Current assessment methods of sustainable buildings do not adequately account for the users’ needs. Given that over the life of a building, total salary costs far outweigh both operating costs and combined capital and rental costs, the occupants’ needs are not something which should be sensibly ignored.This book presents an unbiased evaluation of thirty of the most cutting-edge, sustainable buildings in the world, in terms of the users’ perceived comfort, health and productivity. T...

This book deals with the concerns of everyone involved with the use of energy in buildings. It is written principle for those with a direct professional interest in the energy performance of buildings.

A book in which some of our best writers address their own losses — and help us endure our own…A heartbreaking, comforting and beautiful collection of true stories about grief and mourning from some of Canada’s best known writers.When Jean Baird’s daughter, Bronwyn, died suddenly, Jean’s deep instinct was to turn to books to help her in her time of sudden loss. Although she found that the thoughts of counselors, psychologists, Buddhists, and self-help gurus were perhaps som...

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels (Blonde, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Little Bird of Heaven, etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, off...

A New York Times Notable Crime Book and Favorite Cozy for 2011A Publishers Weekly Best Mystery/Thriller books for 2011With A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny takes us back to the deceptively peaceful village of Three Pines in this brilliant novel in her award-winning, New York Times bestselling series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache."Hearts are broken," Lillian Dyson caref...

What if the best morning of your life suddenly turned into your worst nightmare? Sam Case is about to find out. Saving Rachel is the story of what happens when killers force a man to choose between his wife and his mistress...and the one he rejects must die. "If Dean Koontz collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock at the circus, this would be their brain child." –Vintage DM Book Reviews

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction PrizeIn 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once.Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby's parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult...

A big novel about a small town...When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empt...

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this “extraordinary” and beloved novel that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review), named a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a weal...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenesTHE NEW YORK TIMES’S BEST THRILLER OF THE CENTURY • ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • THE BOOK BEHIND THE FIFTH SEASON OF THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONESNAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF THE DECADEHere is the fifth book in the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and become a modern masterpiece in the making.A DANCE WITH DRAGONSIn the aftermath of a colossal battle, Daenerys Targaryen rules with her ...

**The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy.“Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine**When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her lif...