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All Books

All Books in this Collection

  • Showman

    Showman

    $7.95

    His father was a magician; his mother trained white doves. Russ Whitebone grew up in the colourful world of the Big Top and the vaudeville stage. Showman is his story.

  • Shunning

    Shunning

    $8.95

    The Shunning ‘tears heads off cliches, making us see a whole place freshly. It is a complete world, reeling and tilting but enduring. A fine book, full of bone and muscle. A totality.’ Christopher Wiseman, Books in Canada ‘The Shumnning shuns easy answers and offers a complex vision of lives in all their contradictions. It’s a powerful, humane and moving book.’ Douglas Barbour, Toronto Star.

  • Shut Away

    Shut Away

    $22.95

    An explosive book that exposes the abuses of institutionalization.

    “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” It was one of the first questions kids asked each other when Catherine McKercher was a child. She never knew how to answer it.

    Three of the McKercher children lived at home. The fourth, her youngest brother, Bill, did not. Bill was born with Down syndrome. When he was two and a half, his parents took him to the Ontario Hospital School in Smiths Falls and left him there. Like thousands of other families, they exiled a child with disabilities from home, family, and community.

    The rupture in her family always troubled McKercher. Following Bill’s death in 1995, and after the sprawling institution where he lived had closed, she applied for a copy of Bill’s resident file. What she found shocked her.

    Drawing on primary documents and extensive interviews, McKercher reconstructs Bill’s story and explores the clinical and public debates about institutionalization: the pressure to “shut away” children with disabilities, the institutions that overlooked and sometimes condoned neglect and abuse, and the people who exposed these failures and championed a different approach.

  • Shut Up He Explained

    Shut Up He Explained

    $36.95

    Shut Up He Explained

  • Shutter Speed

    Shutter Speed

    $10.95

    An appealing and contemporary novel about Danny Hinkle, a photographer approaching his thirties who sees everything in shades of grey while those around him demand black and white. Hinkle makes a living as an advertising photographer but yearns to make a serious statement with his camera.

  • Shylock

    Shylock

    $11.95

    ‘Shylock’ is an award-winning play about a Jewish actor who finds himself condemned by his own community for his portrayal of Shakespeare’s notorious Jew.

  • Siberian Odyssey of Hans Schroeder, The

    Siberian Odyssey of Hans Schroeder, The

    $17.95

    The Siberian Odyssey of Hans Schroeder is the ironic and tragic story of a young German mesmerized by the Hitler Youth aura who finds himself on the Russian front where he is taken prisoner. Years later, he is released from his Siberian prisoner-of-war camp and eventually emigrates to Massachusetts, USA, and leads what appears to be an exemplary family life. And, then, he commits the gruesome crime of a double murder. During the course of his trial, his past experiences are exposed under psychiatric investigations, experiences that bring to light the dramatic events Hans was a part of while a prisoner.

  • Sicilian Wife, The

    Sicilian Wife, The

    $19.95

    The Sicilian Wife is both a literary novel and a mystery. Fulvia, the Mafia Princess, must be a dutiful daughter or the family will be dishonoured. Though she eventually escapes and makes a new life in Canada, she is betrayed and then her husband is murdered on the Sicilian coast. The police Chief investigating the case is Marisa, who faces a station house of skeptical men as well as confronting Fulvia’s uncle, the boss of bosses. Interweaving folk tales, classical allusions, and recent Italian history with the conventions of the detective story in this powerful new novel, Caterina Edwards uses the literary noir to question the very possibility of justice and free will.

  • Sick Witch

    Sick Witch

    $17.95

    “I’m going to get you, my pretty!” The enigmatic Sick Witch lures the narrator on a metaphoric/literal vision quest through the hallucinatory terrain of undiagnosed and undiagnosable medical disorders in poems that playfully explore connections between physical and mental illness. Compelling “fever dreams” tackle disorders, from allergy to somnambulism, from retinal detachment to schizophrenia, from avian flu to ALS, beyond the insular country of the sickbed. Allusion becomes illusion in the blink of an eye, both in the sharp images and also with insight, revelation, confusion and fear, with a supposed control that advances then recedes then does it again and again. Here are tales both grim and Grimm, complemented by “lessons” from other patients, and leavened through a series of Letters to an Insurance Adjuster, who may or may not be a good wizard. Disquieting images from myth and pop culture compel the reader to join in the dance down the yellow brick road. X may mark the spot, but is it malignant? Or does it lead to Health?

  • Side by Side

    Side by Side

    $22.95

    Winner of the 2019 IPPY Silver Medal for Multicultural Fiction.

    Kavita Gupta is a woman in transition. When her troubled older brother, Sunil, disappears, she does everything in her power to find him, convinced that she can save him. Ten days later, the police arrive at her door to inform her that Sunil’s body has been found. Her world is devastated. She finds herself in crisis mode, trying to keep the pieces of her life from falling apart even more. As she tries to cope with her loss, the support system around her begins to unravel. Her parents’ uneasy marriage seems more precarious. Her health is failing as her unprocessed trauma develops into more sinister conditions. Her marriage suffers as her husband is unable to relate to her loss. She bears her burden alone, but after hitting her lowest point, she knows she needs to find a better way of coping. Desperate for connection, she reaches out to a bereavement group, where she meets Hawthorn, a free-spirited young man with whom she discovers a deep connection through pain. After being blindsided by a devastating marital betrayal, she wonders if a fresh start is possible in the wake of tragedy. Will she escape her problems and start over? Or will she face the challenges of rebuilding the life she already has? Side by Side is a story about loss, growth and the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, illuminated through one woman’s journey from harm to care.

  • Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse

    Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse

    $20.00

    Side Effects: A footloose journey to the apocalypse is a novel about the post-World War II baby boom generation and the factors that have led to climate catastrophe. The novel provides a portrait of the boomers by following the lives of a zany, idealistic couple and their growing family through the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. Beginning on a honeymoon motorcycle trip the couple sets the goal of putting down roots in California, the land of wild beauty, abundance, and political activism. The music, art, science, and politics of the era are palpable throughout the book.

  • Sideways

    Sideways

    $14.00

    Heather Haley’s poetry is tough, irreverent, and in-your-face. She asks all the questions that a nice girl’s not supposed to ask. Down back roads and highways, her characters long to possess the past and harness the future. Cowboys, car accidents, broken hearts, dead lovers-and potential violence-hover like heat on the horizon. Whether theyre gangsta girls or riot grrrls, roaming the range or pacing the mall, Haley’s women are always in the forefront, in the driver’s seat, crankin’ thewheel in their direction. Like wild horses bustin’ loose, or an explosion in the kitchen, Haley’s women know “how heady power is, how it lathers beneath a mount.” Her characters bite life on the neck and take what they need; and just when they think it’s gone, meaning happens. This is brawny and uncompromising language from a voice that demands to be reckoned with.

    “A supple and unusual book.” – Lyle Neff, author of ‘ Full Magpie Dodge’ and ‘Bizarre Winery Tragedy’

  • Siegebreakers

    Siegebreakers

    $22.00

    Under the crushing weight of the siege of Gaza, Laila and Nasser are members of the Palestinian resistance fighting desperately to free their people. Together, they learn of a plan to unite the disparate Palestinian factions and break Israel’s siege. Unknown to them, Ari, a brilliant Israeli spy, has decided that his conscience can no longer allow him to participate in the starvation of Gaza. A double agent whose every move is under mounting suspicion, Ari reaches out to the American contractors who trained him with a secret plan. As they all struggle to break the siege, they face the wrath of the Israeli military machine.

  • Siegfried: Dragon Slayer

    Siegfried: Dragon Slayer

    $24.99

    Impulsive young Prince Siegfried craves glory and recognition from his aloof parents, the king and queen of Denmark. Starting a war with a neighbouring country and seeking out the most feared dragon in the realm seems like a good place to start.

    An epic tale full of action, adventure, mythological beasts, magical swords, powerful rings, and a treacherous companion.

    Adapted from the ancient Norse mythological Völsunga Saga, Siegfried: Dragon Slayer is the first in a two-part series by Canadians Mark Allard-Will and Jasmine Redford.

  • SigfussonÕs Roads

    SigfussonÕs Roads

    $24.95

    Here was a man who had done it all with winter roads. Here was the spark plug that drove a work force of over 400 men deep into the wilderness of northwestern Ontario, northern Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The Sigfusson Transportation Company built a winter road system like no other on earth—stretching 3,560 miles into the dead of winter. Rather than have Sigfusson gain a hard–earned profit by building and operating a winter–road freighting system annually at no cost to society, the governments of the day in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario each were successful in putting the company out of business.

  • Sightlines

    Sightlines

    $20.00

    This collection is truly global in scope and universal in perspective. From a bog near Ottawa to the lagoons of Venice, from a chamber concert in an Ontario barn to a blind beggar in Mexico, from the infinities of interstellar space to the birth of a grandson — Henry Beissel celebrates the world in all its richness, mysteries and ecstasies, without ever flinching from its contradictions and torments, and offers exciting sightlines on the human condition.