For her entire life, Melanie Landon has hidden the fact that her half sister, Ann, is a shape-shifter, determined to protect her from a world that simply wouldn't understand. When a mans hows up asking about Ann - who has been missing for months - Melanie fears the worst, and with good reason. Freelance writer Brody Westerbrook knows about the existence of shape-shifters and intends to include Ann in the book he's writing. While Melanie is immediately drawn to the stranger she knows better than to trust him, and she denies his claim. But when Ann finally reappears, looking thin and sick, Melanie realises that exposure is the least of their worries. Protecting her sister has always been an enormous part of Melanie's life, but as Ann's health rapidly deteriorates, Melanie must come to grips with the fact that saving her may mean letting go . . .

By approaching geography and history through an integrated eco-feminist and psychogeography lens, Connecting World Geography to World History Through Storytelling, Eco-feminism, and Mindfulness reaches toward a fresh exploration of the land and water while offering suggestions for content-based social-emotional learning activities that include ethnogeography exercises and mindfulness activities.

This book shows how to access the spiritual powers of familiars--real or imagined animals--for personal enrichment. Whether one collects glass animals, dreams about snakes, or "talks" with an animal already, ANIMAL MAGICK shows how to further develop this connection for startling magickal results.

Understanding yourself is the key to dealing with—and even enjoying—the inevitable complexity of life. Irini Rockwell presents us with a powerful system for the kind of self-understanding that leads to just that kind of satisfying relationship with life. It’s a Buddhist model for identifying your unique mix of personality traits that make up your innate intelligence. All five qualities—presence, clarity, richness, passion, and action—are your rich resource. By cultivating them you begin to see how you can use this remarkable system to enhance your relationships, your work, and your creativity. Ultimately, this system introduces us to a larger world: the totality and interconnectedness of everyone and everything.

Adopt a spontaneous, bold, and fearless approach to painting as a process of discovery—one that results in lush and colorful finished works that will beg to be displayed. This inspiring and encouraging book for both novice and experienced painters teaches how to create colorful, exciting, expressive paintings through a variety of techniques, combining basic, practical painting principles with innovative personal self-expression. Flora S. Bowley's fun and forgiving approach to painting is based on the notion that “You don't begin with a preconceived painting in mind; you allow the painting to unfold.� Illustrating how to work in layers, Flora gives you the freedom to cover up, re-start, wipe away, and change courses many times along the way. Unexpected and unique compositions, color combinations, and subject matter appear as you allow your paintings to emerge in an organic, unplanned way while working from a place of curiosity and letting go of fear.

Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel rethinks the nineteenth-century aesthetics of agency through the Victorian novel's fascination with states of reverie, trance, and sleep. These states challenge contemporary scientific and philosophical accounts of the perfectibility of the self, which privileged reflective self-awareness. In dialogue with the field of literature and science studies and affect studies, this book shows how Victorian writers used narrative form to respond to the analytical practices and knowledge production of those other disciplines. Drawing upon canonical texts--by Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy--Still Life contends that depictions of non-purposive perceptual experience suspend the processes of self-cultivation (Bildung) central to Victorian aesthetics, science, psychology, and political theory, as well as most critical accounts of the novel form. Departing from the values of individual cultivation and moral revelation associated with the genre, these writers offer an affective framework for understanding the subtly non-instrumental powers of narrative. Victorian novels ostensibly working within the parameters of the Bildungsroman are suspended by moments of "still life": a decentered lyricism associated with states of diminished consciousness. They use this style to narrate what should be unnarratable: experiences not dependent on reflective consciousness, which express a distinctive ambivalence toward dominant developmental frameworks of individual self-culture.

In national bestselling author Sharon Shinn’s latest Shifting Circle novel, a woman must choose between hiding her nature—and risking her heart... For Karadel, being a shape-shifter has always been a reality she couldn’t escape. Even though she’s built a safe life as a rural veterinarian, with a close-knit network of shifter and human friends who would do anything for her—and for each other—she can’t help but wish for a chance at being normal. When she’s not dealing with her shifts or caring for her animal patients, she attempts to develop a drug that will help shifters control their changes—a drug that might even allow them to remain human forever. But her comfortable life is threatened by two events: She meets an ordinary man who touches her heart, and her best friend is forced to shift publicly with deadly consequences. Now Karadel must decide whom to trust: her old friends or her new love.

We have never had it better so why aren't we happy?;The Significance Delusion explains why humans are so peculiarly vulnerable to mental disorders and social problems, and how understanding the backstory can help you learn the real value of life Today we have everything that previous generations could ever have dreamed of. So why is it that so many people continue to go through life unhappy and unfulfilled, with millions more young people now facing mental health issues? Does it have something to do with the way our brains have developed? Could it be that humans are just essentially delusional ;Now a compelling and insightful new book, The Significance Delusion, draws upon scientific research, ideas, facts and real-life anecdotes to explore the human obsession with meaning. It takes readers on a journey through time, history and the mysterious labyrinth that is the brain, to explore what it really takes for us (and our children) to thrive and survive as individuals and as a society, and even learn the meaning of life.;The author, Gillian Bridge, is a psycholinguistic consultant and expert in empowering people to get the most from their brain, whatever the challenge. The common link in her previous work as a teacher, a lecturer, an addiction therapist, an executive coach and a resilience consultant has been the way brain development and the use of language affect any individual's behaviour and communication. By understanding brain function and how it makes us behave the way we do, Gillian's work enables all people, whether they clearly need help or not, to gain better control of their lives;There are three interweaving strands throughout The Significance Delusion: brain matters, child-rearing matters and self-versus-community matters. By exploring these matters in a challenging, quirky and often humorous way, the book will not only help you answer some age-old questions about yourself (Who am I? What am I? How am I?), but also understand how to better promote the future mental and physical well-being of our children, for the benefit of them individually and society as a whole.;The Significance Delusion provides practical behavioural strategies to improve quality of life, making it a fascinating and invaluable book for parents, teachers, people working in social care, policy makers and anybody else who simply wants to understand themselves, or their relationships better.

Magic Off Main chronicles the life and art of Esther Warkov, a visual artist of Jewish heritage who lives in Winnipeg and paints in a surrealistic and postmodern style. By tracing the development of Warkovs art over forty years, Rasporich addresses aspects of biography, social and cultural history, and art history in a cohesive volume. This biography is not limited to the narrow discipline of art and art history. Rather, it is a contribution to the larger field of Canadian studies, including cultural studies, and social history.