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Showing 8305–8320 of 9492 results
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The Walking Tanteek
$22.95A CNQ Editors’ Book of the Year
Does faith insist upon the spotless soul? Can intellectual integrity and an honest search for the holy in this world survive a collision with religious mania? Is heavenly forgiveness possible this side of the River Styx? In this boisterous, witty, manically paced novel, Maggie Prentice is resolved to find out, even if it costs her everything.
A true original, capable of brilliant verbal contortions, Maggie Prentice won’t give up. Haunted by her past, chafing under the tutelage of her born-again, cult-figure brother, coping with the double devils of alcoholism and disconnectedness, she is pursued by the Tanteek, an armchair prankster out of a Dylan song that incarnates her questions, uncertainties, and fears, and dogs her every move. In her wild, over-the-top, yet eerily familiar universe, Maggie is forced to confront life’s big questions — faith, fear, love, and death — does life have meaning?
In this daring, intelligent, whip-smart debut novel, Jane Woods has created unforgettable characters that live in what might be an alternate reality. She has also written a captivating, deeply affective story that grabs the reader and won’t let go.
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The Wall and the Wind
$10.95In the middle of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe, a young girl dreams of adventures near and far. One day, a huge wall appears that separates East from West, and dreamer from dreams. No ladder is high enough, no tunnel deep enough to get past that wall. But then a crack appears in the wall, and the girl (now a woman) knows she has the chance to follow her dreams again.
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The Walled Garden
$20.00The Walled Garden is a unique collection of short essays addressing a wide variety of subjects. From an exploration of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini to an update on the linguistic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, from a look into the true nature of time and the present moment to a discussion of ‘psychic birthplaces’, from reflections on Paleolithic caves, poetry and art, The Walled Garden includes the wild, the tamed and the stunningly unusual.
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The Walnut Tree
$14.95The Walnut Tree tells the story of the intense journey of SŸssel, a young, privileged Jewish woman who grows up in Chernowitz, studies in Prague and Paris, endures the horrors of World War II in Eastern Europe, and ultimately escapes to the peace and promise of a new life in Saskatoon. The character of the older SŸssel looks back at her life, accompanied by her alter ego, a Musician, who performs on a grand piano. This powerful, disturbing, and transcendent dramaÊsets the devastating power of historical events against the personal forces of reconciliation. The Walnut Tree deals with vital social, political, and ethical issues, and finallyÑand most importantlyÑwith enduring love.
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The Waltz
$18.95“Badian’s rom-com oozes nostalgia and charm, a ’90s tale of boy-meets-girl with substance and bite.” —Intermission Magazine
On a serene summer evening in 1993, two Filipino Canadian teenagers collide outside a remote cabin in Northern Saskatchewan. The clean-cut, Scarborough-born Romeo is driving across Canada to begin his first year at UBC and arrives at the rural address hoping to visit an old family friend. Instead, he is greeted by the grunge-clad and guarded Bea wielding a crossbow aimed right at him. As defences subside, the unlikely pair begin to bond over family histories, cultural heritage, and a yearning to belong. Without warning, they find themselves manoeuvring a delicate will-they-or-won’t-they dance under the starry canopy of an endless prairie sky.
Inspired by characters from Marie Beath Badian’s Prairie Nurse, The Waltz is an enchanting coming-of-age romantic comedy infused with irresistible ’90s charm. Dreamy, tender, and delightfully swoon-worthy, this instant classic captures the giddy thrills of first love, shared identity, and the magic of one perfect night that can change everything.
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The Wanderers
$17.95As the Soviet army invades Afghanistan, Aman and Mariam flee to Canada in hopes of putting an ocean between themselves and the daily horrors of war. A championship chess player in Kabul, Aman finds himself working in a pizzeria just to get by. Their fresh start continues to prove difficult as they navigate the trauma and displacement that follows them at every turn, and when their son Roshan is born, their curse of displacement is passed on to the next generation. The family’s only hope for a peaceful future might be Mariam’s past, as her family mythology becomes a source of power. Is her love strong enough to keep Aman and Roshan from destroying themselves or each other?
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The Wanton Troopers
$19.99In this new edition of Alden Nowlan’s poignant first novel, published posthumously in 1988, a boy growing up in a small Nova Scotia mill town is abandoned by the young mother he adores. Family relationships, sexual confusions, and the pains of love are rendered with deep and authentic feeling. This is an essential book for all readers who have admired the work of this major Canadian writer.
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The War as I Saw It
$18.00In The War as I Saw It, George Makonese Matuvi invites us into the world of a young boy living through a war he doesn’t understand. As violence drives his family from their home in the mountains to the streets of Zimbabwe’s towns and then cities, the author shares his family’s story with honesty, composure and a touch of humour. Interspersed within this tale of flight, hardship and the eventual return to rebuild, Matuvi shares stories of his life as a child, from making soccer balls out of discarded plastic bags to the tales his father told around the fire at night, adding depth and joy to his portrait of a family struggling with displacement. The War as I Saw It is not a tragedy, though there were many tragedies during the war, it is a story of love, of strength in difficulty and of the ingenuity of one family as they cope with forces beyond their control.
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The War Criminal
$29.95A psychological thriller about a former member of the SS in contemporary America. Horst Gerhard Schneider was once a young, naïve member of the SS. An obedient and valued novice, Schneider soon found himself promoted and playing chauffeur to Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most infamous Nazi leaders to be found in the pages of history. Now in his 80s, Schneider is still at large, living in anonymous poverty in a North American city. When the desecration of a synagogue rocks his community, the elderly war criminal suspects that a troubled teenaged neighbour may be responsible. Refusing to be silently complicit for a second time, Schneider must confront both the demons of his own youth and the anti-Semitism that still thrives half a century later and half a world away.
Guilt and wisdom, memory and metamorphosis fill this powerful narrative to overflowing.
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The War Lantern
$14.95On February 27, 1941, bombs fall, families vanish, and the war lantern burns …
In England, fifteen-year-old schoolboy Marcus isn’t supposed to tell anyone about his work at Parnall’s Aircraft Factory, not even his mother, for fear of Hitler’s spies. In Germany, fourteen-year-old Gisele’s baby brother is about to be taken away by Nazi officials, who deem him “life not worthy of life.” Overhead, Tail End Charlie, an underage Royal Air Force rear gunner, flies for a German steel factory behind a squadron of bombers.
Each lead seemingly separate lives, struggling to survive amid World War II, until the roar of bombs — and the silence in the aftermath — connects them all.
Inspired by her family history, Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author Philippa Dowding delivers a carefully researched and powerfully moving wartime story for young readers about family, connections, and resilience.
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The War You Don’t Hate
$22.95In Blaise Ndala’s magnificent second novel, originally published as Sans Capote Ni Kalachnikov in 2017, the paths of a Canadian documentary filmmaker and two former rebel soldiers from the Congo collide in this searing revenge tale about those who profit from the misery of others.
Los Angeles, 2002. Véronique Quesnel accepts the Best Documentary Oscar for “Sona: Rape and Terror in the Heart of Darkness”, basking in the praise of her privileged audience. She has drawn attention to “the center of gravity that is Black tragedy”, which attracted her away from her life in Montreal, and to the harrowing story of Sona, a young woman who escaped sex slavery. But this lauded film has also shone a dangerous spotlight on Véronique herself. In the Great Lakes region of Africa, Master Corporal Red Ant and his cousin Baby Che are stalking the remnants of the Second Congo War – the deadliest conflict since World War II. In search of truth and vengeance, their obsession now has a name.
The original French novel was awarded many honours, such as:
Winner – 2019 Radio-Canada Combats des livres
Winner – 2018 Prix Émergence de l’Association des auteurs et auteures de l’Ontario français
Finalist – 2018 Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire
Special Mention – 2018 Prix Ivoire pour la littérature africaine d’expression francophone
Finalist – 2017 Trillium Book Award
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The Ward
$25.95The story of the growth and destruction of Toronto’s first ‘priority neighbourhood.’
From the 1840s until the Second World War, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American and Chinese, among others – landed in ‘The Ward.’ Crammed with rundown housing and immigrant-owned businesses, this area, bordered by College and Queen, University and Yonge streets, was home to bootleggers, Chinese bachelors, workers from the nearby Eaton’;s garment factories and hard-working peddlers. But the City considered it a slum, and bulldozed the area in the late 1950s to make way for a new civic square.
The Ward finally tells the diverse stories of this extraordinary and resilient neighbourhood through archival photos and contributions from a wide array of voices, including historians, politicians, architects, story-tellers, journalists and descendants of Ward residents. Their perspectives on playgrounds, tuberculosis, sex workers, newsies and even bathing bring The Ward to life and, in the process, raise important questions about how contemporary cities handle immigration, poverty and the geography of difference.
‘The Ward shines a light on one of Toronto’s most historically significant and most forgotten neighbourhoods. Instead of a straight history, the book’s editors opted to present the Ward through multiple short essays, each with its own unique point of view. The result is a fascinating and varied look at an area that once concurrently defined the city and acted as its biggest shame. As a result of the Ward’s eventual razing, there are few artifacts left to teach newer generations about this important part of Toronto’s history. This book helps correct that.’
– 2016 Toronto Book Awards Jury Citation
‘[The Ward] should be of interest to Canadians anywhere, reminding us that we all came from some place else.’
– Michael Enright, CBC Sunday Edition
Contents & Contributors
Introduction – John Lorinc
Searching for the Old Ward – Shawn Micallef
No Place Like Home – Howard Akler
Beforethe Ward: Macauleytown – Stephen A. Otto
My Grandmother the Bootlegger – Howard Moscoe
Against All Odds: The Chinese Laundry – Arlene Chan
VJ Day – Arlene Chan
Merle Foster’s Studio: ‘A Spot Of Enchantment’ – Terry Murray
Missionary Work: The Fight for Jewish Souls – Ellen Scheinberg
King of the Ward – Myer Siemiatycki
Where the Rich Went for Vice – Michael Redhill
A Fresh Start: Black Toronto in the 19th Century – Karolyn Smardz Frost
Policing the Lord’s Day – Mariana Valverde
‘The Maniac Chinaman’ – Edward Keenan
Elsie’s Story – Patte Roseban
Lawren Harris’s Ward Period – Jim Burant
‘Fool’s Paradise’: Hastings’ Anti-Slum Crusade – John Lorinc
Strange Brew: The Underground Economy of Blind Pigs – Ellen Scheinberg
The Consulate, the Padroni and the Labourers – Andrea Addario
Excerpt: The Italians in Toronto – Emily P. Weaver
Arthur Goss: Documenting Hardship– Stephen Bulger
Fresh Air: The Fight Against TB – Cathy Crowe
The Stone Yard – Gaetan Heroux
William James: Toronto’s First Photojournalist – Vincenzo Pietropaolo
The Avenue Not Taken – Michael McClelland
Timothy Eaton’s Stern Fortifications – Michael Valpy
Settling In: Central Neighbourhood House – Ratna Omidvar & Ranjit Bhaskar
Toronto’s Girl with the Curls – Ellen Scheinberg
Chinese Caf̩s: Survival and Danger РEllen Scheinberg & Paul Yee
Defiance and Divisions: The Great Eaton’s Strike – Ruth A. Frager
Elizabeth Street: What the City Directories Reveal – Denise Balkissoon
Growing Up on Walton Street – Cynthia MacDougall
Revitalizing George Street: The Ward’s Lessons – Alina Chatterjee & Derek Ballantyne
Taking Care of Business in the Ward &ndash Ellen Scheinberg
‘A Magnificent Dome’: The Great University Avenue Synagogue – Jack Lipinsky
Reading the Ward: The Inevitability of Loss – Kim Storey & James Brown
Toronto’s First Little Italy – John Lorinc
The Elizabeth Street Playground, Revisited – Bruce Kidd
Divided Loyalties – Sandra Shaul
Crowded by Any Measure – John Lorinc
A Peddler and His Cart: TheWard’s Rag Trade – Deena Nathanson
Toronto’s Original Tenement: Wineberg Apartments – Richard Dennis
Excerpt: Tom Thomson’s Diary – Tom Thomson
An Untimely Death – Brian Banks
Paper Pushers – Ellen ScheinbergÂ
The BMR’s Wake-Up Call – Laurie Monsebraaten
Excerpt: Report of the Medical Health Officer … – Charles J. Hastings
Dr. Clarke’s Clinic – Thelma Wheatley
Slum-Free: The Suburban Ideal – Richard Harris
The Glionna Clan and Toronto’s First Little Italy – John E. Zucchi
‘The Hipp’ – Michael Posner
Before Yorkville– John Lorinc
Sex Work and the Ward’s Bachelor Society – Elise Chenier
Public Baths: Schvitzing on Centre Avenue – Ellen Scheinberg
The Health Advocates: McKeown on Hastings – John Lorinc
Remembering Toronto’s First Chinatown – Kristyn Wong-Tam
Tabula Rasa – Mark Kingwell
Unrealized Renewal – J. David Hulchanski
A Short History of the ‘Civic Square’ Expropriation – John Lorinc
Storytelling is Part of the Story – Tatum Taylor
How We Think About What (Little) Survives – Patrick Cummins
Institutional Memory – Scott James & Victor Russell
Alternative Histories – MichaelMcClelland
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The Ward Uncovered
$27.95In early 2015, a team of archaeologists began digging test trenches on a non-descript parking lot next to Toronto City Hall — a site designated to become a major new court house. What they discovered was the rich buried history of an enclave that was part of The Ward — that dense, poor, but vibrant ‘arrival city’ that took shape between the 1840s and the 1950s. Home to waves of immigrants and refugees — Irish, African-Americans, Italians, eastern European Jews, and Chinese — The Ward was stigmatized for decades by Toronto’s politicians and residents, and eventually razed to make way for New City Hall. The archaeologists who excavated the lot, led by co-editor Holly Martelle, discovered almost half a million artifacts — a spectacular collection of household items, tools, toys, shoes, musical instruments, bottles, industrial objects, food scraps, luxury items, and even a pre-contact Indigenous projectile point. Martelle’s team also unearthed the foundations of a nineteenth-century Black church, a Russian synagogue, early-twentieth-century factories, cisterns, privies, wooden drains, and even row houses built by formerly enslaved African Americans. Following on the heels of the immensely popular The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood, which told the stories of some of the people who lived there, The Ward Uncovered digs up the tales of things, using these well-preserved artifacts to tell a different set of stories about life in this long-forgotten and much-maligned neighbourhood.
Contributors include Abbey Flower, Sarah Hood, Ron Williamson, Cheryl Thompson, Peter Popkin, Arlene Chan, Karolyn Smardz Frost, Simon Rogers, Liz Driver, Vid Ingelvics, Bethany Good, Adrienne Chambon, Kathy Grant, Guylaine Petrin, Craig Heron, Tom Porawski, Wayne Reeves, Wenh-In Ng, Ellen Scheinberg, Nicole Brandon, Rosemary Sadlier, Matt Beaudoin, Natasha Henry, and Heather Murray.
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The Watchmaker’s Table
$18.95In his most personal collection to date, Brian Bartlett meditates upon time and family. We share his son’s discovery of newborn spiders and his daughter’s first grasp of infinity as a concept. In companion poems on the births of his mother and father, Bartlett makes you feel as if you were alive at those moments in history. The opening poem, “All the Train Trips,” displays an uncanny sense of homes and families lost and the casual friendships struck up in conversations in the “bar car.” “Pearly Everlasting” expresses a longing to register the world in the body through the naming of flowers.
Books and the history of poetry shape time for Bartlett, whether in found poems woven from the words of books inherited from ancestors or in the words of great poets that, despite the distance, convey a shared sense of humanity. Wrestling with time as if he were both Jacob and the angel, Bartlett speaks both for time’s dominion and for human mutability.
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The Water Beetles
$22.95Winner, 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, 2018 McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and 2018 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Shortlisted, 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction and 2018 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
A National Post Best Book of 2017
A Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommended Historical Novel of 2017
On CBC Books’ list of writers to watch in 2018The Leung family leads a life of secluded luxury in Hong Kong. But in December 1941, the Empire of Japan invades the colony. The family is quickly dragged into a spiral of violence, repression, and starvation. To survive, they entomb themselves and their friends in the Leung mansion. But this is only a temporary reprieve, and the Leungs are forced to send their children away.
The youngest boy, Chung-Man, escapes with some of his siblings, and together they travel deep into the countryside to avoid the Japanese invaders. Thrown into a new world, Chung-Man befriends a young couple who yearn to break free of their rural life. But their friendship ends when the Japanese arrive, and Chung-Man is once again taken captive. Unwittingly and willingly, he enters a new cycle of violence and punishment, until he finally breaks free from his captors and returns to Hong Kong.
Deeply scarred, Chung-Man drifts along respectfully and dutifully, enveloped by the unspoken vestiges of war. It is only as he leaves home once again — this time for university in America — that he finally glimpses a way to keep living with his troubled and divided self.
Written in restrained, yet beautiful and affecting prose, The Water Beetles is an engrossing story of adventure and survival. Based loosely on the diaries and stories of the author’s father, this mesmerizing story captures the horror of war, through the eyes of a child, with unsettling and unerring grace.
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The Watermelon Social
$25.95Elaine McCluskey’s debut collection contains ten comical and aggressively human slices of suburban life. From grocery aisles to strip-mall parking lots to school hallways and waiting rooms, these stories pulse with the bizarre and sometimes annoying trappings of in-between places and the people we encounter there.
In the title story a mother of two observes as the team of supermoms at her children’s school limps through the volunteer event of the season, propped up by Prozac and estrogen supplements. In “Strange Girls” a liberal couple attempts to understand their children, the children attempt to figure out where their parents went astray and everyone shuffles through the last few snows in a long Halifax winter. “Year of the Horse” features a lonely optimist who adds fictional elaborations to the life stories she edits for the obituaries page.
McCluskey is an avid observer of subcultures and demonstrates a feel for the style and micro-dialects they foster. From the “psychotically precious” Sailor Moon girls at a city high school and the last of the hosers, to a weight loss convention and the night crew at a small-town paper, this collection offers up highly specific cross-sections of North American lifestyles.
The stories in The Watermelon Social are as compassionate as they are pointed. When winter leeches into summer and your neighbourhood just doesn’t look like the ones on TV, it’s hard to hit your stride. McCluskey chalks the line that separates comfort and resentment, and locates that core of clichéd dreams and paralyzing insecurity in all of us. With deadpan humour, imaginative comparisons and the odd cosmic leap, The Watermelon Social gambols through the April slush.
“One day, I was in a grocery store with dented cans and day-old bread,” McCluskey says. “Above each cash register was a list of names under the heading Do Not Cash Cheques From These People. I was in line behind a heavy woman in sweatpants and a bulky top. She wanted to get change from her social services cheque, but the clerk told her she had to spend it all. The woman shuffled off and returned with a package of sticky buns. As she paused and caught a laboured breath, I saw the front of her top. ‘I’m Not Fat, I’m Fluffy,’ it declared over the picture of a large, splendid cat. When I started to write my short stories, I focused on the people who are rarely heard from in our society: poor people, fat people, suburban housewives and tormented teens. Occasionally, cats. I believe the Maritimes has its share of voiceless souls, trying to maintain their humor and dignity in a challenging world. As they make their way through life, they leave stories that are curious and amusing, triumphant and absurd.”