A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more
All Books
All Books in this Collection
Showing 1889–1904 of 9492 results
-
Dancing on Mountains
$26.00Nestled among pristine lakes, powerful rivers and awe-inducing mountain ranges, the Kootenay region of British Columbia has always drawn a distinctly adventurous crowd. The dramatic and somewhat isolated landscape has long been a fertile ground for artists, musicians, back-to-the-landers, hippies, environmentalists, free thinkers, and those seeking to escape the confines of big cities to the east and west and the political dynamics to the south. Others have called the area home for millennia—the Sinixt Nation, which spans the interior plateau of BC and extends beyond the areas now known as the Kootenay region, and the Ktunaxa Nation, which have long resided on the lands and waters of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers and beyond the confines of our colonial borders. Today, the Kootenay region is a hub of farming, arts, culture and counterculture in British Columbia.
Dancing on Mountains is a collection of inspiring and eclectic stories written by women from across geography and time, each of whom has been drawn to take root in the mystic, beautiful Kootenays. In their own words, these women—teachers, artists, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs and environmentalists—share stories that embody the spirit of the Kootenays. From fleeing the US draft alongside the men of the 60s and pushing against traditional gender roles and sexism, to reclaiming Indigenous identities, calling out environmental threats and fighting for our climate today, these stories span the spectrum of human experience. Thoughtful, heartwarming and delightfully entertaining, Dancing on Mountains is a celebration of the brilliant, radical essence of the women of the Kootenays.
-
Dancing with Chairs in the Music House
$22.95Winner, 2021 IPPY Bronze Medal for Canada-East Best Regional Fiction.
Precocious ten-year-old Vanessa Dudley-Morris knows lots of secrets. In 1949 when she and her family are forced to move into two rooms on the second floor of 519 Jarvis Street in Toronto, a genteel but somewhat rundown rooming house owned by a reclusive pianist, she learns a lot more.
Despite the family’s drastically reduced circumstances, her parents struggle to keep up their old standards. Threatened by blindness due to an eye condition, Vanessa is kept at home, tutored by an erratic succession of eccentrics, some with questionable credentials. Consequently, she spends a lot of time alone, wandering the dim corridors of the old house, silently listening at doors and watching the odd characters who live there. She becomes fascinated by a mother and son who move into a room on the third floor. Eventually she agrees to take secret notes from the son to his mysterious friend at her church, unwittingly unleashing a chain of events that leads to tragedy.
-
Dancing with Daisy
$14.95When he finds a photograph of his grandfather as a young man, Liam is full of questions. But that’s just fine, because Grampy has a story to spin with every answer.
On a fall day in 1962, he tells Liam, he had a run in with a nasty girl in search of a dance partner: Daisy was her name. What follows is a tall tale about Grampy’s tango with a hurricane, and all those signs of aging?the wrinkles, the stooped back, the croaky voice, the false teeth?can be chalked up to Daisy’s persistence and Grampy’s refusal to dance. Of course, it takes a talking to from Nana to get that Daisy to blow off elsewhere.Acclaimed author Jan L. Coates and award-winning illustrator Jos?e Bisaillon join forces in this charming picture book to craft a tale both touching and amusing about aging and the bond between a grandfather and his grandson. Bisaillon’s gorgeous, playful illustrations bring the dance to life, evoking that windy girl and her insistent ways, as well as the warm affection between Grampy and Liam.
-
Dancing with the Cranes
$14.95Dancing with the Cranes gives an understanding of birth, life and death. Chi’s momma is soon to have a baby, but Chi is having a hard time being happy about it. Chi misses Temma (her grandma), who has passed away. Chi’s momma and daddy help ease the pain of losing Temma and help Chi to understand life and death as a part of nature. Chi soon finds herself feeling comforted, knowing Temma will always be a part of her and looking forward to the new baby who will be a part of their lives.
-
Dancock’s Dance
$16.95Shell-shocked, judged un?t for society and haunted by the sins of war, Lieutenant John Carlyle Dancock ?nds himself committed to an insane asylum where he cannot escape the con?nes of righteous authority or his own conscience, which visits him in the ghostly apparition of a soldier he once tormented. Dancock’s Dance is an emotionally haunting play in which one broken man clings breathlessly to a hope for redemption. Vanderhaeghe’s stark, vivid portrayal of internal and worldly chaos rings with hope and shimmers in the craft of his language.
-
Dandelion
$22.95Longlisted for Canada Reads
Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award winner: an Asian woman traces her mother’s past journey in order to learn who she really is and where she belongs.
When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never to be seen or heard from again. Now a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town where there were only a handful of Asian families; Lily’s previously stateless father wanted to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Brunei. Years later, still affected by Swee Hua’s disappearance, Lily’s family is stubbornly silent to her questioning. But eventually, an old family friend provides a clue that sends Lily to Southeast Asia to find out the truth.
Winner of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, Dandelion is a beautifully written and affecting novel about motherhood, family secrets, migration, isolation, and mental illness. With clarity and care, it delves into the many ways we define home, identity, and above all, belonging.
-
Dandelion Daughter
$21.95A runaway bestseller in Québec, where it has captured the hearts of readers and pushed trans-identity into the mainstream conversationDandelion Daughter is an intimate, courageous portrait of what it’s like to grow up having been assigned the wrong sex at birth. Set against the windswept countryside of the remote Charlevoix region some five hours north of Montreal, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s autobiographical novel immortalizes her early years as an alienated boy trapped in a world of small-town values and her parents’ dissolving marriage, through complex adolescent years of self-discovery and first loves, to the harrowing episodes that fuel the growing realization that she must transition and give birth to her new self if she is to continue living at all. One of the first novels of its kind to appear in Québec, this inspiring story has already connected with a wide readership, and has been adopted by many schools to help expand worldviews and curriculums.
-
Danger Flower
$19.95A baby transforms into a reverse mermaid in a baptism gone wrong. After being stepped on, a snail exacts revenge. In Danger Flower, Jaclyn Desforges leads enlightened witnesses through a wild garden where archetypal tales are treated with tongue-in-cheek irreverence. Amidst nesting dolls and opossums, poison oak and Tamagotchis, the poet navigates gender roles, sexual indiscretions, episodic depression, and mothering, forming essential survival strategies for a changing world. Danger Floweris a necessary debut.
-
Daniel MacIvor
$25.00This volume of essays is the first solely dedicated to the work of Daniel MacIvor. It aims to contextualize and analyze the work of this highly prolific theatre artist who is consistently produced and published and yet largely ignored in academia. The compilation features seasoned academics as well as emerging scholars dissecting MacIvor’s repertoire and ranges from a study of dance within his plays, to the branding of his solo shows, to the breakdown of memory within his AIDS play, to the troubled formation of identity in his penned female roles, to biographical performances of Tennessee Williams. The book also features insightful artist statements authored by some of MacIvor’s closest collaborators as well as a contemplation from MacIvor himself on the theory of acting and theatre
Contributors include John S. Bak, Susan Bennett, Daniel Brooks, Caroline Gillis, Christopher Grignard, Peter Kuling, Thom Bryce McQuinn, Ray Miller, Wes D. Pearce, Jenn Stephenson, Ann Wilson, and MacIvor himself.
-
Daniil and Vanya
$20.95We Need to Talk About Kevin meets Goodnight Mommy in this outrageous modern family thriller.
Emma and Gregory have a perfect life—a gorgeous home, a successful design firm—except for their inability to start a family. Following a traumatic failed pregnancy, they decide to travel to Russia to adopt a pair of twin boys. From the moment they board the plane in St. Petersburg, the twins begin to demonstrate perverse behaviour that grows increasingly ominous, driving a wedge between Emma and Gregory, and alienating their friends and family. The two brothers show worrying signs of lack of empathy, and seem to leave behind a trail of disturbing incidents, and rumours persist as the boys grow into teenagers—even as Emma continues to cling to her dream of the perfect family. A dark, violent, and tense novel, Daniil and Vanya shows the bond between parent and child gone horribly awry.
A Book of the Year, Quill & Quire
“Sinister and awe-inspiringly good.”—Chatelaine
“Readers will find themselves unable to look away.”—Quill & Quire
-
Danny, King of the Basement
$15.95In two years, Danny and his mom have moved more often than most kids lose teeth…
When Danny moves into a new basement apartment, the kids he meets seem to have way more problems than just being hungry. But Danny’s imagination creates a community that allows his friends to cope with their problems and ultimately to help Danny—because his crisis isn’t losing a home. It’s gaining one…
-
Dante’s House
$18.00Richard Greene’s first collection since winning the 2010 Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, take as their subject the rumors, misunderstandings and half-truths that often comprise our knowledge of others. With an astonishing gift for capturing states of feeling, Greene’s new poems movingly reflect on the “presence and absence, glory and disarray” of our flawed life, moving from his mother’s oil paintings to harrowing conditions at a corrections facility to recollections of a much-loved mentor. The capstone of the book is the magnificent title poem. Written in fluent, colloquial terza rima and set in sun-drenched Siena during the frenzied pageantry of Il Palio–the Italian city’s bi-annual horse race–it is a brilliant, beautifully realized achievement that consolidates Greene’s reputation as an emerging master of narrative verse.
-
Dany Laferrire
$20.00This collection of essays looks at the body of work of Quebec writer Dany Laferrière, including his notorious first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer, through a variety of critical and analytic lenses. Issues such as identity, privilege, memory, exile and return are examined in relation to his writing. Among the contributors are: Ng’ang’a wa Muchiri, Gabrielle Parker, Lucy Brisley, Lynn Penrod, Amy J. Ransom, and Lee Skallerup Bessette.
-
Daphne Marlatt and Her Works
$9.95This volume explores the life and works of Daphne Marlatt. These studies of Canadian authors fulfill a real need in the study of Canadian literature. Each monograph is a separately bound study that contains a biography of the author, a description of the tradition and milieu that influenced the author, a survey of the criticism on the author, a comprehensive essay on all the author’s key works, and a detailed bibliography of primary and secondary works.
-
Daphnis and Chloe
$24.95One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026A fable about love and innocence and beauty, and finding a light through the darkness.There’s a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe.And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wife’s hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.
-
Daria
$22.95When a young woman is subjected to a violent attack, the impact of colonialism, patriarchy, and who we choose to love are thrown into sharp relief. Daria is an immigrant woman living in Toronto, and as she begins to tell her story, the reader is pulled into different worlds, travelling to various timeframes and locations in an unending awe-inspiring Matryoshka play, where one story leads to another and another and another. The novel explores the stories of multiple characters?the Indo-Portuguese-Canadian sexual predator; the idealist and resilient Mozambican freedom fighter; the wondrous Iberian Roma circus; the Christianized Muslims and Jews; the mystical Nubian master who knows how to capture black matter; the fascist dictator whose ruthless cousin delivers unthinkable punishments inside the closed walls of Tarrafal, the infamous Cape Verdean prison of the Portuguese colonial regime?and countless other personalities, some wretched, some redeemable, some otherworldly, who defend visions and ideals and fight for dignity, power, and recognition.
Moving back and forth between Canada, Portugal, Mozambique, and Cape Verde, Daria is a magical realism historical novel where fact and fiction intermingle to create a spellbinding world of complex political, familial, and cultural dynamics.