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All Books

All Books in this Collection

  • The Jonas Variations

    The Jonas Variations

    $24.00

    The Jonas Variations: A Literary Séance is a one-of-a-kind collection: free translations, imitations, variations, reverberations, and refutations of poems in other languages that inspired its author—poet, writer and journalist George Jonas—to words in English.

    The poets span centuries; the languages include Latin, Arabic, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, and Spanish. A thumbnail portrait of each poet in the context of his times precedes Jonas’s versions and re-visionings: poets as well known as Catullus, Dante, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Heine, and Rilke rub shoulders with names much less familiar to most readers. Jonas conjures up the spirits of his poets, dialogues with them, and in doing so gives them new life. This romp through multilingual literary history is at once a very personal project and an inspiring example of oneman’s lifetime engagement with poetry.

  • The Josephine Knot

    The Josephine Knot

    $17.95

    After Samantha’s baba dies, her fractured family is summoned to pick through the house full of belongings and trash, leaving taped notes on whatever they want to take. Between old napkins, a closet full of ketchup packets, and a freezer full of rotting meat are gems like a grandfather clock and plastic deer statuettes that hold more sentiment. While her father David sifts through his own memories, all Samantha wants is to find a simple object that could represent her place in the family. When other family members arrive, tug of wars and passive-aggressive conversations commence. In a house full of junk and sadness, it comes down to Samantha and David to find a new way to fit together.

  • The Joyful Child

    The Joyful Child

    $24.94

    In his third novel, Norman Ravvin writes about a father and his young son, and the companionship they develop at home and on the road. Returning to the wanderlust of his travelogue Hidden Canada and to the European Jewish past that often underwrites his characters’ lives, Ravvin follows the interconnections of urban living, the experience of travel and abandonment, and a man’s love of neighbourhoods, of jazz and old cars

  • The Junction

    The Junction

    $24.95

    In his third book, The Junction, John Schreiber invites us to join him on a journey into the hidden corners of BC’s Cariboo Chilcotin, where he observes and describes a land of mountains and old trails, coyotes and bighorn sheep, Indigenous Peoples, homesteaders, ranchers and the stories of long ago.

    Driven by his love of this land, Schreiber wanders the hills, mountains and valleys visiting old-time characters and old friends. He wakes to the sound of coyotes howling next to his tent, witnesses a mother bear fussing over her four cubs and is inspired by the spectacle of thousands of Sandhill cranes circling high out of sight as they migrate north. With the mastery of an experienced guide, he takes us to wild places, valleys, rivers and mountains of immeasurable beauty and power, and in so doing he acknowledges and underlines the essential importance and meaning of such places in our lives.

    John Schreiber encourages us to take time to pay attention to where we live, and to be alert to the lively mythologies and stories, old and new, which present themselves as we increase our familiarity with the living natural world around us. There is no detail that, when closely examined, is not lively and fully alive.

  • The Jungle

    The Jungle

    $18.95

    Can Jack and Veronyka ever get ahead? In this all-too-relatable love story in a city suffocating under late-stage capitalism, a young couple is pitted against odd after odd in a way that isn’t about testing one’s character anymore—it’s simply reality.

    Jack, a second-generation Chinese Canadian cab driver meets Veronyka, an undocumented factory worker and waitress from Moldova, as he’s bringing her from one job to the other. Their chance encounter blooms into an unlikely romance, stolen in moments between shifts, and then a hasty marriage, which solves migration issues but brings the pair even deeper into the challenges of providing for themselves and their families. The painful death of both of Jack’s parents and the sense of helplessness that has dogged both of their families leads Jack and Veronkya to desperate measures to escape. Some hard work mixed with some political blackmail brings them to a new life, but at what cost?

  • The Just

    The Just

    $17.95

    Camus’s The Just is based on the true story of a group of Russian revolutionaries who assassinated Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in 1905. This new translation by Bobby Theodore comes at a time when the play is more relevant than ever and provokes a troubling yet vital question: Do the ends justify the means?

    Cast of 4 men and 1 woman.

  • The Kaizen of Poker

    The Kaizen of Poker

    $24.95

    Whatever your poker level — beginning, intermediate, or expert — you can always improve!

    In The Kaizen of Poker, Sheree Bykofsky will help you take your game to the next level — and to the level after that. By learning how to identify and focus on the skills and strategies you need to improve most, you will find yourself raking in more pots and leaving the game a winner far more often. Do you play too many hands? Bluff too little or ineffectively? Not know how to read the other players’ strategies and cards? Take the “Morning After Challenge” and start outplaying the opponents you want to emulate. Expanding on Secrets the Pros Won’t Tell You About Winning Hold’Em Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, here she takes the Japanese concept of “Kaizen” — continuous improvement — and applies it to the card game we all love best.

  • The Kayak

    The Kayak

    $12.95

    An accident leaves a teen in a wheelchair and her only freedom comes with kayaking. Meeting a wind surfer who she has saved triggers feelings of wanting to belong and be accepted, and her life begins to change as she starts to look at herself not just as a victim in a wheelchair.

  • The Keening

    The Keening

    $32.95

    The murdered body of Sorcha the prophetess is discovered following a lavish banquet at the Maguire castle in 16th-century Ireland. In the present day, a dig commences on the land, and not only is a body discovered, but a sheaf of prophecies. Who killed Sorcha?

    There has been a guesthouse on the Tierney land in County Fermanagh for hundreds of years. Now Tierney’s Hotel is faced with a development that will block the hotel’s best feature, its view of Enniskillen Castle. But the project can be stopped if there are important historical artifacts buried on the property. Enter the archaeologists.

    Mick’s ancestor, Brigid Tierney, ran the guesthouse in the late 1500s. We see Brigid and Shane and their children at a lavish banquet at the castle, home of the ruling family, the Maguires. The wine and ale flow freely, the harpist plays, the bard recites the Maguires’ heroic deeds. But one woman has a sense of foreboding. Sorcha the prophetess sees harrowing times ahead. The Tudors of England are determined to complete their brutal conquest of Ireland.

    The morning after the banquet, Sorcha is found dead on a bed of oak leaves. And Shane is accused of the killing. His lawyer, Terence, conducts his defence on the hilltop that constitutes the court in 1595.

    Ireland has had a complex and at times woeful history, and we see that history being played out in the lives of the Tierneys, past and present.

    In 2018, the dig commences on Mick Tierney’s land. Historical artifacts? Yes. But also a sheaf of prophecies. And a body ― a bogman ― four hundred years old.

  • The Keeper’s Daughter

    The Keeper’s Daughter

    $14.95

    As a way to draw visitors to their isolated fishing village on Quebec’s North Shore, the tourist bureau commissions a documentary film recreating life as it was lived there in the 1940s and 50s. To gather material for the project, the filmmaker is sent in search of Rose Brouillard, now an old woman but raised on an island just offshore by Onile, a local fisherman. Rose is finally tracked down in Montreal, where she lives a solitary life fogged by one of the inevitabilities of old age – failing memory.

    “Dorothea” (the name Rose gives the young filmmaker), takes her back to scenes from her childhood and invites her to tell her story as they go, and so we return to a past assembled from Rose’s fragmented recollections.

    Structured as a series of short cinematic “takes,” this novel about recovering both personal and shared histories is told in a polyphony of voices, including Rose herself (as a child, an adolescent, and in her old age), the sexton of the village church, his three female cousins, an elderly neighbour, a villager who passes time on the harbour wall, and Rose’s long-deceased mother. We see fishermen on the docks with their nets, hard-at-work villagers with shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, leafy gardens, and tree-lined streets, all recreated during Rose’s reminiscences. The problem is that many of these scenes are invented, not real. Does that matter? Or are the stories we tell more important?

  • The Keys of My Prison

    The Keys of My Prison

    $14.95

    That Rafe Jonason’s life didn’t end when he smashed up his car was something of a miracle; on that everyone agreed. However, the devoted husband and pillar of the community emerges from hospital a very different man. Coarse and intolerant, this new Rafe drinks away his days, showing no interest in returning to work. Worst of all, he doesn’t appear to recognize or so much as remember his loving wife Julie. Tension and suspicion within the couple’s Rosedale mansion grow after it is learned that Rafe wasn’t alone in the car that night. Is it that Julie never truly knew her husband? Or might it be that this man isn’t Rafe Jonason at all?

    Originally published in 1956 by Doubleday, The Keys of My Prison is one of several suspense novels Wees set in Toronto. This Ricochet Books edition marks its return to print after fifty years.

  • The Killer’s Henchman

    The Killer’s Henchman

    $24.95

    Summer 2021, the novel coronavirus is scything through populations worldwide. WHO Director-General announces the pandemic will end “when the world chooses to end it. We have all the tools we need: proven public health and social measures; rapid and accurate diagnostics; effective therapeutics including oxygen; and of course, powerful vaccines.” The pandemic didn’t end.

    The proven health and social measures Tedros mentioned, used by China, Vietnam, New Zealand and a few others to drive infections to zero, were ignored in favor of allowing the virus to run riot, or imposing half measures only when hospitals were under an unbearable strain.

    The promised vaccine exit ramp turned out to be more mirage than oasis. Countries that rolled out vaccines quickly to large parts of their populations, soon turned to boosters, but with little success.

    Poor- and middle-income countries experienced a global vaccine apartheid.

    Stephen Gowans investigates why, despite the availability of necessary tools, the world failed to prevent the Covid-19 disaster. Examining the business opportunities and pressures that helped shape the world’s failed response, he concludes that the novel coronavirus, a killer, had a helper in bringing about the calamity: capitalism, the killer’s henchman.

  • The Killing Room

    The Killing Room

    $9.95

    The Killing Room

  • The King of New Orleans

    The King of New Orleans

    $19.95

    A Big Easy legend returns to the limelight

    New Orleans was once one of the hottest cities for pro wrestling because of one man — Sylvester Ritter, better known as the Junkyard Dog. JYD became a legend in the Big Easy, drawing huge crowds to the Superdome, a feat no other wrestler ever came close to. In 1980, he managed to break one of the final colour barriers in the sport by becoming the first black wrestler to be made the undisputed top star of his promotion.

    This biography aims to restore JYD to his deserved place in the history books by looking at his famous feuds, the business backstories, and the life of the man outside the ring. The King of New Orleans recounts the story of how an area known for racial injustice became the home of wrestling’s most adored African-American idol. A remarkable tale of a man still remembered on the streets of New Orleans and in the hearts of pro wrestling fans.

  • The Kissing Fence

    The Kissing Fence

    $24.95

    1950s, New Denver: Pavel and Nina are among 200 Russian Doukhobor children separated from their families and community, and placed in a residential facility in the Kootenay region of BC. Forcibly removed from their homes by the RCMP, the children attend mandatory school. They must speak in English and observe Canadian customs and religious practices. Seeking to protect the younger children and suffering mistreatment at the hands of the officials, Pavel and Nina struggle to keep their culture alive and remain resilient.

    2018, Vancouver: After more than ten years in business, William has rejected his Doukhobor heritage and is now adept at juggling the demands of his business importing sporting goods. Surrounded by the material wealth he has amassed, William feels justified in enjoying his prosperity–even if he is emotionally distant from his wife and barely knows his daughter–he has made sacrifices to succeed in life as well as making some shady deals.

    When a cycling accident ends with William in the hospital with a concussion, doctors discover a mass on his brain. He is rushed into surgery, but instead of improving after his operation, William’s life starts to tumble out of control: he loses his grasp on the illegitimate side of his business arrangements, an affair threatens his marriage, an employee turns up dead, and then the police come knocking.

    These two stories converge as Pavel and Nina leave New Denver and struggle to build a life outside the dormitory walls, while William begins to question his own values, motivations, and accountability.

    A powerful and emotional novel, The Kissing Fence examines generational trauma through one family’s story of obligation, justice, and belonging. A story of conflicting cultural tensions that questions how we define success, identity, and our community.

  • The Kite

    The Kite

    $19.99

    W.O. Mitchell’s critically acclaimed novel, The Kite, is a humorous yet touching story of a journalist’s worst nightmare. Set in the Prairie backwater of Shelby, Alberta, seasoned reporter and minor television celebrity David Lang arrives to write a magazine feature on the town’s oldest living citizen, the 111-year-old curmudgeon Daddy Sherry.

    Still recovering from the disappointments of a fatherless childhood, the uptight David just wants to file his story as quickly as possible and hightail it back to Toronto. But he hasn’t reckoned on the cantankerous cunning of Daddy Sherry. As David chases his recalcitrant subject all over town, he begins to understand the meaning of life and finds love and happiness for the first time.

    This new edition of The Kite coincided with the publication of a newly discovered and never-before-published edition of the novel in audio format, featuring Mitchell’s own reading. It also introduces a whole new generation of readers to the rampaging Daddy Sherry, a holy terror whom Margaret Laurence considered to be Mitchell’s “best and most complete character.”