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 1969–1984 of 9481 results
-
Death in Vancouver
$19.95Garry Thomas Morse deploys his prodigious classical repertoire to compose the edgy new voices that reflect the cultural simultaneity of our everyday—a transnational, ahistoric cosmopolitanism: an idealized Helen is confounded by Molly Bloom’s monologue from Joyce’s Ulysses; a Dostoyevskian character parodies the libidinal excesses of William Burroughs with “the stone that drives men mad” from Pauline Johnson’s Tales of Stanley Park; an incident from The Book of Judges answers one of Gogol’s riddles; an acidic response to the recent fascination with “speculative fiction” introduces a punch card system from the year 2088 in which future language facilitates only business transactions in a completely monetized world; and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s alcoholism hits rock bottom in the unfulfilled desires of a dry pub crawl.
All of these stories seem to sketch the details of immediately recognizable places, but reveal a luminous interiority we never dreamed might be (re)discovered there. Transparently rooted in the work of other authors, including Garry Thomas Morse’s contemporaries, they nevertheless defy critical terms such as “intertextuality” and “authenticity.” Since his mother’s people (the Kwakwaka’wakw) became disconnected from their traditions there has been a great deal of forgetfulness of the “dream-time” that used to exist in our everyday lives—this forgotten “theatrical madness” of the human condition is what Morse seeks to re-present.
The title story of this brilliant collection of avant-garde fiction, loosely based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, and the film Death in Venice inverts the post-modern textual convention that only the author’s voice can be considered authentic. Its main character—the artist Padam, who is no more “fictional” than the author—constantly interrogates the accuracy of his representations, whereas we know almost nothing about the narrator, who exists merely as the “subject” of the Padam’s portrait and an “object” of his reflection.
-
Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning, The
$19.95Three years into the second millennium, Majestic, Alberta is a farm town dealing with depressed crop prices, international borders closing to Canadian beef, and a severe drought. Older farmers worry about their way of life changing while young people concoct ways to escape: drugs, partying, moving away. Even the church is on the brink of closing.
When local woman Annie Gallagher is struck by lightning while divining water for a well, stories of the town’s past, including that of Annie and the grandmother who taught her water witching, slowly pour forth as everyone gathers for her funeral.
Told through the varied voices of the townspeople and Annie herself, The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning reveals Majestic to be a complex character in its own right, both haunted and haunting. Here, Audrey J. Whitson has written a novel of hard choices and magical necessity.
-
Death of the Spider
$15.95“Neil Bishop has … revived this novel, Death of the Spider, in the true light of its prophecy (be it but dreamed), in the bright light too of its modernism, for this novel is both a poetic indictment of our contemporary society and a forerunner of the feminist novel—while admirably avoiding the traps of theory and rigidity. The author draws us into our very depths, our own submissiveness, our own hereditary sheep-like docility, she shuts us in with her main character, staring at the spider on the ceiling, in that secret bedroom of rebellion where this nameless heroine has withdrawn to think about her fate which is also ours and where she and we are left, alone with the shameful images of our own condition, our own, often willing, bondage.” – from the preface by Marie-Claire Blais
-
Death of the Territories
$23.95For decades, distinct professional wrestling territories thrived across North America. Each regionally based promotion operated individually and offered a brand of localized wrestling that greatly appealed to area fans. Promoters routinely coordinated with associates in surrounding regions, and the cooperation displayed by members of the National Wrestling Alliance made it easy for wrestlers to traverse the landscape with the utmost freedom.
Dozens of territories flourished between the 1950s and late ’70s. But by the early 1980s, the growth of cable television had put new outside pressures on promoters. An enterprising third-generation entrepreneur who believed cable was his opportunity to take his promotion national soon capitalized on the situation.
A host of novel ideas and the will to take chances gave Vincent Kennedy McMahon an incredible advantage. McMahon waged war on the territories and raided the NWA and AWA of their top talent. By creating WrestleMania, jumping into the pay-per-view field, and expanding across North America, McMahon changed professional wrestling forever.
Providing never-before-revealed information, Death of the Territories is a must-read for fans yearning to understand how McMahon outlasted his rivals and established the industry’s first national promotion. At the same time, it offers a comprehensive look at the promoters who opposed McMahon, focusing on their noteworthy power plays and embarrassing mistakes.
-
Death of WCW
$26.95In 1997, World Championship Wrestling was on top. It was the number-one pro wrestling company in the world, and the highest-rated show on cable television. Each week, fans tuned in to Monday Nitro, flocked to sold-out arenas, and carried home truckloads of WCW merchandise. It seemed the company could do no wrong.
But by 2001, however, everything had bottomed out. The company — having lost a whopping 95% of its audience — was sold for next to nothing to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment. WCW was laid to rest.
What went wrong? This expanded and updated version of the bestselling Death of WCW takes readers through a detailed dissection of WCW’s downfall, including even more commentary from the men who were there and serves as an object lesson — and dire warning — as WWE and TNA hurtle toward the 15th anniversary of WCW’s demise.
-
Death Plays Poker
$14.95Someone’s making a killing at a major poker tournament — one dead player at a time — in this mystery featuring a young female undercover cop
“[Death Plays Poker] is a book that grabs you like a gambling addiction and doesn’t let go.” — Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Every year, the Canadian Classic Poker Tour attracts TV cameras, scores of fans, and some of the most exciting players from the world of professional gambling. This year it has also attracted a serial killer. Players have been turning up strangled in their hotel rooms, and the Poker Choker’s latest victim was an undercover cop sent in to catch the killer. But nothing stops the Poker Classic from playing on — no matter who folds.
Now young cop Clare Vengel is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s last hope for bringing the killer to justice. Going undercover as a trust-fund princess who thinks gambling is a better idea than college, her flashy new wardrobe helps her infiltrate the elite circle of professional liars. But with her handlers doubting her every move, Clare starts to wonder if they’re right: Should she pack it up and go home to a dull life as a beat cop? As more victims lose their lives, Clare will have to go all in against a killer who doesn’t bluff.
-
Death Plays Poker
$24.95World class poker players are being strangled in their hotel rooms, and Clare is given her second big assignment: to pose as a poker player in a major televised tournament, befriend the suspects, and find the killer in their midst.
Her cover role? A trust fund princess named Tiffany who thinks the poker tour is a better idea than college.
Though Clare would prefer to wear jeans and get her hands dirty, posing as Tiffany helps her infiltrate the inner circle quickly. And her flashy new wardrobe attracts the attentions of Noah — a dark stranger who’s at the game for hidden reasons of his own. Rumors surface about a cheating ring that could be connected to the murders.
Clare loves the job and the game, but soon learns that there’s no one she can trust. Her handlers doubt her every move — she has to fight to keep her job — and everyone she meets lies for a living.
As more victims lose their lives to the cunning Poker Choker, and her cover role’s legitimacy comes under attack from two directions, Clare wonders if her handlers are right: Should she pack it in and go home to a dull life as a beat cop? Or will she find the killer, prove her worth?
-
Death Spiral
$27.95Death Spiral is the story of three successful businesses and their self-made CEOs who would rise to national prominence and then see their work destroyed. Ron Weinberg and Micheline Charest would build Cinar Films into a world power of children’s television programming. John Xanthoudakis, the CEO of Montreal’s Norshield Financial Group (an emerging and successful alternative investment company) and Weinberg’s paths would cross as Weinberg began to invest large sums of money in a Bahamian Hedge Fund called Globe-X. Over a span of two years, $108 million of Cinar’s money would be invested in Globe-X. Across town his longtime friend and sometimes business partner, Lino Matteo, was building a public company called Mount Real. In March of 2000 Weinberg’s Board was fed up with surprises and revelations surrounding tax scams and personal abuse of corporate funds, and declared the money invested by Cinar in the Bahamas as ?missing.” Weinberg, Charest, and Hasanain Punju were then fired from the company. John’s life would be fixated on how to keep the ?Cinar fire” from destroying the other parts of his successful business. Over the next five years he would fence with Cinar’s new management, bankruptcy receivers, Cinar’s new owners, and the unprecedented litigation machine of the ?CCE,” a high-bred organization funded by the 2004 Cinar asset sale. The CCE would eventually spend millions of dollars pursuing Xanthoudakis, Matteo, Weinberg, Panju, and Charest for money. By May of 2005 Norshield Financial Group, the largest Hedge Fund in Canada, would be put out of business; by November Mount Real, a TSX listed entity, would be closed, and Weinberg’s assets seized or under court control. In all, over $2,500,000,000 in investment capital would be lost by investors between the three debacles. Death Spiral reveals the character and structural flaws of the complex business world in which we live.
-
Death Spiral
$10.99Nominated for the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award and shortlisted for the 2011 Evergreen Award. This complex, multi-layered thriller opens with a hero’s welcome for the wounded Wilf McLauchlin, a celebrated WWII Canadian Spitfire fighter pilot. Almost immediately after his homecoming, a series of bizarre murders erupt in his hometown. Wilf finds himself trying to solve them and wondering if he is somehow causing them. Wilf follows his own trail back to when he was shot down over Germany in the last days of the war and makes the shattering connection.
-
Death to America
$22.00In Ayaz Pirani?s debut collection of stories, Death to America, he doesn?t try to straighten a dog?s tail. His stories are the frays on Empire?s fringe, and his colored characters navigate a perennially perfidious Albion.
In the first story, ?Battle of Waterloo,? Danju is obliged to choose sides in the struggle between disco and rock and roll, and in the last story, ?Brief Survey of Coloreds in the Rift Valley,? Nunu?s feeble crush on his grade-school librarian spins out a second post-colonial yarn. The youngster Aqbal, in ?The Lyric,? is rescued by racism, and in ?They?ve Forgotten That I?m Not There,? the small-time fence, Mohan, observes the narrow path. And sometimes you get to start over, as Gently discovers in ?Kitchener, née Berlin.? Other characters include Arf, Fruq, Eerfal, Salty, the East African dandies Sur and Nur, and the sparring teenagers Umed and Frenni.
With economy and a taste for the oddball?s angle, Ayaz Pirani makes the peculiar quotidian. He draws from Ismaili ginans and granths, and the Indo-Pak heritage of story-telling, oral poetry, and old-fashioned one-liners.
-
Death Valley
$22.00Love is complicated. It’s 2006 and Vivienne Pink, a photojournalist with an eye for war, is flying to Las Vegas to capture images of servicemen deploying for combat in Iraq. Together with her novelist husband and their housemate, an intelligence operative, Vivienne plans a side trip to Death Valley to confront an old enemy, but her scheme is soon complicated by a handsome young soldier on his way to war and a retired counterterrorism agent wearing a bird suit. Together they begin an atomic road trip through empty canyons, old film locations and the Nevada desert’s nuclear test site, where reality shifts like sand beneath their feet. This is Death Valley, and the fallout is hilarious and harrowing.
-
Death, Drugs, & Muscle
$18.95Death, Drugs, & Muscle is the story of a man who lived decades on the right side of the law before making the dangerous choice to enter the dark and dangerous world of drug dealing. After reaching the top and living a lavish lifestyle where sex, drugs, and money were in plentiful supply at all hours of the day, it all came crashing down in one harrowing instant. This is the story of Gregg Valentino, a man who had everything, lost it all, and fought his way back to the top.
The book describes Valentino’s involvement with bodybuilding and its association with steroids and underground behaviour, including the sex and muscle worship trade. Valentino eventually begins dealing drugs himself, and details the dangers and the fallout — including the murder of his girlfriend, his arrest, and his rise as an unlikely celebrity.
The story is uncensored, no-nonsense, and spares no expense to give the reader a true account of a life marred with murder, tragedy, sex, drugs, and sports.
-
Death’s Last Run
$14.95A young snowboarder is found dead on the Blackcomb Glacier, and Whistler police want to close the case as suicide. The victim’s mother, a U.S. senator, says her daughter would not, and did not, kill herself. At her request, the FBI sends in an undercover agent — Clare Vengel — to find out who might have killed Sacha and why. Dropped into a world of partying with ski bums and snow bunnies, Clare soon discovers that Sacha was involved in an LSD smuggling ring. Worse: the top cop in Whistler is in cahoots with the smugglers, and Clare’s cover is too precarious for comfort. As suspicion snowballs, can Clare solve the case before she’s buried alive?
-
Debris
$19.95Winner of the 2016 Trillium Book Award
Finalist for the 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
Nominated for the 2015 Danuta Gleed Literary Award
One of Quill & Quire?s Books of the Year, 2015
One of 49th Shelf?s Books of the Year, 2015
The eleven remarkable stories in Kevin Hardcastle’s debut Debris introduce an authentic new voice. Written in a lean and muscular style and brimming with both violence and compassion, these stories unflinchingly explore the lives of those—MMA fighters, the institutionalized, small-town criminals—who exist on the fringes of society, unveiling the blood and guts and beauty of life in our flyover regions.
-
Decadence
$24.95A collection of essays, ranging from the personal to the humorously mundane, Decadence spans a decade in the life of writer Richard Kelly Kemick.
The subjects of these essays are far-ranging, including Christmas villages, volleyball, municipal landfills, high-school plays, and dog fur. They feature the same rotating cast of characters: friends, family, Litia—Kemick’s partner of ten years—and their newborn son.
Throughout the course of Decadence, a narrative is gradually revealed. The collection begins with the early days of Kemick’s relationship with his long-time partner; the collection closes with the surprising, unconventional end to their romance. In the pages between, Kemick creates a repository of humour and epiphany that make up the odds and ends of living.
These essays are for fans of David Sedaris and David Rakoff. However, unlike the books published by these authors, Decadence puts on display the writer’s evolution. The contents, in chronological order, span the ten years it took Kemick to write this collection, revealing a gradual shift in his voice and priorities.
-
Decalogue
$19.95Decalogue: ten Ottawa poets is a poetry anthology edited by rob mclennan.