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Showing 5585–5600 of 9489 results
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Pollen
$18.95With wit and sensitivity, these tales portray moments of suffering, confusion and discovery. Also, the reader is introduced to a wide variety of worlds, worlds that reveal Abray’s deep understanding of how people engage with-and become obsessed by-activities such as Japanese kite-making, bees, daycare, alcohol, and motorcycle maintenance. How does the activity reveal the person? How does the problem? Abray’s stories push full-on into the world of obsessions. A new vacuum cleaner becomes a new pawn in a just-ended relationship. Riding-a-motorbike becomes the way brothers bond over their troubled relationship with their father. A wise naturalist takes the reader on a comic tour of an animal-filled mall, and a bee infestation in a kitchen forces three urban apartment-sharing youths to suddenly confront nature and their own changing relationship. Yes: in these stories, Tom Abray shows us how every human activity becomes a metaphor: for self-revelation, and for relationships that range from romantic to familial.
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Polly MacCauley’s Finest, Divinest, Wooliest Gift of All
$19.95From one of Canada’s most loved and lauded children’s writers comes a new tale about the joy of making things, the strength of community, and the warm reach of generosity. This beautifully illustrated storybook blends poetry and prose, infused with Fitch’s trademark wit and playfulness, to tell the story of Polly MacCauley, a bit of a mystery in her community of River John, who spends her time making wondrous things with wool. When Star, a very special lamb, is born on a nearby farm, Polly knows that with Star’s wool she can make her “finest, divinest, wooliest gift of all.” But the greedy Count and Countess of far-off Wooland have learned about the lamb’s arrival, too, and are determined to add her to their flock.
Will the good folk of River John join together to see that Star gets to her rightful home? Will Polly be able to finish her masterpiece? Darka Erdelji’s gorgeous illustrations have just the right amount of whimsy, perfectly capturing the spirit of Fitch’s touching yarn.
Divided into nine short sections, this is a grand book to share aloud, or read alone. It will appeal to children of all ages. And to knitters, weavers, spinners and the warm-hearted everywhere.
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Polly Perfect and the Tragic Fart
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Polyamorous Love Song
$23.00From interdisciplinary writer and performer Jacob Wren comes Polyamorous Love Song, a novel of intertwined narratives concerning the relationship between artists and the world. Shot through with unexpected moments of sex and violence, readers will become acquainted with a world that is at once the same and opposite from the one in which they live. With a diverse palette of vivid characters – from people who wear furry mascot costumes at all times, to a group of “New Filmmakers” that devises increasingly unexpected sexual scenarios with complete strangers, to a secret society that concocts a virus that only infects those on the political right – Wren’s avant-garde Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose) will appeal to readers with an interest in the visual arts, theatre, and performance of all types.
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Polychromasia
$20.95Polychromasia, as the word implies, metaphorically looks at the many hues of life as it is lived, especially in India. It takes on love, through confessional poems, the biosphere through the idea of geographical space over human time, patriarchy, class, and caste as it affects people, and the practice and appreciation of art.
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Pond and Beyond, The
$32.95Just beneath the water’s surface exists a fragile and delicate ecosystem, yet is a place often overlooked and taken for granted. The Pond and Beyond explores the tiny worlds right beneath our feet and the beautiful creatures that inhabit them. This sensitive and poignant book calls out our arrogance as the dominant species and the risks of continuing to ignore the complex environments and social systems thriving right alongside our own.
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Pond Memories
$17.00“Wildlife rehabilitators, or wildlife custodians, as we are now called in Ontario, often do not have the opportunity to monitor the lives of their wards once they have been released to the wild. Sometimes that may be just as well, as even youngsters raised by their natural mothers often do not survive the first year of their lives or, for that matter, the first few months.”So writes Lil Anderson, author of Pond Memories. Lil is well known in the Lake of the Woods area for her extensive wildlife rehabilitation work and in Pond Memories she recounts her experiences nurturing the creatures that people less skilled bring to her.Much of the action focuses on the antics of the menagerie in and around the pond on her property. (Originally dug for a young beaver named Eh.) Lil learns to cope with Brownie, a young bull moose who came to her half-drowned and suffering from pneumonia, and whose appetite for clay, squashed caterpillars, and rotting aquatic vegetation made Lil’s stomach curdle.Lil also raises a kit vixen fox, who one day happily leaves the makeshift den Lil had built, but not before retrieving a stuffed toy she slept with. And no tale of animal rehab would be complete with the appearance of a new beaver kit called Cameron.Readers will enjoy the heart-warming story of Lil’s life with creatures big and small, a life full of trials, triumphs, and heartbreak. This glimpse at the ways of Canadian wildlife reveals they are different from us, but not so much as we often imagine.
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Pontypool
$17.95In the sleepy town of Pontypool, Ontario, no one is safe from an epidemic so devastating it will leave you literally speechless.
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Pontypool Changes Everything
$19.95The compelling, terrifying story of a devastating virus. Have you ever imagined what it would be like to kill someone? Wondered, in your darkest secret thoughts, about the taste of human flesh? What if you woke up and began your morning by devoting the rest of your life to a murderous rampage, a never-ending cannibalistic spree? And what if you were only one of thousands who shared the same compulsion? Well, today’s your lucky day: in fact, by this afternoon, the predators will outnumber the prey.
Pontypool Changes Everything depicts just such an epidemic. It’s the compelling, terrifying story of a devastating virus. You catch it through conversation, and once it has you, it leads you on a strange journey — into another world where the undead chase you down the streets of the smallest towns and largest cities.
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Pools
$22.00“Anyone who wanted to be anybody in Vancouver had a pool by the summer of ’83.” Thus sets the scene for Pools, a novel that delves into themes of excess through the lens of the 1980s party culture.
At the close of an evening of cocktails and cocaine, sexual escapades, and ribald discourse, an unknown guest is found dead at the bottom of the hot tub. No one seems to know who the red-haired woman is, or how she ended up at the party. A few snippets of hazy memory provide the only details of her identity. Beyond that, she is a mystery.
Denis, the protagonist, grapples with his estranged relationship with his wife, Julie, who is in LA, while interacting with a colourful cast of characters, including various acquaintances and partygoers. Drug use, sexual experimentation, and social dynamics play key roles throughout the novel, reflecting the hedonistic yet empty lifestyle of many of the characters.
As the plot unfolds, Denis faces moral dilemmas and confrontations that stem from the drowning incident and the subsequent reactions of those involved. Loyalties are tested, and the implications of the characters’ actions are examined against the backdrop of a decaying social fabric.
Shot through with irony and black humour, Pools weaves a rich tapestry of human experience, illustrating the often tragicomic elements of this thing we call life. -
Poor Clare, The
$16.95Set in Victorian England, Gaskell’s gothic masterpiece weaves the tale of a lonely old woman whose curse upon the murderer of her cherished dog unleashes unintended consequences. The impulse of revenge is turned to contrition after the discovery of an unexpected connection between her and the accursed. Through Ireland to Yorkshire and finally London, a young lawyer discovers a beautiful young woman mysteriously followed by her own demonic doppelganger, and sets out to learn if the curse can be broken.
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POP
$21.95Softening concrete poetry with humour and tenderness, POP takes an uncommon perspective on modern poetic traditions, combining deft lyricism with visual poems for a playful romp.
POP rummages through the stale Cheetos after the love poem: what remains? What never existed to begin with? The book invites the reader to journey both forward and backward in time, to retrace steps, solve word searches, hold pages to the light. POP delineates the intensities of a volatile relationship through a variety of lenses. As the speaker tries to anchor her experience, she is met with a clamour of perspectives: it is a junk food fight of poetic styles, each line fried and seasoned using recipes passed down for generations; it is a sad clown’s skincare routine; it is a singalong, a cartoonish cacophony of pots and puns. The speaker shakes the love poem for all it’s worth, leaving behind a trail of lint, wrappers, fibs, and soap foam, but opening up enough space to move in herself.
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Popcorn Elder
$15.95Darren, newly on parole from prison, has been ordered by the court to live with his father on the rez. Wally and Darren have always had a contentious relationship: Wally is a problem drinker, and Darren’s got a short fuse. But Wally tells his son that he’s changed, has stopped drinking and started going to ceremony, and he urges Darren to do the same. As old family secrets start to be revealed, the father and son grapple with complex issues.
Popcorn Elder examines the problem of “plastic shamans” who offer spirituality at a price. It looks at a community working to face its demons and heal past trauma. And at the heart of the play is the story of a father and son, filled with anger, guilt, and pain, seeking connection and reconciliation.
Through flashbacks, a combination of Cree and English, and an unforgettable cast of characters, Popcorn Elder tells the story of one family’s journey toward hope.
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Popular Narratives
$15.95This book of prose poems strips down the codes and conventions that make up our society’s “popular narratives.” A revealing and witty, exploded view of our culture.
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Porcupines and China Dolls
$24.95“A terrific book that deals with present day concerns.”?Thomas King, Governor General’s Award?wining author of The Back of the Turtle and The Inconvenient Indian
?To understand this story, it is important to know the People and where they came from and what they went through.? So begins a haunting story that explores with frank and honest words the dark legacy of the residential school system and its impact on individuals, families and communities.
James Nathan and Jake Noland have been best friends for life. After finishing mission school they return to their Gwich?in community in the Northwest Territories. Their lives revolve around bootleggers, the bar, drug abuse and meaningless sex. James and Jake try to dull their painful memories of the school. Each hides a dark secret that fuels his nightmares. Enough alcohol silences the demons for a night; a gun and a single bullet silences demons forever. When a friend commits suicide and a former priest appears on television, the community is shattered. James and Jake confront their childhood abuse and break the silence to begin a journey of healing and rediscovery.
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Porcupines, Politicians and Plato
$12.95These wildly funny articles, observations of life in the tiny village of Nazko in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, were first published in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer. Just about everyone in the Cariboo started out as babies when they were quite young, which gives Kishkan a lot of material right there. The other subjects of these real-life stories range from thieving packrats, to provincial bureaucrats, to American hunters in fluorescent orange, to fishing yarns, with a bit of homespun philosophy thrown in.