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Dr. Joe Schwarcz breaks down the fascinating chemistry all around us in this intriguing look at everyday science
From pesticides and environmental estrogens to lipsticks and garlic, the science that surrounds us can be mystifying. Why do some people drill holes in their heads for “enlightenment”? How did a small chemical error nearly convict the unfortunate Patricia Stallings for murdering her son? Where does the expression “take a bromide” come from? Dr. Joe Schwarcz investigates aphrodisiacs, DDT, bottled water, vitamins, barbiturates, plastic wrap, and smoked meat. He puts worries about acrylamide, preservatives, and waxed fruit into perspective and unravels the mysteries of bulletproof vests, weight loss diets, and “mad honey.” From the fanciful to the factual, Dr. Joe enlightens us all — no drills attached.
Finalist, A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and Raymond Souster Award
In tarot, the Fool represents continual beginnings, not being able to see or think past the excitement and potential of a new start. The Fool is also associated with zero — a literal loop.
Like Anne Carson writing poetry in the style of the poet alchemist Arthur Rimbaud, Jessie Jones renders her reflections with acerbic brilliance. In her debut collection, she examines the sensual, cruel, pleasing, and depraved state of being human in the twenty-first century. All pro, she’s ready to stage a coup d’état.
Reflective with a kind of circular logic edging toward a darker surrealism, these poems are at times comically satirical, but always grounded in fresh ethos. A pleasure of language and circumstance, where passengers on a boat peer through “a thick, absorbent mist” and the poet moves “through/the city like a bundle of kindling./ All day I wait for a bit of friction/ to transform me,” The Fool sets its sights on a world riddled with panaceas designed to course-correct our lives.
The Forgotten is the story of nineteen-year-old Charlie Black who, in 1950, desperate to prove himself to his father, joins the Canadian Army’s Special Force as part of the United Nations forces defending South Korea from an attack by the North. Leaving his family and girlfriend behind, Charlie trains hard, but is soon separated from his battalion, the 2nd Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He manages to catch up with the Patricias at the last minute as they prepare to ship out, but not before witnessing the aftermath of a fatal rail disaster. Onboard, Charlie is relegated to 13 Platoon, a group of misfits and adventure-seekers under the leadership of Frenchy, their menacing corporal. Charlie’s comrades are young, only partly trained, but eager to get into battle. When the battalion arrives in Korea, however, their role has changed significantly. China has entered the war on the other side, and allied forces are struggling to survive. What the Canadian government conceived as a semi-peacekeeping role for their troops has changed into an all-out war, and after a brief period of additional training, the Special Force-including Charlie’s battalion-goes on the offensive against terrible odds. A harrowing story of war and survival, The Forgotten helps shed a light on a brutal conflict in our nation’s history, and those brave souls willing to step into the breach.
In 1823, a series of violent events in northern British Columbia shattered the fragile trading relationship between the local Indigenous community and the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). In The Fort George Murders, best-selling author and historian Geoff Mynett delves deep into the HBC’s documentation about this exceptional period in BC history. Writers later in the century took the HBC stories and added invented details and imagined motivation like layers of paint and grime over an old painting. Unfortunately, there are few written records from the Indigenous point of view. With a keen and curious sensitivity, Mynett examines the records, always bearing in mind the likelihood of conscious or unconscious bias of the writers.
With the murder of two HBC workers following a situation rooted in personal relationships and complicated by tensions between the Indigenous and the settler communities, the future of New Caledonia’s trading district was thrown into crisis. Mynett wades through the imperfect historical record in search of what really happened, seeking to understand this period of dangerous tension: Was the HBC to blame? Would they withdraw from New Caledonia altogether? Would they capture the murderers? And if so, what then?
Bringing to life notable figures in British Columbia’s history such as Chief Kw’eh, James Murray Yale, John Tod, Sir George Simpson and Sir James Douglas, The Fort George Murders explores how simmering tensions between the HBC and Indigenous community upended a delicate trade alliance, in which many wanted to simply co-exist. In a startling account as gripping as it is uncomfortable, bestselling BC author Geoff Mynett brings us to a breaking point in Canada’s fur trade.
The Foundations of Kindness is a tale of love, politics, murder and assassination in Sixties Chicago told from the vantage point of the mountains of British Columbia in the Seventies. Plus contemporary commentary. Young revolutionaries take on the Chicago Democratic Party machine with disastrous consequences for them and their movement. Fifty years later some of them are older, wiser, weaker but uncowed.
This history of oppression and its effects, at the heart of a French-Canadian family in the 1950s and 1960s, depicts a combination of prohibitions and censures. While the father demands the children’s slavish obedience and labour, the mother promises some protection from his tyranny–until the family settles into a flea pit hotel at the cross-roads of a practically deserted village. Surrounded by an impenetrable forest, the hotel hosts regulars that resemble characters from Hugo and Gorki, and family life declines. In hopes of escape, the younger daughter marries while the elder, against her parents’ wishes, immerses herself in studies and asks questions whose answers are disturbing.
In February 2022, the “Freedom Convoy” laid siege to Parliament Hill, bringing the nation’s capital to a standstill. The Freedom Convoy unpacks the larger project of extremism and social fear in the Canadian landscape, tracing the Convoy’s history to pinpoint the conditions that fomented the movement.This book unpacks the collapse of the policing system and the failure of intelligence services, and all levels of government under the occupation of Ottawa and the blockades at border crossings. What these security failures reveal is a system dominated by personalities and petty interests that had puttered along in ordinary times, but utterly seized through Canada’s first genuine national, political, and security crisis in a generation. Understanding the drivers of social polarization and political extremism — including the sins of the state — this book lays out a roadmap for bringing the disaffected back into the democratic fold.
Winner of the 2019 Heritage Toronto Book Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
“Moncrieff eloquently reminds readers of the bounty and beauty that surround them.” —Publishers Weekly
Our cities are places of food polarities — food deserts and farmers’ markets, hunger and food waste, fast food delivery and urban gardening. While locavores and preserving pros abound, many of us can’t identify the fruit trees in our yards or declare a berry safe to eat. Those plants — and the people who planted them — are often forgotten.
In The Fruitful City, Helena Moncrieff examines our relationship with food through the fruit trees that dot city streets and yards. She tracks the origins of these living heirlooms and questions how they went from being subsistence staples to raccoon fodder. But in some cities, previously forgotten fruit is now in high demand, and Moncrieff investigates the surge of non-profit urban harvest organizations that try to prevent that food from rotting on concrete and meets the people putting rescued fruit to good use.
As she travels across Canada, slipping into backyards, visiting community orchards, and taking in canning competitions, Moncrieff discovers that attitudinal changes are more important than agricultural ones. While the bounty of apples is great, reconnecting with nature and our community is the real prize.
Daniel Brooks’s The Full Light of Day is a modern epic tragedy, a timely exploration of crumbling privilege and power, beautifully told and innovative in form. Mary’s family finds itself in serious difficulty, and some bad decisions lead to disaster. Mary soon falls ill, and as she is dying wrestles with what her family is, what she has done with her life, and how she wants to die. The Full Light of Day is a provocative film/theatre experiment which looks at crucial choices facing Canadians today – how to live, love, and die in a world in transition. Bold characters, bracing text, wit, and suspense all mix together in this new play by award-winning artist Daniel Brooks.
Nominated for 2024 Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association’s Elgin Award • One of the Globe 100’s Best Books of 2023
The follow-up to Guriel’s NYT New & Noteworthy Forgotten Work is a mashup of Moby-Dick, The Lord of the Rings, Byron, cyberpunk, Swamp Thing, Teen Wolf … and more.
It’s 2070. Newfoundland has vanished, Tokyo is a new Venice, and many people have retreated to “bonsai housing”: hives that compress matter in a world that’s losing ground to rising tides. Enter Kaye, an English literature student searching for the reclusive author of a YA classic—a beloved novel about teenage werewolves sailing to a fabled sea monster’s nest. Kaye’s quest will intersect with obsessive fan subcultures, corporate conspiracies, flying gondolas, an anthropomorphic stove, and the molecular limits of reality itself. Set in the same world as Guriel’s acclaimed Forgotten Work, which the New York Times called “unlikely, audacious, and ingenious,” and written in rhyming couplets, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles cuts between Kaye’s quest, chapters from the YA novel, and guerilla works of fanfic in a visionary verse novel destined to draw its own cult following.
A stunningly original work of speculative fiction,The Fungus Garden follows the plight of a man who becomes transformed into a termite. Impeccably researched, this story brings the reader effortlessly into a fascinating world of conflict and desire, ultimately becoming an investigation into what it means to be human.
Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com‘s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week • One of Kirkus Reviews‘ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
Michael Harris’s first poetry collection since his Governor General’s Award-nominated Circus (2010), The Gamekeeper assembles a thoughtful selection of the Montreal poet’s accomplished verse. With evocative imagery and a natural sense of rhythm, Harris writes of illness, pain, marriage, death, imaginary fairy-tale monsters, and much else. The result, according to one reviewer, “straddles a position between the carnivalesque and the sensual.”