For two decades, Stuart McLean travelled across the country every December with The Vinyl Cafe Christmas tour, bringing the gift of laughter and light during the darkest days of the year. The hilarious world of Dave and Morley was even more real--more vibrant--during the holidays. For many, the Vinyl Cafe Christmas stories became beloved family traditions. Now, for the first time, they have been brought together in this special collection--including the classic Dave Cooks the Turkey, as well as five new, never before published Christmas stories. From mishaps with the Turlingtons and the tale of a young Dave's first holiday disaster to the surprising Christmas Ferret and the touching sign off in The Christmas Card, these wonderful new stories will delight for years to come. Brimming with charm and humour (often at Dave's expense), these twelve stories entertain on every page, reminding us what the holidays are all about.

    But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of thirteen to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea’s unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.At the age of thirty-seven, Cea has built a life that looks like the normal one she craved as a child—husband, young son, beautiful house, enviable career. But her carefully art-directed world is about to crumble around her. As she confronts the death of her still-young mother, the disintegration of her second marriage and the demise of her business, all within a few months, she finally faces the need to look at her past to make sense of her present.The Globe and Mail says “Person’s best gifts as a writer are her memory, her knack for knowing when to dig down into the finer details of a scene, and when to pull back.” Nearly Normal chronicles the many stories Cea left untold but that needed telling. Settled into a new and much happier life after the release of her first book, she is nonetheless compelled to continue searching for answers about her enigmatic family. She discovers the value in the lessons they taught her, and the power of taking responsibility for her own choices.

    THE WESTERN FRONT IS IN STALEMATE. Captain Malcolm MacPhail of the Canadian Corps has been in the trenches for longer than he cares to remember. He’s just landed a new job on the intelligence staff, but if he thinks staying alive is going to become any easier, he’s sorely mistaken.The rain is pelting down, the shells are flying and the dreaded battle for Passchendaele looms. Malcolm reckons matters can still get worse. Which proves to be an accurate assessment, especially as his unruly tongue has a habit of making enemies all on its own.The Allies are fighting desperately to swing the tide of war, and Malcolm’s future hangs in the balance, so keeping his head down is simply not an option… Authentic and gripping military historical fiction. Praise for MALCOLM MACPHAIL'S GREAT WAR: "Darrell Duthie skilfully blends history and fiction... He brings his invented hero, Malcolm MacPhail, into conjunction with real characters, to inform and stimulate readers... Malcolm MacPhail's Great War is realistic and often gripping... deserves a Mentioned-in-Despatches at least!" -- Dr. Peter Stanley, professor, former principal historian of the Australian War Memorial, author"The concept of trench warfare... is a prominent theme in this very readable work of 'faction'... The friction between HQ politics and the front line resonates throughout this tale. All in all, it is an enjoyable read."-- Soldier Magazine (magazine of the British Army)

    Most of the world sees a painfully and chronically shy software engineer in his mid-20s, soft-spoken, a bit of a loner, and someone easy to escape notice wherever possible—and that’s just the way Alex wants it. Because no matter how many years have passed, the incident known only as “Gabriel” in the MacAskill family is something that still haunts him.But when his mother, one of the only people in the world who Alex felt comfortable as himself around, dies after a long illness, he suddenly has no choice but to face the very thing that he’s been avoiding since that night in high school. In an instant, Alex finds himself trying to piece together the mystery of his identity, and on a search for parts of his family he never knew existed—a search that takes him from Ottawa to London to Moscow, encountering along the way the KGB, painful memories from his past, and even the 1972 Russian hockey team—a search that ultimately helps Alex discover himself.With his trademark wit and captivating storytelling, Terry Fallis has written a novel unlike any of his others. One Brother Shy is at once poignant and humorous, heartbreaking and heartwarming, and readers will not soon forget Alex MacAskill.

    Along with their friends, the neighbouring Mi’kmaq, the community believes they can remain on neutral political ground despite the rising tides of war. But peace can be fragile, and sometimes faith is not enough. When the Acadians refuse to pledge allegiance to the British in their war against the French, the army invades Grande Pré, claims the land, and rips the people from their homes. Amélie’s entire family, alongside the other Acadians, is exiled to ports unknown aboard dilapidated ships. Fortunately, Amélie has made a powerful ally. Having survived his own harrowing experience at the hands of the English, Corporal Connor MacDonnell is a reluctant participant in the British plan to expel the Acadians from their homeland. His sympathy for Amélie gradually evolves into a profound love, and he resolves to help her and her family in any way he can—even if it means treason. As the last warmth of summer fades, more ships arrive to ferry the Acadians away, and Connor is forced to make a decision that will alter the future forever.

    Using found text from government reports, corporate websites, and her father's prison correspondence, these poems interrogate the possibility of a privatized prison system in Canada and explore disproportionate representations of Indigenous Canadians, people of color, and refugees.Mercedes Eng is a teacher and writer in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish land.

    A perfect combination of weather, geography and circumstance created a raging wildfire that devoured everything in its path. Winds drove the flames towards the town, forcing the entire population to evacuate. As the fire swept through neighbourhoods, it fell to the men and women of the fire department to protect the city.Born and raised in Fort McMurray, Damian Asher was a fifteen-year veteran and captain in the city’s fire department. Day after day, Damian and his crew remained on the front lines of the burning city. As embers rained down around them, they barely slept, pushing their minds and bodies to the brink as they struggled to contain the fire. As he led his crew through the smoke and the flames, Damian had little time to worry about whether the house he had built for his family was still standing. With media unable to get into the locked-down city, the world watched in hope and fear, wondering what was happening on the fiery streets.Finally, after weeks of battling the wildfire, the firefighters managed to regain control. When the smoke cleared, much of the city had been destroyed. Would things ever be the same? How would the city reunite? What would it take to rebuild life in Fort McMurray?

    Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on the moral, emotional, and philosophical implications of love and the creative act, especially those creative works that, as George Steiner has said, “make a deposit in the bank of terror.” Michaels has chosen to draw on that “bank” – to embrace life through an unblinking confrontation with the terror that is death in our time – by speaking through the work of three great artists, recently dead, who were her confidants: the sculptor Eva Hesse, the painter Jack Chambers, and Claire Wilks, print maker and sculptor "who could draw like few others.”

    Sharp-tongued and quick-witted, he lives alone in rural Cape Breton, but he still cooks breakfast for his wife, who's been dead for thirty years. He silently starts to question his own mind after stopping to pick up a hitchhiker -- a hitchhiker who turns out to be his neighbour's mailbox.Everything shifts, though, when Emily, a pregnant teenager, shows up at his house with no place else to go. Determined to help Emily as best as he can, John must also keep the wolves from his door and maintain some semblance of sanity.The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil is a compelling, witty and heartwarming novel by renowned Nova Scotia author Lesley Choyce.

    Plus, this year featuring more all-new material than ever before!Contributors to the 2017 calendar include:Kelly Link (Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners)Jim Gavin (Middle Men, AMC's forthcoming Lodge 49)Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)Ken Liu (The Paper Menagerie, The Grace of Kings)Maggie Shipstead (Astonish Me, Seating Arrangements)and [REDACTED x 19]!As always, each booklet is sealed, so you won't know what story you're getting until the morning you open it. Calendars are available in a one-time print run, which means that once they're gone, they're gone forever. The 2017 edition has also been reimagined, design-wise—did someone say translucent vellum sleeve? Yes. It was us.

    But Wanda's life changes radically on a routine trip to the grocery store when a gunman enters the supermarket and opens fire. The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes is the highly anticipated debut novel by Bridget Canning, one of the most promising new writers from Newfoundland, and is an energetic page-turner about the power of selflessness in a contemporary culture of fear and suspicion.

    Lundy accepts the weight and the richness of memory, drawing lyric portraits of intriguing people who have touched his life. Of his aboriginal mother he writes, "She exists for me \ the way the owl \ perches \ on black spruce \ backlit by streetlight \ grey against the night sky \ Just before taking flight." His words send a shiver up the spine with their edgy intimacy, as he speaks of the power of understanding and reconciliation. Lundy's "honour songs" celebrate the beauty, wisdom and power of the earth and sky and their creatures: all things that existed long before humankind. In this exciting new collection, his most contemplative to date, he finds a sense of peace and belonging.

    Clare Holmes, a flaw checker at the local glassworks, is saving up for passage to England, to work for the Red Cross and be near her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. But one normal Thursday morning, a deadly explosion in the Halifax harbour shatters the city – and Clare is caught up in the blast.As Clare struggles to recover from her injuries, she stumbles upon the School of Art, where she finds solace in drawing, and a mentor who encourages Clare’s burgeoning artistic ambitions. But how can one be an artist when the whole world has gone mad? When her own city is half-destroyed? When she’s not sure if Leo will ever come home?Meanwhile the city, weary from the seemingly endless war and torn apart by the devastating explosion, is wracked with fear and mistrust of foreigners. Clare’s new friend Fred, a glassmaker from Germany, is pulled into a web of suspicion, causing Clare to question everything she thought she knew.Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about resilience, art, and the casualties of war, abroad and at home. With extraordinary vision and clarity, Alison Watt’s remarkable debut novel brings the past to life.

    Renee struggles to keep her head above water until she is drawn into the orbit of two beautifully notorious bar-singer cousins, and all three women are called to test the bonds of blood and loyalty. A polyphonic fable riddled with tall tales, Glory explores what it means to be a woman in north-central BC by flooding the shores of the human heart.

    Matthews, “The Gift” will leave you breathless in this story about a darkness that haunts a little Belgium village, and the lengths it will take to save a young woman from being lost to it forever. “The Gift” is a vividly haunting Christmas story that will not be easily forgotten. The darkness begins here. Fae Peeters is an exchange student in Belgium pursuing her Master’s Degree in architecture. As Christmas approaches, she receives a letter from her beloved grandmother inviting her to visit her own childhood village in southern Belgium, and there find her Christmas gift. The letter is unusually vague and bewildering but Fae follows it, the mystery of the gift leading her on. Arriving in the village, Fae is greeted by a picturesque holiday villagescape. . . and an unshakable feeling that the quaint village is hiding something. Almost immediately upon arriving she begins hearing a voice that isn’t really there and imagining dark things she’d never seen or dreamed before. Her mind starts to unravel and she wonders if she’s starting to go insane—but is she? Or is something much darker going on? The longer Fae stays in the village the more disconcerted she becomes as she begins to uncover more mysteries and fewer answers. Desperate to keep a hold on her fleeting sanity, and determined not to disappoint her Grandmother by quitting the village before Christmas morning, Fae befriends the only person who seems to want to help her, but even he might not be what he appears. . . Fae’s fight for her life and her soul, and the realization of what living through this Christmas Eve will cost not only her, but others around her, is a heart-pounding, page-turning experience. Edited by New York Times Best Seller editor Steve Parolini, “The Gift” is a supernatural thriller that will carry you away to the wintery streets of Europe and insert you into the struggle against a darkness that haunts an innocent village. A mind-bending struggle of hidden truths against the darkest of evils, “The Gift” is a story of survival that will challenge your perception of the world around you in a narrative to satisfy thrill seekers and holiday lovers alike.

    From an award-winning Cree playwright comes two powerful solo shows that promise visceral journeys into the lives of marginalized characters.

    Barry Blitt's cartoons have been lampooning American politics and culture for decades. His iconic New Yorker covers are defining images for our times, earning him adoration from critics and fans and piles of hate mail from everyone else.This lavish full-color collection showcases more than a quarter century of Blitt's work: his wry and provocative New Yorker covers, from the Obama fist bump heard round the world, to George W. Bush's drowning cabinet, to the myriad (and counting) misadventures of Donald Trump; Blitt's long-running collaboration with Frank Rich on The New York Times op-ed page; and his work for Vanity Fair, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and others. Blitt also shares his private sketchbooks, drafts, and uproarious rejected illustrations, offering readers an illuminating view into his creative process.Featuring the author's hand-scrawled annotations and self-deprecating witticisms, more than one hundred never-before-seen sketches and drafts, and essays from Blitt's collaborators and peers, including Frank Rich, Francoise Mouly, and Steve Brodner, Blitt is a visual delight and a rollicking trip into the mind of an utterly original artist.

    With those words, eighty-three-year-old Arthur Manuel set his remarkable First World War memoir in motion.

    Together they stocked their farm with sheep, cattle, chickens, pigs and, eventually, four children. Needles' charming chronicle unfolds in essays dated from 1997 to 2016, offering homespun advice for successful country living--like whether to wave from the elbow or to merely raise one finger from the steering wheel when passing a neighbour in the car. He cautions on rural superstitions, such as when his neighbour hesitated before selling him weaner pigs because every time he does the wife of the farmer who's buying them becomes pregnant--which turned out to be true. Here too is the tale of an unlikely friendship between a "borderline" collie ("he's never bitten anything in his life and the sheep are catching on") and an odd duck named Ferdinand, as well as other hilarious stories involving an assortment of farm animals, including the weapon of choice to properly dispatch a rooster-gone-bad; the risks of giving a name to a potential Sunday dinner entrée; and how to outsmart a free-range pig. With his witty insight, Needles shares the art of neighbouring in the country--a place made for visits, and "where a figure walking across your field is more of a reason to put the kettle on than to call the police."True Confessions from the Ninth Concession is a sesquicentennial crop of antics and aphorisms by Canada's funniest farmer--one that presents a wonderful escape for world-weary city dwellers, and affirmative reading for anyone who is from, or has moved to, rural Canada.

    It’s a collection that challenges our notion of seeing as a passive or automatic activity by asking us to question the process of looking. The book’s first section, “Underway,” deals with the moving image and includes both poetic responses to film theory and lyrical long poems while also reimagining fairy tales. The next section, “Stagings,” takes its inspiration from the still image and explores a wide range of periods, movements, and media. Sze’s focus on the process of looking anticipates “Guillemets,” a creative translation of Roland Giguère’s 1966 chapbook, Pouvoir du Noir, which contains a series of poems accompanied by his own paintings. Sze’s approach to Giguère is two-fold: she “translates” his text, and artist Jessica Hiemstra provides a visual response to her translation. The final section, “Panicle,” continues the meditative quality of “Guillemets” in a suite of poems that ruminate on nature, desire, and history.

    What she learned made her rethink the man who had raised her. The tale begins with his childhood in the Australian outback, and follows his immigration to English and enrollment in the British forces in 1914. After being injured in France, he is hired by the British Foreign office, which sends him to Berlin as a passport clerk in the 1930s. For the next ten years, he lives in a world of intrigue and espionage as the Nazi regime grows stronger around him. This is a compelling inside look at the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, from subtle changes in the people's everyday behaviour to Hitler's sinister consolidation of power. It is an eyewitness account of an era we all read about, but rarely experience with such a personal touch. Having promised not to release the story until after his passing, Darlene Harrington now shares her father's remarkable life, which will change the way we understand the Second World War and the impact one person can have on history....

    That’s why the government put him in prison.They placed him in a Calorie Reduction Centre (CRC), where trained staff work to help him and many others slim down. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The powers that be had decided chubby citizens must either go there or lose their health care coverage.When he meets Jacinda Williams, an activist lawyer researching this new system, Keelan is more determined than ever to slim down. But Keelan discovers losing weight is more difficult than it seems, especially when he also has to fight against a ridiculous bureaucracy and policy wonks with hidden agendas. Can he succeed, and will the CRC-crossed lovers ever sit at love’s banquet together?From award-winning author Mark A. Rayner, The Fatness is a contemporary satire of socialism, capitalism, and the so-called “obesity epidemic”. This is Catch-22 for a new generation, with a distinctly tender undertone, even as it mercilessly spoofs the establishment.Praise for Mark A. Rayner“Mark A. Rayner—an all-Canadian synthesis of Douglas Adams and Ben Elton—understands that the best satire is only five degrees to the left of reality. The Fatness may not be reality (yet), but it’s too close for comfort. Luckily, it’s also funny as heck.” ~Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey and Husk“I’ve only come across a few writers who are truly funny, and Mark A. Rayner is one of them.” ~Terry Fallis, author of Best Laid Plans“Mark A. Rayner’s characters possess substance enough, and exist in a world sufficiently vivid, to be able to revolt and liberate themselves in an exhilarating counterrevolutionary struggle.” ~Tom Bradley, author of Useful Despair as Taught to the Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch“Mark A. Rayner is just a terrific storyteller and one of the most imaginative and original writers you will ever have the pleasure of reading.” ~Ian Ferguson, author of Village of the Small Houses“Mark A. Rayner is an author with a fantastical sense of humor and a dangerous imagination.” ~The Next Best Book Club

    Twenty-two-year-old Linda Wise despairs of escaping her overprotective parents and her hometown, where far too many know she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Deliverance arrives in the form of marriage to the charismatic, twenty-six-year-old Ronald Brunson, a newly ordained Methodist minister who ignites her passion for social justice. Ron tells her war and racial discrimination are symptoms of the "moral rot" destroying the country, conjuring up something dark and rancid in her mind, thrilling in its wickedness. He sweeps her away from Stony River, New Jersey, to serve with him at a church in a speck-on-the-map prairie town in Minnesota. What lies ahead for her over the next seven years is the subject of Tricia Dower's penetrating study of a marriage and a woman's evolving sense of self as she confronts the trauma that keeps her from her future, unfettered self. BECOMING LIN evokes the turbulent era of Freedom Riders for civil rights, Vietnam war resistance, the US government's war against the resisters, sisterhood and the push for equal rights for women, new-age metaphysics, motivational psychology and the unraveling of the traditional marriage contract -- an era that resonates today in persistent racism and sexism, perpetual war and wide-reaching government surveillance.

    This gripping companion piece to The Last Wife reimagines the little-known story of Elizabeth I before she was queen.

    Catriona Wright’s debut introduces us to the image of the poet as “gastronaut,” a figure who seems to live entirely between table and a stove and who steeps her surroundings and relationships in complex emotional flavours. “My life,” she writes, “is now tuned to bone marrow donuts and chef gossip. I’m useless at any other frequency.” Wright’s wild narratives are sometimes funny, sometimes frightening and always ravishingly observed. Table Manners is what might have emerged had Julia Child written like Sharon Olds, or if Anthony Bourdain knew his way around a line-break.

    Does this outward shift in the Canadian state's approach to longstanding injustices facing Indigenous peoples reflect a "transformation with teeth," or is it merely a reconstructed attempt at colonial Indigenous-settler relations? Prairie Rising provides a series of critical reflections about the changing face of settler colonialism in Canada through an ethnographic investigation of Indigenous-state relations in the city of Saskatoon.　 Jaskiran Dhillon uncovers how various groups including state agents, youth workers, and community organizations utilize participatory politics in order to intervene in the lives of Indigenous youth living under conditions of colonial occupation and marginality. In doing so, this accessibly written book sheds light on the changing forms of settler governance and the interlocking systems of education, child welfare, and criminal justice that sustain it. Dhillon's nuanced and fine-grained analysis exposes how the push for inclusionary governance ultimately reinstates colonial settler authority and raises startling questions about the federal government's commitment to justice and political empowerment for Indigenous Nations, particularly within the context of the everyday realities facing Indigenous youth.

    The younger ones will want someone to read them the story. The older ones will read it themselves. This is the story of Hannibal Jones, the world's worst poet. It's the story of what happens when his tame dragon turns bad. Memorable characters include "Young" Betty Marchmere (she's seventy-five) who thinks her donkey is a horse, and Inky Jake who thinks you can kill dragons with silver arrows (he's wrong). It's also the story of the young prince and princess, Gaelen and Ket, who are caught up in the chaos of the dragon gone wild.

    It is the 1980s and teenage Gemma lives with her well-meaning father, Nathaniel, goes to 'art therapy' once a week and tries to come to terms with growing up motherless. She collects facts about her long lost mother, Angie (height, weight, eye-colour, mint lip-gloss) and develops a rare syndrome she calls PMMSM, People-Make-Me-Stupid-Mad. Then comes the strange, almost unthinkable news: Angie is back, attending church in a nearby town. She is ready to return to motherhood, and to prove it, she has adopted a Korean infant. Then an invitation: would Gemma like to stay with a family in Angie's community over the summer? Gemma, who has never had a friend in her life, suddenly finds herself living in a house full of God-fearing teenagers, and every Sunday, facing the prospect of maybe, just maybe, seeing a mother she is pretty sure she hates.

    There are secret vacations, library book fetishes, women who participate in "fully-clothed, free-form touching and explorative play experiences" in exchange for protection from teenage vandals, and a doomsday cult operating out of an aquatic centre. An exiled polar bear spies on his old community and fights to survive in unfamiliar territory. A man campaigns to keep the sitcom Friends on the air after the collapse of his family. A masochistic deer wants to feel something other than the slow digestion of cud:"The thing I really fantasize about is that one night a driver will stop and reverse slowly over my tail. And then maybe they get out, and slam one of my legs in the car door. Oh god. Maybe they tie me up like they're going to mount me on the roof rack, but instead they just douse me in windshield washerfluid."Infused with dark humour, each of the sixteen stories included in the collection explores the absurdity of life when the things that really matter are placed just out of reach. Cop House is a book about the lengths people will go to undo the things that can't be undone.

    After a busy night of playing and gliding and snacking, they're ready to settle down and sleep all day.But humans have other plans: the tree is cut down and packed onto a truck bound for Boston, Massachusetts. It turns out their new home has been chosen as Halifax's annual thank-you gift, the Boston Christmas Tree! The little squirrels have no idea they're about to embark on a journey across Atlantic Canada and Maine on the way to Boston. Will the accidental stowaways be discovered? And what awaits them in their new American home?

    But today there is finally a remarkable cure.Elizabeth Rains describes how she was likely infected with hepatitis C during her wild hippie days, how she was diagnosed more than four decades later, and how she became one of the early patients to be cured, including the obstacles she encountered in gaining access to the $100,000 drugs. She describes the symptoms—and non-symptoms—of hep c, the stigma that still accompanies a diagnosis, the grueling interferon treatments that many hep C patients have had to undergo, and the new antivirals that have exploded onto the pharmaceutical market and that provide a cure but at a tremendously high price.Because most people who have hepatitis C have no idea they harbor the disease, Rains’ riveting account will compel readers to get tested for this silent killer.

    When her cousin marries and sails for Canada in the 1870s, Eleanor determines to follow. Having left home in secret, she soon has reason to regret her decision. Friendless in a strange new country, both women fall victim to a brutality that threatens to destroy them. This is a work of historical fiction based on events of the period. Written with a masterful command of the voices it inhabits, the novel's endearing characters come alive in a nineteenth century setting. The journey of its protagonist highlights the importance of those immigrants, of every class, who came to North America and who have played essential roles in the establishment of a developing social fabric.