Your cart is currently empty!
Browse featured titles from the ebooks for Everyone collection of accessible epubs.
Showing 381–400 of 608 results
My great-
grandmother slept
in a boxcar on the night
before she made the crossing. The steel
ended in Sangudo then, there was
no trestle on the Pembina, no siding
on the other side. They crossed
by ferry, and went on by cart through bush,
the same eight miles. Another
family legend has it that she stood there
in the open doorway of the shack
and said, “You told me, Ernest,
it had windows and a floor.” – from “Robinson’s Crossing”
The poems in this book arise from Robinson’s Crossing – the place where the railway ends and European settlers arriving in northern Alberta had to cross the Pembina River and advance by wagon or on foot. How have we crossed into this country, with what violence and what blind love? Robinson’s Crossing enacts the pause at the frontier, where we reflect on the realities of colonial experience, but also on the nature of living here- on historical dwelling itself. In long meditative narratives and shorter probing lyrics, Jan Zwicky shows us-as she has in her celebrated Lyric Philosophy and the Governor General’s award-winning Songs for Relinquishing the Earth – how music means and meaning is musical.
Romancing History?: Wayne Johnston and “The Colony of Unrequited Dreams” closely re-examines how Wayne Johnston’s seminal historical novel combines fact and fiction to shape our perception of the truth.
First published in 2000, Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an enduring contribution to the literature of Newfoundland and Labrador. In Romancing History?, Stan Dragland examines the novel’s indelible portrait of its central character, Joey Smallwood. What liberties did Johnston take in transforming Smallwood from historical figure to literary character, and to what end? Starting with this incisive analysis of Smallwood’s “sea change,” Dragland offers a luminous reading of Johnston’s novel that sees it as “a giant contemplation of Newfoundland,” one “large enough and compelling enough and playfully original enough to earn a place alongside other nation-making epics.”
Stan Dragland’s Romancing History?: Wayne Johnston and “The Colony of Unrequited Dreams” is the 2001 Pratt Lecture, the oldest public lecture at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Pratt Lectures were established in 1968 to commemorate the legacy of E. J. Pratt. Over the years, the series has hosted world-renowned authors and scholars, including Northrop Frye, Seamus Heaney, Helen Vendler, Mary Dalton, George Elliott Clarke, and Dionne Brand.
Prohibition in the United States created new opportunities for organized crime to make profits even they couldn’t imagine. It did not take long for the mobsters to push out the independent bootleggers and take control of the whole operation inside the United States. Their tentacles then reached into St. Pierre and Newfoundland, both of which had become legalized transshipment ports for liquor ? a real rum-runner’s heaven! Once it became clear that St. John’s was legally an open port for the movement of liquor the mob welcomed it as another St. Pierre. During the era of Prohibition in the United States, Al Capone emerged as the top mobster in the country. His capers made international headlines. Capone controlled the politicians, police, bootleggers, prostitution, and smuggling. He ruled a 1,000-man mob and his gross income was near $100 million annually. The tentacles of organized crime reached into Newfoundland in a big way. In Rum-runners and Mobsters: Prohibition’s 100th Anniversary Jack Fitzgerald leaves no stone unturned as he chronicles the start and end of the Prohibition era in Newfoundland, while exposing mobster involvement.
What is real when seen through the eyes of a child? When does the harshness of reality transform idyllic memories? The young narrator of Santa Rosa seeks the answers to these questions as she tries to make sense of the disintegration of her parents’ marriage–a process echoed by the slow disintegration of their neighbourhood. In subtle poetic prose, Wendy McGrath evokes afternoons at the fair captured in overexposed photographs, and a family’s disquieting day at the beach as moments that exist apart from time, in a place where every sense is heightened, and where every memory is sharpened as if in a lucid dream where understanding lies just beyond reach.
After a series of assassinations rocks Calgary’s underworld, Detective Lane is conscripted along with his husband Arthur into working undercover to seek out links in the Mexico-Canada drug connection and stop the violence.
As tensions mount back in Canada and outright war on the streets seems imminent, the laconic detective and his allies must use some unorthodox tactics to avert disaster in the Gulf of California and dismantle the cartel.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-FictionAn adventure story set against the backdrop of a son trying to understand his fatherAfter a 25-year break from boating, Brian Harvey circumnavigates Vancouver Island with his wife, his dog, and a box of documents that surfaced after his father’s death. John Harvey was a neurosurgeon, violinist, and photographer who answered his door a decade into retirement to find a sheriff with a summons. It was a malpractice suit, and it did not go well. Dr. Harvey never got over it. The box contained every nurse’s record, doctor’s report, trial transcript, and expert testimony related to the case. Only Brian’s father had read it all — until now.In this beautifully written memoir, Brian Harvey shares how after two months of voyaging with his father’s ghost, he finally finds out what happened in the O.R. that crucial night and why Dr. Harvey felt compelled to fight the excruciating accusations.
The engrossing memoir of a plastic and reconstructive surgeon involved in groundbreaking and life-changing procedures
Through his work in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Donald Laub changed the lives of thousands of people who had been shunned by society. Dr. Laub’s influence fostered the development of three key areas in the surgical profession: pioneering and influencing international humanitarian medical missions in the developing world, being at the forefront of gender affirmation surgery for transgender people since 1968, and the education and training of over 50 plastic and reconstructive surgeons.
His unstinting efforts to surgically correct cleft palates gave new lives to thousands of children in developing countries. As one of the original surgeons to perform gender affirmation surgery, Laub not only continually improved on his methods, but he also became a tireless advocate for the rights of transgender people. His non-profit foundation (Interplast, now called ReSurge International) has sent thousands of multidisciplinary teams to perform transformative and reconstructive surgery in the developing world.
Second Lives, Second Chances is more than just a memoir; it’s a testament to how the determination of one person can bring others together to make a lasting difference in the world.
Everyone can live a happier life, especially those with chronic illnesses. Brian Orend’s smart and accessible guide for people with illness, injury, or other challenges provides both a satisfying look into happiness as well as practical steps for living a measurably happier life.
When Brian Orend began having debilitating seizures that his doctors couldn’t explain, he began a quest to learn how he could be happier, even despite his challenging circumstances. He dove into the research about happiness, only to realize that much of the advice about happiness was aimed at “everyone” – failing to take into consideration the significant obstacles and circumstances faced by those with chronic conditions.
Orend realized that the advice required for augmenting happiness needs to be tailored for those experiencing ongoing health challenges. And so he wrote Seizure the Day – a smart, accessible guide, grounded in the latest scientific research, that tackles not only the background of happiness, but also provides concrete how-to advice for living a happier life.
As Seizure the Day demonstrates, people confronting challenging circumstances can make themselves measurably and sustainably happier. A better life, for each of us, awaits.
Finalist for the Wildrid Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction at the 2017 Alberta Literary Awards!The long rivalry between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company for control of the fur trade in Canada’s northwest came to an explosive climax on June 19th, 1816, at the so-called Battle of Seven Oaks. Armed buffalo hunters-Indigenous allies of the Nor-Westers-confronted armed colonists of the HBC’s Selkirk settlement near the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers in today’s Winnipeg. This “battle” would prove to be a formative event for Mtis self-determination as well as laying down a legacy for settlers to come.The Seven Oaks Reader offers a comprehensive retelling of one of Canada’s most interesting historical periods, the Fur Trade Wars. As in the companion volume, The Frog Lake Reader, Kostash incorporates period accounts and journals, histories, memoirs, songs and fictional retellings, from a wide range of sources, offering readers an engaging and exciting way back into still-controversial historical events.
Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, 2020
In this volume of poetry, Joseph A Dandurand lives the experiences of an Aboriginal people brought to the edge of extinction.
From the Author’s Note:
“The poems in this collection tell the truth of what has happened to my people. The Kwantlen people used to number in the thousands, but 80% of our people were wiped out by smallpox and now there are only 200 of us…I believe the gift of words was given to me so I can tell our stories…The poems gathered here tell the tale of a Kwantlen man who has been given the gift of healing but also is a heroin addict living on the east side.
“This is a book of hope, loss, and redemption for all the poor souls who find themselves on the street and lost from where they truly come.”
These poems tell the story of a Kwantlen man who has been given the gift of healing but is also is a heroin addict.
“A joy to read. Compelling, wise, and deeply human.” — Helen Humphreys, author of Followed by the LarkA restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherdFor 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm. Shepherd’s Sight shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life through the seasons. Now in her 70s, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction.Through her unsentimental gaze, we witness the highs and heartbreaks of delivering and rearing lambs, the shearing and spinning of wool, the wildlife in the woods (and occasionally in the house), and the garden produce moving from seed to harvest to table. Even after half a century on this land, McLean is still making fresh observations, and she shares them in evocative, elegant prose. As she moves through the calendar year, she also reflects on years past, offering a long view on climate, stewardship, and agriculture.With its lyrical description and absorbing storytelling, Shepherd’s Sight offers an unforgettable glimpse of a life lived on the land.
Karen Solie takes risks with perception and language, risks that pay off in such startling ways that it’s hard to believe this is a first book. Short Haul Engine is one great twist of fate and fury after another. The writing is clear, striking and open to all sorts of possibilities. Even at their most playful, these poems dive much deeper than initially expected. There’s a remarkably dark sense of humour at work here, but tempered with a haunting vulnerability that makes even the sharpest lines tremble.
from “Signs Taken for Wonders” … Too delicate for these dog-days, small, clover-blonde, my sister sews indoors. I ask her to fashion me into something nice, ivory silk. I am a big girl, sunburnt skin like raw meat, sweating two pews in front of the Blessed Virgin….
Deluxe redesign of the two-time Griffin Award winner’s first poetry collection. Includes new material.
On the occasion of the press’s 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the first of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This new edition of Short Talks features a foreword by the poet Margaret Christakos, a “Short Talk on Afterwords” by Carson herself, and a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst.
First issued in 1992, this is Carson’s first and only collection of poems published with an independent Canadian press. It announced the arrival of a profound, elegiac and biting new voice. Short Talks can comfortably stand alongside Carson’s other bestselling and award-winning works.
The youth at night would have himself driven around the scream. It lay in the middle of the city gazing back at him with its heat and rosepools of flesh. Terrific lava shone on his soul. He would ride and stare.–“Short Talk on the Youth at Night”
Praise for Short Talks: “Short Talks is a unique form of slag-like poetic address that arises from the full formative force of Carson’s young embodiment of a northern Ontario mining-town winter of mind.”–Margaret Christakos, from the Introduction.
Winner of the 2019 IPPY Silver Medal for Multicultural Fiction.
Kavita Gupta is a woman in transition. When her troubled older brother, Sunil, disappears, she does everything in her power to find him, convinced that she can save him. Ten days later, the police arrive at her door to inform her that Sunil’s body has been found. Her world is devastated. She finds herself in crisis mode, trying to keep the pieces of her life from falling apart even more. As she tries to cope with her loss, the support system around her begins to unravel. Her parents’ uneasy marriage seems more precarious. Her health is failing as her unprocessed trauma develops into more sinister conditions. Her marriage suffers as her husband is unable to relate to her loss. She bears her burden alone, but after hitting her lowest point, she knows she needs to find a better way of coping. Desperate for connection, she reaches out to a bereavement group, where she meets Hawthorn, a free-spirited young man with whom she discovers a deep connection through pain. After being blindsided by a devastating marital betrayal, she wonders if a fresh start is possible in the wake of tragedy. Will she escape her problems and start over? Or will she face the challenges of rebuilding the life she already has? Side by Side is a story about loss, growth and the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, illuminated through one woman’s journey from harm to care.