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Showing 6353–6368 of 9250 results
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Soft where
$15.00“Soft Where by Marcus McCann is a hard-hitting cutting edge poetic expose of a world filled with experimentation and valour. This stunning book explores the possibilities of bringing image to life, written in the language of the people and soaked in a heart of sapphire. The jury was intoxicated by this book, and feels this young writer should be encouraged in every and all ways—to the full extent of poetic promise. The language in Soft Where is as stark and meaningful as the images which express a lifestyle hard-lived and yet as delicate as an origami bird.”—Gerald Lampert Award jury citation
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Soldier’s Heart
$16.95David French’s award-winning and ongoing dramatic cycle about the Mercer family, both in their native Newfoundland and later, as participants in the great outport clearances, relocated in Toronto, has become a defining part of Canada’s theatrical history.
Set in Toronto, the first play, Leaving Home (1972), introduced the family saga’s key figure, Jacob Mercer, who appears in all of the plays. Also in this series are Of the Fields, Lately (1973); Salt-Water Moon (1984); and 1949 (1988), which deals with this expatriate family’s reaction to Newfoundland’s entry into confederation.
With Soldier’s Heart, French looks back in time at the thoroughly alienated 16-year-old Jacob, standing on a railway platform, his suitcase and one-way ticket away from home in hand. His father Esau, a veteran of the First World War, rushes to the station in a last-ditch effort to persuade his son not to leave. Unable to speak of what had happened in the Great War since his return, Esau begins, in halting and tentative language to tell of his comrades and his brother, their training in Scotland, the agony of Gallipoli, and finally the formative events at the battle of the Somme at Beaumont Hamel. At first defensive in response to his son’s probing and impatient questioning, Esau’s answers evolve into stories of pride, foolishness, anger, desperation and finally mindless terror, leaving only the image of a man driven by the blind animal instinct to survive. It is this devastating and unsparing account of all that is in a soldier’s heart, that finally brings father and son back together.
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Soldiers for Sale
$29.95A fascinating study that uncovers an important aspect of the history of the American Revolution, this account reveals how the British Army that fought the American Revolutionaries was, in fact, an Anglo-German army. Arguing that the British Crown had doubts about the willingness of English soldiers to fight against other English-speaking people in North America, the book details how the task of providing troops fell upon the princes of German States, who were relatives of England’s ruling family. In return for large amounts of money, German princes and barons provided about 30,000 soldiers, many of whom were dragged unwillingly from their families and sent to fight in a war in which they had no interest. While some of the soldiers eventually melted into the French and English-speaking societies of Canada, little history has been available, not even to the descendant families. These soldiers’ experiences offer new insight into the battles that took place between 1776 and 1783 and had an impact that spanned four countries.
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Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys
$23.95CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023
THE TORONTO STAR ‘MUST READ, HANDS DOWN BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR’
‘Cat Person’ meets Station Eleven in this apocalyptic depiction of toxic masculinity.
An unnamed man is spending the evening with his ex-girlfriend. She’s obsessed with the 1956 John Wayne classic The Searchers, and she recounts the story as a way for them to talk about their histories, their families, maybe even their relationship. But as he gets more drunk and belligerent, she gets more and more uncomfortable with him being in her home.
And then, two days later, a mysterious catastrophic event befalls Toronto, and our protagonist must trek across the city to find Melanie. His quest spirals into increasing violence, bloodshed, and hallucinations as he moves west through the confusion and chaos of the city.
Using the tropes of both the Western and the disaster movie, Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys looks at the violence of our contemporary masculinity, and its deep roots in shaping our culture. A suspenseful and thought-provoking evocation of our current moment.
“Ask the right questions and a conversation about the movies becomes a conversation about your life, family, past, and everything you value: Aaron Tucker’s novel, which starts chatty before turning deeply, unexpectedly inward, grasps the ceaseless, sometimes terrible relevance of violence and troubling art.” – Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time
“In Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys, Aaron Tucker refuses the easy projections of masculinity from film history. Instead he gallops into the screen to sift out how drama collaborates with the bloodiest of truths. That this novel shifts from dialogical treatise into a thriller proves that Tucker is well on his way to stealing the weird fiction mantle away from Don DeLillo.” – Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes and Little Threats
“Sad, smart, innocent and wise. A relentless retelling of a movie and a life, full of hope, if there is any.” – John Haskell, author of The Complete Ballet: A Fictional Essay in Five Acts
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Solidarity
$24.95The year 1983 began like any other year in Canada’s West Coast province. Then suddenly everything changed when the newly elected provincial government announced an avalanche of far-right legislation that shocked the country.
In response, a resistance movement called Solidarity quickly formed across British Columbia uniting social activists, trade unionists and people who had never protested before. The movement rocked social foundations resulting in massive street protests, occupations, and plans for an all-out general strike.
Filled with revealing interviews and lively, insightful prose Solidarity goes behind the scenes of one of the greatest social uprisings in North American history. In revisiting this one singularly dramatic event, Solidarity chronicles the history of 20th century British Columbia, exploring its great divides and alliances, cultures and subcultures, and conflicts that continue into the 21st century. -
Solitaria
$19.95When Vito Santoro’s body is inadvertently unearthed by a demolition crew in Fregene, Italy, his siblings are thrown into turmoil, having been told by their sister Piera that Vito had fled to Argentina fifty years earlier after abandoning his wife and son. Piera, the self-proclaimed matriarch, locks herself in her room, refusing to speak to anyone but her Canadian nephew, David. Now scattered over three continents, the family members regroup in Italy to try to discover the truth.
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Solo Performance
$25.00Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English sets out to make the best critical and scholarly work in the field readily available. The series publishes the work of scholars and critics who have traced the coming-into-prominence of a vibrant theatrical community in English Canada.
Solo Performance includes work by Hourig Attarian, David Bateman, Johanne Bénard, Diane Bessai, Jill Carter, Aleksandar Saša Dundjerovic, Helen Gilbert, Sherrill Grace, Jennifer Harvie, Kedrick James, Ric Knowles, Jacqueline Lo, Bruce McDougall, Katherine McLeod, Jenn Stephenson, Renate Usmiani, Craig Stewart, David Watmough, and Ann Wilson.
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Solo Yet Never Alone
$22.95All Canadians know Marilyn Bell and her 1954 swim across Lake Ontario. Most of us can recall a few other crossers – probably Vicki Keith and Cindy Nicholas; perhaps Colleen Shields or Paula Stephanson. But few of us know that in fact, including Bell’s swim, 74 swimmers (mostly amateur and mostly Canadian) have made 66 crossings of Lake Ontario, 19 of Erie, five of Huron and Georgian Bay, two of Michigan, and two of Superior. What drives them to undertake such an ordeal? Well, to fill us in Laura E. Young interviewed over 40 Canadian swimmers, both the icons whose names we know, and the many not-so-regular Canadians who also answered the challenge to swim across a Great Lake.
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Somali Camel Boy, The
$22.95Where simply yawning can be a crime…
Ali belongs to a camel-herding family of the Sudi clan, in a Somali society riven by ancient clan rivalries. When members of the rival Duki clan kill his father and steal his herd, Ali walks all the way to the capital town to start a new life. The ruling government, however, is dominated by the Duki; its actions are murderous, its rulings arbitrary, and its target the Sudi clan. For the crime of yawning–thus acting out the Great Leader’s nickname, “Big Mouth”–Ali is arrested, imprisoned, brutally beaten, and tortured. He manages to flee to Toronto, where he is assisted by two members of his clan. Celebrating his new freedom, his family now with him, this self-willed but simple camel boy is still obsessed with one mission: to avenge the murder of his father by killing a Duki. Any Duki.
Tragic, yet hilarious at times, as the camel boy negotiates the ways of his new life, this novel provides a rare insight into the complexities and conflicts of our world.
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Sombrio
$22.00Vulnerable and hallucinatory, Rhonda Waterfall writes an alarming and vivid West Coast novel. Set in the rainforest on the outer coast of Vancouver Island, Sombrio takes us into the dark heart of lost childhoods. Three men – an artist, his apprentice and an ex-bank robber turned poet – seek refuge in an abandoned squatters shack. As windstorm descends upon the men, their thin hold on reality begins to unravel and fray. Each man must grapple with his past and with his desire for fame or infamy along with what their disastrous choices have wrought for their children. This is a tale of madness, art, love, addiction and paternal responsibility. And how men lauded as geniuses crush their daughters.
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Some Birds Walk For the Hell of It
$18.00Some Birds Walk for the Hell of It is the third volume of poetry from musician and spoken word artist, C.R. Avery. In his take-no-prisoners style of verse and performance, Avery celebrates the virtues of the bohemian lifestyle, late-nite denizens of inconvenient madness, the dissolute and the temporary, lawless black leather pioneers of rap, and every tattooed member of this “helpless grey sky tribe.” Like a cross between Lenny Bruce and Tom Waits, Avery’s poetry is alternately profane,brilliant, vulgar, funny, brash, unsettling, and unquestionably original.
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Some Blow Flutes
$15.95Inspired by a quote from the I Ching about how we respond to tragedy — “Some weep, some blow upon flutes” — Mary Vingoe’s play is the story of Costas, an elderly Greek shoe repair man whose wife Elena suffers from dementia and whose marriage has been eroded by a family secret. Costas is in denial of his wife’s illness but Lia, their teenage granddaughter who cares for her grandmother, is not. Costas’ life is altered when Sandra, a professional organizer who cannot begin to organize her own life, enters his shop. An unlikely, at times humorous friendship develops between the two — until we discover that Sandra’s estranged daughter Marijke is fourteen and pregnant. A chance meeting between Elena and Marijke leads to an unravelling of past lives and buried grievances which play out with unexpected results. Some Blow Flutes brings the issue of dementia into the open and explores the possibility of compassion and redemption in the face of overwhelming odds.
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some conditions apply
$18.95This debut poetry collection is a breathtaking array of poems, wisdom, reflection, and all that comes in between. The sections are perfectly placed, providing interludes that allow for breath and temporary relief, needed because of the powerful themes, images, word choices. The poems in some conditions apply delight in the power of art to transmute pain through beauty. They observe, question, laugh, and weep. The collection is structured in four untitled sections to enable readers to project their own meanings. Meaning is accessible but sometimes also intentionally layered and ambiguous, urging readers to let the poems “be” and not “mean,” as per Archibald MacLeish. Poetic forms, dictated by the idiosyncratic nature of the poems, don’t represent all possible forms and don’t adhere to standard conventions. The poetic style is modernistic, conventional, and influenced by (and even includes) song lyrics. The poems speak deep, resonant truths and are infused with the poet’s experience of music and music therapy, attesting to the power of beauty to transform even the most painful of experiences.
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Some Days I Think I Know Things
$14.95A contemporary retelling of the story of Cassandra, Rhonda Douglas’s Some Days I Think I Know Things explores what “truth” really means and asks what Homer’s iconic young prophetess might have to say to anyone wise enough to pay heed to her in the twenty-first century. We find Cassandra walking among us once more and, just prior to the sacking of a Troy not unlike any modern city, she sheds light on the idyllic domestic life that she shares with her father Priam, mother Hecuba, and the rest of her doomed, if royal, family. No sooner has she relished in the timeless sexual awakening dreamt about by most girls, than she must stoically submit to the indignities of the invading Greeks. As a captive, she pronounces a series of prescient “Lost Prophesies” intended for our time. However much her Cassandra remains faithful to the figure of the ancients, Douglas destabilizes her heroine’s primacy as “truth-teller” with a witty, varied chorus whose voices we can’t fail to recognize from the quotidian of our present-day lives.
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Some Extremely Boring Drives
$19.95Shortlisted for the 2015 ReLit Award for Short Fiction!Shortlisted for the 2015 Trade Fiction Book Award at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards!From the multi-talented author of Inventory and Open Pit comes a new collection of short stories, filled with lost souls drifting through exotic locales, reinventing themselves on the fly.Marguerite Pigeon’s gifts for quick characterization and muscular dialogue are on full display in this collection, where you will encounter competitors in an endurance race at the edge of the world; the secret lives of stray cats, and those who try to catch them night after night; an interview with a once-famous musician who seems to be losing touch with reality; a date in Mexico City that ends in a kidnapping; a woman who comes face to face with her mirror image and finds that she’s taken another path; and a girl who’s determined to never, ever stand still again.
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Some Girls Do
$18.00In prose thats as sharp as broken glass and shot through with poetry, Teresa McWhirter unlocks the extraordinary subculture of urban adults in their twenties and early thirties. Most startling of all are the portraits of young womentough, independent party girls who are strong enough to say no to love and smart enough to know why.
McWhirter unearths a community of adult-kids seldom chronicled Realistic dialogueheavily peppered with slang, swearing and esoteric pop-culture referencescontributes to the novels overall believability. The humour and wordplay alone mark McWhirter as a writer to watch. Quill and Quire
Some Girls Do is a sharp, poetic glimpse into the yearning but hopelessly unfocused lives of a group of marginal urbanites surprisingly, McWhirter makes them touching rather than alienating. Elle Canada