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All Books

All Books in this Collection

  • The Great Wave of Civilization

    The Great Wave of Civilization

    $16.95

    The Great Wave of Civilization is Herschel Hardin’s play about the destruction of the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy by the liquor trade in Montana and Alberta in the 19th century. Little Dog of the Northern Blackfoot tribe vs. Snookum Jim, free trader, I.G. Baker, merchant-prince of Fort Benton and the rest of the “great wave of civilization.”

    Cast of five women and 13 men.

  • The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes

    The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes

    $19.95

    Wanda Jaynes is about to lose her job amidst a mountain of bills, and she suspects her musician boyfriend might be romantically interested in his friend, Trish. But Wanda’s life changes radically on a routine trip to the grocery store when a gunman enters the supermarket and opens fire.

    The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes is the highly anticipated debut novel by Bridget Canning, one of the most promising new writers from Newfoundland, and is an energetic page-turner about the power of selflessness in a contemporary culture of fear and suspicion.

  • The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

    The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

    $19.95

    In this comical novel about sexuality, relationships, and aging, self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Lover, eighty-year-old Alberto Camelo frankly recounts his exhaustion at being tasked with a lover whose spontaneous ecstasy becomes too much for him to handle, his short-lived stint in the army, and how he ran a franchise of “specialty” restaurants – into the ground, that is. An aura of absurdity pervades this humorous satire of a life characterized by awkward amorous encounters, lascivious liaisons, and erotic irreverence.

  • The Greats

    The Greats

    $20.00

    Guinea-Bissau, 2012. Mixing fiction and fact, Sylvain Prudhomme revisits the famous ’70s music group Super Mama Djombo, as seen through the eyes of Couto, the laconic guitarist. After learning of the death of the singer, Dulce–once the love of his life&mdashCouto wanders through the capital city, from bar to bar, friend to friend. Thirty years file past in his memories: of the woman he loved, of guerillas fighting against Portuguese colonizers, and of the golden days of a legendary band that played all over the world with a sound that was new, fresh, and driven by the pride of an entire country.

    Tension mounts page after page as the group prepares a final concert in Dulce’s honour, even as a coup d’�tat is prepared by her husband, Guinea-Bissau’s Army Chief of Staff.

  • The Green Line | خطّ التماس

    The Green Line | خطّ التماس

    $19.95

    A poetic, heartbreaking story of intergenerational queer history in Lebanon, The Green Line weaves together civil war Beirut with a contemporary nightclub, following one family’s journey to discover their past.

    In the present day, Rami, a twentysomething queer Lebanese Canadian, has returned to the Lebanese mountains to bury his father. To cope with the weight of his grief, Rami, carrying a necklace in the shape of a phoenix left to him by his father, finds himself in a queer Beirut nightclub, where he catches the attention of a powerful drag queen named Fifi, who just so happens to be dressed as a phoenix.

    In 1978, in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, Naseeb is attempting to get himself and his sister Mona out of Beirut and into the safety of the mountains. Mona, however, is secretly in love with her classmate, a woman named Yara, and refuses to leave the city. When Naseeb becomes swept up with the descending political culture of the war around him, he creates a rift between himself and Mona greater than the line that divides the country itself.

  • The Green Thumb Collection

    The Green Thumb Collection

    $19.95

    This collection of six plays written for young audiences—from primary school right through high school—showcases some of the recent inspiring works developed by Green Thumb Theatre. These plays include characters struggling with addiction, isolation, low self-esteem, rape, and concern for the environment, but never cross the line to become the dreaded “issue” plays that are often aimed at youth. Includes the plays Blind Spot by Meghan Gardiner, Cranked by Michael P. Northey, Derwent is Different and Showdown by Jamie Norris, and The Invisible Girl and Tree Boy by Michele Riml.

  • The Greengrocer’s Kitchen

    The Greengrocer’s Kitchen

    $24.95

    Pete Luckett, Canada’s Greengrocer, has transformed produce from an ordinary commodity into the jewel of the shopping basket. His newest cookbook is a guide to the seductive pyramids of luscious fruits that shoppers love to fondle but may not have dared to take home.

    The Greengrocer’s Kitchen: Fruit and Nuts is the key to buying, storing, and preparing those Edenic temptations. It contains over 150 recipes, as well as tips on every page for choosing the most delectable specimens and keeping them in prime condition.

    Fruit eaten raw is sublime; cooked, it’s ambrosial. With Cape Gooseberries, simply separate the sections of the husk into wings and dip the berries in melted chocolate, or strut your culinary stuff by creating a sensational Pavlova with Passion Fruit Sauce and Cape Gooseberries. Recipes such as Oriental Apricot Glaze for Salmon and Pork Tagine with Prunes and Apples show the glory of fruit in savoury dishes. Tropical Trail Mix, easy enough for children, and elegant Dried Cranberry and Pistachio Biscotti exploit the natural affinity between dried fruit and nuts.

  • The Grey Islands

    The Grey Islands

    $20.00

    Deluxe redesign of a seminal book by Canada’s former Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Includes new material.

    On the occasion of the press’s 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the second of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This new edition of The Grey Islands features a foreword by scholar Adrian Fowler and a detailed and insightful look back at the book and the time of its inception by Steffler himself. Featuring a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst.

    The Grey Islands is the story of one man’s pilgrimage to a remote island of Newfoundland’s northern peninsula. Using a broad range of styles, The Grey Islands delivers the bite of raw experience and embraces existence at the edge in all its terror and beauty.

    Bent, I circle the building grubbing and rooting. Every shingle and stick I lift yields bait. Things Carm ate and didn’t eat, turned to worms. A kind of organic shadow of the man.

    –from “The Grey Islands”

    Praise for The Grey Islands: “[The book] illustrates… how the outsider becomes an insider by becoming a supplicant, renouncing the role of saviour and honouring the culture of the people among whom he has decided to make his home.” –Adrian Fowler, from the Introduction.

  • The Grimmer

    The Grimmer

    $24.95

    “A spooky story with well-rounded characters, a unique magic system, and a villain most mysterious and terrifying.” — Ryan Douglass, New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake LivingstonThe small-town mysteries of John Bellairs are made modern with a dash of Stranger Things in this spine-tingling supernatural horror-thrillerAfter his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish — lover of metal music and literature — is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to know about the family’s troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult, where witches live in television sets, undead creatures can burn with a touch, and magic is mathematical. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee, Gisela, to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their peaceful town.Bringing together scares, suspense, and body horror, The Grimmer is award-winning author Naben Ruthnum’s first foray into the young adult genre. This gripping ride through the supernatural is loaded with vivid characters, frightening imagery, and astonishing twists, while tackling complex issues such as grief, racism, and addiction.

  • The Grimoire of Kensington Market

    The Grimoire of Kensington Market

    $22.00

    The downtown core of Toronto is being consumed by elysium, a drug that allows its users to slip through the permeable edges of this world into the next before consuming them utterly. Peddled by the icy Srebrenka, few have managed to escape the drug and its dealer. But Maggie has.

    Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” and woven through with northern folk tales, The Grimoire of Kensington Market is the story of Maggie, proprietor of the Grimoire bookstore, the cosmic nexus of all the world’s tales. Years after beating her addiction, Maggie is dismayed by the reappearance of Srebrenka in her life. Although she resists temptation, she quickly learns that her brother, Kyle, has been ensnared by Srebrenka’s drug-laced beguiling.

    Driven by guilt and love, Maggie sets off on a quest to rescue Kyle from the Silver World, where robbers stalk the woods, where tavern keepers weave clouds to hide mountains and where caribou race along the northern lights. There, she must discover what hidden strengths still lie within her.

  • The Ground That Grows Roses

    The Ground That Grows Roses

    $20.00

    More Singers have risen, and they’re about to unleash chaos.

    Denny has put her father to rest, solved the mystery of the screamers and become a national hero. On the surface, she is living a dream, but her problems are far from over. In order to end the screamer crisis, she and Verity will need to find more singers to help calm the restless dead, but so far none have been found.

    Meanwhile, in downtown Hamilton, a traumatized teen named Tessa and Lorian, an out-of-luck musician, discover singing through a friend’s death, but as they use their powers, they leave a trail of chaos and destruction behind them. In order to win them as allies, Denny will have to find a way to reach Tessa before she self-destructs under the weight of her past, but Denny is still struggling with demons of her own.

  • The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism

    The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism

    $10.95

    In this second edition, David Lester supplements his original concise and understaded, yet politically and socially potent catalogue of the injustices of capitalist ideology on the world’s indigent people, and the devastating environmental consequences of industrialization. Contains new, reliably sourced gruesome statistical facts about the harsh reality of capitalism’s impact on the world that will appall, inspire, and incite.

  • The Guardian’s Dilemma

    The Guardian’s Dilemma

    $25.00

    Zizi of Cleo knows there is no going back home after their ship is shot down and they are stranded on Earth. Having been placed in the custody of the US Government, they face interrogation and confinement. Their only companion is the man tasked with the topic of their capture: Neveth Amalthea Musleath from the planet Haddal, who has allied himself with Earth in the hopes of brokering their aid in preventing the cold war between Haddal and Cleo from escalating.

    The devoted and pragmatic Amalthea struggles with the inherent contradiction between his loyalty to his people and the responsibility he holds for the child abruptly placed within his care. The lonely and lost Zizi seeks both freedom and camaraderie, finding them at odds with one another. In a society that benefits from their captivity and demands their compliance, can Amalthea and Zizi reconcile their needs and wants with those of humanity? Can one truly care for another when both are stuck in a terrible place that benefits from the two keeping each other there?

    A soft science fiction ethical drama for young adults.

  • The Guilt Trippers

    The Guilt Trippers

    $24.95

    Moe Tremblay tries hard, but he’s struggling with the trappings of domesticity, having just moved to Montreal with his wife to support her budding law career. He’ll stay at home with the kids, they decide, while she climbs the corporate ladder.

    Then Dean shows up. Enticing him with tales of rock and roll glory and grime, Dean convinces Moe to join their band, The Guilt Trippers. Moe follows him through a door to a lost boys’ world of aging musician journeymen and a local music scene that is soiled and sexy, alluring and dangerous.

    Moe thought juggling childcare was hard; now he has fit it all in with weekly rehearsals, drug and alcohol addictions, and late nights at the bar. But increasingly, everything Moe does for himself seems to have dire repercussions for his family.

    A fictional story inspired by the author’s experience as both a father and a musician, The Guilt Trippers is a darkly funny and moving account of modern parenthood, the Montréal music scene, and the musicians that make their home here.

  • The Gull

    The Gull

    $17.95

    Winner of the prestigious 2008 Uchimura Naoya Prize, The Gull is the first Canadian play staged in the ancient, ritualized tradition of Japanese Noh. Produced by Vancouver’s Pangaea Arts, and written by award-winning poet and novelist Daphne Marlatt, the play is set in 1950: wartime restrictions on interned Japanese Canadians have finally been lifted, allowing them to return to the coast. It is a dramatization of the historical link between the fishing town of Steveston, home to many of these first, second and third generation Japanese Canadians, and Mio, the coastal village in Wakayama from which many of their ancestors originally emigrated.

    Inspired by a ghost story a Nisei fisherman had told during Marlatt’s work on the history of Steveston in the 1970s, the ghost in the play is seen by one of the two fishermen as the spirit of his mother who had perished in the internment camps, and as a gull by the other. The iconic centre of the play, the gull is common to Japan and North America. Connected to a fishing superstition that if you see a seagull splashing in the waves it means a storm is coming, it also takes full advantage of the dense intertextuality and multiple meanings of the poetic language of classical Noh theatre. To “be gulled” is to “be taken in,” a key to the play’s storyline of a people deluded that their right to citizenship by birth would protect them, their homes and their families from the State.

    An international collaboration, The Gull’s premiere featured: Noh master Akira Matsui, declared an Important Intangible Cultural Asset by Japan in 1998, as the main actor; American Noh expert Richard Emmert who wrote the music; two masks created by Wakayama artist Hakuzan Kubo; and a troupe of professional Noh musicians from Japan.

  • The Gull Workshop and Other Stories

    The Gull Workshop and Other Stories

    $22.95

    The Gull Workshop is a collection of stories that features a unique combination of thematic seriousness and comic style.

    The characters in The Gull Workshop are often in search of something—call it authenticity, a basis for living a meaningful life, or leave it unnamed. However it’s defined, these characters are unlikely to find it. This is a book about the comically fruitless quest for meaning and authenticity; the thirteen stories are set in locations across Canada.

    The prose is as witty, brilliant, and engaging as the stories are imaginative. One features a theme park with attractions based on the Book of Revelation. In another, the nineteenth-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud takes up residence on the fringes of an unnamed rural community in Canada in the early twenty-first century. Others are more rooted in realism: there’s the guy who lives in a basement and rants entertainingly about . . . pretty much everything, but especially the woman who lives upstairs, whom he hopes to save from what he calls “a life of blandness.” On every page there’s something to smile at, as the world of The Gull Workshop brims over with weird characters and comic situations, from the man who was once the apprentice of a world-famous taxidermist to the protagonist who’s deeply concerned about a brick on his patio that mysteriously changes position overnight.