, but also its role in creating a more inclusive and equitable future.

The Only Girl in the Car Bookworm and dreamer, Kathy was a young girl with a tender heart, an adventurer’s spirit, and a child’s terrible confusion about her proper place in the world. As the oldest daughter in a family of six children, she seemed trapped in her role as Big Sister and Mommy’s Helper. Then, one day, teetering on the brink of adolescence, hormones surging, she heard someone call her “cheesecake,” and suddenly saw her path. “Cheesecake, jailbait, sex kitten”--the very words seemed to be “doors opening” to a splendid new self. But from the moment she decides to lose her virginity and reels in her prey, a “full-grown man,” fourteen-year-old Kathy is headed for trouble. One cold, raw March night some months later, parked in a car with four boys on the outskirts of her small suburban town, she finds it. Though she could never have foreseen the outcome of that night, the “boys in the car could just as well have been Gypsies foretelling my future,” she writes. Girls who break the rules in small towns like the one she lived in are expected to pay a very high price for their transgressions--and she did. And yet...this young girl, as scrappy a protagonist as any in our literature, manages to transform her fate. The story of how she came to be in that car, and how she stepped out of it forever altered, to be sure, yet not forever damaged, is the theme of this extraordinary coming-of-age tale.

“An eerily beautiful and lyrical story of loss, grief, and how quickly relationships can change, while also changing us.” —Robin Benway, National Book Award winner and bestselling author of Far From The Tree and A Year to the Day “Fast-paced, unputdownable, and full of heart and complicated emotions. An unforgettable story.” —Yamile Saied Méndez, Pura Belpré Award–winning author of Furia, a Reese’s Book Club selection What would you do if everyone you love disappeared? What if it was your fault? For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year. Once, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch. Now, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared. No family. No Alex or Sydney. No Sam. July’s only chance at unraveling the mystery of their disappearance is a series of objects, each a reminder of the people she loved most. And a mysterious message: GET TH3M BACK. From the #1 bestselling author of the Matched series, The Only Girl in Town is a searingly candid reckoning with both love and loneliness that perfectly distills the messy, beautiful realities of growing up, growing apart, and the courageous act of self-discovery.

A serial child killer plays with authorities and plans his next kill... Investigative reporter Tess McClintock and FBI Special Agent Michael Carter track down clues in the most important cold case to them both -- the disappearance of Tess's friend Lisa Tate, who went missing from Michael's back yard almost twenty years earlier. Working together, they uncover evidence that suggests a different killer than the police and FBI have identified. One mistake by the killer leads Tess to take risks to find out the truth, putting herself in danger The chilling conclusion to the McClintock-Carter Crime thriller trilogy, THE ONLY GIRL LEFT ALIVE follows Tess and Michael as they search for the truth about the case that links them together and which sent them both on the path back to Paradise Hill.

For readers of Damaged and Running with Scissors, a chilling exploration of psychological control that ends with a glorious escape. Maude still remembers the sound of the gate being locked behind her. She was three years old when they moved into the secluded manor and in the coming years, she would only be allowed out a handful of times. Her parents belonged to a fanatical Masonic order. She followed a strict schedule of study, hard labour and endless drills designed to ‘eliminate weakness’, such as holding an electric fence without flinching and sitting in a rat-infested cellar. But despite their chilling psychological control, her parents could not control her inner life. Befriending animals on the lonely estate and characters in the books she read, Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love her parents forbade.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was not normal, and I had terrible tantrums in Lille. I was a bundle of indomitable will, full of joy and rage. I was not afraid of anything. I wanted to go to school, but my parents did not want me to. #2 Linda was a puppy that my father bought to protect the house. But she ended up sleeping in the kitchen because the nights were cold in northern France. She was eventually exiled to the unheated utility room. #3 My father trained a German shepherd to attack me if I ever tried to steal his bike. I learned my lesson, and never tried to steal his bike again. I still loved Linda just as much; I would never believe she had bitten me deliberately.

ONE OF WASHINGTON POST'S NOTABLE NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR A bracingly honest exploration of why there are still so few women in STEM fields—“beautifully written and full of important insights” (Washington Post). In 2005, when Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, asked why so few women, even today, achieve tenured positions in the hard sciences, Eileen Pollack set out to find the answer. A successful fiction writer, Pollack had grown up in the 1960s and ’70s dreaming of a career as a theoretical astrophysicist. Denied the chance to take advanced courses in science and math, she nonetheless made her way to Yale. There, despite finding herself far behind the men in her classes, she went on to graduate summa cum laude, with honors, as one of the university’s first two women to earn a bachelor of science degree in physics. And yet, isolated, lacking in confidence, starved for encouragement, she abandoned her ambition to become a physicist. Years later, spurred by the suggestion that innate differences in scientific and mathematical aptitude might account for the dearth of tenured female faculty at Summer’s institution, Pollack thought back on her own experiences and wondered what, if anything, had changed in the intervening decades. Based on six years interviewing her former teachers and classmates, as well as dozens of other women who had dropped out before completing their degrees in science or found their careers less rewarding than they had hoped, The Only Woman in the Room is a bracingly honest, no-holds-barred examination of the social, interpersonal, and institutional barriers confronting women—and minorities—in the STEM fields. This frankly personal and informed book reflects on women’s experiences in a way that simple data can’t, documenting not only the more blatant bias of another era but all the subtle disincentives women in the sciences still face. The Only Woman in the Room shows us the struggles women in the sciences have been hesitant to admit, and provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women into fields in which even today they remain seriously underrepresented.

The New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Hedy Lamarr possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both? Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis...if anyone would listen to her. A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionised modern communication, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece.

This book is comprised of a series of stories describing situations resulting from being the Only Woman “caught” in a male-dominated world. The author has attempted to keep the book on the “light” side, since many of stories are funny in retrospect. These incidents were actually very hurtful and some were even degrading at the time they occurred. Other stories are not intended to be amusing. They describe the realities of discrimination and “double-standards” facing a female trying to compete (or even survive) in a male dominated technical field. The impact of the incidents described in the book may be difficult for someone to fully understand who has not walked in the shoes of a minority.