This is a story about how I saved two horses and one mare was in foal and had been without food and water. The owners fell on hard times and they struggled to keep them, but it got too much for them, and the horses were suffering by going without. It broke their hearts to let them go but he gave them up and I got lucky to get her and the painted filly, which in turn the grey mare had my Lil Smokey.

The classic no-holds-barred memoir from Hollywood's most legendary stuntman -- an inspiration for Brad Pitt's character Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- is "full of incredible stories as told by a real man of action" (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Yep that's me, Hal Needham, on the cover doing a fire stunt. When you're on fire you don't dare breathe because if you do, you'll suck those flames right down your throat. I was Hollywood's highest paid stuntman so I should know. I wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, and along the way broke 56 bones, my back twice, punctured a lung and knocked out a few teeth...I hung upside down by my ankles under a bi-plane in The Spirit of St. Louis, jumped between galloping horses in Little Big Man, set a world record for a boat stunt on Gator, jumped a rocket powered pick-up truck across a canal for a GM commercial, was the first human to test the car airbag-and taught John Wayne how to really throw a movie punch. Life also got exciting outside of the movie business. I had my Ferrari stolen right from under my nose, flew in a twin-engine Cessna with a passed out pilot, rescued the cast and crew from a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, and once took six flight attendants on a date. I owned the Skoal-Bandit NASCAR race team, the sound-barrier breaking Budweiser Rocket Car and drove a souped-up, fake ambulance in a "little" cross-country race called The Cannonball Run, which became the movie I directed by the same name. Oh yeah, I also directed Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and several other action/comedy movies that I liked a bunch. I was a sharecropper's son from the hills of Arkansas who became a Hollywood stuntman. That journey was a tough row to hoe. I continually risked my life but that was the career I chose. I was never late to the set and did whatever I had to do to get the job done. Hollywood's not all sunglasses and autographs. Let me tell you a few stories...

With the enchanting chords of his piano and his effortless charisma and charm in the modern classic La La Land, Ryan Gosling has swept back onto our screens and confirmed himself as one of Hollywood's greats. Born into a modest family in Ontario, Canada, it certainly didn't seem likely that Ryan Gosling would grow up to become one of the world's most popular movie stars. However, at the age of 12, his first break came. Beating 15,000 hopefuls to become a Mouseketeer in Disney's All-New Mickey Mouse Club, young Ryan found himself performing alongside a whole host of future stars including Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera. However, his remarkable acting ability allowed him to break free from the Disney mould. Since his breakthrough role as Noah in romantic weepie The Notebook, Ryan Gosling has gone on to star in films as diverse as Half Nelson, Crazy Stupid Love and The Big Short, and become a global star. With a legendary compulsion to lose himself in every role he takes on, he has been named by many as this generation's Marlon Brando. However, he has remained resolutely humble despite his success, and keen to keep his life private, even in the glare of the spotlight placed on himself and his partner, fellow actor Eva Mendes, and their two young children. In this career-spanning biography, journalist Nick Johnstone looks into the life and career of this most gifted, charming and enigmatic leading man.

A New York Times bestseller If you work hard enough, if you want it enough, if you’re smart and talented and “good enough,” you can do anything. Except get pregnant. Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery. This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir, Kid Gloves, not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology recovers a new regional archive of “black prairie” literature, and includes writing that ranges from work by nineteenth-century black fur traders and pioneers, all of it published here for the first time, to contemporary writing of the twenty-first century. This anthology establishes a new black prairie literary tradition and transforms inherited understandings of what prairie literature looks and sounds like. It collects varied and unique work by writers who were both conscious and unconscious of themselves as black writers or as “prairie” people. Their letters, recipes, oral literature, autobiographies, rap, and poetry- provide vivid glimpses into the reality of their lived experiences and give meaning to them. The book includes introductory notes for each writer in non-specialist language, and notes to assist readers in their engagement with the literature. This archive and its supporting text offer new scholarly and pedagogical possibilities by expanding the nation’s and the region’s archives. They enrich our understanding of black Canada by bringing to light the prairies' black histories, cultures, and presences.