Showing results by publisher "Penguin Canada" in All Categories

A successful Black woman in media, Bee Quammie often finds herself being cast as a role model for young women—and especially women of colour. But Bee has never quite been comfortable with the idea of being a role model for the next generation. Who is she to suggest anyone live the way she has? Follow a certain path? Who says the path she followed is the “right” one—that there even is a “right” one?

Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children.

We all know Denmark is the happiest country in the world—but this doesn't make it perfect. Happiness isn't exclusively Danish. Nor is it just eating pastries, lighting candles, and practising hygge. Happiness is something available to all, wherever you are, and whatever your means. Starting from the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Meik Wiking, probably the happiest man in the world, travels across the globe on a quest to uncover the secrets of the very happiest people from Dubai to Rio de Janeiro.

Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective—or she was before a medical leave left her unsure if she'd ever return to work. She now spends most days watching the growing tensions in her small seaside town of Ebbing—the weekenders renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes. Elise can only guess what really happens behind closed doors. But Dee Eastwood, her house cleaner, often knows. She’s an invisible presence in many of the houses in town, but she sees and hears everything.

A transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.

After decades of significant progress, the prospects of women and girls in Afghanistan are once again dependent on radical Islamists who reject gender equality. When the United States announced the end of their twenty-year occupation and the Taliban seized control of the country on August 15, 2021, a steep regression of social, political, and economic freedoms for women in the country began. But just because a brutal regime has taken over doesn't mean Afghan women will stand by while their rights are stripped away.

The urge to nest and control our close environments has never been stronger. We spend more time in our homes than anywhere else—but the way in which our homes impact how we feel has remained relatively unexplored until now. Backed with Danish design principles, years of research, case studies and a sprinkle of hygge, Meik Wiking has created the ultimate guide to turning your home, office, or wherever you may be, into your happy place. The Hygge Home will teach us all how to create that much-needed cozy safe space in our homes into which we can retreat.

Alicia has been out of grad school for six months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won’t stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store.

Combining research on happiness and mnemonics (learning techniques that aid memory retention or retrieval), Meik Wiking explores how peak experiences are made, stored, and remembered. Using data and diaries, interviews, global surveys and studies, and conducting real-life behavioural science and happiness experiments, The Art of Making Memories will answer how we can create perfect moments. Moments that will go down in history. This audiobook will help you create more peak experiences, help you retrieve happy memories of the past, and store them for the future.

On the brink of 40, Bea Rose has lost her lover, her business, and her bearings. When the opportunity arises to work on a summer production of King Lear to be staged in various parks around Montreal, she takes it, despite her utter lack of theatre experience. Things get off to a rocky start when Bea meets the artistic director, Artie White, a childhood friend whose presence stirs up painful memories. At the same time, Bea's father begins behaving erratically, and her younger sister Cara discovers cracks in the foundation of an apparently perfect life.

Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast-food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests—everybody's in solidarity with somebody—but while she keeps hearing that they’re fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can’t afford to pay attention. Then she gives a ride to Jolene (five stars, obviously).

Simran is unable to move on. Grappling with the growing estrangement of her sister and daughter as well as the disintegration of her marriage, she wonders how her life has come to this. As the life she has carefully constructed unravels, she is forced to confront one of her most painful childhood memories - her parents sending her younger brother away from home.

It is well-known that the Danish have a fantastic balance of work and home life, that working late is discouraged, parental leave is split equally, and long relaxing summer holidays are the norm. They even have a word that means “happiness at work”—arbejdsglæde. All of this is true while the rest of the western world are struggling with a burn-out epidemic, so where are we going wrong?

Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (aka Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks - even though her best friend, Mel, says she's the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she's afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: She knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses.

Over the course of three weeks in present-day Washington, DC, three sons watch their parents' marriage falter and their family home fall apart. Meanwhile, a large catastrophe is engulfing another part of the world: A massive earthquake devastates the Middle East, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. With global upheaval in the background and domestic collapse in the foreground, Jonathan Safran Foer asks us: What is the true meaning of home? Can one man ever reconcile the conflicting duties of his many roles - husband, father, son? And how much of life can a person ultimately bear?

Living forever isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Hearts can still break, looks can still fade, and money still matters, even in eternity. The ghosts, zombies, and demons in this collection are all shockingly human, and they’re ready to spill their guts. Vanity, love, and tragedy are all candidly explored as the unfulfilled desires of the dead are echoed in the lives of modern-day immigrants. Story-by-story, the line between ghost and human, life and death, becomes increasingly blurred. From Shanghai to Vancouver, the women in this collection haunt and are haunted.