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Claws of the Panda

By: Jonathan Manthorpe

$24.95

Claws of the Panda tells the story of Canada’s failure to construct a workable policy towards the People’s Republic of China. In particular the book tells of Ottawa’s failure to recognize and confront the efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate and influence Canadian politics, academia, and media, and to exert control over Canadians of Chinese heritage. Claws of the Panda gives a detailed description of the CCP’s campaign to embed agents of influence in Canadian business, politics, media and academia. The party’s aims are to be able to turn Canadian public policy to China’s advantage, to acquire useful technology and intellectual property, to influence Canada’s international diplomacy, and, most important, to be able to monitor and intimidate Chinese Canadians and others it considers dissidents. The book traces the evolution of the Canada-China relationship over nearly 150 years. It shows how Canadian leaders have constantly misjudged the reality and potential of the relationship while the CCP and its agents have benefited from Canadian naivete.
Closer

By: Sarah Barmak

$14.95

NATIONAL POSTÂ 99 BEST BOOKS OF 2016

QUILL & QUIREÂ BEST OF 2016

QUILL & QUIREÂ BEST COVER OF 2016

We think of the modern woman as sexually liberated – if anything, we’re told we’re oversexed. Yet a striking number of women are dissatisfied with their sex lives. Over half of women report having a sexual complaint, whether that’s lack of desire or difficulty reaching orgasm. But this issue doesn’t get much press; the urge is to ignore or medicalize it (witness the quest for ‘pink Viagra’). If so many ordinary women suffer from sexual frustration, then perhaps the problem isn’t one that can be addressed by a pharmaceutical fix – or isn’t a problem. Maybe we need to get hot and bothered about a broader cultural cure: a reorienting of our current male-focused approach to sex and pleasure, and a rethinking of what’s ‘normal.’

Using a blend of reportage, interview and first-person reflection, journalist Sarah Barmak explores the cutting-edge science and grassroots cultural trends that are getting us closer to truth of women’s sexuality.Â Closer reveals how women are reshaping their sexuality today in wild, irrepressible ways: nude meetings, how-to apps, trans-friendly porn, therapeutic vulva massage, hour-long orgasms and public clit-rubbing demonstrations – and redefining female sexuality on its own terms.

‘Closer tackles its subject with eloquence, intelligence and humour … I recommend it to my friends of all genders, my boyfriend, my sisters, and especially the woman who started it all, my mother.’

—rabble.ca

‘… Closer is a revelation.’

—Bitch Magazine

‘… an incredibly insightful exploration of female pleasure.’

—The Globe and Mail
Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan

By: Alden Nowlan

$55.00

Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) once wrote of a desire to leave behind “one poem, one story / that will tell what it was like / to be alive.” In an abundance of memorable poems, he fulfilled this desire with candour and subtlety, emotion, and humour, sympathy and truth-telling. For many years, Nowlan has been one of Canada’s most-read and -beloved poets, but only now is the true range of his poetic achievement finally available between two covers, with the publication of Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan.

Nowlan takes us from nightmarish precincts of fear and solitude to the embrace of friendship and family. Delving into experiences of violence and gentleness, of alienation and love, his poetry reveals our shared humanity as well as our perplexing and sometimes entertaining differences. Nowlan’s childhood and adult years are colourfully reflected in his poetry. These autobiographical threads are interwoven with fantasies, an astute historical consciousness, and a keen awareness of the shiftings and transformations of selfhood.

Nowlan wrote with formal variety, visually shaping his poems with a dexterity that complicates impressions that he was primarily a “plainspoken” poet. His varied uses of the poetic line — his handling of line-lengths and -breaks, stanzas, and pauses — show him to be a writer who skilfully uses the page to suggest and embody the rhythms of speech. This long-awaited volume enables readers to experience his poetic genius in its fullness and uniqueness.
Concord Floral

By: Jordan Tannahill

$17.95

Concord Floral is a one-million-square-foot abandoned greenhouse and a refuge for neighbourhood kids; a place all to themselves in which to dream, dare, and come of age. But hidden there is a secret no one wants to confront, and when two friends stumble upon it they set off an unstoppable chain of events, from shadows in parking lots to phone calls from the grave. It’s time for the teens of Concord Floral to start talking.
Copernicus Avenue

By: Andrew J. Borkowski

$21.00

You will never know what really happened to Lech or any of us. We mean nothing by it, darling. It is a silent agreement we all have with ourselves, that nothing will ever make us prisoners again, not even memory.?

Set primarily in the neighbourhood of fictional Copernicus Avenue, Andrew Borkowski’s debut collection of short stories is a daring, modern take on life in Toronto’s Polish community in the years following World War II. Featuring a cast of young and old, artists and soldiers, visionaries and madmen, the forgotten and the unforgettable, Copernicus Avenue captures, with bold and striking prose, the spirit of a people who have travelled to a new land, not to escape old grudges and atrocities, but to conquer them.
Cotton Blues

By: Edem Awumey

$22.95

In an African town somewhere between the Sahel and the Atlantic coast, cotton planter Toby Kunta takes a Berlin journalist hostage in a museum showroom. Kunta asks for compensation of several million francs for himself and a group of peasants ruined by the production of genetically modified cotton. As the tension rises inside the museum and a standoff begins with the chief of police, Kunta begins to burn the exhibited works one by one and threatens to do the same with his prisoner.

With this standoff behind closed doors, where words and gestures get exchanged with anger and hope, Edem Awumey takes us on a contemporary journey on the cotton road, from the African Savannah to the American South, from the luxurious salons of Berlin to the fields of Indian Rajasthan sprayed with glyphosate, from the valleys of Uzbekistan covered with white fibre to the spinning mills of Dhaka in Bangladesh. It is the novel of the crossing of worlds in a struggle against the domination of the multinationals. It is the great lamentation of the African people enslaved to the thirst for wealth in the West. It is a cry of freedom too long held back that finally bursts out with thunderous violence.
Cries from the Ark

By: Dan MacIsaac

$20.00

A pitch-perfect debut and a call to act in the service of Earth through radiant attention.

Humankind, at present, has breached floodgates that have only been breached before in ancient stories of angry gods, or so far back on geologic and biological timelines as to seem more past than past. Against this catastrophic backdrop (at the end of consolations, at the high-water mark), and equipped with a periscopic eye and a sublime metaphorical reach, poet Dan MacIsaac has crowded his debut vessel with sloths and gipsy-birds, mummified remains and bumbling explorers, German expressionists and Neolithic cave-painters.

MacIsaac knows that in order to render a thing in language, description itself must be open to metamorphosis and transformation; each thing must be seen alongside, overtop of, and underneath everything else that has been seen. With the predominant “I” of so many poetic debuts almost entirely absent, Cries from the Ark is catalogue and cartography of our common mortal–and moral–lot.

“These poems are fecund as black dirt, as carnal and joyous. Each piece is an owl pellet, a concentrate of bone and tuft, of bison, auk and Beothuk. Not since Eric Ormsby’s Araby have I read a book so empathic and so glossarily rich. Fair warning, MacIsaac: I’ll be stealing words from you for years.” –Sharon McCartney

“MacIsaac sings a raven’s work, sings the guts from our myths, sings our world with the breath that ‘for a century/ of centuries / only the wild grass / remembered.’ Present but acquainted with antiquity, MacIsaac’s instrument is our own breathing as we say these poems of reverence to ourselves.” –Matt Rader
Crisp

By: R.W. Gray

$17.95

Crisp confronts the unspeakable parts of memory, meditating on characters caught in isolation and struggling to make sense of grief, disappointment, and the occasional dinner party gone wrong. The characters in Crisp’s stories don’t always make sound decisions: a grieving widow pursues a priest, an unhappy wife whittles her husband to bits, and a nostalgic man has a one-night stand with a whale trainer. Ranging from the mystical to the eccentric, Gray masterfully uncovers human reactions to loneliness and unrest through tales about relationships, secrets, and a longing to connect.
Curb Angels

By: Nyala Ali

$24.95

In the post-punk, global economy of the 1980?s, four young women from very different backgrounds are united by a common goal: justice. Curb Angels features fearless female characters on a mission that crosses borders and challenges the status quo. In the face of exploitation and violence against women, they carve their own path and leave a touch of well-deserved wreckage along the way. Featuring the powerhouse team Lisa Mendis and Nyala Ali as they join forces in this tour-de-force sequel to the acclaimed smash hit Curb Angels Volume 1.
Curry

By: Naben Ruthnum

$14.95

No two curries are the same. This Curry asks why the dish is supposed to represent everything brown people eat, read, and do.

Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands, Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience.
Curtains for Roy

By: Aaron Bushkowsky

$21.00

Alex is a playwright suffering from writer’s block and harsh reviews. His best friend, Roy, is a theatre director with lung cancer and six months left to live. In pursuit of fresh air and great wine, they go on a road trip to the Okanagan Valley, where Roy rediscovers his passion for theatre. But when he decides to stage a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a winery, disaster ensues: the woman cast in the lead is the winery owner’s wife and has no talent; wildfires encroach upon the surrounding forest; and Roy slips closer to death, one cigarette at a time.

Curtains for Roy is a hilarious peek into the world of theatre, where the greatest drama is offstage and the best performances take place behind the curtain.
Dancing Lessons

By: Olive Senior

$22.00

When her house in the Jamaican countryside is damaged by a hurricane, Gertrude Samphire is sent by her estranged daughter Celia to Ellesmere Lodge, an assisted living centre. Gertrude is unimpressed with her new wealthy neighbours, and spends most of her time alone. It is only through writing that she finds her voice, and she begins to record her life in a notebook: memories of her gothic childhood, impetuous marriage, and struggles with raising a family. Gertrude slowly comes out of her shell, establishing and mending the relationships she has been missing for so long – and comes to realize that she may not be alone as she once felt.
Dancing with Chairs in the Music House

By: Caro Soles

$22.95

Winner, 2021 IPPY Bronze Medal for Canada-East Best Regional Fiction.

Precocious ten-year-old Vanessa Dudley-Morris knows lots of secrets. In 1949 when she and her family are forced to move into two rooms on the second floor of 519 Jarvis Street in Toronto, a genteel but somewhat rundown rooming house owned by a reclusive pianist, she learns a lot more.

Despite the family’s drastically reduced circumstances, her parents struggle to keep up their old standards. Threatened by blindness due to an eye condition, Vanessa is kept at home, tutored by an erratic succession of eccentrics, some with questionable credentials. Consequently, she spends a lot of time alone, wandering the dim corridors of the old house, silently listening at doors and watching the odd characters who live there. She becomes fascinated by a mother and son who move into a room on the third floor. Eventually she agrees to take secret notes from the son to his mysterious friend at her church, unwittingly unleashing a chain of events that leads to tragedy.
Dancing with Daisy

By: Jan L. Coates

$14.95

When he finds a photograph of his grandfather as a young man, Liam is full of questions. But that’s just fine, because Grampy has a story to spin with every answer.

On a fall day in 1962, he tells Liam, he had a run in with a nasty girl in search of a dance partner: Daisy was her name. What follows is a tall tale about Grampy’s tango with a hurricane, and all those signs of aging?the wrinkles, the stooped back, the croaky voice, the false teeth?can be chalked up to Daisy’s persistence and Grampy’s refusal to dance. Of course, it takes a talking to from Nana to get that Daisy to blow off elsewhere.Acclaimed author Jan L. Coates and award-winning illustrator Jos?e Bisaillon join forces in this charming picture book to craft a tale both touching and amusing about aging and the bond between a grandfather and his grandson. Bisaillon’s gorgeous, playful illustrations bring the dance to life, evoking that windy girl and her insistent ways, as well as the warm affection between Grampy and Liam.
Dandelion Daughter

By: Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay

$21.95

A runaway bestseller in Québec, where it has captured the hearts of readers and pushed trans-identity into the mainstream conversationDandelion Daughter is an intimate, courageous portrait of what it’s like to grow up having been assigned the wrong sex at birth. Set against the windswept countryside of the remote Charlevoix region some five hours north of Montreal, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s autobiographical novel immortalizes her early years as an alienated boy trapped in a world of small-town values and her parents’ dissolving marriage, through complex adolescent years of self-discovery and first loves, to the harrowing episodes that fuel the growing realization that she must transition and give birth to her new self if she is to continue living at all. One of the first novels of its kind to appear in Québec, this inspiring story has already connected with a wide readership, and has been adopted by many schools to help expand worldviews and curriculums.
Danger Flower

By: Jaclyn Desforges

$18.95

A baby transforms into a reverse mermaid in a baptism gone wrong. After being stepped on, a snail exacts revenge. In Danger Flower, Jaclyn Desforges leads enlightened witnesses through a wild garden where archetypal tales are treated with tongue-in-cheek irreverence. Amidst nesting dolls and opossums, poison oak and Tamagotchis, the poet navigates gender roles, sexual indiscretions, episodic depression, and mothering, forming essential survival strategies for a changing world. Danger Floweris a necessary debut.
Daphne’s Bees

By: Catherine Dempsey

Ten-year-old Daphne is abuzz with excitement! She?s learning the ins and outs of beekeeping from her grandmother. Together they assemble hive boxes, set up a colony, tend the colony and gather honey. Told in a simple, straightforward manner, this beautifully illustrated informational storybook is an excellent introduction to the many aspects of beekeeping. It includes lots of useful information, bee facts and more, all wrapped up in a story that celebrates the connection between grandparent and grandchild.
Darwin’s Moving

By: Taylor Lambert

$20.95

In a city known for wealth and prosperity, the divide between haves and have-nots is rarely clearer than on moving day, when those two worlds come together in intimate fashion. Violent ex-cons and drug addicts are invited into spacious homes, entrusted with the care and transport of the possessions of the upper classes — a unique bridging of two normally segregated worlds.

Darwin’s Moving is an intriguing and affecting exploration of class divides by a journalist and former mover. Taylor Lambert takes us behind the scenes of a familiar industry that is almost completely undocumented in Canadian literature to reveal the cycles of poverty and addiction that ensnare its workers. This is the Other Calgary, a world populated by transient men and women struggling to survive in a boomtown’s shadow.
Daughters of Silence

By: Rebecca Fisseha

$22.95

Strong female voice, a clear-eyed narrator examining self and family.

Ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano fills the skies. Flights are grounded throughout Europe. Dessie, a cosmopolitan flight attendant from Canada, finds herself stranded in Addis Ababa — her birth place.

Grieving her mother’s recent death, Dessie heads to see her grandfather, the Shaleqa — compelled as much by duty as her own will. But Dessie’s conflicted past stands in her way. Just as the volcano’s eruption disordered Dessie’s work life, so too does her mother’s death cause seismic disruptions in the fine balance of self-deceptions and false histories that uphold her family.

As Dessie reacquaints herself with her grandfather’s house, familiar yet strangely alien to her diasporic sensibilities, she pieces together the family secrets: the trauma of dictatorship and civil war, the shame of unwed motherhood, the abuse met with silence that gives shape to the mystery of her mother’s life.

Reminiscent of the deeply immersive writing of Taiye Selasi and Arundhati Roy, Rebecca Fisseha’s Daughters of Silence is psychologically astute and buoyed both by metaphor and by the vibrant colours of Ethiopia. It’s an impressive debut.
Dawning of a New Garden

By: Tara Nanayakkara

$22.95

Confronted with the task of re-inventing her life, young widow Priya grieves by researching spiritualism for a new age magazine and spending time in the garden her late husband, Gabe, had tended. Human contact is limited to an elderly nursing home resident, Jeevan, who is from her father’s native land of Sri Lanka. Soon Priya is drawn further into Jeevan’s world, which includes a mysterious nephew, Suresh. Despite rigid religious views, Suresh takes advantage of Priya’s vulnerability. Soon an isolated Priya finds herself facing the prospect of either single motherhood or a loveless marriage. While her Canadian and Sri Lankan friends Meg and Shobi conduct a tug of war over Priya’s destiny, Suresh’s jealous and coercive tactics prevent her from exploring a third possibility, her kindly neighbour Ryan, the only person whose presence gives Priya a genuine sense of solace. In this sequel to the author’s earlier novel, Priya’s World, Priya’s life is mired in uncertainty, but as spring begins to stir, the garden Gabe planted begins to speak to her of new life and fresh possibilities.