The Party of Your Life - Get the Funeral You Want by Planning It Yourself

I killed and buried my best friend today ...

When authorities found Raffi Kodikian -- barely alive -- four days after he and his friend David Coughlin became lost in Rattlesnake Canyon, they made a grim and shocking discovery. Kodikian freely admitted that he had stabbed Coughlin twice in the heart. Had there been a darker motive than mercy? And how could anyone, under any circumstances, kill his best friend?

Armed with the journal Kodikian and Coughlin carried into Rattle- snake Canyon, Jason Kersten re-creates in riveting detail those fateful days that led to the killing in an infamously unforgiving wilderness.

Get off the dieting roller coaster and stopovereating at its source--the brain

Leonard Budgell saw the Canadian North like nobody else. He put his observations into words as few others ever could.

As a "Servant of the Bay" Budgell ran Hudson's Bay Company trading posts for decades in isolated communities up the Labrador coast and across the Arctic. Living among aboriginal Canadians he witnessed episodes and heard stories that would never again be repeated - except he wrote them down. His pen memorably portrays everything from dancing northern lights and hunting practices of birds to astonishing human adventures and predicaments.

Northern ways intact for centuries changed with rifles and motorboats, radios and electric generators, new foods and different medicines. Most often, it was Budgell who bridged the aboriginal and southern cultures, building and operating remote radio stations at places like Hebron, taking an RCMP officer into a settlement where a choice had to be made between two different codes of law and behaviour in a murder case. In Arctic Twilight, Budgell chronicles, in an outpouring of letters to a much younger female friend, a traditional way of life that was changing forever.

Claudia Coutu Radmore, a teacher, writer, and artist, first met Len Budgell in Winnipeg when she was a fine arts student and he had retired from the Company. Their friendship grew stronger when he began writing remarkable letters after she returned to Queen's University. Now edited and organized by her, this unique memoir is available to the public for the first time.

That first day is hard. The hands begin to cramp, drops of blood start oozing through your fingertips . . .

In 2003, Tori Holmes, a 21-year-old from Alberta, Canada, and Paul Gleeson, a 29-year-old financial advisor from Limerick, Ireland, met in Australia when Holmes answered an ad to drive the support vehicle for Gleeson’s 5,000-kilometre cycling trek across that country. During their first adventure together, Gleeson fell hard: both off his bike and for the woman driving the car.

Once Australia was behind them, it became clear that crossing a continent together was simply not enough. Acting on self-assured determination and an ever-growing sense of adventure, Gleeson and Holmes embraced the dream of rowing a tiny boat across the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean in the 2005/06 Trans-Atlantic Race. Of course, neither of the young adventurers knew how to row, so they connected and trained with the only Irishmen ever to have completed the same race, Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh.

In November 2005, after months of training, Paul and Tori left the Canary Islands to row 4,800 kilometres across the Atlantic. In February 2006, they completed their epic journey after 86 days of huge seas, violent storms, terrifying capsizes, unbearable thirst, bizarre hallucinations and sleep deprivation. Along the way, however, during one of the darkest moments in the race, inspiration came in the form of an unseen, yet completely perceptible, presence. Old seafaring lore has several theories as to what this might have been, but both adventurers are keeping their minds open on it.

Part inspirational adventure story, part travelogue and part romance, Crossing the Swell is an honest and intimate portrayal of what it takes to truly engage in the many adventures that life has to offer.

Growing up in Queens in the 1960s and '70s, Alyse always yearned for more in life, while her mother settled for an unhappy marriage, an unsatisfying job, and ultimately a joyless existence. Her father drifts in and out of their home. There are harrowing fights, abject cruelty, and endless uncertainty. Throughout her childhood Alyse adamantly rejects everything about her mother's lifestyle, leaving her mother to ask "Who do you think you are?"

A personal portrait of a mother and daughter, Who Do You Think You Are? explores the profound and poignant revelations that so often can come to light only after a parent has died. Balancing childhood memories with adult observations, Alyse Myers creates a riveting and deeply moving narrative.