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All Books in this Collection
Showing 257–272 of 9311 results
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A Place Called Sorry
$22.95Growing up in the 1930s, Adeline Beale knows little of the outside world or the looming shadows of a second world war. Addie-as her grandfather Chauncey Beynon Beale affectionately calls her- believes that everything she could ever want or need is to be found on his cattle ranch, the place her family calls home, or in the little town twelve bush miles away, a place called Sorry. After tragedy strikes her family, Addie holds her sorrows close to her heart. Only later will she learn that her grandfather too has lived with his own secret torment for more than seventy years. It will take his slipping into blindness and dementia before the dark spectre from his past emerges, leaving her the one responsible for its consequences. And when that day arrives, when Chauncey Beale’s past intersects with Addie’s present, it will change her future in ways that she, and those she loves, could never have imagined.
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A Place for People Like Us
$25.00When Hannah meets Jillian, their connection is instant and addictive. Both unique and talented, but equally adrift in trying to determine and then pursue their goals, they become each other’s anchor until Jillian’s lies threaten to unravel the lives they’ve built.
In this insightful exploration of friendship and identity, Judaism and cults, and hypocrisy and family Danila Botha brings her signature empathy and nuance into worlds few are intimately familiar with, with riveting results. Poignant and moving, A Place for People Like Us is a story that will stay with you for a long time.
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A Place in Mind
$19.95A Place in Mind: Designing Cities for the 21st Century is the result of Avi Friedman’s worldwide quest for successful environments where people congregate and feel comfortable. Whether he writes of the conviviality of a teahouse in Istanbul; the serenity of Assisi; the squatter settlements of Tijuana, or the architectural harmony of neighbourhoods in London, Friedman conveys his excitement at discovering people-friendly places–antidotes to social isolation.
His search for unique spots took him to spiritual places, workplaces, towns’ squares, very cold places and warm ones. They made themselves known unexpectedly, and affected him in some way. He went on to look into their distant and near history, origins and effect on civilizations, the people that inhabit them, and above all, to reflect on what made them special.
Published originally in 2010, this is a completely revised edition including new essays and photographs.
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A Place in the Dark/ The Glamour of Evil
$20.00This is a flip book with two novels: A Place In The Dark braids history, fiction and politics. It is set in Utica with substantial passages of painful, site-specific memories of the characters of both the Vietnam war and the American engagement in Iraq. These memories are carried by a Vietnamese immigrant woman living in Utica, who suffered in Saigon, an American Marine and Italian-American Utican who committed an atrocity during the siege of Khe Sanh, and an Iraqi who administered torture and worked as translator and interpreter in Baghdad on America’s behalf. The central character is an ex-private investigator, of Utica, who is an Italian-American, beset by his long-standing guilt for his deferment from the draft during the Vietnam era and now suffering from serious heart disease. The Glamour of Evil deals with how, some males, especially literary/intellectual types, are drawn to violent men in organized crime. How they secretly desire intimacy with such people whom they find charismatic, powerful and uniquely free inside a world where the freedom of the individual is in much doubt. The novel features a legendary American Mafioso–who loved modern fiction and French existentialism–Crazy Joey Gallo and his dark world. This is combined with a whodunit involving Eliot Conte’s daughter, a crisis that a connected man of literary flair promises to resolve for Conte–for an unusual price.
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A Possible Landscape
$14.00Maureen Harris’s first volume of poetry evokes “a possible landscape,” where the stories that subtly shape us blend with the moments that we are. Here is an Eden where Eve longs for the serpent’s “green quiver,” his “sibilant caress,” where a snake tires of his lover “wearing/the same skin day-out, day-in.” The poems in the first section of this book are sharp new takes on old stories, at once angry, witty and thoughtful. With grace, compassion and sparkle, the rest of the book explores the self in the world of the late twentieth century, the seeming contradictions of the third world, and the ordinary magic of an evening spent with friends.
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A Possible Life
$19.95Daniel Clevenger has a successful career as a professor and writer in Winnipeg. But his two university-aged sons are growing up and Daniel is still haunted by memories of his late wife. Then he meets Magda, an attractive, recently-divorced art historian, a specialist in the Italian Renaissance.
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A Pretty Sight
$17.95Like the rhapsodists, the storytellers of ancient Greece, A Pretty Sight shapes voices of the past and present into a stitched song lifted and sounded toward the next century. Haunted by ‘time’s frame / that dark shape near the edge of the canvas,’ O’Meara’s new book explores aspects of culture, art, war, rebellion and technology, offering defiance amid decay.
‘O’Meara is a poet of the personal. Of the person. In and amongst the social documentary and human observation at which he excels, here is a writer prepared to put feelings on the line and to argue his case with the reader. This is proud, felt, and affecting work — I can’t think of many other poets so prepared to engage and so equipped to succeed.’ —Simon Armitage
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A Priest in Hell
$19.95“Living in jail is like living in a foreign country. The customs and culture are different, almost alien, and so is the language.”
A Priest in Hell is the compelling true story of life in the U.S. prison system. The book takes fodder for popular reality shows (like Cops) to a new level, giving the reader a frighteningly real sense of the tastes, sounds, smells, culture and lifestyle of jail.
On November 5, 2005, Randall Radic was arrested and charged with ten felonies. Desperation for a monied lifestyle led Radic, a pastor in the northern California community of Ripon, to first mortgage the home provided to him by his church, before selling off the church itself. His crime is exposed when a large bank deposit catches the attention of the authorities. Radic is subsequently convicted of embezzlement, forgery, and fraud, and he spends six months in a California jail before a plea bargain facilitates his release.
At 54, Radic is well above the average age of the prison population, and his background as a priest makes him both a target and a confidante within the prison walls. Through the book, Radic introduces the stories of several of his fellow inmates, detailing their crimes, cases, and struggles. He eventually earns his plea bargain by sharing confessions of a fellow inmate with the district attorney.
Radic considers his time in jail Dante’s version of Hell. This is the gritty, painful reality of crime and consequence.
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A Profession of Hope
$20.00Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award
Gold Medal for the Green Living category in the Living Now Book Awards
Finalist for the High Plains Book Award for creative nonfiction
“This is not the story of a ready-made farm, complete with generations of history, carefully tended tools and sturdy clapboard farmhouse.” In 2006 Jenna Butler and her partner, Thomas, purchased “160 acres more or less” of rough northern bush. They knew they weren’t purchasing anything more than hard work and hope but still they headed up every weekend to clear a spot in those woods where they could plant their first crops.
With the warm wit of Barbara Kingsolver and the stark beauty of Sharon Butala’s writings on the prairie, Jenna Butler shares her journey with us. From beating a hasty retreat from the first overwhelming swarm of mosquitoes, to discussing worm poop with local farmers and becoming forever more the crazy hippie teachers, the stories of Larch Farm spill out of these pages. A Profession of Hope: Farming on the edge of the Grizzly Trail is a beguiling read, as rich and promising as freshly turned earth.
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A Progressive Traditionalist
$45.00Winner of the Heritage Toronto Award
John M. Lyle (1872–1945) was an anomaly among architects: a Beaux-Arts classicist who nevertheless found much inspiration in modernism, allowing his own traditionalist practice to be affected in form and detail by a brave new emphasis on minimalism and indigenous influence. His early works, including countless legendary banks and residences, as well as the iconic Union Station and Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, are exemplary of Beaux-Arts classicism; his later bank designs in Halifax, Calgary and Toronto display a modernist shift and see him championing an idiosyncratic and authentic regional consciousness.
A Progressive Traditionalist traces this aesthetic trajectory through the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century, documenting Lyle’s training at Yale and in Paris, his early career in New York and his later successin Toronto, including his tireless efforts to raise the profile of the profession through teaching, writing, curating and lecturing, and his attempts to pave the way for a uniquely Canadian architecture.
‘A book on Lyle is long overdue. Glenn McArthur has given us an elegant and thoughtful publication which sets a new standard for documenting our architectural legacy.’
– Bruce Kuwabara, KPMB Architects
‘Most Canadian architects are simply architects who practice in Canada; but for John Lyle, being a Canadian architect meant practicing Canadian architecture in Canada. Glenn McArthur brings Lyle, brilliant designer and passionate cultural nationalist, vividly to life.’ – Christopher Hume
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A Pug Called Poppy
$14.95One day Poppy the Pug meets Smudge the Maine Coon cat at the park, and so begins an extraordinary friendship and a series of adventures ranging from a disastrous coffee-and-play group to a terrible house fire. These eight linked stories also introduce Poppy’s human companion Danielle, cheeky Jackson, Baby Gillian, the dog-hating Wenda, and the dreaded Psycho-Cat, proving that no matter what the situation, life is never dull when there’s a glossy black pug in the neighbourhood!
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A Quiet Night and a Perfect End
$17.95The days of which Denise Roig writes in A Quiet Night and a Perfect End are filled with Chinese-cooking lessons, wedding preparations, and day trips to the Laurentian mountains. They’re peopled by fundamentalist fishermen, mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, the kind of people who seek quiet nights and perfect ends to the turmoil of their long days and shaky beginnings. In short, these are stories about ordinary people’s extraordinary ability to cope with the unexpected tragedies, large and small, that befall everyone.
Roig takes her characters, and her readers, on Munro-like passages through miscarriages, infidelities, and disappointments through the motions of everyday life. It may be coping with the feeling of academic failure or coming to terms with the loss of a child who has died too young, an unexpected pregnancy or the intrusion of house guests who are no longer friends. What is uplifting, finally, is the achievement of forgiveness, the small, daily victories over despair. These are stories that remind us why our days and nights are so worth living.
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A Quiet Roar
$22.95Compelling and honest life of a stubborn BC rancher living tenaciously in the face of her Multiple Sclerosis condition. The devastating diagnosis of an incurable, debilitating disease does not ordinarily form the starting point of a triumphant story. This, however, is a triumphant story. Heidi Redl was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2004 and immediately chose to fight the disease with the only tools available to her: sheer stubbornness and courage.
Growing up on a pioneer ranch in the rough and dusty days of the late 1960s and the 1970s, Redl learned at a young age to be self-reliant and tenacious. Life as a rancher had given her the courage she would need to bravely and persistently fight back against this chronic disease that now affects 2.5 million people worldwide. But nothing in her previous experiences could fully prepare her to live with an equally tenacious enemy.
In A Quiet Roar, Redl shares the struggles and triumphs in her uphill battle with multiple sclerosis. To survive, Redl must first learn to trust and rely on other people for the help she would need in the new reality of her daily life. This compelling and honest memoir is a record of her struggle against the physical challenges of living with a progressive disease but also of the support and incredible friendships she found along the way. -
A Quilting of Scars
$26.95Filled with the pleasure of recognizable yet distinctively original characters and a deftly drawn sense of time and place, A Quilting of Scars brings to life a story of forbidden love, abuse and murder. Pulsing with repressed sexuality and guilt, Larkin Beattie reveals the many secrets he has kept hidden throughout his lonely life. The character-driven narrative is a meditation on aging and remorse, offering a rich account of the strictures and rhythms of farming in the not-so-distant past, highlighting the confines of a community where strict moral codes are imposed upon its members and fear of exposure terrifies queer youth. As Larkin reflects upon key events, his recollections include his anger at the hypocrisy of the church, and the deep grief and loneliness that have marked his path. There is a timelessness to this story which transcends the period and resonates with heart-breaking relevance.
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A Ragged Pen
$22.95A Ragged Pen brings to the page five essays on memory. First delivered in Vancouver in the spring of 2005, these talksby Robert Finley, Patrick Friesen, Aislinn Hunter, Anne Simpson and Jan Zwickyexamine the narrative challenges, lyric energy and questions of verity that surround the subject of memory in a creative context.
Finley’s essay searches out appropriate, genuine voices for memories. Comparing photo narrative projects, his own and a friend’s, he proposes a form of storytelling that incorporates both memory and creation, a dialogue that speaks to, rather than for, the past. Within the discussion of narrative Zwicky posits a distinction between lyric and narrative treatments of memories, what each accepts about and tries to do with what memory delivers, and whether a difference in the degree of verity is part of this distinction. Hunter picks up the thread of verity and examines the discrepancy between seeing and imagining, the notion of “real” and the power of memory, drawing on the work of Borges, Seamus Heaney and recent science that calls into question commonly held perceptions of truth. Friesen begins with a childhood memory he suspects may be an invention, and opens onto the role of longing in memory and in poetry, challenging the assumption of past experience in longing, arguing for a note of loss in every new experience, a longing for what has never been. Simpson uses a myth of longing, that of Orpheus and Eurydice, to dig beneath metaphor, bringing new ideas and influences to the role of metaphor in social interactions and artistic endeavours.
Together these essays make fascinating crossovers and offer fresh insight on memory and art. A Ragged Pen is a valuable new contribution to the study of poetics and narrative philosophy.
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A Ramshackle Home
$22.95Felicia Mihali writes: “I would like this novel to be read as a universal story about little girls born in small and poor villages around the world who are not as lucky as those born in big cities and in good families. These are girls who have to struggle to succeed, to fight their own complexes and their shame over not being more fortunate. For many of them their only escape is through the imagination.”