Important Shipping Notice: Due to the ongoing Canada Post strike, delivery times may be longer than usual. Where possible, we’ll use alternative shipping methods to help get your order to you sooner. We appreciate your patience and understanding as your order makes its way to you.

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

  • Uncommitted Crimes

    Uncommitted Crimes

    $29.95

    Theodor Adorno once remarked that, “…every work of art is an uncommitted crime.” This book is a tribute to political artists who deviate from the mainstream and create art that engages with questions of societal oppression, survival, and resistance. It draws on interviews with transnational artists whose work is representative of emerging trends in art, visual culture, and political aesthetics. Uncommitted Crimes reflects on a new generation of artists whose creative praxis, sensibilities, influences, and frames of reference derive from multiple national, religious, and cultural genealogies, and an ambivalent relationship to Western and European nationalisms. Courageously, these racialized, Indigenous, and migrant artists straddle the divides of many categories of identity in regards to gender, sexuality, and ‘race.’ Their art challenges the silently imbibed worship of whiteness, heteronormative patriarchies, and colonial settler ideologies of “home.” These exceptional cultural producers enter into uncomfortable dialogues, creatively. Inspired by their visionary praxis, this book is an uncommitted crime, attempting to smuggle arresting artistic ideas into a site of intellectual imagi/nation. Artists whose works are explored in this book include: Andil Gosine, Syrus Marcus Ware, Elisha Lim; Amita Zamaan and Helen Lee; Shirin Fathi; Kara Springer; Rajni Perera; Joshua Vettivelu; Brendan Fernandes; Kerry Potts and Rebecca Belmore; The Mass Arrival Collective (Farrah Miranda, Graciela Flores Mendez, Tings Chak, Vino Shanmuganathan, and Nadia Saad). The book contains 65 pages of artwork.

  • Uncommon Sense

    Uncommon Sense

    $20.00

    Adam Mardero was diagnosed with Asperger’s at the age of nine, and began the journey to understand his differences and the label that would define his life. Uncommon Sense is a vulnerable and insightful exploration of a boy growing into a young man while battling a label and the misunderstandings that arise from being on the spectrum. Through the perspective of his geek world, Adam shares the challenges faced after being labeled and how he found his voice as an activist for neurodiverse young people.

  • Uncontrolled Flight

    Uncontrolled Flight

    $24.95

    Wildfire season in the British Columbia Interior. Experienced firefighting pilot Rafe Mackie loses control of his airplane while doing a routine drop and plummets to his death.

    The investigation that follows unleashes revelations that forever change the lives of three people: Will, the pilot who watched his mentor crash; Sharon, the widow struggling to come to terms with her loss; and Nathalie, an accident investigator with shadowy connections to the incident. As a form of the truth emerges, these three are drawn into a tangle of secrets and lies, passion and grief, blame and forgiveness that forces them to confront the actions that brought one man’s life crashing to an end.

    In her second novel, Frances Peck creates another explosive literary page-turner, one that probes love, loyalty, and the ways we try to conceal and redeem our lives.

  • Uncoupling

    Uncoupling

    $22.95

    Anyone going through separation and divorce can agree that it’s an emotional and financial rollercoaster. There is so much to understand, prepare, read, gather, and act on that it’s an incredibly draining process. Uncoupling: The Ugly Truth about Divorce and Finances is here to help. This book has everything from the basics to the nitty-gritty when it comes to separation and divorce, with an emphasis, of course, on finances.

    Along with the stories of people going through their own separations and divorces are the voices of experts covering everything from the specifics of Canada’s Divorce Act and parenting agreements to the tax implications of divorce and financial post-divorce to-dos. Divorce rates in Canada are on the rise and Uncoupling will provide much-needed information for those on this difficult journey.

  • Uncovering Alias

    Uncovering Alias

    $17.95

    In this series guide to the television phenomenon “TV Guide” called “one of TV’s most enjoyable escapist hours ever,” the authors give a comprehensive perspective on the series’ first three seasons.

  • Undark

    Undark

    $18.95

    “Later we will laugh; shake moonlightoff our clothes like ash.For now we stare at the clock. Theday wears, tired as mechanism.”–from UndarkUndark: An Oratorio is the highly anticipated second collection from Sandy Pool, whose debut book of poetry Exploding into Night (Guernica, 2009) was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 2010.In the early 1900s, thousands of women between the ages of 11 and 45 were employed painting glow-in-the-dark watch faces in factories across North America. Several years after leaving the plant, the dial painters developed mysterious medical conditions. These included complete necrosis of the jaw, severe anemia, intense arthritic like pains, and spontaneous bone fractures. Though clearly ailing from the use of radium based paint, the women were intentionally misdiagnosed as having syphilis. Many women died in shame before ever receiving compensation.Sandy Pool’s second book, Undark: An Oratorio, is equal parts dramatic elegy and poetic inquisition written in seven distinct voices. Drawing from the historical record of the ‘radium women’ and other instances of historical erasure, the work urges us to engage deeply with questions of time and women’s history. The book confronts Bakhtin’s notorious questions: What happens to time when history is being erased? What happens when time takes on flesh?

  • Undaunted, The Best of BC BookWorld

    Undaunted, The Best of BC BookWorld

    $19.95

    For over a quarter century, many readers have agreed with legendary publisher Jack McClelland who said, “I have never before encountered a book journal as engaging as BC BookWorld.” But over several decades, the populist style of BC BookWorld has tended to overshadow its literary value and its essentially educational agenda. Here in The Best of BC BookWorld is a sampling of articles that entertain, enlighten, educate and provoke. About half are by Alan Twigg, who has written the majority of the newspaper since its inception in 1987. Other contributors include Jane Rule, George Woodcock, W.P. Kinsella, Stephen Vizinczey, broadcaster Mark Forsythe, biographer Joan Givner and BookWorld’s designer and cartoonist David Lester. There is something for everyone here: from early explorers of the Pacific Slope, to essays about literature, to BC authors who have written about the Holocaust.

  • Under an Outlaw Moon

    Under an Outlaw Moon

    $19.95

    “Kalteis breathes life into these fearless, larger-than-life fugitives.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

    Meet Depression-era newlyweds Bennie and Stella. He’s reckless, she’s naive. Longing for freedom from tough times, they rob a bank, setting off a series of events that quickly spin out of their control

    Under an Outlaw Moon is based on the true story of Depression-era bank robbers Bennie and Stella Mae Dickson. She’s a teenage outsider longing to fit in. He’s a few years older and he’s trouble. They meet at a local skating rink and the sparks fly.

    They marry and Stella dreams of a nice house with a swing out back, while Bennie figures out how to get enough money to make it happen. Setting his sights on the good life, he decides to rob a bank. Talking Stella into it, he lays out his plan and teaches her to shoot. The newlyweds celebrate her 16th birthday by robbing a local bank.

    They pull it off, but the score is small, and Bennie realizes the money won’t last long, so he plans a bigger robbery. What lays ahead is more than either of them bargained for. After J. Edgar Hoover finds out they crossed state lines, he declares them public enemies number one and two — wanted dead or alive. So much for the good life. The manhunt is on, and there’s little room for them to run.

  • Under Budapest

    Under Budapest

    $19.95

    Ailsa Kay lays out the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle in Under Budapest, bringing into stark relief the triumphs, calamities, and desperation of two North American Hungarian families and those whose lives they’ve touched.

    There’s Agnes and Tibor, mother and son, travelling to Hungary for reasons they keep to themselves, he to recover from a disastrous love affair, she to search for a sister gone missing during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. There’s Janos, a self-styled player and petty thug, who schemes to make it rich in post-communist Hungary. And there’s Gyula and Zsofi, caught up in a revolution that will change the face of Hungary forever. Their lives are all connected by a conflagration of events: The legacy of wartime violence, past allegiances, long-buried rivalries, and secrets from the past.

    Through riveting narratives that spring back and forth through time, Under Budapest captures the drama and ravages of the Hungarian Revolution and the eras that followed. A dark ode to memory, Kay’s intimate spectacle demonstrates that actions have consequences, that the past cannot be shaken, that all events can carry the possibility of repercussion.

  • Under Her Skin

    Under Her Skin

    $21.00

    Tucked away in her tattoo studio in the port city of Halifax, Shaz draws meaning and symbolism onto the bodies of her clients. After the ransacking of her home, the brutal attack on her friend and the sudden appearance of her white father, Shaz is compelled to explore the racial divides in her life and in the city around her. A chance encounter with Rashid, a parkour-performing refugee from Sri Lanka, provides a stabilizing counterpoint to the tumultuous relationships in her life.

    Ultimately, Shaz discovers the complexities of truth, the meaning of loss and how we are all coloured by our experiences. In a narrative that explores racism, family dysfunction and the experiences of refugees, Under Her Skin paints the canvas of our landscape, making us aware of who we are.

  • Under My Skin

    Under My Skin

    $15.00

    Under My Skin asks a lot of questions, questions that demand answers: Why are young black gay men invisible in Canada’s queer and black communities? Do their lives really matter? How do young black men deal with the daily challenges of dealing with multiple oppressions in relation to our race and gender? Is Canada truly a multicultural nation? Why are the brothers dying due to gun violence on the streets of Toronto?

  • Under Nose Hill

    Under Nose Hill

    $16.95

  • Under the Bright Sky

    Under the Bright Sky

    $24.95

    Under the Bright Sky: A Memoir of Travels through Asia brings together ten personal travelogues set in ten Asian countries over a period of several decades. Each story is a snapshot of a distinct time and place, covering a vast and complex landscape, both physical and emotional. Intimate recollections stretch from a father’s desire to revisit Sri Lanka, where he had been posted fifty years earlier during WWII, to a spouse’s search for long-lost relatives in the small villages of southern China. A widowed husband mourns; the stages of a new romance are celebrated in India and Indonesia. Cultural conflict is encountered in Turkey; cultural cooperation in Vietnam. Together, these intimate recollections are a meditation on the relationships between cultures. Interlaced with each new experience is a sense of familiarity and appreciation as Scott places his own travels into the context of those before him, exploring our interconnectedness–a Thai Buddhist abbot in search of the perfect piece of BC jade, and the first Japanese visitors to the Pacific Northwest, a group of seamen who arrive the hard way, drifting in their disabled vessel for more than a year. In Under the Bright Sky, award-winning author Andrew Scott ventures through time and space in search of connection and meaning. His devotion and insight will inspire travellers and historians alike.

  • Under the Radar

    Under the Radar

    $15.95

  • Under the Stone (Sous beton)

    Under the Stone (Sous beton)

    $18.00

    From birth, the child was locked away in a minuscule cell, at #804 of level 5969 of the Edifice. Around him … only concrete, without a view of the outside world. And two people: the tyrannical father, slowly killing himself; and the mother, fearing eviction. Unmoving in his roost, the child’s life will be disrupted by a transformation that will reveal an unexpected horizon.

    Praise for Under the Stone:
    “Although thematically this novel is not a relaxing read, it is beautifully written in short, sparse sections that cumulatively build toward a horrendous, yet engaging, alternate reality. Homel’s translation progresses fluidly so that the language never distracts from the narrative, but rather lodges the reader deeper and deeper Under the Stone.” (Montreal Review of Books)

    Under the Stone exists on the fault line between novel and poem, exploring a monochromatic world haunted by the ghost of self-conscience.
    Dark but deeply engaging.

    “Echoes of George Orwell’s 1984 are heard throughout this excellent novel with its style as cold and dark as whatever lies under the stone… ” (Lisanne Rhéault-Leblanc, 7 jours)

  • Under the Zaboca Tree

    Under the Zaboca Tree

    $19.95

    At ten, Melody Sparks, better known as Baby Girl, is excited to move to the tropical island of Trinidad with her single-parent dad, but she silently longs for her mother, a woman she can’t recall ever meeting and doesn’t have a photo of. She fits in to her new life in Paradise Lane quite well: she loves her school and makes new friends. However, her longing for blood family remains strong. But Baby Girl is suddenly and unexpectedly uprooted from her comfortable life in Paradise Lane by and forced to reside in Flat Hill Village, a depressed, crime-ridden community. She struggles to adjust to life in this village with the help of new friends, Arlie, a village activist and Colm, a young man who mentors her to write poetry. When Baby Girl witnesses a serious crime, her father insists she move in with relatives she doesn’t know very well, where she ultimately uncovers the truth about her mother. Under the Zaboca Tree is a contemporary coming of age novel that explores multiple issues including the challenges of being a motherless adolescent, searching for one’s identity, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the ability to adapt to difficult situations.