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50 Books for 50 Years
A collection of 50 landmark books to celebrate the Literary Press Group of Canada’s 50th Anniversary in 2025.
All Books in this Collection
Showing 21–40 of 50 results
Jack and Mary in the Land of Thieves
$14.95Award-winning storyteller Andy Jones and acclaimed illustrator Darka Erdelji are back with another whimsical, wise, and witty ‘Jack tale’—the third in their on-going series. Jack and Mary in the Land of Thieves finds Jack, that everyman of folktales, married to his sweetheart Mary, the best woman ever born and a mighty fine baker to boot. Their lives are as happy and successful as can be, until an underhanded sea captain and Jack’s own bragging get the better of our hero. Jack is sent to work on Slave Islands, and Mary is turned out of house and home. But Mary is resolute and resourceful, and has plans to find Jack and restore their fortunes.
With a hidden key, a storm at sea, and a singing mynah bird named Baxter who carries more than his share of tunes, Jack and Mary in the Land of Thieves will delight youngsters and oldsters alike. As a special bonus, the melodies of all of Baxter’s songs are included, so that readers can learn them, sing them, and share them.
Kinmount
$20.00Rod Carley has concocted another hilarious romp behind the theatre curtain – a showdown between artistic freedom and censorship in rural Ontario. Kinmount is the last place down-and-out director Dave Middleton wants to revisit yet there he is directing an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet for an eccentric producer in farm country. And there his quixotic troubles begin. From cults to karaoke, anything that can go wrong does. In one hilarious chapter after another, Dave becomes the reluctant emissary of truth in a comic battle between artistic integrity and censorship. Add in a pesky ghost and a precocious parrot and the stage is set for a summer Kinmount won’t soon forget.
Live from the Afrikan Resistance!
$22.00Live from the Afrikan Resistance! is the first collection of spoken word poetry by Halifax’s fifth Poet Laureate, El Jones. These poems speak of community and struggle. They are grounded in the political culture of African Nova Scotia and inherit the styles and substances of hip- hop, dub and calypso’s political commentary. They engage historical themes and figures and analyze contemporary issues — racism, environmental racism, poverty and, violence — as well as confront the realities of life as a Black woman. The voice is urgent, uncompromising and passionate in its advocacy and demands. One of Canada’s most controversial spoken word artists, El Jones writes to educate, to move communities to action and to demonstrate the possibilities of resistance and empowerment. Gathered from seven years of performances, these poems represent the tradition of the prophetic voice in Black Nova Scotia.
Moon of the Crusted Snow
$22.952023 Canada Reads Longlist Selection
National Bestseller
Winner of the 2019 OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award
Shortlisted for the 2019/20 First Nation Communities READ Indigenous Literature Award
2020 Burlington Library Selection; 2020 Hamilton Reads One Book One Community Selection; 2020 Region of Waterloo One Book One Community Selection; 2019 Ontario Library Association Ontario Together We Read Program Selection; 2019 Women’s National Book Association’s Great Group Reads; 2019 Amnesty International Book Club Pick
January 2020 Reddit r/bookclub pick of the month
“This slow-burning thriller is also a powerful story of survival and will leave readers breathless.” — Publishers Weekly
“Rice seamlessly injects Anishinaabe language into the dialogue and creates a beautiful rendering of the natural world … This title will appeal to fans of literary science-fiction akin to Cormac McCarthy as well as to readers looking for a fresh voice in indigenous fiction.” — Booklist
A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
My Conversations With Canadians
$20.00Shortlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Award
Shortlisted for the First Nation Communities READ 2018-2019 AwardOn her first book tour at the age of 26, Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn’t possibly answer at that moment. As time passed, she was asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, prejudice, and reconciliation, to name a few, are the heart of My Conversations With Canadians.
In personal essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide answers to these questions. Rather, she thinks through each one, drawing on a multitude of experiences as a First Nations leader, a woman, a mother, and a grandmother. My Conversations With Canadians presents a tour de force exploration into Maracle’s own history and a reimagining of the future of our nation.
North End Love Songs
$15.95Katherena Vermette’s award-winning poetry collection North End Love Songs is an ode to the place she grew up, where the beauty of the natural world is overlaid with the rough reality of crime and racism. When a young girl’s brother goes missing, she learns what prejudice and discrimination mean, as the police and the media dismiss his disappearance because he is young and Indigenous.
Read alone, or as a companion to Vermette’s award-winning novel, The Break and its follow-up, The Strangers, North End Love Songs is a moving tribute to the people who make the North End their home.
On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood
$18.00Winner of the 3rd Prize for Poetry in the 2017 Alcuin Society’s Book Design Awards
Winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
Shortlisted for the City of Calgary 2016 W.O. Mitchell Book Prize
Finalist for the Poetry category of the High Plains Book Awards
In his final years, Richard Harrison’s father suffered from a form of dementia, but he died without ever forgetting the poems he had memorized as a student and had taught to Richard as a child. In 2013, the poet feared his father’s ashes had been lost in the flood water that ravaged Alberta?a crisis that would become the inciting event and central theme of this collection. Combining elements of memoir, elegy, lyrical essay and personal correspondence with appreciations of literary works ranging from haiku to comic books, Richard Harrison has written a book of great intellectual depth that is as generous as it is enchanting.
Rock Recipes 3
$29.95***READER VIEWS COOKING AWARD – SILVER***
Break out your mixing bowls and preheat the oven because Barry C. Parsons, the bestselling cookbook author and creator of the phenomenal RockRecipes.com, is back with an extra helping of delicious recipes to delight everyone at your dinner table.
In Rock Recipes 3: Even More Great Food and Photos from My Newfoundland Kitchen, you’ll find full-flavoured slow-cooked suppers and effortless quick-and-easy dinners to whip up in a pinch. From dinner-party showstoppers to family-night comfort food, Barry has every meal covered. Easy baking recipes take center stage as well with straight forward, old fashioned recipes you’ll love, including those heavenly desserts that have made Rock Recipes famous the world over. And as always, every recipe is accompanied by one of Barry’s amazing full-colour photographs to help guide you from preparation to presentation. With helpful cooking tips and a recipe for every possibility, Rock Recipes makes mealtime as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Salvation of Yasch Siemens, The
$19.00Born “on the wrong side of the double dike” in the mythical Mennonite village of Gutenthal, Yasch Siemens seems destined for a life as a hired hand in love with the wrong girl. But all of that changes when he meets Oata Needarp. Oata is determined to make Yasch hers, and it only takes some chokecherry wine and the fragrance of Oata’s “Evening in Schanzenfeld” perfume to seal Yasch’s fate. Shortlisted for both the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Books in Canada Best First Book Award, The Salvation of Yasch Siemens is an outrageous, comic ride through Canadian literature’s most unforgettable community.
Now this enduring Canadian classic includes a loving preface from the author, Armin Wiebe, and an insightful new essay from Nathan Dueck. Together they rediscover the warmth and wit in the world of Gutenthal, a profound part of Canada’s literary landscape.
Savage Love
$19.95The Globe and Mail Top 100
Quill & Quire Book of the Year
Amazon.ca Editors’ Pick, Top 100
Now magazine, Top 10 Books
Chatelaine, Favourite Books of 2013“This was, hands down, the best book I read in 2013.” — Steven W. Beattie,The National Post
The return of Douglas Glover, one of Canada’s most lauded and brilliant authors.
“Douglas Glover, the mad genius of Can Lit.” — Caroline Adderson, The Globe and Mail
Savage Love shatters then transforms every conventional notion we’ve ever held about that cultural-emotional institution we call love.
“The most stylish, adventurous fiction this country has ever seen.” — Quill & Quire
Absurd, comic, dream-like and deeply affecting, Glover’s stories are of our time yet timeless, spectacular fables that stand in any era, any civilization.
“Eclectic and obsessive, abrasive and majestic.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
Savage Love exposes the humanity lurking behind our masks, the perversities that underlie our actions. This is Douglas Glover country, and we are all willing visitors.
Scarborough
$19.95SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2022
NOW A MOTION PICTURE directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson; screenplay by Catherine Hernandez
Trillium Book Award and City of Toronto Book Award finalist; Edmund White Debut Fiction Award finalist; A Globe 100, National Post and Quill and Quire Best Book of the Year
Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact of poverty on education.
And then there are the three kids who work to rise above a system that consistently fails them: Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives under the shadow of his father’s mental illness; Sylvie, Bing’s best friend, a Native girl whose family struggles to find a permanent home to live in; and Laura, whose history of neglect by her mother is destined to repeat itself with her father.
Scarborough offers a raw yet empathetic glimpse into a troubled community that locates its dignity in unexpected places: a neighbourhood that refuses to be undone.
So Many Windings
$28.95Reluctant amateur detective, Reverend Charles Lauchlan, departs the prairie city of Winnipeg and travels abroad to Scotland with his fiancé Maggie on a bicycle tour of the highlands. Two near fatal accidents put members of the tour on edge and, to make matters worse, a shadowy figure seems to be observing their every move. Stuck in the remote highland countryside, the group is thrown back on their own resources. While Charles and Maggie are trying to decipher what these strange events mean, they make another grisly discovery. It’s murder most foul and we’re not just talking about Scottish weather. So Many Windings is the second in a three book series that began with Put on an Armour of Light (winner of the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction). Deftly wrought, meticulously researched, and scintillating with charm and period prose, Macdonald weaves a winding, cross-country tale that will require all of the detective’s ingenuity and test the measure of his resolve.
Solitaria
$19.95When Vito Santoro’s body is inadvertently unearthed by a demolition crew in Fregene, Italy, his siblings are thrown into turmoil, having been told by their sister Piera that Vito had fled to Argentina fifty years earlier after abandoning his wife and son. Piera, the self-proclaimed matriarch, locks herself in her room, refusing to speak to anyone but her Canadian nephew, David. Now scattered over three continents, the family members regroup in Italy to try to discover the truth.
Songs For The Cold Of Heart
$29.95Nuns that appear out of thin air, a dinner party at the Goebbels’, Quebec’s very own Margaret Thatcher, a grandma that just won’t die (not until the archangel comes back)…Songs For The Cold Of Heart is a yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivière-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome, and beyond. This is the novel of a century?long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs, and unforgettable characters?with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca.
The Big Green Book of Munsch Books
$24.99Five classic Robert Munsch stories in one beautiful, gift-worthy treasury.
With over 80 million books sold across the globe, Robert Munsch is the authority on stories kids love to hear read aloud. This gorgeous hardcover edition is the authoritative collection of Munsch!
The Big Green Book of Munsch Books includes:
The Paper Bag Princess
David’s Father
Purple, Green and Yellow
50 Below Zero
I Have to Go!
The beautifully designed volume is full of empowering stories where kids rule and each predicament is more outrageous than the last. Munsch’s zany spins on everyday situations are the perfect gift for any kid who loves to laugh.
Robert Munsch is one of North America’s bestselling children’s book authors. Two of his books appeared on The New York Times list of the top 100 children’s books. Since his first book was published in 1979, over 80 million Munsch books have been sold in over a dozen languages.
The Brickworks
$19.95When the Tay Bridge collapsed in 1879 it killed everyone on the train that was crossing, leaving the son of the driver, young Brodie Smith, traumatized and reduced to poverty as a result of his father’s death. Leaving home determined to make his way in the world, Brodie finds safe haven with his kindly uncle in Edinburgh and studies engineering, intent on demonstrating that the bridge disaster was not his father’s fault. In search of adventure and further opportunities, Brodie then travels to Buffalo where he befriends Alistair, another young Scot filled with dreams and ambitions. Together the men bring industrialization to a small rural community where they establish a brickworks, changing the lives of all those they encounter with a sense of possibility and the reality of attendant loss. Told in beautifully crafted prose, it is Black’s incomparable voice-her uncanny humour and an astonishing ear for dialogue-that renders The Brickworks both remarkable and unforgettable.
The Clarion
$22.95Longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Globe and Mail 100 Best Book of 2023
CBC Books, Best Canadian Fiction 2023
Apple Books, Best Canadian Debut 2023 and Best Book of the Month for September 2023
“We all lined up for our whipping by the shouting beauty and tender traumas of life. All of us so sensitive, and now this beautiful girl, with soft brown hair that was shot with gold in the sun. Another one of us starting to stumble.”
Peter plays the trumpet and works in a kitchen, partying; Stasi tries to climb the corporate ladder and lands in therapy. These sensitive siblings struggle to find their place in the world, seeking intimacy and belonging – or trying to escape it.
A promising audition, a lost promotion, intriguing strangers, a silent lover, and a grieving neighbour—in rich, sensual scenes and moody brilliance, The Clarion explores rituals of connection and belonging, themes of intimacy and performance, and how far we wander to find, or lose, our sense of self.
Alternating between five days in Peter’s life and several months of Stasi’s, Dunic’s debut novel captures the vague if hopeful melancholy of any generation that believes it was never “called” to something great.
The Future
$24.95Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com‘s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week • One of Kirkus Reviews‘ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
The Glass Lodge
$34.99John Brady McDonald, MBSFA, a Nêhiyawak-Métis multidisciplinary artist and writer from Treaty Six Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada, is an award-winning author of multiple books who has presented at literary festivals around the world. Before all this, however, he was a young, urban Indigenous youth, struggling with addictions, the streets, and the pain and turmoil of intergenerational trauma as a residential school survivor and the child of residential school survivors.
These raw, lyrical poems are a glimpse of the birth of a poet, recklessly using language and words with abandon and without restraint. It is the poetry of an individual experimenting with the language, mixing the influences of Shakespeare and Jim Morrison with the teenage-Goth writing style of youth-the base metals from which a lifetime of words was forged.
Originally published by Kegedonce Press in 2004, The Glass Lodge was presented across Canada and the United States at esteemed festivals. Chosen for the First Nations Communities Read program, it was also nominated for the Anskohk Aboriginal Book of the Year in 2005.
Now, here is that seminal work in a brand-new edition, re-edited and restored, illustrated with images of many of the original, handwritten poems, and with author’s notes providing frank, fascinating insight into what gave rise to each of these verses: the outpouring of language that marked the birth of a remarkable writer.
The Junta of Happenstance
$19.95Personal, primordial, and pulsing with syncopated language, Tolu Oloruntoba?s poetic debut, The Junta of Happenstance, is a compendium of dis-ease. This includes disease in the traditional sense, as informed by the poet?s time as a physician, and dis-ease as a primer for family dysfunction, the (im)migrant experience, and urban / corporate anxiety. In the face of struggles against social injustice, Oloruntoba navigates the contemporary moment with empathy and intelligence, finding beauty in chaos, and strength in suffering. The Junta of Happenstance is an important and assured debut.