A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more
All Books
All Books in this Collection
Showing 7665–7680 of 9481 results
-
The Keeper’s Daughter
$14.95As 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
$14.95That 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
$24.95Summer 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
$9.95The Killing Room
-
The King James Bible Play
$18.95“History has as much to do with imagination as anything else.”
In the early 1600s, a modest crew of male scholars and clergymen are working for King James to produce a new English translation of the Bible that will bring unity through God’s words. Their idiosyncratic and interpersonal conflicts will be embedded in one of the most influential texts in history, indelibly shaping the English language and Christian thought for centuries to come. Fast-forward to the present day where an all-female theatre troupe is creating a play about those translators—and they have more than a few notes.
A witty and fascinating interrogation of translation in all its forms, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman’s The King James Bible Play brilliantly examines the personal and political forces within authorship and authority. Musing on the mysteries of creation itself, this gripping drama draws a parallel between past and present, reckoning with what we inherit and what we choose to believe.
-
The King of New Orleans
$19.95A 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
$24.951950s, 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
$19.99W.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.”
-
The Knife Sharpener’s Bell
$21.00Winner of the J.I. Segal 2010 Awards, Prize in English Fiction and Poetry on a Jewish Theme
Shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, Fiction
Annette Gershon and her family try to escape the economic chaos of the Great Depression in 1930s Winnipeg by returning “home” to the Soviet Union. But there they find themselves on a runaway train of tumultuous events as Stalinist Russia plunges into the horrors of World War II. This story of remarkable breadth and extraordinary prose is the seldom-told tale of those who undertook that odyssey, of loyalty and betrayal, heroism and fear.
-
The Knockoff Eclipse
$18.00Melissa Bull’s debut short story collection The Knockoff Eclipse and Other Stories hums with the immediacy of distant and future worlds. Firmly rooted in the streets of Montreal and its many neighbourhoods and subcultures, Bull zooms in on the female experience while playing with societal expectation and literary convention. Spattered with bits of French, many of the stories pull back the covers on the intersection between French and English Canada.
In the titular story “The Knockoff Eclipse,” we’re transported to a future world where women’s clothing quite literally advertises their supposed wants and desires. Wanda and Henry meet in an old divebar turned trendy futurist café. “I used to be a model. But I got tired of people looking at me,” she tells Henry. The theme of looking or being looked at runs through the entire collection, female bodies and the women who inhabit them must constantly contend with the masculine gaze, which is often internalized in such a way that it seems inescapable.
The Knockoff Eclipse is dark like Duras, flippant comme Sagan, with elements of the surreal running through. These stories are modern feminist fables for the reader who is decidedly uninterested in upholding the moral of the story as it’s been traditionally told.
-
The Knotted Rope
$12.95Broken Trail, a white boy adopted by the Oneida First Nation and brought up to be a warrior, has seen much injustice done to his adoptive people and even more suffered by the Black slaves who spend their lives in bondage. The year is 1793, the year in which a new law is passed to gradually end slavery in Upper Canada. The new law is not perfect; it will leave hundreds still in slavery for the rest of their lives. But it is enough to make many slave owners afraid that their investment in slaves will soon be worth nothing. No wanting to lose money, they sell their slaves to dealers to take to slave markets in the United States. When a twelve-year-old girl, Rosa, and her father are sold to a slave dealer, Broken Trail has a plan that will not only rescue them from the slave dealer but also make them free for life. But where has the slave dealer taken Rosa and her father? Broken Trail embarks a dangerous search for the place where slaves are confined until they can be shipped across the border. The danger is great, and Broken Trail finds more than he expected.
-
The Lachine Canal Chronicles: Murphy’s Law
$22.95Murphy’s Law, the second book in the “Lachine Canal Chronicles” series, follows Tom Murphy who is trying to cope with the tragic events of his life and his newfound fame as a writer. Tom is trying to get rid of his self-destructive habits and is asked to speak at one of his A.A. meetings. The story revolves around him detailing his life: from his upbringing in LaSalle to his friendship with Eamon, his time in the army and his unhinged sex life – all while losing, in the process, everyone who is dear to him. Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. This is exactly what this novel is all about.
-
The Lachine Canal Chronicles: The Luck of the Irish
$22.95The Luck of the Irish is the first instalment of “The Lachine Canal Chronicles” series. It follows the misadventures of Eamon Jovanovski, a wannabe artist of Irish descent, who befriends the infamous Tom Murphy, another Irish Montrealer, at the age of sixteen. From then on, Eamon’s life will be turned upside down due to of his friendship with Tom who is infatuated by sex, drugs and punk rock. Tom’s downward spiral will eventually have a dark influence on Eamon who keeps helping him get back on his feet. Eamon and Tom will exile themselves from Montreal, both looking for their place in society and both trying to give their life some meaning. But, a couple of years later, they will be drawn back to their “hood”: Montreal’s South-West area, between the Lachine Canal and the Aqueduct. Throughout the novel, Eamon also keeps getting his heart broken by different women, due to series of events beyond his control but that all originate from his friendship with Tom.
-
The Lady Smith
$14.95What happens when the “other woman” becomes your roommate? What happens when she starts to confide in you about her affair?
From the playwright of “A Common Man’s Guide to Loving Women,” comes a claustrophobic drama, set in the Black community of Toronto’s Bloor and Bathurst neighbourhood, which challenges the distance between deception and redemption.
-
The Land on Which We Live
$24.95Legendary tales of pioneers and adventurers cultivating BC’s Cariboo Plateau in between the 19th and 20th century. The romantic backwoods landscape known as the North Bonaparte, stretches east from 70 Mile House to Bridge Lake and is full of small remote ranches, hidden abandoned homesteads, and rutted roads leading to graves in forgotten meadows. High on the Cariboo Plateau, the land was once the domain of the Secwepemc people who hunted and fished throughout the region. White settlers began to arrive in 1891 and discovered the land they chose was tough and challenging. Winters were long with frost in July and September, the soil was inhospitable, the location remote from any amenities. Those who made it their home had to be tough, resourceful and resilient in order to thrive. This is the story of those people: colourful, hard-working, hard-playing individualists. Tales of well-known pioneers such as Bill and Mary Boyd and the Saul brothers of the 70 Mile House, the McDonald family of The Rainbow Chasers, and Jack Dubois, the famous rustler and horse breeder of Outlaws of Western Canada are among those included in the book. Barbara MacPherson’s The Land on Which We Live fully captures a life that depended on tenacity, skillfulness, and on the kindness and help of neighbours and friends.
-
The Land Speaks
$22.00When a young girl visits her special place on the land with her Mosôm, she learns that every season carries a gift. Together, they greet, listen, learn, and give thanks. As the seasons change, so too does her relationship with her grandfather. When she must return to the land on her own, she discovers that his teachings are still with her in the sky, the ground, and the animals all around her. The Land Speaks is a gentle, poetic story about love, loss, and the teachings we carry forward.