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Showing 5057–5072 of 9489 results
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Nondescript Rambunctious
$20.00Winner, Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University’s First Book Competition
Nondescript Rambunctious is a genre-busting thriller with a beating, human heart. More than a simple story of a killer and his victims, the novel takes the reader into the life of a family, the days of a community, and the very real possibility that evil is everywhere – maybe even inside us. Woven through this dark tapestry are the glittering threads of humanity, humour, and in the form of one young woman, the promise of redemption.
Like a sinister dream, Nondescript Rambunctious pulls you in and doesn’t let go. There is no easy way out.
Praise for Nondescript Rambunctious:
“Jackie Bateman’s debut novel is very impressive. The writing is taut, controlled, and relentless. Nondescript Rambunctious is a dark, murderous thriller, a winner with a variety of narrators, surprising turns and shifts, and some hard, hard corners.” (Mark Anthony Jarman, author of My White Planet and 19 Knives)
“… Nondescript Rambunctious, for which Jackie Bateman won the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University’s First Book Competition in the fiction category, is a thriller that succeeds by nodding politely to the formula, then turning it on its head. The novel has four narrators, but Bateman weaves their voices together effortlessly, and the build-up retains all the suspense and intensity one expects from a crime thriller. … Bateman hasn’t imagined a world of dogged cops, rumpled detectives, or amateur sleuths. Nondescript Rambunctious is about the heartbreaking consequences of human depravity, not tying up loose ends or piecing together clues. It wouldn’t be wrong to label this novel a thriller, but it also confounds the expectations of that label, to great effect.” (Quill & Quire)
“Vancouver’s Jackie Bateman draws on her Scottish roots for a bewitching first novel that transforms from gentle domestic comedy into gripping suspense. … it’s a real page-turner, and Bateman takes it to a surprising and satisfying conclusion.” (Prairie Fire)
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NonZero Definitions
$16.95The 19th-century German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann’s ideas had a profound effect on the development of modern theoretical physics and provided the concepts and methods used later in Einstein’s relativity theory and Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle.” Riemann is popularly known for his challenge of Euclidean geometry’s axiomatic (“given” or “natural”) presumption of space, hinging on the question of the value of zero. In the simplest possible terms, in this realm of theoretical physics and mathematics, zero represents not the absence of something in and for itself, but only the potentiality of some thing existing in relation to some other thing. This means that what is “known” or “perceived” by any observer can only ever be defined by and through that act of perception, and not by its absence, which can never be experienced but can only ever be postulated. Thus everything we can communicate about the known world consists entirely of a cascade of perpetually unfolding “non zero definitions.”
Fiction writers such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, and poets such as William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley have applied these theories from the physical sciences to their acts of writing, but the pyrotechnics of their progressive narrative deconstructions and reconstructions have remained muted by a lingering textual self-awareness. Not until the work of Gil McElroy’s clearly present mentor, bpNichol, did the language of poetics emerge into the light of the purely formalist and luminous “definitions” of things and their movements in which McElroy excels so brilliantly. In the poems of McElroy’s NonZero Definitions, things can never cease to be; they only can, and do, gloriously engage in the ceaseless metamorphosis of replication in all of their luminous present and endlessly unfolding possibilities.
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Norman Levine and His Works
$9.95These studies of Canadian authors fulfill a real need in the study of Canadian literature. Each monograph is a separately bound study of about 55 pages. Each 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.
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North
$13.95This latest volume of Cecelia Frey’s poems published by Bayeux Arts contains some of her best poetry, with startling and exquisite imagery, mixing memory and loss, joy and its transience.
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North Coast Collected
$12.95These articles, stories and poems are selected from ten years’ worth of work by the Prince Rupert Writers’ Group. Some of the contributors have since moved away from Prince Rupert; others are as deeply rooted in the North Coast as lily pads in a creek bed; still others roam. The contributions to this anthology come from as far away as the Queen Charlottes and the Bulkley Valley. But all members of the group were at one time or another profoundly affected in their life and in their writing by their experiences in the magical North Coast region. And all write from the edge – small, isolated northern communities, where experience is unique, but universal. Contributors include Joan Skogan, Ken Campbell, Jean Rysstad, Andrew Wreggitt, George Stanley, Dorothy Spiller and Nancy Robertson.
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North East
$17.95In North East, Wendy McGrath expands on the story she began with Santa Rosa, as a working class couple living in 1960s Edmonton drift further apart while their young daughter tries to understand something she senses is hiding under the surface of her family and her neighbourhood. A visit to her grandparents’ farm in the country reveals the abject poverty the couple came to the city to escape, and the internecine marital strife that threatens to be born anew.
McGrath’s crystalline, evocative prose conjures an image of the past that defies nostalgia, conjuring images of a city that is in the midst of rewriting its own history. Through the all-seeing eyes of her child protagonist McGrath conjures indelible scenes of harsh domesticity and small victories, of endless summertime days spent around the home and evenings at the drive-in theatre.
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North of Familiar
$24.95In 1974, Terry Milos moved to rural northern Canada, to pursue her dream of homesteading. Following the seventies trend of the back-to-landers, she and her partner left the city life for what they imagined would be a simpler existence. Sometimes humorous and often insightful, North of Familiar is the story of a woman who learned to hunt, fish, and live off the land in what most would consider an utterly hostile and unbelievably cold environment.
After a few months of cobbling together a living, Terry reluctantly leaves the north to further her education but with a dream of returning as a teacher. A year later Terry accepts a job in the small town of Atlin where she grows to expect the unexpected. Terry’s adventures in the north push her beyond the familiar as she tries to apply her street savvy skills to negotiate a desolate mountain trail, or mush her dogs to school when the deep cold renders her car useless. But there are also times when unfamiliar becomes pure fear, such as when the pilot of a bush plane on which she is the only passenger falls asleep, sending the plane on a downward descent, or when a strange man is repeatedly seen lurking in the woods by Terry’s cabin after a trapper mysteriously goes missing.
North of Familiar is about coming to grips with life in the bush far away from the luxuries of the city. In Carcross, Carmacks, Dawson City and Old Crow, Terry navigates the cultural differences between her urban upbringing and the communities of Canada’s Indigenous north. In spite of the harsh country, Terry survives and thrives, while raising a family and becoming a part of a strong and unique community. This story is not only entertaining and inspiring, it is also a story of joy, friendship, and change.
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North of Here
$19.95Donna and Raymond would be the first to admit their 25-year union wasn’t perfect. But despite all its various blemishes, their life together works, or at least it did until, one frigid November night, in a field just a few miles from their home, one reckless act throws their lives into a tailspin. Donna is willing to follow a winding path to peace, and turns to her friends and community for help. Raymond, on the other hand, takes a more bare-knuckled approach to life, and believes he’ll solve his own problems, one punch or elbow at a time. North of Here is a story of courtship, marriage, grief, joy, and a skewed hope for the future.
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North of Middle Island
$17.95Journey to the southernmost tip of the territories held by Canada. North of Middle Island opens with a collection of individual poems that
capture the spirit of the relatively isolated, sparsely populated community of
Pelee Island. The pieces explore contemporary Indigenous experience in the
natural and built environments of the island and surrounding waters. The book concludes with an epic, “rarely true” narrative of modern-day warriors, told in traditional Anglo-Saxon style—a new Lenape myth of how Deerwoman (Ahtuhxkwe) comes to Pelee Island. The events of this epic tale are loosely based on the infamous professional wrestler and actor Rowdy Roddy Piper’s time on the island and Wrestlemania XII, Piper’s notorious “Backlot Brawl” with fellow wrestler Goldust (Nkuli Punkw). Follow acclaimed Moravian of the Thames First Nation poet D.A. Lockhart on this lyrical, epic journey into the unique culture and landscapes that lie just North of Middle Island.
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Northern Exposures
$50.00In Northern Exposures we have attempted to represent the sentiment of life in this “true north strong and free.” These photographs will take you on a journey to where there are no boundaries. Place yourself into the gleaming sunset, frosty twilight, onto the graceful dance of the water, or into the silent forest where the young doe forages. Imagine you are the explorer, taking in the sights and sounds of the boreal forest, Canadian Shield, and the wildlife in this place of wonder.
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Northern Girls
$18.95“What goes on in this house stays in this house.” That was the rule when author Michelle Willms was growing up, and she abided out of loyalty — until now. In the care of a single, working mother who uses alcohol to quiet her childhood memories, Michelle and her siblings are often left without a responsible parental figure to care for them, and more often than not find themselves alone or in danger. They learn to appease, negotiate with, or physically fight off the abusive men who track through their home. Their mother?s absence sends a clear message: You can count on each other as siblings for protection and you can count on the family cat for comfort, but you cannot count on me.
Brave, engaging and electric, Northern Girls is a collection of true stories about the fractured legacy of growing up in rural northern Ontario. Exploring themes of generational trauma, parental addictions, and domestic violence, Willms confronts a past replete with both fragility and resilience.
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northern wild roses / deth interrupts th dansing
$17.95A pioneer of sound, visual and performance poetry—eschewing the artificial hierarchies of meaning and the privileging of things (“proper” nouns) over actions imposed on language by capital letters; the metric limitations imposed on the possibilities of expression by punctuation; and the illusion of formal transparency imposed on the written word by standard (rather than phonetic) spelling—bissett composes his poems as scripts for pure performance.
His primal rejection of all the limiting conventions of written language has allowed him to both maintain and foreground the appearance of any linguistic event as a living performance rather than backgrounding it(s breath [spirit]) as a “dead letter” in all of his work.
Here, bissett reminds us (based on the latest neurological research) that:
langwage centrs ar all ovr th brain
northern wild roses dansing can stall deth postal parts uv speech arts uv each sylabul a liter sentens thn thot wud happn
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Northern Wildflower
$23.00Northern Wildflower is the beautifully written and powerful memoir of Catherine Lafferty. With startling honesty and a distinct voice, Lafferty tells her story of being a Dene woman growing up in Canada’s North and her struggles with intergenerational trauma, discrimination, poverty, addiction, love, and loss. Focusing on the importance of family ties, education, spiritualism, cultural identity, health, happiness, and the courage to speak the truth, Lafferty’s words bring cultural awareness and relativity to Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike, giving insight into the real issues many Indigenous women face and dispelling misconceptions about what life in the North is like.
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Nostos
$21.95i came from the sea / first on fins then on fours
Taking its title from Ancient Greek, Tracy Wai de Boer’s Nostos is a hero’s journey rooted in the quest for selfhood from elemental beginnings to an unknowable end. “Nostos” translates to homecoming and is one of the root words of nostalgia; the other, “algos,” means pain, making nostalgia a painful return home. This etymology acts as guide for de Boer’s “i” when she imagines homecoming as less a moment of arrival and more about desire to move through pain and mystery in the formation of self. Nostos is an essential debut from one of Canada’s fastest rising poets.
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Nosy White Woman
$19.95A daughter explains to her mother why calling the police isn’t always a sound idea. A dad tries to understand how his influence over his children persists in their adulthood. A caretaking group of sisters must rely on each other, but one has a fierce drinking problem. Throughout Nosy White Woman, ordinary people, caught in the passing moments of their daily lives, confront the reality that the quiet societies they thought they knew aren’t really so simple after all, the morals not always obvious. In these sixteen stories, Martha Wilson turns a clear-eyed yet compassionate gaze on everyday experience, from rattled family discussions, to self-examination of body and voice, to increasingly present anxieties about the end of the world, stripping each one down with precision and sardonic wit to reveal surprising truths: that individual lives always intersect with the political, and that our small gestures and personal habits reverberate in the larger world of which we can’t help being citizens.
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Not All Dragons
$24.00What is it that you are, Rhys?
In a land of magic and myth, Rhys awakens on the shore of Lanilia with mysterious wounds on his back and no memory of his life before. Disoriented, he stumbles on the Mernese estuary protected by the mermaid Delia, who is quickly intrigued by this male who doesn’t smell like any Lanilian she’s ever met and who is unable to answer questions about himself. Determined to figure out his past, Rhys convinces Delia to help, and begins a dangerous journey to discover who he is, or was, and who he might become as they hunt for the truth beneath story and prophecy.
David Ly brings readers a fascinating and fresh take on dragons and destiny in this captivating debut novel.