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Showing 5409–5424 of 9481 results
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Past Imperfect, Present Tense
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Past Lives
$29.95A companion anthology to Canadian Performance Histories and Historiographies, Past Lives: Performing Canada’s Histories brings together plays that not only stage moments in Canada’s past but also act historiographically, generating new histories for the present moments at which they were written and performed.
This anthology represents a wide range of literary and performance practices—ranging from poetic tragedy, to radio drama, to Indigenous satire—and, because of its broad generic and historical scope, also serves as an excellent survey of Canadian dramatic literature from Confederation to the present.
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Past Perfect
$15.95In Albertine in Five Times, Michel Tremblay portrayed one of his most unforgettable characters during five decades of her life, beginning in her thirties. Now, in Past Perfect, we meet Albertine at twenty and discover the dark secret of her being. Still reeling from the heartbreak that plunged her into a nervous breakdown, Albertine sets out to re-conquer the beau she has lost to her younger sister. On this fated Thursday evening, will she find the strength to survive the crisis that grips her very essence in this dark night of her soul? Or will she spend the rest of her days foundering in an endless rage that could extinguish all hope of love ever lighting up her life?
In the eyes of her mother, Victoire, her brother, Édouard, and her sister, Madeleine, Albertine is a soul on fire that devours everything she touches. But in her own eyes, Albertine is sensitive, selfless, and devoted to the objects of her desires. In this extremity of contradiction between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us, Tremblay stages the agony of the imagination in chains, the tragedy of an understanding of the imagination as a way to the “truth,” rather than as a path to understanding. Caught in this dilemma, Albertine, who has cast herself as a sacrificial lamb, a victim of destiny, the queen of unhappiness, descends into a hell of lucidity as she confronts Alex, the great hope and passion of her youth.
Cast of three women and two men.
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Pastels are Pretty Much the Polar Opposite of Chalk
$16.95Pastels Are Pretty Much The Polar Opposite of Chalk is about the syntax of distinction, unlikely comparison, and the colorful drama that comes with choosing between actions, people, and things. Scenarios of rupture are set in shopping lines, bedrooms, tawdry boardwalks, train stations, and hospitals, as tinsel rains down slowly in the background. Nathaniel G. Moore’s poetry bears witness to staged altercations between previously unimagined oppositions, and asks the strangest questions: Do I like pretzels? What kind of pretzels do I prefer? How do I feel? Would I rather watch a car chase or be in one? What is Golden Flint? Do they sell that at the grocery store? Have I told you the story of when I fell in love with you? Like a sensitive psycho surrealist, Moore provides answers to all the questions in his wonderfully wrought and affecting poetic riddles.
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Pastimes
$19.95A collection of wry and wonderful diary comics that capture modern life in all its cringe-inducing glory!
Social worker in a hospital by day, internationally-acclaimed cartoonist by night, Pascal Girard (Petty Theft) seems to be a magnet for awkward situations. Why can’t he manage to walk his dog, hit the gym, or even push a shopping cart down the grocery aisle without having yet another weird encounter? Or, just maybe, is he the one who provokes them? Even with those closest to him, Pascal has a knack for getting into trouble, especially when his young daughter Lucie starts to ask him profound questions about life, death, and the universe that he doesn’t quite know how to answer.
From encounters with would-be swingers at the dog park to ferocious felines at the local cat cafe, in these short, snappy comic strips Pascal Girard delivers snippets inspired by his daily life, with a bittersweet humor that’s sometimes mocking, sometimes tender, but always deeply observant. Pastimes is a funny and surprisingly moving portrait of passing time in the modern world, one comic at a time.
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Pastoral
$17.95André Alexis brings a modern sensibility and a new liveliness to an age-old genre, the pastoral.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS’ TRUST OF CANADA FICTION PRIZE
ONE OF THE GLOBE AND MAIL‘S GLOBE 100: BEST BOOKS OF 2014
There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant’s second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whomthey would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs. Young, for instance, after she had watched him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery.
For his very first parish, Father Christopher Pennant is sent to the sleepy town of Barrow. With more sheep than people, it is sleepily bucolic – toomuch Barrow Brew on Barrow Day is the rowdiest it gets. But things aren’t so idyllic for Liz Denny, whose fiancé; doesn’t want to choose between Liz and his more worldly lover Jane, or for Father Pennant himself, whose faith is profoundly shaken by the miracles he witnesses – a mayor walking on water, intelligent gypsy moths and a talking sheep.
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Pastoral Madness
$7.00In Pastoral Madness, Ed Upward takes a mirror and holds it up to his life and to the landscape.
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Pathologies
$23.95In these fifteen searingly honest personal essays, debut author Susan Olding takes us on an unforgettable journey into the complex heart of being human. Each essay dissects an aspect of Olding’s life experience—from her vexed relationship with her father to her tricky dealings with her female peers; from her work as a counsellor and teacher to her persistent desire, despite struggles with infertility, to have children of her own. In a suite of essays forming the emotional climax of the book, Olding bravely recounts the adoption of her daughter, Maia, from an orphanage in China, and tells us the story of Maia’s difficult adaptation to the unfamiliar state of being loved.
Written with as much lyricism, detail, and artfulness as the best short stories, the essays in Pathologies provide all the pleasures of fiction combined with the enrichment derived from the careful presentation of fact. Susan Olding is indisputably one of Canada’s finest new writers, one who has taken the challenging, much-underused form of the literary essay and made it her own.
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Paths to the Stars
$19.95From Edward Willett, Aurora Award-winning author of Marseguro, The Cityborn, and Worldshaper (DAW Books), among many others, comes twenty-two tales of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, drawn from a long career of telling fantastic tales.
A young musician dreams of playing his songs among the stars . . . A Broadway performer on the lam is forced to direct aliens in The Sound of Music . . . Strange vegetables with dangerous properties crop up in small-town Saskatchewan. . . . A man with a dark secret gets his comeuppance on a windy night on the prairie . . . An elderly caretaker on the Moon preserves the memory of the millions who died on Earth’s darkest day . . . A woman and a bat-like alien must overcome their own prejudices to prevent an interstellar war.
From the far future and the farthest reaches of space to the Canadian prairie, from our world to worlds that have never existed to world’s that might some day rich realms of imagination and the fascinating characters and creatures that populate them await within these stories, some previously published, some seeing print for the first time.
Time to go exploring . . .
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Patrick and the Backhoe
$15.95Beautifully illustrated by BC folk hero Bus Griffiths who wrote and illustrated the popular comic book Now You’re Logging, Patrick and the Backhoe is a classic story of decency and guts triumphing over arrogance and greed.Patrick lives in a little town on the side of a high mountain. Patrick’s mother and father own the town bookstore, and his brother Simon is a bookworm. Patrick can’t concentrate on books. The only book he likes is Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.Although no great scholar, Patrick does have a talent with levers and knobs and switches. He likes to take things apart and climb up on things. “Once when he was quite small he learned how to make the door of the car work when Dad was driving, and he fell out on his noggin.”Patrick has a special friendship with his Grampa who operates an old backhoe which Patrick loves “because it has more levers and knobs and buttons on it than anything in the world.” Occasionally, Patrick is allowed to ride on the backhoe with Grampa.One day it begins to rain and doesn’t stop. “The creek rose higher and surged under the bridge. Then a big boulder came loose and rolled down the hill, plugging the hole under the bridge. The raging waters of Cypress Creek backed up and began to wash away the land on which the town was built.” The only thing that can move that boulder is Grampa’s backhoe and when Grampa gets stuck under the bridge it’s up to Patrick to save the town.
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Patriots, Traitors and Empires
$24.95Patriots, Traitors and Empires is an account of modern Korean history, written from the point of view of those who fought to free their country from the domination of foreign empires. It traces the history of Korea’s struggle for freedom from opposition to Japanese colonialism starting in 1905 to North Korea’s current efforts to deter the threat of invasion by the United States or anybody else by having nuclear weapons. Koreans have been fighting a civil war since 1932, when Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with other Korean patriots, launched a guerrilla war against Japanese colonial domination. Other Koreans, traitors to the cause of Korea’s freedom, including a future South Korean president, joined the side of Japan’s Empire, becoming officers in the Japanese army or enlisting in the hated colonial police force. From early in the 20th century when Japan incorporated Korea into its burgeoning empire, Koreans have struggled against foreign domination, first by Japan then by the United States. Patriots, Traitors and Empires, The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom is a much-needed antidote to the jingoist clamor spewing from all quarters whenever Korea is discussed. -
Patternicity
$17.95Patternicity contains a suite of poems that won a 2008 CBC Literary Award and follows the author’s debut book of poems, The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008). As a physiologist currently completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, Johnstone’s work is informed by a scientific approach, his own corporeal environment and an exploration of “the unreliability of language, regardless of how it’s relayed.”
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Patterson House
$22.95Tainted by the suicide of her long dead and scandal plagued grandfather, Alden Patterson wants two things: to regain what she sees as her rightful place in Toronto society and to do so without succumbing to the traditional role of wife and mother. But escaping such roles is almost impossible for a woman in 1916 and the history of the Patterson family and Patterson House haunts her. On the day she imagines her most ambitious plans will come to fruition, Alden unexpectedly becomes guardian to a foundling, Constance. Alden’s dreams are further dashed when her father dies in the Spanish Flu epidemic and she learns that the family money is gone. Aided by a former member of the household staff and returning veteran, the horribly disfigured John Hunt, Alden takes in boarders to support this unlikely trio. When a mysterious new boarder, Carling Grant, arrives, Alden thinks he will save her, but his presence, the divisions he creates, and the secret he reveals puts everything Alden has at risk–her house, her identity, John Hunt, and even Constance.
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Paul Bley
$17.95Arrigo Cappelletti retraces the life one of the most complex and mysterious personalities in the history of jazz. Paul Bley, born in Montreal in 1932, is one of the most important exponents of jazz of the last 50 years. He occupies, among the pantheon of jazz giants, an eccentric and aristocratic position, a reflection of a restless spirit, free and anarchic. An advocate of improvisation, he has always favored free jazz.Bley honed his talent in the bands of Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young and Sonny Rollins. He played with jazz icons such as Keith Jarrett, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman and Carla Bley.
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Paul Driessen: My Life in Cartoons
$24.95PAUL DRIESSEN was born in 1940, just before The Netherlands were invaded by Nazi Germany and his family lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland.
Growing up with parents who were arts and culture advocates, Driessen was surrounded by music, literature, and theatre.
In 1967 he moved to London to work on the animated Beatles feature The Yellow Submarine. From its Canadian director, George Dunning, he discovered the National Film Board of Canada, an organisation known for its inventive animated shorts.
An award-winning director/animator/cartoonist who is the recipient of more than 50 prizes, Driessen has created some of the most acclaimed animated films and books, including an Academy Award nomination for 3 Misses and lifetime achievement awards at both the Ottawa and Zagreb animation festivals. He is recognized worldwide as one of the greatest animators and cartoonists.
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Paul is Dead
$19.95Under the sway of a charismatic stranger, five friends at an isolated lakeside cottage find their idyll unravelling, leaving two of them — Lydia Eadon and Dorian Grant — trapped in an explosion of violence that shatters their young lives and propels them past the borders of conventional morality. Forty years later when a body is unearthed from the scene of their revels, Lydia — a book editor in San Francisco — and Dorian — a vagabond actor — are plunged into a terrible reckoning with the past. Like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, this is a chronicle of duplicity and collusion, of innocence corrupted, and of the terrible power of guilt.