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This insider’s guide tells how David F. Ritchie founded and developed Ritchie’s, achieving national and international recognition for skill, reliability, and service as auctioneers and appraisers. Ritchie reminisces about the firm’s struggles and successes and about prominent Canadians whose collections his firm sold. “In this business, one never graduates.”
After auctioneer Lisa Spencer's adventures in "Cabbagetown" (Murder in Cabbagetown), she is ready for things to get back to normal. Unfortunately, that also means that business is back to being slow, and the auction scene just isn't what it used to be. With a sale just around the corner, Lisa is still looking for a headliner of the show to attract the highest bidders, and she may just have solved that problem. She's found a painting by a renowned Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt, and she's on her way to meet the owner in a small town just east of Toronto. She couldn't possibly know that waiting for her is another adventure, this time involving some shady characters, a big wig research association, and even a painter with ties to a WWIIPOW camp. And, as if THAT wasn't complicated enough, Lisa soon finds herself entangled in yet another murder. At the end of it all, will Lisa finally get her hands on the painting to auction? Business might be slow, but for Lisa Spencer, everything else is anything but...
Marlene Ritchie is off to teach in China at age 68. She’s just divorced and retired from the auction business she and her husband founded, and is now examining her past and finding the self-confidence to start anew. She’ll be embedded in the commune of a Chinese university, attending to her basic needs with little Chinese speaking ability, while making lesson plans and teaching English, uncertain whether the students will be able to understand. The man in charge of her accommodations reluctantly addresses faults in her apartment, challenging her patience and finesse. As she ventures about to understand what life is like for her students, colleagues, business and farming acquaintances, she often gets into predicaments which are amusing. Her understanding is enriched by trips to historic sites. China is in flux. It’s a crash course covering language, history, and sociology with exotic dinners thrown in. Marlene wasn’t going to miss out, and neither are you as you live her experiences through the pages of this heart-warming narrative.
First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.
In South Auckland, New Zealand, Mannie and his wife, Jo, have finally achieved stability. Mannie's successful job as a carpenter gives the couple hopes for a future home and children. But it's all about to come tumbling down. When Wall Street crashes in 2005, the New Zealand economy plunges into a recession. Mannie loses his job and is forced to apply for the unemployment benefit to survive. Worse, he and Jo must take in boarders in order to make the rent. But Mannie soon sees his misfortune as an opportunity to reclaim land in the Tongariro National Park that belonged to his Maori tribe more than one hundred and thirty years ago. Mannie persuades a small, disillusioned group of young Maori into claiming sovereignty over a small block of land on the side of a mountain, offering freedom and peace in protest against the government. They build huts and live off the land. Mannie and Jo try to find their former happiness, but then tragedy strikes, and Mannie suddenly finds himself in a deadly game of survival.
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