In March 2020, when social distancing was brought into operation, a pensioner in a Scottish village began to write a daily blog on social media for family and friends. Sandy's wry and amusing descriptions of his day to day life quickly caught the imagination of readers worldwide, and became compulsive reading for more than 1600 followers. Sandy's diaries are filled with gentle humour and sharp observation. Here you will meet Sandy and his wife M, along with the rest of their family, and read about their interactions with each other, with friends and neighbours and with random people. There are encounters with birds and animals, airlines and insurance companies - some of it friendly, some less so - but always light hearted and thoroughly entertaining. As the diaries start, Sandy charts his daily activities, such as shopping and housework, and laments the downturn in his social life as events are cancelled. As the story progresses and lockdown becomes a reality we learn that M is isolated at home with Sandy and the interactions between her industrious nature and his relaxed outlook lead to some entertaining situations. Painting and decorating, gardening, DIY, all lend themselves to Sandy's sense of fun. And as we progress through the diaries, past the milestones of twenty, fifty, one hundred days, we meet more characters including El Gato the stray cat, Angry Dog and Percy the persistent crow. There are encounters with the Hoover from Hell, the garden shed of doom and the dreaded Times Crossword. All punctuated with regular supplies of scones from the Lovely Italian Neighbour. There are 101 of these daily diaries, and every one of them will make you smile. The Covid-19 pandemic was a devastating experience for many people and Sandy doesn't trivialise that, but he manages to find humour in the most ordinary of situations and to see the funny side of a very serious situation.

A follow up to the 2020 book "Sandy's Daily Diaries". Always able to find humour in the most ordinary of situations, this second volume of Sandy's diaries is sure to make you smile.

Raw and honest, Bearskin Diary gives voice to a generation of First Nations women who have always been silenced, at a time when movements like Idle No More call for a national inquiry into the missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Carol Daniels adds an important perspective to the Canadian literary landscape. Taken from the arms of her mother as soon as she was born, Sandy was only one of over twenty thousand Aboriginal children scooped up by the federal government between the 1960s and 1980s. Sandy was adopted by a Ukrainian family and grew up as the only First Nations child in a town of white people. Ostracized by everyone around her and tired of being different, at the early age of five she tried to scrub the brown off her skin. But she was never sent back into the foster system, and for that she considers herself lucky. From this tragic period in her personal life and in Canadian history, Sandy does not emerge unscathed, but she emerges strong—finding her way by embracing the First Nations culture that the Sixties Scoop had tried to deny. Those very roots allow Sandy to overcome the discriminations that she suffers every day from her co-workers, from strangers and sometimes even from herself.

Young Cassidy O'Connor was an avid researcher of the supernatural. When she found herself involved in a case that was unlike any other, however, she was forced to open her eyes. With the introduction of young Matthew into her life, she began to realize this was not a normal haunting. This was something very different - this was evil. Cassidy dug through layers of historical events and learned how the past can always come back to haunt you. Combining history with folklore, she discovered that what tormented Matthew and his family was not a ghost or a simple whisper, but something out of Hell itself. This is a true, first-person account from the woman who aided that family over a three year period. Not even medical diagnoses, hospitals, or the legal system could explain what plagued Matthew, but Cassidy, without any experience of the demonic, had to prepare herself for the fight. This story is a warning to those who believe that the world of the demonic is something to toy with. It is a warning to those who feel that fame and fortune can come from entering that forbidden world.

The New Zealand soldiers who left these shores to fight in the First World War represented one of the greatest collective endeavours in the nation’s history. Over 100,000 men and women would embark for overseas service and almost 60,000 of them became casualties. For a small nation like New Zealand this was a tragedy on an unimagined scale. Using their personal testimony, this book reveals what these men experienced – the truth of their lives in battle, at rest, at their best and their worst. Through a comprehensive and sympathetic scrutiny of New Zealand soldiers’ correspondence, diaries and memoirs, a compelling picture of the New Zealand soldier’s war from general to private is revealed. This is not a campaign history of dry facts and detail. Rather, it examines minutely the everyday experience of trench life in all its shapes and forms. Diverse topics such as barbed wire, the use of the bayonet, gas attacks, rats, horses, food, communal singing, infectious diseases and much more feature in this riveting account of the New Zealand soldier in the First World War. It is the story of ordinary men thrust into the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable. Written in an accessible style aimed at the interested general reader, the book is the product of a substantial amount of research. The text is complemented by a range of maps, illustrations, graphs and diagrams.

The Sandy Knoll Murder, Legacy of the Sheepshooters is the true story of the high-profile 1904 murder of John Creed Conn, who disappeared in the midst of central Oregon's bloody range war period. That circumstance has always been believed to have precipitated his death. Sensational and intriguing, the details of the murder held the reading public in rapt attention with articles appearing on the front page of the Oregonian for nine months after Conn's mysterious disappearance. It is not very often that a prominent man, a celebrity, vanishes from the main street of an Oregon town in broad daylight. And even less often does a missing man's body reappear on a small, sandy knoll outside of that same town seven weeks later. This work is the result of six years of painstaking research that encompassed eighty other homicides and suspicious deaths of the period, Conn's life and relationships, the circumstances of his death, and all that was ever written by and about the sheepshooters. All of the planning that the killer put into making Conn vanish showed a high level of control and organization on his part. But, he did unwittingly leave some clues to his identity, and they could be traced like fingerprints through the ink of the newspapers of the day. Other clues were left like footprints in the soil surrounding the Sandy Knoll and in the behaviors that he exhibited there. Conn was the brother of a district attorney and a member of a politically prominent and well-connected family. He was a local celebrity and a respected figure, and there could be no doubt that a massive man hunt and investigation would ensue. Every effort has been made to adhere to the facts of the case, long-held as the legacy of the sheepshooters. The Creed Conn murder was then, and remains today, one of the most sensational in the history of the state of Oregon.

This family cookbook morphed into much more for me during the writing process. It began by contacting friends and family to collect recipes for what I thought would be a simple process. During those conversations and with my own memories, a flood of personal history evolved in my mind. What began as a repository of food recipes became much more to me, and I decided to collect the process in the form of this book, The Diary of a Mad Chef, to also include photos of those people and selected short stories. Food has always been the center of our family's common narrative thread, and I attempted to place the face and the stories of my friends and family with the recipes as I remember them. Along with the feedback and photos from my friends and family, it became a two-year-long effort to compile, edit, and publish this book. The journey has been a magnificent experience for me, and I am grateful to have had the time and opportunity to write this book.

Each branch of the US armed forces has a unique job to do and important contributions to make. This title highlights the history and achievements of the US Coast Guard. Easy-to-read, engaging text explores the military branch's key missions and important roles in protecting the United States. Learn about cutting-edge technology and weapons, and discover what it is like to join the US Coast Guard and have a career in the branch. Well-placed sidebars, vivid photos, helpful maps, abundant charts, and a glossary enhance readers' understanding of the topic. Additional features include a table of contents, a selected bibliography, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and essential facts. Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.