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And Sometimes They Fly
$19.95The disasters of 9/11 trigger a Cataclysm that is unleashed every so many cycles. It can only be averted by the selfless act of the Elect, a trio of exceptional humans who are guided by Milton, a being known as an Elder. The three, all Barbadians, are David Rayside, Marsha Durant and Franck Hurley. And it is their time: to save the world before the deadliest characters of their legends and myths-the baccou, the steel donkey, la djables, and the heart man-destroy it…. All their lives, the Elect have had their abilities: David, the power of flight; Marsha, incredible strength; and Franck, super speed. With great power may come great responsibility, yet the choice to act or not remains theirs. Milton, like his adversary, Mackie (short for Machiavelli), is an Elder who can inform, not influence, the course of events. Are the Elect mature enough to decide what’s best for humanity? The longer they take to agree to Milton’s plan, which he can’t reveal until they are all on board, the more their world is overrun with Caribbean folklore creatures…. Set in Bridgetown and Montreal (‘where much of the Diaspora live’), And Sometimes They Fly questions notions of the heroic. Where do heroes-a region’s but also a culture’s heroes-come from? George Woodcock once noted that, unlike Americans or the British, ‘Canadians do not like heroes, and so they do not have them.’ Humanity is in trouble if this is also true about Barbadians.
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And the Birds Rained Down
$18.95A CBC Canada Reads 2015 Selection
Finalist for the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English Translation
Deep in a Northern Ontario forest live Tom and Charlie, two octogenarians determined to live out the rest of their lives on their own terms: free of all ties and responsibilities, their only connection to civilization two pot farmers who bring them whatever they can’t eke out for themselves. But their solitude is disrupted by the arrival of two women. The first is a photographer searching for survivors of a series of catastrophic fires nearly a century earlier; the second is an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution. The little hideaway in the woods will never be the same. Originally published in French, And the Birds Rained Down, the recipient of several prestigious prizes, including the Prix de Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, is a haunting meditation on aging and self-determination.
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And Then Is Heard No More
$17.95Opening night of the season at Winnipeg?s Prairie Theatre Centre is a glittering event on the city’s arts calendar, and this October, there is real drama happening offstage. Gerald Blaise, the company’s well-loved Artistic Director has failed to show up. Gerald’s car is found the following day, north of the city, when a couple of dogs take a keen interest in the bloody contents of the trunk. Since Gerald’s remains have been discovered outside the city limits, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway of the RCMP finds herself investigating the death.
PTC’s next play up is to be Shakespeare’s Macbeth, an unlucky play according to theatrical tradition. That rings true, for the staff, cast and crew as well as Roxanne. When a second body is found, this time in a city park, Roxanne finds herself having to work alongside the cynical Detective Sergeant Cooper Jenkins of the Winnipeg’s Police Services.
Theatre is a different world with its own jargon, where fact and fiction merge, lies are delivered as truth, and where people with active imaginations conjure up convincing stories. Who is Roxanne supposed to believe.
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And To Say Hello
$21.95The twelve stories in And to Say Hello investigate the hazards of men and women becoming fathers and mothers: the immediate harm and the long-term damage. In ‘Mass Graves,’ a new mother’s stay-at-home anxieties are amplified by the ominous chipmunk infestation overtaking her townhouse. In ‘Gestation,’ a father-to-be nurtures the idea of his ex-girlfriend’s imagined infidelity until it matures into a fully grown mania. In ‘Six,’ a deceased woman’s biography and failings as a mother are communicated piecemeal through the ruminations of her pallbearers. In ‘The Vasectomy Doctor’s Online Presence,’ the professional and familial successes of an urologist are cruelly and publicly undercut by his failed musical aspirations. And in the title story, a mother’s irrational worry about her son’s language development puts irreparable strain upon her marriage.
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Andy’s Gone
$19.95What stories do we tell ourselves to keep our walls up and our privilege intact? What is the cost of revolution?
In this contemporary retelling of Antigone, denial of what rages outside of a city’s perimeter comes to a head when a young princess named Alison tries to expose the truth of her beloved cousin Henry’s death. By night, Henry went as Andy, as together he and Alison scaled the walls of their kingdom to help the migrants who are kept out of sight. Burdened by the weight of the inequality that his future reign represented, he killed himself. But his mother, Queen Regina, hails his death as a valiant knight and will do anything she can to keep Alison silent. The two women become locked in a poetic battle of power and prejudice, until a push turning into a shove might mean it’s too late to find peace.
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Anecdotes
$23.00With dreamlike stories and dark humour, Anecdotes is a hybrid collection in four parts examining the pressing realities of sexual violence, abuse, and environmental collapse.
Absurdist flash fictions in “The Boy is Dead” depict characters such as a park that hates hippies, squirrels, and unhappy parents; a woman lamenting a stolen laptop the day the world ends; and birds slamming into glass buildings.
“We’re Not Here to Talk About Aliens” gathers autofictions that follow a young protagonist from childhood to early 20s, through the murky undercurrent of potential violence amidst sexual awakening, from first periods to flashers, sticker books to maxi pad art, acid trips to blackouts, and creepy professors to close calls.
“This Isn’t a Conversation” shares one-liners from overheard conversations, found texts, diary entries, and random thoughts: many are responses to the absurdity and pain of the current political and environmental climate.
In “My Dream House,” the past and the future are personified as various incarnations in relationships to one another (lovers, a parent and child, siblings, friends), all engaged in ongoing conflict.
These varied, immersive works bristle with truth in the face of unprecedented change. They are playful forms for serious times.
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Angel and the Bear
$5.50A pinball wizard stars in this urban romance, set where the blues meet jazz in London, Ontario’s historic York Hotel.
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Angel Wing Splash Pattern
$20.00With this special 20th Anniversary edition, Richard Van Camp re-releases his first bestselling collection of short stories. There is pain in these stories and there is loss. There is death, but there is also rebirth, and there is always the search from each of the narrators for personal truth. This collection of hilarious and profound stories is where beloved recurring characters Torchy, Sfen, Snowbird, Clarence and Brutus first appeared. Larry Sole from The Lesser Blessed>/i> also appears in this collection, alongside many other characters, all of them linked by themes of hope, the spirit of friendship, and hunger.
Richard has gone on to publish four other short story collections, but Angel Wing Splash Pattern is where his love of the short story—”those perfect universes”—all began. This beautifully redesigned 20th anniversary edition, with a new introduction by the author and two new graphic-novel style stories, proves once again that Richard Van Camp is a master of the short story. -
Angela of the Stones
$19.95“All of Cuba is a museum now. We live off our old Revolution,” laments Gertrudis, one in a cast of characters teetering on the verge of political change while held in the grip of the past. Cuba is the place where the grandchildren of peasants become consultant surgeons, but also the place where necessity as the mother of invention is put into extreme practise. In Havana, the buildings like the peoples’ dreams, are constantly being restored. But so too in the rural districts, in towns like Baracoa, you will find boisterous people who idolised the Fidel past and continue to mourn his passing while those like Godofredo, born in January 1959 as a victorious Fidel marched into Havana, limps along the streets of Baracoa where he encounters tourists and townspeople while maintaining his anonymity as the peanut vendor. In Amanda Hale’s stories, Cuba comes alive with a gentle humour and through the richly detailed portraits of the families of Baracoa as they struggle with the political changes that are reshaping Cuba.
Meet Daniela who flies from the roof into the arms of her unfaithful husband; Sonia who marvels at the new world of her cell-phone crazy teenagers; Tito, a world away in Miami, who rants about Obama’s handshake with Raúl Castro; and witness a corpse that travels the length of Cuba and back in a nightmare of bureaucracy, all while Ángela huddles for the night on her bench in Parque Central. -
Angelic Scintillations
$18.95While deeply embedded in the cultural, historical, ecological, and theological zeitgeist, Angelic Scintillations continues the poet’s spiritual evolution. First, the poet dialogues with her ancestor, seventeenth century Welsh mystic poet Henry Vaughan, the religious practices of his time and mine, using current events and politics to situate the reader. Second, she resacralizes cronehood and attitudes toward aging through humour and healing and using historical and autobiographical references. Third, she revisions the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, restoring their cosmic power via a feminist viewpoint. There is a cohesiveness here that melds a feminist perspecitve with questions about religion and Biblical stories–an attempt to situate all of this within a modern-day context with issues we face politically, geographically, and environmentally in today’s society.
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Angélique
$16.95“And in seventeen thirty-four a Negro slave set fire to the City of Montreal and was hanged…”
With this bald statement of history as a basis, Lorena Gale constructs a vivid portrait of a time when captive people had no say in the outcome of their lives.
A rich, poetic evocation of a graceful yet cruel time—a time when “civilized” citizens still bought and sold slaves. This is a time when the thoughts and feelings of these captive people had no bearing on the outcome of their lives, unless they were outraged and brave enough to try and shake their bonds. Angélique is the winner of the du Maurier National Playwriting Competition and was nominated Outstanding New Play in Calgary’s Betty Mitchell Awards, 1998.
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Angloman
$9.95Angloman—in reality Eaton M. McGill, insurance underwriter for SunLife—is your typical, everyday superhero, bigger than life, champion of bilingualism and tolerance, and dumber than a post. Angloman’s secret base of operations is the Fortress of Two Solitudes. He is joined in his adventures by kid sidekick West-Island Lad and partner Poutinette, the cholesterol-powered superheroine who takes on evil, infamy, and health food.
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Angloman 2
$9.95He’s Québec’s best-known ethnic minority superhero. He spent 22 weeks on the Montreal Gazette bestseller list and received rave reviews from everybody from La Presse to The Toronto Star to Geist. He’s Angloman, and he’s back for another parody-rich romp through the surrealistic politics of La Belle Province and the country as a whole!
Barrel-chested champion of bilingualism and tolerance, always well-meaning but thick as a brick, Angloman is joined by his partners in parody Poutinette and West Island Lad, and a crew of political adventurers like Power Chin, Canada! man and Le Capitaine Souche.
In Angloman 2 there’s a whole new cast of post-referendum personalities, including the all-powerful, all-knowing Ethnoman, who will, of course, stop at nothing to destroy the French fact in Québec! Can Capitaine Souche stop this mad genius and his super-powerful ethnic ballot box of doom, or will he finally face the one foe he simply cannot defeat? Can Matzohgirl, teenage super-powered defender of Côte Saint Luc, escape the insatiable clutches of La régie? Even tougher, can West Island Lad get her to go out with him? What will become of Blocman now that he’s no longer bloced? Will Partition Man divide Québec?
And where have all the anglos gone? Are they really leaving Québec of their own free will, or is something else afoot? Will Angloman, Poutinette and West Island Lad survive their encounter with the malevolent Torontorg, and more important will Toronto survive its encounter with them?
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Angular Unconformity
$45.00Angular unconformity: a discordant surface of contact between the deposits of two episodes of sedimentation in which the older, underlying strata have undergone folding, uplift, and erosion before the deposition of the younger sediments, so that the younger strata truncate the older.
— Michael Allaby, ed., A Dictionary of Earth Sciences, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Angular Unconformity shows us a life’s work in cross-section, a restless and humane intelligence, ever searching, ever shifting, finding meaning in our blink-of-an-eye existence against a backdrop of geological time unimaginable in its scale.
In this volume, the first comprehensive collection of Don McKay’s poetry, this pre-eminent Canadian poet displays his gift for thinking through metaphor, channelling a profound philosophical discourse through plain language and striking imagery. In his poetry, disciplined attention and contemplation break through the commonplace and illuminate an ecological understanding of the world as it is.
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Anima
$16.95This award-winning novel by playwright Wadji Mouawad is a thriller and a road novel – written in the North African storytelling tradition in which events unfold from an animal point of view.
The novel opens with a brutal murder: the protagonist arrives home to find his wife lying in a pool of blood. Driven by grief and the need to find whoever did this – “I want to see his face, I want to know who he is” – the protagonist sets out on desperate journey from Montreal to Indian reserves along the Canada–U.S. border, south through Civil War sites in the Midwest, to Animas, New Mexico. The furious odyssey awakens long-buried memories that make present circumstances even more painful.
This masterful novel is told in a bestiary of voices, more than fifty animals, birds, and insects, each with their own characterization and style of speaking, reveal the unflattering contrast between the human and the natural. Violent and dark, the novel nevertheless moves beyond the thriller genre to become a book of multiple levels, rich in symbolism and open to complex interpretation. While set in North America, Mouawad’s Lebanese roots suffuse the text, which becomes an examination of cultural influences and at the same time an excavation of childhood trauma and the legacy of war.
Anima has resonated with readers worldwide. It’s been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan. It won the Thyde Monnier Grand Prize from the Société des Gens de Lettres, the Mediterranean Prize, the Literary Prize for a Second Novel in Laval, the Golden Alga Award, the Phoenix Award (as part of the Beirut Spring Festival), and the Catalan Llibreter Prize for Foreign Novel, all in 2012 and 2013. In 2015, Anima won the Lire en Poche, a prize awarded annually in France in celebration of the paperback book. An elegant translation by Linda Gaboriau brings this celebrated novel to English readers.
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Animal
$18.00Finalist, Trillium Book Award
The stories in Animal depict people on the brink of major life change. Often at a crossroads they are oblivious to, Leggat’s characters seem to be captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroically resisting the ever-present pull of Fate. It matters little whether the characters take action or refuse to act; life acts for them. The reader is left to wonder: When does “meaning” cease to have meaning? Like travelling a mountain highway at night, what’s just around the next bend is never known. The stories in Animal never fail to deliver potent surprises.
Praise for Animal:
“I’m tempted to say it’s a slim, distilled masterpiece.” (Michael Bryson, Underground Book Club)
“these quickly unfolding stories are elliptically drawn, tense with action and dark humour. Leggat is a shape-shifting writer” (Ibi Kaslik, The Globe and Mail)
“Alexandra Leggat’s Animal is poetic and disarming. The stories are primarily mood-driven rather than straightforward narratives a series of emotional puzzles in which key pieces of information are often withheld until very late in the telling. The effect is to create an uneasiness about people’s relationships to one another and to the natural world. All of this is carried off in finely calibrated prose.”(Quill & Quire)