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Showing 8897–8912 of 9481 results
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Very Small Something, A
$18.95Olive Bezzlebee lives by the sea in a fantastic town with the world’s biggest bubblegum factory, where its citizens blow bubbles all day. But Olivia can’t blow a single one and feels as if everyone looks down on her. Leaving Covington to find a place where she might belong, she learns the true meaning of both family and home.
A Very Small Something, beautifully illustrated by Alexander Griggs-Burr, is a story to which all children – and any tuned-in parent – will be able to relate. Blowing bubbles may indeed be a very small something . . . but when you are a small child and it’s the thing you most want to do, a bubble can mean the whole world.
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Vessel
$23.95An evocative, lyric bricolage of memoir, literature, history, and translation that wrestles with the shape death takes.
Who would think to call Ophelia a corpse? She is but a woman emptied of herself.
In 1993, when she was 18 years old, Dani Netherclift witnessed the drowning deaths of her father and brother in an irrigation channel in North-East Victoria, Australia. Or, she saw her father and brother disappear beneath an opaque surface and never saw her loved ones again. Netherclift hasn’t stopped imagining the shape of this bodily loss. Not viewing the bodies grows into a form of ambiguous loss that makes the world dangerous, making people seem liable to suddenly vanishing.
What would it have been like to have seen them, after the fact? To have looked upon their bodies. To picture the emptied vessels of her father and brother is to reach toward a sense of closure; a form of magical thinking in which goodbye is made possible. Vessel pulls together a language of space and ruin, building toward the realization that all bodies become in the end bodies of text, beautifully written palimpsests—elegies—inked on the skins of the dead.
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Vetala, The
$18.95Nada Marjanovic, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Zagreb, has spent more than twenty years translating an obscure text on the vetala, a parasitic, vampire-like being that possesses the bodies of his victims. When her mentor and collaborator in the Indian city of Pune dies, she finds herself face-to-face with the undead that the text describes, an evil which long ago killed her lover ? and set her on the path of an obsessive scholarly revenge. She must rely on her intellect, mythic lore, and even dreams to piece together the mystery of the manuscript. The vetala’s opposition grows increasingly violent as Nada nears the book’s conclusion, and with the help of two colleagues, struggles to decipher its climactic secret, which would allow her to exorcise the demon at last ? freeing not only the mysterious man whom he has possessed for centuries, but also, perhaps, her own imprisoned and forgotten love.
Suspenseful and unforgettable, Phillip Ernest’s debut novel captures the most universal elements of human experience ? even the monsters we face. -
Vetiver
$14.95Joël Des Rosiers is an acclaimed Haitian-born francophone writer whose work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award and whose life reads like a novel — he is a psychiatrist, an award-winning poet and a political activist on the international stage. His poetry collection Vetiver, which won the 1999 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal and the 2000 Grand Prix du Festival international de la poésie de Trois Rivières, is now published for the first time in English.
Vetiver, a grass also known as cuscus, was brought from the Indies to Haiti. There it has taken root and flourished, becoming all-pervasive. The heavy aroma of the grass permeates everything. In Vetiver, the grass is a powerful, mythical symbol for Joël Des Rosiers, representing the root of lyrical possibility.
An homage to his native land, Des Rosiers’ narrative poem evokes all of the wild opulence of the Caribbean world and plumbs the depths of memory in language that is rich and multihued, full of tangible flavours. It is a hymn to the power of the word, the book and the voice, guided by the heritage of ancestors and the sensual proximity of people and things.Des Rosiers revisits themes from his three previous collections here: nostalgia, the search for roots and identity, the pain of memory, and the exploration of real and imagined spaces. Rooted in mystery and sacrifice, these narrative poems are shaped by extreme tensions that blend, in a strange way, with a seemingly clinical erudition where the melancholy of the flesh offers itself up as a substitution for mourning, religious ceremony and sensuality.
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Via Roma
$20.00In Via Roma, Mary Melfi’s protagonist Sophie Wolfe experiences passionate, singular love, horrific loss, a journey to the Otherworld to meet one last time her departed lover, and finally happiness with the man who has stood by her. Intensely erotic, outspoken, earthy, without being clinically pornographic or gushy, the novel is a metaphysical exploration of love, suspense, suffering and redemption.
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Viaticum
$19.95When Annika Torrey is diagnosed with cancer, she has no one in her life she can turn to. Divorced and estranged from her fundamentalist family, she sells her life insurance policy for cash, hoping to live out her final days in peace. But then Annika is given a rare second chance. Meanwhile, struggling real-estate agent Matt Campbell is drowning in debt. Desperate to save his career and marriage, he lets an old friend invest his money, but the big payout he’s promised never materializes. Suspecting fraud, his search for answers leads him to the mysterious Annika, and soon both characters are trapped in a web of deception and desire, their hopes for redemption threatened by the contract that binds them. Viaticum is a taut psychological drama about two people fighting to maintain their dignity in a world that objectifies them. Thematically rich and morally-fraught, this intelligent and finely-crafted novel is timely and relevant.
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Viaticum by Heather Pyrcz
$16.95Viaticum: provisions or an official allowance of money for a journey. Viaticum: Nova Scotian poet Heather Pyrcz’s latest collection of poetry, in which she investigates the journeys we take and the things that sustain us along the way.
Pyrcz journeys outward to new forms, new technologies and new continents, and inward to dreams and interior spaces, defamiliarizing and rediscovering the things we often take for granted. This is a collection in which “each poem is its own leaving and arriving. Each poem is its own journey, but speaks to a larger one” (Sandra Barry in Atlantic Books Today). Putting a new spin on the perennial archetype of the journey, Pyrcz connects cultural discoveries with innate sensibilities in verses that take us abroad and bring us back home again.
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Viaticum: From Notebooks
$19.95What does it mean to think, to imagine, to create, to be? Why do we believe what we do? Is death an ontological state of being, or is it a grammar error? What exactly is poetry? The varied writings in Jeffery Donaldson’s Viaticum explore life’s most basic questions-and its biggest illusions-from the nature of language to the rhetorical potential of the afterlife.
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Vibes
$16.95In this inspiring book, David Morrison and Syd Kessler apply to sales and management the amazing findings of quantum physics and neurobiology, which show that everything is made up of vibrations. As they explore and apply these truths, the dramatic implications become clear: we can actually affect our own and others’ feelings and behaviours by increasing our own vibes and those of the people we sell to and work with, and sales and management can become powerful arenas of energy, teamwork, and extraordinary success. The book is full of real-life stories showing salespeople and managers in action raising their vibes and sales in truly inspiring ways. From cover to cover, Vibes is an energetic description of the nature of the universe and the secrets of optimal human relationships, and of what can happen when this understanding is applied to business and life.
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Vic City Express
$16.95It could be happening here…or there. Today the place is Greece, wracked by a crisis that has pushed people to the brink. Two strangers meet in a train headed for Athens. One spews out his disgust at the foreigners and the poverty that have invaded the neighborhood he calls home, Vic City. He even has a “final solution” in mind. The other, seized by fright—or is it resignation and apathy?— squirms as his haughty silence gives way to voyeurism and to political correctness. While the former, uninhibited, lashes out at the economic crisis in a violent racist rant, the latter, troubled, checks his email about the latest health treatments aimed at him and his family. Along the way, we get glimpses of the forces that have destroyed a society. Who will end up leading its angry, desperate and rudderless people? Vic City Express seizes the anxieties of our dystopian globalized world. -
Victor & Me in Paris
$23.95When retired academic Imogene Durant finds herself in Paris with Victor Hugo as her guide, a series of disturbing discoveries are made in local hotels. While Imogene hopes to settle in, read, and write a follow up to her acclaimed book, Fyodor & Me in Russia, she’s drawn into the mystery by her new friend and neighbour, the police detective assigned to the case.
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Video Poker
$16.95Video Poker: Play Longer with Less Risk presents a sensible, easy method for playing one of the most popular casino games. Beginning gamblers as well as seasoned players will benefit from a strategy that helps them play longer with less risk. “Jacks or Better,” “Four of a Kind,” “Double Down,” “Deuces Wild,” and “Sneak Peak” are featured with step-by-step instructions. The unique playing system is explained in detail so that players can apply the technique to any of the flashing, spinning variations of Video Poker.
Advice on identifying poker machines with more liberal payouts is also included.
With a business background in accounting and taxes, Carol Costa has combined her love of gambling with her understanding of finance. While this book doesn’t promise the reader big winnings, it does offer a conservative approach to Video Poker that allows players to derive more pleasure from the game by helping them to win smaller amounts more consistently.
Costa’s book is not for the high roller, but for the average person who enjoys the challenge of playing Video Poker and the social aspects of gaming. Video Poker shows the player how to stay in the game without risking the rent money. It teaches gamblers how to play sensibly and responsibly, and have fun doing it.
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Video Watcher, The
$19.95Video Watcher, The
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Vigil
$16.95Since Morris Panych’s classic black comedy, Vigil, premiered in 1996, it has been produced throughout North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, including a 2009 Off-Broadway production, which opened to rave reviews, a run as Auntie & Me in London and, most recently, shows at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where Panych directed Academy Award–winner Olympia Dukakis opposite Marco Barricelli in the lead role.
This updated edition incorporates changes to scenes and dialogue that have been part of the play’s evolution over the past fifteen years, as well as a new playwright’s note.
Vigil is about a man returning—after thirty years—to sit with a female relative on her deathbed. Kemp, the protagonist, is an extremely self-centred and shallow person who uses acid wit and seemingly callous indifference to cover up the profound discomfort he experiences upon finding himself part of a death watch. Kemp’s problem is: she’s not dying fast enough. Through Kemp’s own errors and inattentiveness, the visit that he thinks will take a day or two stretches into a year, and he finds himself caring for his long-forgotten aunt Grace against his will. Gallows humour and Kemp’s diatribes on humanity and mortality fuel this delightfully dark narrative, but it is Grace’s economical contributions to the dialogue (she’s a woman of few words) that give this play its weight and profundity. A play of mistaken identity, twisted circumstance and surprising turns, it is deliciously absurd, incredibly funny and poignantly tender. This is one Vigil worth keeping.
Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.
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Vigil Poems
$20.00This compilation of three of his books is a fine introduction to this emotional poet to English-speaking readers. Kindled by the death of his mother and his partner, Micheline LaFrance, Royer has set out to delve in poetic verse a world that seems to be fading away. References are made to writers that have influenced the poet, while he explores in short-lined verse about state of wakefulness for which death is responsible. There is also a sense of vigil, of watch, of alert in these precise and simple words. An elder speaks to the young. It is with honour that I will tackle the translation of these moving poems that form the latest work of one of the last of a generation of poets that have passed away in the last decade.
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Vigilante Season
$14.95Inspector Luc Vanier is back, and Montreal’s Hochelaga district is in the throes of gentrification. Its drug dealers and prostitutes are disappearing, and Vanier, investigating the brutal death of one, suspects the neighbourhood cleanup may involve murdering the unwanted. The local Police Commander sees only declining crime rates and his improving career prospects, and is willing to go easy on a local militia group that’s expanding its influence. When Vanier is suspended for brutality, he’s on his own. He continues to probe the dark side of progress, while struggling to help his son, just back from Afghanistan and crippled by PTSD. As the threats against him mount, Vanier fights to prove his innocence and discover who really controls the streets. Have the government and police stepped back to allow the militia to impose order? Is the militia the price of order when governments run out of money?