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All Books

All Books in this Collection

  • Begin With the End in Mind

    Begin With the End in Mind

    $12.95

    Residing on the border between poetry and prose, Emma Healey masterfully navigates the tension and balance between the two forms. Her writing examines the animate qualities of seemingly inanimate things and explores personal relationships, collective and individual human experiences, as they are distilled through our encounters with such things as the CBC, chain bookstores, the contents of a kitchen, or the expanse of a whole city. Begin With the End in Mind tests the capabilities of the prose poem–the specific rhythmic, lyrical, and syntactic possibilities of the form, and the opportunities for play, renegotiating the more traditional/technical elements of lyric and line that are afforded the prose poet.

  • Beginnings

    Beginnings

    $12.95

    Twice winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Livesay was a founding member of the League of Canadian Poets and writer-in-residence at many universities. She considered Beginnings “essentially autobiographical.”

  • Behind Closed Doors

    Behind Closed Doors

    $26.95

    Behind Closed Doors features written testimonials from thirty-two individuals who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The school was one of many infamous residential schools that operated from 1893 to 1979. The storytellers remember and share with us their stolen time at the school; many stories are told through courageous tears.

  • Behind The Eyes We Meet

    Behind The Eyes We Meet

    $24.95

    Why must one man perish while another survives? How does losing a sibling at birth affect life? And what are the chances that a fish lost and a cat found will bring our two protagonists together? This sweeping tale of intertwined destinies takes the reader from present-day Montreal to war-torn Italy and back again, with a gruelling march through the frozen Eastern Front of World War II along the way. All the while, secrets burn behind every pair of eyes we meet.

  • Behind the Face of Winter

    Behind the Face of Winter

    $22.95

    A coming-of-age novel set in a Montreal in which immigrant youth totter on the edge of self-destruction and oblivion, in the face of brutal and racist police, an insensitive education system, and few prospects for the future. Thomas’s language is spare, and his crackling dialogue and use of patois can compare with the best in Caribbean literature.

  • Behind the Lens

    Behind the Lens

    $39.95

    A one-of-a-kind collection including some never-before-seen photographs of the wild and unforgettable WHA from legendary sports photographer Steve Babineau

    On October 12, 1972, legendary Boston sports photographer, Steve Babineau, was in attendance for the debut of the New England Whalers. They were taking on the Philadelphia Blazers at the old Boston Garden — and Babs was shooting the action. Fifty years later, he’s still photographing big-league sports events — but this lovingly curated collection documents both his earliest published (and unseen) works and the wild emergence of the colorful, revolutionary, wild, and unforgettable WHA.

    In an era when rolls of film still had to be changed by hand and cameras were focused manually, when arena lighting was questionable and images had to be captured through the haze produced by smoking fans, Babineau captured it all: the timeless legends who were finally getting paid, the journeymen who finally got a shot at the pros, the 17-year-old who would go on to rewrite record books, the brawls and goals, the glorious ’staches and flows, the highs and the lows …

    Behind the Lens: The World Hockey Association 50 Years Later has the Golden Jet and the Howes, the teams that seemed to change names and cities as often as some players changed wooden sticks, and even the true origin story of that Wayne Gretzky photo that’s become the million-dollar holy grail for sports card collectors.

  • Behind the Orchestra

    Behind the Orchestra

    $7.95

    This book presents the revelatory nature of Trujillo’s English poetry. In the simplicity of these lines unfolds the mood and emotion divined by one who sees this country-made-home with the eyes and memory of one from away.

  • Behold Things Beautiful

    Behold Things Beautiful

    $19.95

    After twelve years in exile, living and teaching in the safety of Montreal, Alma Alvarez has been persuaded to return to Luscano by her old friend Flaco, who has invited her to give a lecture at his university on the tragic Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini, a writer with a cult-like following known for her erotic poetry and film noir demise.

    Having been arrested herself after the publication of a poem which offended the military regime, Alma knows how influential and dangerous poetry can be. But her mother is dying, and her return to Luscano feels inevitable. She soon discovers that life in Luscano is still rife with secrecy and duplicity. And Flaco turns out to have a hidden agenda as well. As Alma attempts to readapt to a country that, despite its seductive charms, may not have broke free of its brutal past, she catches sight of the man whose actions prompted her exile and begins to follow him in secret.

    The imaginary country of Luscano, an amalgam of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, is vibrantly brought to life with a nod to the region’s literary tradition of magic realism.

  • Beirut

    Beirut

    $27.95

    Barrack Zailaa Rima’s celebrated graphic novel trilogy, gathered together and available in English for the first time.

    Beirut is an intimate and poetic look at a beloved city that is at once autobiographical, documentary, and fantastic in nature. In Rima’s hands, Beirut is a labyrinth of alleyways and stories, a theater teeming with revolts, and a cenotaph to buried memories. With Rima and her family serving as our guides, and through chance encounters with incongruous figures (a librarian, a garbage collector—or the city’s last storyteller), we discover a city that longs for its Golden Age even as it is transformed by neoliberal forces in the aftermath of the Civil War—an evolution whose future remains uncertain.

    Dreamlike, tender, and ever-attentive to the beauty of the line, Beirut offers a glimpse into Lebanon’s past and present, which must be pieced together to form a whole. From the promise of the political activism of its youth in the 1950s and 1960s, to the grating difficulties of the 2015 garbage crisis and the struggle to accommodate and assimilate refugees, this is a journey through a city, and an expedition into the idea of home, that only Rima could shepherd. No matter the detours.

  • Belief

    Belief

    $22.95

    An upright and modest Muslim family in Mississauga, Ontario, discovers by accident the plans to bomb public places in Toronto on their son Rafiq’s computer. Belief tells the story of the family’s escape from Bombay to Canada following the communal violence of 1993; their small success, epitomized by their proud ownership of a house; and Rafiq’s attraction to fundamentalist Islamic ideas. Rafiq, it appears, has rejected the planned act of terrorism, organized by an evil charismatic genius, but how can he explain its details found on his computer? Told simply, impartially, and with understanding and empathy, Belief describes the trauma of a family unable to understand their child as they anxiously await his fate.

  • Believe America

    Believe America

    $20.00

    When Samson Johnson feels pushed over the edge from news reports of another U.S. mass shooting, he comes up with the bi-partisan ‘Save Lives, Save Guns’ plan. If shootings could be made non-lethal, killings would be stopped, the insurance companies would still profit and nobody would have their guns taken away. From town hall meetings in Oklahoma, to a Pride Centre in Vermont, from sunny California, to the prairies of South Dakota, Samson’s sleepless effort to end mass shootings forever covers the breadth of the country. Yet as the campaign goes viral on social media and funds begin to pour in by the millions, Samson is confronted with the realities of his plan. Voices across the country begin to riddle him with doubt: that his policy may be misguided and stand to do more harm than good. Can Samson put a stop to his misguided plan in time? Or is the ‘Believe America’ movement a Frankenstein’s monster ‘too big to fail’? 

    A biting satire on American exceptionalism, gun ownership and violence, #BelieveAmerica gets to the core of how hard it will be to change these attitudes and to bring sanity back into the debate. 

  • Believing Cedric

    Believing Cedric

    $19.95

    Cedric Johnson is a middle-aged insurance broker with an unusual problem. He seems to be physically flashing back to pivotal moments from his past. It begins when his third-grade teacher notices a startling awareness in an otherwise unremarkable boy. Next, Cedric inhabits his fourteen-year-old body. He continues to travel through the life he’s already lived, issuing warnings and searching for answers. But why should anyone believe him?

    Cedric’s journeys through time bring him face to face with forgotten memories, heartbreaking loss, the possibilities of love, and the agony of a life of regret. Cedric incenses and inspires the people around him, and changes the landscapes of their lives.

  • Belinda’s Rings

    Belinda’s Rings

    $19.95

    Half-Asian teenager Grace (but she’d prefer it if you called her “Gray” instead) is not a perfect little supermom-in-the-making like her older sister Jessica, and would rather become a marine biologist than a mother–although she does understand how to take care of her special-needs kid brother Squid better than anyone else in her family. When her mother Belinda abruptly runs out on her family and flies across the Atlantic in order to study crop circles in the English countryside, Grace is left alone to puzzle out her life, the world, and her unique place within it.

    With a warmth and a boisterous sense of humour reminiscent of Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness and Peter Hedges’ What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? author Corinna Chong introduces us to two lovable and thoroughly original female characters: persnickety, precocious Grace, and her impractical, impulsive mother Belinda–very different women who nevertheless persistently circle back into each other’s hearts.

  • Bells of Memory, The

    Bells of Memory, The

    $12.95

    The distinguished Arabic scholar, author, and translator Issa J. Boullata grew up in a Palestinian family in the Jerusalem of the 1930s and 1940s, when Palestine was under the British Mandate. His memoir, The Bells of Memory, is delightful in its reflections on an idyllic youth and detailed in its recollections of family members, classmates and teachers, remembered scents and foods, the pleasures of reading, and his early experience of the working world. This is a love letter to a Jerusalem that was changed immeasurably by Al-Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of 1948 that dispossessed the Palestinians of their homeland and dislocated many as refugees when Israel was established.

  • Belonging and Banishment

    Belonging and Banishment

    $25.95

    A variety of Canadian voices come together here to explore some of the vital issues facing Muslims in Canada. Who, indeed, is a Canadian Muslim? This is only one of the fundamental questions addressed in this volume. The authors are from diverse ethnic backgrounds, hail from coast to coast, and profess varying degrees of practice and belief. In their thoughtful contributions, they explore matters of faith, identity, sectarianism, human rights, and women’s rights. Specifically, the essays collected here question the dubious role of the government of Canada–under pressure from the “war on terror”–and its agencies regarding scientific research and the Muslim traditions of knowledge and intellectual pursuits; give examples of tolerant Muslim upbringing and reinforcement of positive identities; point out the duplicitous practices of certain Canadian media in portraying Muslims; look at the issues of women voting or participating in sports while veiled, and the implications of Shariah law as a means of arbitration.

    With contributions by: Anar Ali, Arif Babul, Anver M Emon, Karim H Karim,Ausma Zehanat Khan, Rukhsana Khan, Sheema Khan, Amin Malak, Syed Mohamed Mehdi, and Haroon Siddiqui.

  • Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart

    Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart

    $18.00

    Juxtaposing the diction of surrealism with Ovid, Callimachus, and popular music—punk and new wave—the poems in Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart concern themselves with various aspects of Eros.

    From wistful romance to explicit sex, these poems are inspired by the troubadour poets of Provence and Italy, and invoke such historical figures as the Byzantine Empress Theodora and her husband, Emperor Justinian, not to mention the Countess of Dia—Beatriz—a major poet of the troubadour tradition; these are Hausner’s “alter voices,” expressing permutations of presence, absence, conquest, and loss.

    Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart reaches back through the millenia to create an unexpected, unconventional, and contemporary exploration of one of humanity’s oldest pleasures.