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Showing 577–592 of 9248 results
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Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow
$17.00In Jason Heroux’s disquieting third novel, Owen lives an enjoyable suburban life with his wife, Lila, until a knock at the door brings him face-to-face with a past he didn’t know he had. The sudden revelation forces him to reconsider where he’s from, what he is, and where he’s going. Owen finds himself on a non-stop rollercoaster ride of awareness and doubt, hurtling through the days and nights of an ordinary world with extraordinary highs and lows. Filled with flammable reality, stuffed with a dream-soaked rag, then ignited and tossed at the here and now, Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow is a spirited, thoughtful novel that challenges our relationship with our society, our cosmos, and ourselves.
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An Almost Perfect Thing
$16.95Greg is a once-respected journalist searching for a high-profile story that will help revive his career. Chloe is the missing girl he wrote about six years earlier who has just returned home to a world she no longer recognizes. Instead of leading police to her captor, Chloe turns to Greg to share her story. Unfortunately for him, Chloe won’t provide names or locations, and instead dictates exactly how the story should be told. But Chloe has become an international celebrity—both respected and scrutinized by the public—and they all want to know, who is her kidnapper? Why is she protecting him? When Greg begins to question whether truth and fiction have collided, he takes matters into his own hands, in spite of the drastic consequences. Even if that means coming face to face with Chloe’s abductor. An Almost Perfect Thing is a multi-perspective thriller about possession and desire, the need to own our stories, and our “right” to the truth.
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An American Demon
$29.95An American Demon is Jack Grisham’s story of depravity and redemption, terror and spiritual deliverance. While Grisham is best known as the raucous and provocative front man of the pioneer hardcore punk band TSOL (True Sounds of Liberty), his writing and true life experiences are physically and psychologically more complex, unsettling, and violent than those of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk.Eloquently disregarding the prefabricated formulas of the drunk-to-sober, bad-to-good tale, this is an entirely new kind of life lesson: summoned through both God and demons, while settling within eighties hardcore punk culture and its radical-to-the-core (and most assuredly non-evangelical) parables, Grisham leads us, cleverly, gorgeously, between temporal violence and bigger-picture spirituality toward something very much like a path to salvation and enlightenment. An American Demon flourishes on both extremes, as a scary hardcore punk memoir and as a valuable message to souls navigating through an overly materialistic and woefully self-absorbed “me first” modern society.An American Demon conveys anger and truth within the perfect setting, using a youth rebellion that changed the world to open doors for this level of brash destruction. Told from the point of view of a seminal member of the American Punk movement — doused in violence, rebellion, alcoholism, drug abuse, and ending with beautiful lessons of sobriety and absolution — this book is as harrowing and life-affirming as anything you’re ever going to read.
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An Artist’s Journey
$16.95An Artist’s Journey emphasises the values of loyalty and belonging to one’s homeland, speaking to teens in an eloquent and beautiful language while raising contemporary issues of immigration and problems faced by expatriates, as well as the value of art and cultural integration. It is a captivating story told by an enlightened grandmother in the Hakawati style. She uses sound effects, masks and drawing tools while narrating the tale. Told from the perspective of small and colourful birds, the story is a miniature example of desired civic life in the Arab Islamic societies based on the values of justice, equality, respect for the supremacy of law, tolerance, love, cooperation, national identity, and defending the homeland. This book encourages educators to teach in different ways, such as using art to engage children to pursue knowledge, acquire life skills and develop their intelligence.
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An Enduring Wilderness
$49.95Featuring tributes from award-winning writers
In a city sometimes referred to as “The Big Smoke,” Toronto’s extensive network of sunken rivers, forested vales, and expansive shoreline has been too often overlooked, neglected, or forgotten. However, the last 25 years has seen these distinctive landscapes rediscovered and even embraced as great civic spaces. Commissioned by the City of Toronto to chronicle the wonders of these wilderness parks, renowned photographer Robert Burley looks at these sites as integral parts of urban life, from breathtaking lake views of the Scarborough Bluffs to glimpses of the densely wooded trails in the Carolinian forests of Rouge Park, Canada’s first and only urban national park.
Burley’s photos are augmented with selections of poetry and prose by some of Toronto’s best-known writers, including Anne Michaels, George Elliott Clarke, Alissa York, and Michael Mitchell. A historical essay and an appendix highlight the history, the biodiversity, and the priceless cultural value of these urban parklands. Though confined to the city limits, An Enduring Wilderness is full of surprising ecological and urban discoveries that know no limits themselves.
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An English Canadian Poetics
$29.95This collection of 37 essays by Canada’s Confederation Poets is the first in a series of volumes intended to collect all the significant essays on poetic theory written in English by Canadian poets from the late nineteenth century to the first decades of the twenty-first. These essays follow a long tradition among poets of the West to articulate in prose what their poetry is about, why they write in a particular form, how they regard language, and whom they consider mentors, equals or inferiors in the practice of their craft. Above all, the essays concern the specific social, cultural and political circumstances under which poetry is created.
The Confederation Poets reflects their Romantic preoccupation with Nature and the ideals of Beauty and Truth, placing great value on imperial (Victorian) notions of formal structures in art and poetry. All born in Canada in the early 1860s, these poets came to maturity after Confederation, and all were men, members of the sex most qualified (according to the gender assumptions of the time) to celebrate in poetry the nation-building enterprise of the immense and young Dominion of Canada. Not all of them shared an explicit desire to see Canada become a republic, but all of them believed in the importance of poetry to the creation and expression of a distinctive nationality, an assumption rooted in the defining characteristic of their age—nineteenth century European nationalism of which Young Ireland was an offshoot, as were Young England, Young Italy and Young Germany.
As the First World War was drawing to a close, they knew an era had ended. Bliss Carman wrote on April 5, 1917: I doubt if any of the men who came to maturity before the great war will be able to find the new key, the new mode, the new tune.
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An Error in Judgement
$29.95On January 22, 1979, an eleven-year-old Native girl died of a ruptured appendix in an Alert Bay, B.C. hospital. The events that followed are chronicled here by Dara Culhane Speck, a member by marriage of the Nimpkish Indian Band in Alert Bay. She has relied mainly on interviews, anecdotes and public records to describe how this small, isolated Native community took on the local hospital, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, provincial and federal ministries of health and national media, because their private tragedy held implications that reached far beyond one child, one physician, one town and even one century.
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An Exile’s Perfect Letter
$19.95**NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR BOOK AWARDS FICTION LONGLIST**Sixty-two-year-old English professor Hugh Norman is getting ready to retire and just going through the motions. He’s detached, irreverent, and quite pleased with himself. But then he learns of a long-lost friend’s sudden death, and shockingly discovers a body while walking through a city park. Suddenly, over just a few days, Hugh is compelled to deal with a large cast of eccentric characters and a police detective who has taken a sudden interest in his life. With a perfect sense of comedic timing, An Exile’s Perfect Letter is a portrait of a man forced to come of age all over again. It’s a send-up, a love story, an elegy for lost youth, and a celebration of friendships that stand the test of time. -
An Expectation of Home
$21.95This startling debut novel follows two boys from the Miramichi region in New Brunswick on very different paths toward adulthood. The story begins on the school bus, where we are first introduced to Bern and Calvin. At either end of the town’s economic spectrum, the two boys share an uneasy friendship, one cemented by accidents: the drowning of a deer in the river and the sudden death of Calvin’s mother. An Expectation of Home is searing and vivid, deeply rooted in the lives and community on the Miramichi River. This novel challenges readers to explore the depths and complexities of growing up. Lynch sounds the distances between generations, genders and classes as his characters struggle to find a sense of community, connection and above all, home.
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An Honest Woman: A Novel
$20.00If there ever was a time and place to explore the territory of mature women and their journeys this would be the time. The subjects of sex, passion, confidence in JoAnn McCaig’s An Honest Woman are beautifully played out against society’s stereotypes of women as they age and as they confront the truths of themselves outside the societal frameworks in which they have been boxed.
There are metafictional elements turned loose in this novel. First, there is an intensely self-conscious narrator and second, there are characters who live inside fictional worlds and travel outside those worlds for intense real-life encounters. Their storytelling draws attention to themselves as both living, breathing people but also fleshed-out fictional world characters.
The structure of the novel is complex, layered, and interwoven. There are several narrators, stories within stories, and writers making things up and fantasizing while living real (albeit fictional) lives. There are literary allusions galore and cameo appearances by thinly disguised famous authors. It can all get a little crazy, so McCaig has provided a few support materials: an infographic that maps out the different characters, and relationships and authorships, a fairly detailed table of contents, a few postscripts, and a couple of appendices. Watch for symbols that indicate that the narrator has lapsed into fantasy and for when she returns to her “real” life, such as it is. That said, An Honest Woman has enough grounded familiar plot lines to keep a general reader interested and layered ambiguities to keep the well-read interested. While there is some undermining of traditional literary conventions, there is nothing lost in McCaig’s exploration of the relationship between literature and life. The novel is humorous, and sometimes really funny; it is also a smart and warm and moving read.
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An Image in the Lake
$34.95From Arthur Ellis Award–winning, Grand Master of Crime Writers, and “the queen of Canadian crime fiction” (Winnipeg Free Press) comes the 20th installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series
A dark secret threatens the future of the Shreve family
It’s August 24 and Joanne Shreve and her husband, Zack, are savoring the last lazy days of summer and looking forward to the birth of a new grandchild; involvement in the campaign of Ali Janvier, a gifted politician with a solid chance of becoming the province’s next premier; and the debut of Sisters and Strangers, the six-part series Joanne co-wrote that focuses on her early life. The series is the flagship of a new slate of programming, and MediaNation is counting on a big return. Joanne and Zack’s stake in the series’s success is personal. Their daughter, Taylor, is in a relationship with one of the show’s stars, and Vale Frazier is already like family to them.
It seems the “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness” will be a bountiful one for the Shreves. But when a charismatic young woman wearing a grief amulet that contains a lock of her dead brother’s hair and a dark secret becomes part of their lives, the success of Sisters and Strangers and the future of Taylor and Vale’s relationship are jeopardized, and only Joanne and Zack can put an end to the threat.
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An IMM-Permanent Resident
$18.95“Together. Always.”
Neha and Himanshu are drowning in paperwork. After leaving Mumbai in pursuit of the Canadian dream, Neha’s repeated rejections for permanent residency have left the couple suspended in bureaucratic limbo. As forms pile up and questions grow more invasive, their relationship is put under the microscope—not only by immigration officers, but by each other. Flashbacks of their charming courtship collide with the emotional toll of visa purgatory, forcing them to question if love alone can keep them together.
An IMM-Permanent Resident is a hilarious and heartbreaking true story of resilience, partnership, and the universal desire to belong. Told by real-life couple Neha Poduval and Himanshu Sitlani, this candid romantic comedy takes audiences on an irreverent journey through the absurdities of the Canadian immigration system with biting humour, Bollywood flair, and unflinching honesty. A love letter to anyone who’s ever chased a dream, this tender portrait proves that true love knows no borders.
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An Old Man’s Winter Night
$15.95An Old Man’s Winter Night: Ghostly Tales is the newest collection of ghost stories by Tom Dawe, one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most distinguished writers. The stories, all based on ones Dawe himself has collected across the province over the years, include tales of visitations both malevolent and benign.
There are stories of ghostly galleons, of unsettling graves, of strange omens and fetches; an eerie tale of a notoriously haunted house?haunted, or built on a fairy path; and another of a ghostly sled dog that returns to save its master lost in a blizzard.
Targeted to middle readers, the book includes original, deeply atmospheric illustrations by acclaimed artist Veselina Tomova. The images, as powerful as the stories themselves, fuse word and image, hauntingly.
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An Opera in 3 Acts, Starring Gino Quilico
$26.95When young Louis Quilico meets upcoming concert pianist Lina Pizzolongo, a personal and musical collaboration begins that sees Louis become one of the most accomplished baritones in the world. Their son, Gino, follows in his father’s footsteps to emerge as a globetrotting opera singer. Theirs is a story of love, fame, estrangement, breakdown, and finally triumph.
Connie Guzzo-McParland writes her own aria with this real-life family dynasty that takes us through the world of opera??all its high notes, tragedies and artistry intact.
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An Orange from Portugal
$19.95It’s often said that the main export of the Maritimes is Maritimers, and the same is true of Newfoundland. “Going down the road” is a way of life, but so is coming home for Christmas. It is tradition marked by happiness, fun, and sometimes less comfortable emotions. Given the regional penchant for yarn spinning, this common experience yields an abundance of stories.
In An Orange from Portugal, editor Anne Simpson takes liberties with the concept of “story” to produce a book bursting with Christmas flavour. Many of her choices are fiction, others are memoirs, tall tales, poems, or essays, and still others defy classification. Some authors are nationally and even internationally famous, some are well known in the region, and others are published here for the first time. Spanning more than a century of seasonal writing, the collection includes a description of killing a pig aboard the sailing ship Argonauta for Christmas dinner; Hugh MacLennan”s Halifax waif who wants nothing more than for Santa to bring him a real orange, an orange from Portugal; a story by Alden Nowlan and another by Harry Bruce giving very different versions of what the animals in the barn do on Christmas Eve; a story about Jewish children hanging up their stockings; and very new work by young writers Lisa Moore and Michael Crummey. Beautiful poems by Lynn Davies, Milton Acorn and others leaven the collection for readers of all persuasions. Other authors include: Wayne Johnston, Mary Pratt, David Adams Richards, Carol Bruneau, Wilfred Grenfeld, L.M. Montgomery, Paul Bowdring, Grace Ladd, Herb Curtis, Joan Clark, Ernest Buckler, Rhoda Graser, Bert Batstone, Elisabeth Harvor, David Weale, Charles G.D. Roberts, Ronald F. Hawkins, Mark Jarman, Elsie Charles Basque, Richard Cumyn, Herménégilde Chiasson, Stan Dragland, Alistair MacLeod, and Bernice Morgan.
An Orange from Portugal is a Christmas feast, with the scent of turkey and the sound of laughter wafting from the kitchen, and a flurry of snow outside the window.
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An Other I
$28.00This is the first full-length study of the short stories and novels by Clark Blaise. It follows his development as a deeply self-conscious writer who becomes involved in the dualities of the world around him — dualities that are reflected in the structure of his fiction and in the narrative strategies he employs to convey an image of himself. Lecker frames his discussion with an opening chapter that provides a detailed discussion of Blaise’s aesthetic stance. Subsequent chapters focus on Blaise’s first two short story collections, and on readings of Blaise’s two novels. The study includes an original chronology by Clark Blaise, which provides a creative rendering of the important dates and turning points in his life and literary career.