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“A bitingly funny whodunit.” — Maclean’s
Arthur P. Besterman, criminal lawyer and reformed alcoholic, was the first to go. Counsel to Vancouver’s assorted shifters and grifters, Besterman almost always lost his cases. But a recent victory defending a low-life client might be a clue as to why he was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Then when someone takes a pot shot at philandering lawyer Brian Pomeroy after he successfully defended a group of controversial eco- terrorists, people start to take notice. All of a sudden, lawyers whose clients are less than savoury start second- guessing the ethics of their profession, and going to court becomes a possible bloodsport.
Exploring ecology, art, activism and historiography, Tom Cull writes of his relationships with family and place, pursuing the imperfect program of recollecting and reconstructing the idea of ‘home’ while resisting nostalgia’s dubious erasures. Frank, unabashed, the poems lean into these entanglements with humour and sincerity, chronicling the writer’s vulnerability as a hinge-point in time—between being a son to a father and a father to a son; between a history that can’t be changed and a future that might be.
WINNER OF THE 75th GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 25th TRILLIUM BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF AN ALCUIN AWARD FOR DESIGN
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE
These are poems of critical thought that have been influenced by old fiddle tunes. These are essays that are not out to persuade so much as ruminate, invite, accrue.
Hall is a surruralist (rural & surreal), and a terroir-ist (township-specific regionalist). He offers memories of, and homages to — Margaret Laurence, Bronwen Wallace, Libby Scheier, and Daniel Jones, among others. He writes of the embarrassing process of becoming a poet, and of his push-pull relationship with the whole concept of home. His notorious 2004 chapbook essay The Bad Sequence is also included here, for a wider readership, at last. It has been revised. (It’s teeth have been sharpened.)
In this book, the line is the unit of composition; the reading is wide; the perspective personal: each take a give, and logic a drawback.
Language is not a smart-aleck; it’s a sacred tinkerer.
Readers are invited to watch awe become a we.
In Fred Wah’s phrase, what is offered here is “the music at the heart of thinking.”
When Vancouver psychiatric social worker Chris Ryder spots an abandoned cell phone during his afternoon jog, the innocent discovery drags him into the psychotic games of Ray Owens, a former patient at the centre of a high-profile kidnapping and murder case. Now, if Ryder is to survive, he must examine the darkness in his own soul as he walks the killer trail.
Shortlisted for the 2013 Debut Dagger Award by the Crime Writers Association, D.B. Carew’s first novel is a gripping thriller that approaches crime with a clinical precision.
If you could travel to any place and time in history, what would you do? For Isabel, Suresh, and Nathan, three teenagers in Ms Sullivan’s high school English class, the answer is: 1613 when Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned down. Nathan intends to ensure that all of Shakespeare’s plays burn down with it, so students will never have to study Shakespeare again. When they land in 1592, losing their time travel device during the journey, they are stranded in Elizabethan London with no return in sight. Now they must grow and adapt to survive, or die. In the process, they reckon with historical figures such as Francis Drake, John Dee, Walter Raleigh, and a young up-and-coming Shakespeare. Filled with intrigue and the volatile history of its time, Killing Shakespeare is a fantasy that examines life, love, literacy, and their importance to us.
Four travelers take refuge from a Huron County blizzard in the secluded farmhouse of Gerald Goldie, retired Latin teacher. All four of the strangers have some things in commonÑa working knowledge of Latin, a serious distaste for their host, and a growing animosity for each other. As ominous Latin phrases begin to appear on the walls, it becomes clear that someone has murder in mind. And as the body count rises, our stranded guests are forced to choose between certain death in the blizzardÑor tempting the Fates by remaining in a house of terror.
An unflinching reimagining of Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing for young adultsWritten specifically for young adults, reluctant readers, and literacy learners, Killing the Wittigo explains the traumatic effects of colonization on Indigenous people and communities and how trauma alters an individual’s brain, body, and behavior. It explores how learned patterns of behavior — the ways people adapt to trauma to survive — are passed down within family systems, thereby affecting the functioning of entire communities. The book foregrounds Indigenous resilience through song lyrics and as-told-to stories by young people who have started their own journeys of decolonization, healing, and change. It also details the transformative work being done in urban and on-reserve communities through community-led projects and Indigenous-run institutions and community agencies. These stories offer concrete examples of the ways in which Indigenous peoples and communities are capable of healing in small and big ways — and they challenge readers to consider what the dominant society must do to create systemic change. Full of bold graphics and illustration, Killing the Wittigo is a much-needed resource for Indigenous kids and the people who love them and work with them.
In a Catholic high school in Scarborough, Ontario, amidst low-income housing, difficult race relations, and poverty, a young woman struggles to find her sexual identity. In this sincere portrayal of high-school kids pitting the voice of God and thousands of years of scripture against the voice of their own bodies, Kilt Pins cheekily asks “Is your kilt pin up or down?”
Kilworthy Tanner
Tessa, Damon, and Keegan share the same band class and the same passion: their pets. When Tessa loses her beloved dog Joey, the event challenges and transforms not only the three children, but the adults in their lives as well.
Heartwarming and humorous, Kindness sensitively captures the reality of children’s feelings as they navigate the small and large events in their world. From Hurricane Katrina to everyday encounters in the school hallway, the play offers an unforgettable lesson in compassion.
Hoping to erase her unhappy old life, Hazel jumps in her beat-up old car and speeds away. When she pulls up to the Evening and Morning Star Trailer Park, where nothing turns into even more of nothing, she decides it just might be the new life she’s looking for.
At the centre of this new life is King, a motorcycle-riding, hard-drinking, guitar-playing kind of guy. Hazel loves him to death. He spends his days fixing cars, while Hazel spends hers working at the town’s thrift shop. Evenings they spend with Spiney and Sissy, playing cards or drinking at Old Joe’s. It’s a clear kind of life, pure as water in the old quarry.
As Hazel settles into the trailer park, she begins to settle into her new life too. She covers the trailer’s yard with wildflowers. She makes new friends, like Egbert (Egg), who helps her create elaborate tableaux in the thrift-shop window. She may even learn how to cook.
But when King’s repeated brushes with the law bring him a spell in jail, things begin, slowly and surely, to unravel. Maybe Hazel hasn’t outrun herself after all, maybe year-round Christmas lights and thrift-shop glamour can’t outshine honesty, and maybe Hazel can’t make her world perfect by willing it so.
Fun and sad and true, King feels like a slumber party: just you and your best friend in sleeping bags whispering through the long night. And when you wake up in the morning, you’ll blink, shake your head, and for a second, just a second, the world will seem like a more magical place.
Jerry King tries to be as inept as possible in his role as a professor, but his inability to get anything done only makes him more appealing to his higher-ups.
Hartley Addison is probably the nicest guy in Port DEspere, Ontario. Everybody loves him, even when they disagree with him. He’s never officially run for mayor of his small lakeside town but he keeps getting elected anyway. The town has been a major environmental dumpsite for decades and most of his constituents prefer to look the other way and accept the government line: There is no problem. At home, his wife is slowly disappearing before his eyes, and the young reporter hes taken under his wing is out on the lake every night doing something downright mysterious. When the media circus comes to town chasing a runaway story about Boyd Banta, an escapee from the local poultry plant, Hart wants to believe that help has arrived at last. Will he finally get some much-needed national attention and possibly a little justice for his contrary citizenry, whether they want it or not? King of Hope brings Southern Ontario Gothic with an environmental twist, through the lens of a small town that’s been facing radical environmental uncertainty for generations.
Eve and Manny are engaged in post-civil war Israel. Eve studies at the Hebrew University for Jewish Renewal, an island of militant secularism in the religiously-run Shalem State, while Manny is an unemployed graduate student with a secret: he is falling in love with his religious roots and turning his back on modern moral relativism. As their wedding date approaches, Manny deserts Eve, then devastates her a second time with the revelation that he has pre-empted their wedding with a marriage to a new lifestyle. In the midst of this betrayal, Eve collides with a pre-soul who has had his out-of-this-world eyes on her all along. The collision leaves Eve with a choice: reconcile with Manny or else condemn a soul to never living.
Now, more than a decade later, the couple live with their three children off the Tel Aviv Coast on the manmade Yovel Islands. But Eve’s uncanny encounter has left a mark and she now has her own secret, one that may save her only son’s life, or else tear her family apart. King of the Class is a futuristic satire on the toxic brew of religion and politics in modern Israel, poking a playful finger at parental gold-digging and technological dependence.