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Showing 321–340 of 892 results

How to Be Alone

By: Heather Nolan

$19.95

A breathtaking duet of spare, poetic novellas documenting the double-edged sword of self-acceptance.

Heather Nolan returns with How to Be Alone, a pair of novellas that depict the euphoric highs of a Queer awakening and the crushing lows of feeling Othered in a world that isn’t built for you. In this short but weighty book, Nolan explores themes such as isolation, trauma, and loss against the vibrant streets of Montreal. Here, in a city famous for bringing people together, the streets serve as a palette with a different purpose: a foil for those struggling to connect with the world around them.

How to Be Alone on Boulevard Saint-Laurent follows a fragmented trail left by Kaitlin, a narrator who finds moments of astonishing absurdity and beauty in the mundane as she wanders along Boulevard Saint-Laurent. In How to Be Alone on Rue Sainte Catherine, Lev moves to the Gay Village in Montreal to escape his mother, but what he finds is not what he expected.

A writer of uncommon talent, Nolan creates characters that reveal themselves through an understated confessional — the empty spaces holding meaning as much as the worded ones.
Huff & Stitch

By: Cliff Cardinal

$18.95

In huff, brothers Wind, Huff, and Charles are trying to cope with their father’s abusive whims and their mother’s recent suicide. In a brutal reality of death and addiction, they huff gas and pull destructive pranks. Preyed upon by Trickster and his own fragile psyche, Wind looks for a way out, one that might lead him into his mother’s shadow.

In Stitch, Kylie Grandview is a single mom struggling to make a living as a porn star while dreaming of being on the big screen. She’s painfully aware that she is among the many nameless faces on the Internet, the ones that blip across cyberspace, as her yeast infection, Itchia, reminds her at every turn. But when Kylie is offered the chance at a big break, a series of twisted events lead her down a destructive path, revealing a face no one will forget.
Human Scale, The

By: Michael Lista

$22.95

Whether investigating a gruesome triple-murder, a fairy tale marriage gone horribly wrong, or a brilliant con artist, Michael Lista has proven himself one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation. In his belief that crime reporting thrives the closer it moves to “the human scale”—where every uncovered secret reveals the truth of our obligations to each other—Lista builds his compulsively readable narratives from details (fake flowers, a little girl’s necklace) others might pass over, details that provide a doorway into the extreme situations he is drawn to. The Human Scale not only includes Lista’s most celebrated magazine stories to date, but comes with postscripts that describe his process in writing each piece, and the fallout from publication. Here is long-form journalism in its most hallowed form: brilliant and bingeable.
Hummingbird

By: Devin Krukoff

$21.95

A compelling, haunting novel about a man experiencing gaps in time, and the pain of living inside an anxious mind.

Felix wakes up one day to find he has a girlfriend he doesn’t recognize. He finds a novel, with his name on the cover, that he doesn’t remember writing. He’s been losing time since university. Sometimes these gaps are minutes, sometimes months. But now he begins experiencing flashbacks and moments where he gets a glimpse of an unsettling future. He will do anything necessary to keep the people he loves safe . . .

Hummingbird is a haunting, powerful novel, told in unadorned language that expresses with clarity the pain of living inside a disturbed mind. Like Anakana Schofield’s ground-breaking Martin John, Hummingbird is at times uncomfortable, but written with deep compassion and a sense of urgency.
Hunt, The

By: Nick Wilkshire

$24.95

A fast-paced thriller set in the vast and rugged Yukon wilderness, The Hunt follows an unlikely duo on an exhilarating journey as they battle the terrain and race against the clock to solve a murder—before they become victims themselves.

Ben Matthews is less than thrilled when he is posted to Canada from Washington, but he doesn’t have time to sit in his disappointment. His diplomatic credentials are still fresh when he is drawn into an urgent assignment: locating an American VIP who vanished on a Yukon hunting trip. Seeking help from the local Mounties, he finds himself paired with Lee Sawchuk; an RCMP sergeant, she is at ease in the challenging terrain of the Yukon environment. Battling nature and their considerable differences, the impromptu team’s search takes them to Kluane National Park and beyond—but the missing person is no ordinary VIP, and this is no ordinary search. Faced with a cryptic warning found in the remote Yukon mountains, all Matthews and Sawchuk know for sure is that the clock is ticking—and they only have four days left.
Hymn

By: John Barton

$19.00

A journey in search of love through the contemporary homoerotic male body.
Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes — from Belfast to the clear-cuts of Vancouver Island, from the subterranean heat of Jules Verne’s Iceland to the ventriloquism of the Alberta Rockies’ echoing eastern slopes — John Barton documents the path of the male body in the search for love in an increasingly unstable, supposedly tolerant contemporary world. Hymn, stokes the fires of homoerotic romantic love with its polar extremes of intimacy and solitude.
… though he files all forethought of the unknown life now going

on without him, a life he confuses with his own, his life promiscuous
however rearranged his surfaces or clean his drawers, the unclarifying

distractions of the body portentous in his downfall, the downfall
of his own body a matter of time, but thinking of the man who left
the accidental man come between them, the man he may yet become
it is impossible for him not to sing them unwashed hymns of praise.

— from “Hymn”
I Am Full

By: Dan Yashinsky

$19.95

Dan Yashinsky’s son Jacob died tragically in a car accident at the age of 26. Dan, Jacob and Jacob’s best friend Effie were driving back to Toronto after a magical trip to Montreal when Dan fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. Dan and Effie survived, but Jacob did not. When the unimaginable happens–a parent is still somehow here but their child is gone–all that’s left are stories. In the process of grieving his son, Dan realized that he was now Jacob’s storykeeper, and I Am Full is Jacob’s story.

Jacob’s death is the least interesting thing about him. How he lived, the kind of man he became, is what matters most. All his life, Jacob had struggled with Prader-Willi Syndrome, but rather than let it defeat him, he became an advocate for people suffering from PWS as well as people coping with various other disabilities. He was a jewelry-maker, a photographer, a songwriter, a TPS crossing guard, and an avid fisherman. Six months after Jacob’s death, Dan began to gather and create the texts that make up this chronicle, all the while guided by Jacob’s imagined voice. The events in I Am Full are drawn from many periods of Jacob’s life. Much of it–poems, sayings, speeches, letters, notes–are in Jacob’s own words and the rest is told in his imagined voice narrating things that Dan saw him do or hear him talk about. Jacob’s voice has been captured and carried in this unique book, which goes beyond the terrible grief of losing a child to preserving and sharing his story.
I Built a Cabin

By: Sara Jewell

$13.99

Eager for some peace and quiet, the main character of this tale in verse moves to the woods and builds a little cabin getaway. She?s found the perfect retreat?or so she thinks until she meets her neighbours: an array of loud and lively creatures who crunch and crack and hoot their way into her life. Young listeners will delight in the animals? playful antics and learn a bit about life in the wild.
I Can’t Believe I’m Old

By: Janet Torge

$26.95

As Janet Torge arrives, stumbles and finally lands solidly on the upper reaches of life, she explores how other senior citizens are grappling wIth this predicament—and adds her own comic voice with such gems as “My Love of Sitting,” “The Belly Fat Trap,” and “This Ain’t No Time for Puffed Sleeves.” The stories she tells in I Can’t Believe I’m Old will not help you live longer, nor will they promise you either health or happiness. What they will do is show you that this last phase of life can be full of surprises—and allow you to crack a smile or two along the way.
I Hate Parties

By: Jes Battis

$19.95

Fifty poems to dance (awkwardly) between queer and anxious spaces.

Social anxiety runs through I Hate Parties like a current. Recorded on deliberately shaky media, this collection offers the B-side of growing up queer, autistic and nonbinary. From Scruff dates to mix tapes, Jes Battis cruises (and crashes) through wild feelings and minor catastrophes. Dipping readers into a world of missed connections, social disasters and life as a queer party that constantly surprises, Battis uses a light touch and neurodiverse prosody as they chronicle middle-grade queerness and a kind of meandering surreality. From difficult desires, panic attacks and environmental sensitivities, Battis weaves nineties metaphors with current discussions of neurodiversity and trans rights in Canada as they ruminate between past and present like a cat refusing to settle. I Hate Parties guides us through all the best and worst parties of our lives—to the secret room beyond, where being awkward is the one and only dress code.
i heard a crow before i was born

By: Jules Delorme

$22.95

i heard a crow before i was born.
i heard tsó:ka’we before i was born.

i heard a crow before i was born opens with a dream-memory that transforms into a stark, poetic reflection on the generational trauma faced by many Indigenous families. Jules Delorme was born to resentful and abusive parents, in a world in which he never felt he belonged. Yet, buoyed by the love shown to him by his tóta (grandmother) and his many animal protectors, Delorme gained the strength to reckon with his brutal childhood and create this transformative and evocative memoir.

Across chapters that tell of his troubled relationships, Delorme unwraps the pain at the centre of his own story: the residential schools and the aftershocks that continue to reverberate.

In this stunning testament to the power of storytelling — to help us grieve and help us survive — Delorme tells the story of his spirit walk as he embraces the contradictions of his identity. As he writes, “i heard a crow before i was born is a man looking back, and dreaming back, and seeing that life, in whatever form it takes, however harsh it might seem, is beautiful.”
I Left You Behind

By: Nazneen Sheikh

$22.95

Spanning several decades and three countries, these enchanting short stories dwell unsentimentally on shifting homes and lost ancestral homelands, distant memories and fragmented family ties. Largely inspired by the author’s own life experiences, they depict close parental bonds, poignant encounters, tragedies and personal triumphs.

Injustice, the importance of education and a love of literature are recurring themes in the more autobiographical stories. At the age of thirteen in Pakistan “the girl” is forced to learn to read the Quran, without understanding its verses until adulthood. During a school year spent in Texas, she witnesses the ugly realities of American racism and segregation. At university in Pakistan, she visits a teenaged royal bride who is forced to observe purdah, to whom she later sends samples of classical English fiction, in the hope of inspiring her, and being a comfort and an inspiration. Years later, she visits her former philosophy professor at Oxford, with whom she shares her decision to become a writer.

These are stories of dislocation, relocation, and longing, evoking the physical and mental isolation made so tangible during the Covid pandemic. Rich in dialogue and description, the seventeen stories are Persian carpets, interwoven with numerous threads to produce a vivid tapestry of lives lived.
I Remember Lights

By: Ben Ladouceur

$24.95

The first novel from award-winning poet Ben Ladouceur, I Remember Lights depicts a time when the world promised everything to everyone, however irresponsibly.

In summer 1967, love is all you need…but some forms of love are criminal. As the spectacular Expo 67 celebrations take shape, a young man new to Montreal learns about gay life from cruising partners, one-night stands, live-in lovers, and friends. Once Expo begins, he finds romance with a charismatic visitor, but their time is limited. When the fireworks wither into smoke, so do their options.

A decade later, during the notorious 1977 police raid on a gay bar called Truxx, he comes to understand even more about the bitter choice, so often made by men like him, between happiness and safety.

I Remember Lights is a vital reminder of forgotten history and a visceral exploration of the details of queer life: tribulation and joy, exile and solidarity, cruelty and fortitude.
I’m Going to Break Your Heart

By: Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida

$28.95

Raine Maida has played sold-out stadiums as the frontman of Our Lady Peace, launched a successful solo career, and produced albums for superstars Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson. Chantal Kreviazuk is a Canadian singer-songwriter, composer, and classically trained pianist whose introspective pop-rock and adult-contemporary music earned her multiple Juno Awards and platinum-selling albums and who has written chart-topping songs for global stars such as Pitbull, Christina Aguilera, and Drake. And yet they would both tell you that the most difficult and rewarding part of their journey has been their marriage.

I’m Going to Break Your Heart introduces these music icons at a breaking point in their relationship: when did things start to unravel, and how did they fall into such unhealthy patterns? More importantly, how do they break the cycle? Instead of walking away, they make a bold choice: to seek help.

A raw, honest journey through the highs and lows of a couple working through therapy, I’m Going to Break Your Heart is a powerful reminder that the goal isn’t perfection — it’s the commitment to keep showing up, to keep trying, and to keep choosing each other, one imperfect day at a time.
Ice Diaries

By: Jean McNeil

$26.95

What do we stand to lose in a world without ice?

A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent — Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth that is nobody’s country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent.

In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life. Ice Diaries is a haunting story of the relationship between beauty and terror, loss and abandonment, transformation and triumph.
If Clara

By: Martha Baillie

$19.95

In If Clara, nobody stands on firm ground. Daisy, a writer confined to her home, her leg in a cast from hip to ankle, receives a parcel containing the manuscript of a novel about a Syrian refugee and is asked to pose as its writer. Julia, the curator at the Kleinzahler Gallery, has no idea that her sister, Clara, has written a novel. However, she does know that Clara suffers from a debilitating mental illness, is unpredictable, and lapses easily into hostility. Maurice’s life is changed by an art installation involving a pair of binoculars welded to the wall through which visitors are invited to observe passersby outside. An ultralight aircraft’s collision with a quiet lawn brings them all together. If Clara explores the emotional weight of friendship, the complexity of family, and people inextricably entwined.
If Sylvie Had Nine Lives

By: Leona Theis

$22.95

Winner of the High Plains Book Award and the Saskatchewan Fiction Award.

An innovative, gorgeously written story about the small decisions that shape our lives.

Meet Sylvie—funny, sly, sensual and flawed. She can’t always count on herself to make good choices. She may or may not recognize a life-or-death moment, may or may not cancel her own wedding with a day to spare, might just try to walk past store security with a little something in her pocket. Like all of us, Sylvie must make decisions that have reverberations for years to come. Unlike the rest of us, Sylvie gets to live more than one life.

In airy prose imbued with humour, this novel asks the big questions: is there a right path and a wrong path, or does each possibility hold its share of pleasure and pain? Does a person have an immutable self, or is her essence dependent on circumstances? In this energetic and innovative book, Leona Theis creates a world without the usual limits and a protaganist who is conflicted, charismatic, brave, and full of curiosity. If Sylvie Had Nine Lives is for everyone who has ever asked, What if…?
If We Caught Fire

By: Beth Ryan

$22.95

If We Caught Fire brings two families together for a wedding in St. John’s, an event that sets off a summer of fireworks in the lives of the people around them.

Edie’s calm and contained life is knocked awry when her mother decides to marry a man she met online after just a few months of dating. The groom’s son, Harlow, is a joyful adventurer who shows up for the wedding and quickly recruits Edie as his sidekick.

Harlow runs toward risk and adventure with arms wide open, unconcerned about what other people expect from him. Edie plans every step carefully and keeps her dreams small and attainable, even when others encourage her to want more. Over a few months, they develop a connection that defies definition, a situation that leaves Edie queasy with fear and tingly with possibility.

Edie and Harlow (and the rest of their new unwieldy family) do an elaborate dance, trying to discover just what they are to one another. When Edie thinks she’s figured him out, Harlow reveals a depth and darkness she didn’t see coming. By Labour Day, they’ve created connections, tested boundaries, and found they’ve come together and apart in unexpected ways.
If We Were Birds

By: Erin Shields

$16.95

If We Were Birds is a shocking, uncompromising examination of the horrors of war, giving voice to a woman long ago forced into silence, and placing a spotlight on millions of female victims who have been silenced through violence. A deeply affecting and thought-provoking re-imagining of Ovid’s masterpiece “Tereus, Procne, and Philomela,” Erin Shields’s award-winning play is an unflinching commentary on contemporary war and its aftermath delivered through the lens of Greek tragedy.
Immigrant Blues

By: Goran Simic

$15.00

Immigrant Blues, an extension and deepening of the famous poems of the siege of Sarajevo translated in Simic’s Sprinting from the Graveyard (Oxford, 1997), explores the personal and the public devastations of war, especially its effects on the emotions, thoughts and memories of exiled survivors. Simic’s genius is to present this disturbing reality in terms so vigorous and humane that pain is mixed with the solace and pleasure of great art.

Open the doors, the guests are coming
some of them burned by the sun, some of them pale
but every one with suitcases made of human skin.
If you look carefully at the handles, fragile as birds’ spines,
you will find your own fingerprints, your mother’s tears,
your grandpa’s sweat.
The rain just started. The world is grey.

from “Open the Door”

“The brilliance of these poems lies in their detail, their lack of rhetoric, and their passion.” — Helen Dunmore, reviewing Sprinting from the Graveyard in The Observer

“Goran Simic has written with tact and restraint in daunting and provocative conditions. The fact that his terrifying testimony seems more whispered than screamed is part of its power.” — Denis O’Driscoll, on Sprinting from the Graveyard in The Times Literary Supplement