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Showing 7697–7712 of 9492 results
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The Last Hiccup
$16.95“A strange and surprisingly touching novel about how people find good and evil where they look for them.” — Booklist
“A beautifully written novel, part folk tale, part parable.” — Will Ferguson, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning 419
Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction
In 1930s Russia, an eight-year-old boy named Vladimir is suddenly stricken with a chronic case of the hiccups. He soon finds himself spirited away to a Moscow hospital by the famous physician Sergei Namestikov, who puts him through a series of extraordinary — and often bizarre — treatments in an effort to find a cure.
Then Sergei’s chief medical rival, the brilliant Alexander Afiniganov, determines that beneath Vladimir’s blank eyes lurks a pure, unbridled evil — and takes steps to remove the child from polite society. Abandoned by everyone but his hiccups, Vladimir is about to embark on a journey that is funny, poignant, and surreal — and that takes a close look at the nature of good and evil.
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The Last Hockey Game
$29.95Shortlisted, Toronto Book Awards
On May 2, 1967, Montreal and Toronto faced each other in a battle for hockey supremacy. This was only the fifth time the teams had ever played each other in the Stanley Cup finals. Toronto led the series 3-2.
But this wasn’t simply a game. From the moment Foster Hewitt announced “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States,” the game became a turning point in sports history. That night, the Leafs would win the Cup. The next season, the National Hockey League would expand to twelve teams. Players would form an association to begin collective bargaining. Hockey would become big business. The NHL of the “Original Six” would be a thing of the past.
It was The Last Hockey Game.
Placing us in the announcers’ booth, in the seats of excited fans, and in the skates of the players, Bruce McDougall scores with a spectacular account of every facet of that final fateful match. As we meet players such as Gump Worsley, Tim Horton, Terry Sawchuk, and Eddie Shack, as well as coaches, owners, and fans, The Last Hockey Game becomes more than a story of a game. It also becomes an elegy, a lament for an age when, for all its many problems, the game was played for the love of it.
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The Last House
$19.00Poems of disturbing beauty, examining personal and collective loss.
This is Michael Kenyon’s third full-length collection of poems. His poetry and fiction have always been alert to the underside, the angularity of the outcast, those forced by temperament or predilection or circumstance to the fringes of middle class life. Here, it is insight itself that pushes the speakers closer to the edge. The world of these poems is dark: Kenyon names and owns our clear cuts, our overpopulation, our fossil-fueled rush to oblivion, the violence embedded in sexuality. This is a book of expanded elegy, clear-eyed, unflinching, amid the wreckage of its loves.
… It is useless to
choose a direction: current must find us.At last we swim away from each other
to make the storm less jealous, old stars freeze
the water, earthquakes calve an island, and
another me adores another you
inland.— from “The Stars”
Fiercely elegiac, jaggedly sexual, The Last House
stands on the brink of devastation–personal, ancestral, cultural. There is transcendence here, but no redemption: it is too late. But this is also a book about love — protean, violent, perduring — love as the key to reality, even as it mystifies us or tears us apart. These are poems of deep and disturbing vision, sustained by electrifying honesty. -
The Last of Its Kind
$24.95In 1835, Gus, a young zoologist, is sent to Iceland by The Natural History Museum of Lille to study North Atlantic fauna. It is there he witnesses the bloody massacre of a colony of great auks. Amidst the violence, the curious researcher pulls a single wounded bird from the water, unaware that he has recovered what will eventually be the last of its kind. Gus brings the initially suspicious animal home with him to study it. Instead of a research specimen, he discovers the beauty and majesty of his new companion, who he names Prosp, and the pair eventually develop an endearing mutual affection.
Over the next fifteen years, Gus comes to realize that he is the close observer of something inconceivable: the extinction of a species. From there, a singular preoccupation is born, and the inevitable fate of his feathered friend eclipses everything else around him. Gus’s burgeoning understanding, wonder, and obsession around the disappearance of a species and humankind’s role in its erasure mirror some of our questions today about the future of the natural world and our place within it.
The Last of Its Kind is a story of friendship, trust, and respect, but also about the desire to endure and survive. With unparalleled mastery, Sibylle Grimbert illuminates the deep intelligence and emotion of our animal counterparts and asks the urgent question of what it means to love what will never be again.
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The Last Real World Champion
$29.95“Tim Hornbaker further establishes himself as possibly the finest wrestling historian writing today.” — SLAM! Wrestling on Death of the TerritoriesFrom the author of Death of the Territories and Capitol Revolution comes the definitive biography of “Nature Boy” Ric FlairFor more than a century, professional wrestling has cultivated some of the most eccentric and compelling personalities. As the embodiment of flamboyance and intensity, the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair stood at wrestling’s apex for decades, cementing his place as a once-in-a-lifetime athlete and performer. When he was in the ring, fans knew they were witnessing the very best, and he not only became a multi-time world heavyweight champion in the NWA, WCW, and the WWE, but his status as a generational great has been confirmed with inductions into numerous Halls of Fame.The Last Real World Champion: The Legacy of “Nature Boy” Ric Flair is a gripping portrait of a wrestling legend. This unflinching biography explores the successes, struggles, and controversy of Flair’s life in wrestling, pulling no punches in sharing the truth behind his in-ring achievements and out-of-the-ring hardships. Today, Flair is celebrated for his pioneering career and as an iconic figure in the realm of mainstream sports entertainment. Celebrated wrestling historian Tim Hornbaker tells Flair’s complete story, with meticulous attention to detail and exhaustive research, creating a must-read for fans of wrestling, sports, and popular culture.
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The Last Tasmanian
$18.99Winner, Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
Shortlisted, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Canada and the CaribbeanThe Last Tasmanian has reaped more national and international recognition than any other novel by Herb Curtis. First published in 1991, it has remained in print continuously in its original edition and later in The Brennen Siding Trilogy. Now it’s available again as a separate volume in the GLE Library Series.
Brennen Siding, a hamlet on a small tributary of the famous Miramichi River, is home to an unforgettable crew — Shadrack Nash and his friend Dryfly Ramsey; Dry’s mother, the homely, destitute Shirley, and Nutbeam, the big-eared hermit she marries; the American sports who come to the Cabbage Island Salmon Club to fish; and, above all, Hilda Porter, the elderly schoolteacher who treasures the story of Trucanini, the last Tasmanian on earth. Hilda herself is the last of the Porters, and, amid the invasion of TV, Elvis, and rich Americans, Shad and Dry may be the last true natives of Brennen Siding.
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The Last Thief
$18.95Nine-fingered Fyodor “Bone” Sliva is the last Thief, legendary for his murderous adherence to the Zakone, a brutal code of honour that once ruled the Moscow underworld. But as the Soviet Union disintegrates and a new cadre of gangsters, businessmen, and politicians takes over, Bone finds himself a hunted man. He flees eastward, across the crumbling Union, through the opium fields of China and Burma, through the brothels of Bangkok, and begins a journey to North America in order to finally leave his blood-soaked past behind.
But trailing him is the hook-nosed sniper, Alexandr Solonik, whose mission is to kill Wild Thieves as they’re found. And ahead, in Canada, is the depraved master criminal Dmitri Razinkin, who has taken firm control of the northern underworld. Most of the Wild Thieves have been assassinated by Razinkin’s brigade of cut-throats. Torn between the Code that bids him to protect the downtrodden Thieves, and his own desire to “walk alone,” the charismatic Bone gathers together his own brigade of bandits, torpedoes, and apprentices.
With the gangsters in Moscow awaiting delivery of his decapitated head, Bone leads a resistance against the corrupt new order. But can he trust his brigade not to betray him for Razinkin’s riches? Will Solonik catch up with him before he can redeem the Code? The Last Thief is the story of an underworld caught between profit and tradition, an epic testament to the struggle for honour in the midstof violence.
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The Last Unsuitable Man
$17.95Struggling mystery author Claire Denman is enjoying a relaxing vacation at her brother’s secluded house in the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia after helping a wealthy elderly woman move her cats across the country. The woman happens to be the wife of the man Claire had an affair with 30 years ago and she happens to be renting Claire’s brother’s rental property next door.
Claire’s days are filled with writing poetry, birdwatching, and exploring the nearby town. But then strange things begin to occur on the property. Claire finds messes she doesn?t remember making, objects start to go missing, and entire days are seemingly missing from Claire’s memory. So, when the elderly lady is found murdered, how can Claire be sure she wasn’t somehow involved?
The Last Unsuitable Man is a slow-burn thriller filled with twists that no one–least of all the victim–could see coming.
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The Last Wife
$17.95Kate Parr is smart, confident, and passionate: a rising star in a world of intense competition. But her obligatory marriage to Henry is rife with the threat of violence and the lure of deceit; her secret liaisons with Thom, her husband’s former brother-in-law, could send her to an early grave; and her devotion to the education and equal rights of Henry’s daughters is putting an even bigger strain on her marriage. Does Kate risk her life to gain authority in both her relationship and her political career? Which love will she be led to if she follows her heart? And what kind of future is there for her children if she makes a crucial mistake?
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The Last Word
$14.95A lively examination of why the modern eulogy should rest in peace.
Finding the right words to reckon with a loved one’s death is no easy task, and the pressure to grieve in a timely fashion only makes the difficulty of saying a meaningful goodbye that much harder. We are continually instructed to contain our grief to a limited period, to promptly ‘get over it’ and return to business as usual – is it any wonder that, when themoment for speaking directly to death arrives, we so often grasp at clichés in order to avoid examining our sorrow?In turning a critical eye toward the act of eulogy, Julia Cooper manages to perceptively, even playfully, create a new space for the bleak act of mourning. Examining fictional eulogies inThe Big Lebowski and Love Actually alongside teary speeches at celebrity funerals and reflections on mourning from Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, The Last Word is a light in the dark. Braiding her delightful, lively cultural analysis with her own personal experiences of loss, Cooper makes a stunning and compelling case for a more compassionateapproach to grief.
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The Late Season
$9.95The Late Season
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The Laundromat Essay
$16.95A difference between us bridged my fondness for a street that ran through the kitchen. It was evenly lined with the trees that line those kinds of streets. That autumn we had to gather the leaves from the floor. They fell when you quietly pulled down the shelves from inside the cabinets.
‘I know the owner of the laundromat,’ reflects the narrator of this extended poem, ‘but can’t remember his name, which could be for many reasons.’ The laundromat is across the street from his apartment. The narrator, also nameless, is looking at it through his window but can’t seem to get there to pick up all his clothes. The narrator then detours as he tries to navigate a city that is fracturing around him at the same time as he confronts the failure of poetry and memory inside the labyrinthine architecture of language
‘This book is like a blindfolded staircase,’ the narrator says. Poetry here is misused, a failed image. Written as a narrative essay that continuously dissects a never-finished conversation, and annotated with the fragments of poems that were maybe never written about a childhood that maybe never took place, The Laundromat Essay is a spiralling poem about the pathology of failure and of forgetting, a poetic narrative of credible absurdity.
In this debut, Buckley initiates and sustains a dialogue between language, experience and oblivion that departs incessantly into an autumnal landscape full of melancholy and metaphor.
‘Kyle Buckley’s debut book ends up as playful as it is intellectually stringent … [his] asides about poetry’s structural contradictions are made much more palpable bye the fact that his poems are so damn good, even when they’re presented as mere footnoes.’
– Eye Weekly
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The Laundryman
$26.99In the frozen heart of the 1883 Canadian frontier, a single death unveils a darkness that could consume a town—and the men sworn to protect it.
Corporal Belvedere, a Mountie scarred by a brutal past, and Surgeon Virgil Montgomery, a newcomer haunted by his own doubts, are drawn into a murder investigation in the isolated settlement of Prince Albert. As winter’s grip tightens, the killing exposes a web of secrets buried beneath the snow, threatening to unravel the fragile order of the North-West Territories.
In a community steeped in mistrust, Belvedere’s unyielding quest for justice collides with Montgomery’s struggle to uphold his oath to do no harm. Each clue they uncover draws them deeper into a maze of deception, where allies and enemies blur and every step risks a deadly reckoning. As the ice on the Saskatchewan River begins to crack, they must confront a truth that could cost them their lives—or their souls.
A gripping tale of vengeance and redemption, The Laundryman plunges you into a world where justice battles betrayal, and the truth lies buried in a frozen wilderness.
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The Law of Gravity
$19.95Dom has had a rough go of things so far. At fourteen, he has the hardened look of someone who’s had to fight for everything.
Fred has just moved to Not-The-City, a new place to try to disappear. But he didn’t expect to actually make friends. He just hopes he’s accepted for how he looks.
When Dom and Fred meet on a hill overlooking a bridge that connects Not-The-City to The City, a place where anyone can be anything they want, the two find a refuge in one another and make a pact: they’ll cross the bridge at the end of the school year. They’ll be free. What could happen by then? Who will they be? And will the bridge even let them cross?
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The Laws of the Skies
$19.95Winnie-the-Pooh meets The Blair Witch Project in this very grown-up tale of a camping trip gone horribly awry.
Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies tells the harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness and accidents, and a murderous child.
Part fairy tale, part horror film, this macabre fable takes us through the minds of all the members of this doomed party, murderers and murdered alike.
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The Lease
$17.95The lease is meaningless: a square paced
first by seismic workers, and then your father,
and then by every other man you know.Distilled from his time in the Saskatchewan and Albertan oilfields, Mathew Henderson’s The Lease plumbs the prairie depths to find human technology and physical labour realigning our landscape. With acute discipline, Henderson illuminates the stubborn and often unflattering realities of industrial culture and its cast of hard-living men.
Shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry (2013)
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award