London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade. Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.

    In the course of his search, he founded the Revelations Colony of Truth.Now, Maggie Kyle runs an extraordinary boarding house on the original site of the Colony, and she and her irrepressible boarders search out Keneally’s story as a key to their own roots and even the possibility of love.Originally published in 1977, The Invention of the World is Jack Hodgins’ first novel.

    But we don’t have to let them. Instead, we can use these events as opportunities for growth. In Things No One Else Can Teach Us, Humble the Poet flips the conventional script for happiness and success, showing us how our most painful experiences can be our greatest teachers.Humble shares raw, honest stories from his own life—from his rocky start becoming a rapper to nearly going broke to being the victim of racial prejudice—to demonstrate how a change in mindset can radically alter our outlook. This shift in perspective—one that stops seeing the negative and starts seeing the lesson or positive spin—is what no one else can teach us. We must figure things out on our own, often through difficult and heartbreaking experiences.Humble inspires us to create these silver linings ourselves, preparing us to better handle any challenges that may arise. From a breakup to going broke to losing a loved one, our hardest moments can help us flourish, but onlyif we recognize and seize the opportunity. By doing so, we will become more self-aware, grateful, and empowered.Simple yet profound, Humble’s message is clear. While we can’t control the vagaries of life, we have the power to control how we react to them. Things No One Else Can Teach Us reminds us all that we have the power within us to transform the way we respond to everyday challenges and ultimately be our best selves.

    Larissa Lai interweaves three narrative voices and their attendant cultures: an elusive fox growing toward wisdom and her 1000 birthday, the ninth-century Taoist poet/nun Yu Hsuan-Chi (a real person executed in China for murder), and the oddly named Artemis, a young Asian-American woman living in contemporary Vancouver.With beautiful and enchanting prose, and a sure narrative hand, Lai combines Chinese mythology, the sexual politics of medieval China, and modern-day Vancouver to masterfully revise the myth of the Fox (a figure who can inhibit women’s bodies in order to cause mischief).

    Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state's role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard's intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities.A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

    Like I do with all great books, I kept have to stop and step away every few pages to think about what I’d just read. Crybaby is tender and full of carefully chosen, luxurious language. It’s poem after poem of sensual, wide-eyed desire and a total rejection of shame. There was something I wanted to tattoo or study or steal on every page.” – Clementine von Radics, author of Mouthful of Forevers & founder of Where Are You Press“Crybaby is a masterpiece. This collection is one of the greatest triumphs of Caitlyn Siehl’s young career. There are few poets who simultaneously reveal the wonder in everyday life and expand our understanding of the world. Caitlyn is one of those poets. She perfectly balances radical tenderness and gritty truth telling in her sophomore collection. There is a ravenous appetite in her words, a deep yearning to achieve complete wholeness. This hunger empowers readers to explore their identities and discover their best parts. Crybaby is a compelling read from cover to cover. Bring it home to someone you love. Allow your heart to be expanded by this collection; there is truly something here for everyone.” – Christian Sammartino, co-founder & editor-in-chief for The Rising Phoenix Review“Crybaby cries with you. Caitlyn’s second collection is what every second collection should be: equal parts heartbreak, forgiveness and honesty so clear it hurts. I read this and couldn’t believe I didn’t have something like this to turn to when I was younger. Hell, I regret that I didn’t have this last year. Caitlyn possesses a true gift in writing about the things that hurt us, the things that haunt us, and the things that also give us endless hope. I am breathless from the sheer unapologetic way in which she describes the mundane nuances of everyday life—from the pancakes to the flowerbeds and all the lovers in-between. Caitlyn’s collection tells you that you’re going to fall, but more importantly, it shows you how to do it. A triumph.” – Kristina Haynes, author of It Looked A Lot Like Love & Chloe

    John Rourke is haunted by his days as a relief doctor in West Africa. In the 1990s, in the midst of a civil war, he provided medical attention and supplies to the people of Sierra Leone. He befriended a local nurse named Mariama Lahai and a doctor named Momodu, but lost contact when the conflict escalated to conflagration. His last memory of Sierra Leone is of Mariama delivering a beautiful baby girl to a tortured, mutilated mother just before armed rebels take the hospital.Now living in Vancouver and happily married to Nadia, who is expecting their first child, John is thrust back into the horrors of the past by the arrival of a package from Sierra Leone. He realizes that before he can commit to his future, he’ll have to confront his conscience and the pain of his past. He embarks upon a journey that takes him back into Mariama’s world of child soldiers, bush-wives, and African secret societies.My Heart Is Not My Own is a story of love, courage, and resilience that is brought to life through the powerful voice of Mariama.

    In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel--sort of a Clerks meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf--we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged aisles associate at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And Roger's co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6.One day, Bethany discovers Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she's never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right.These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life.Coupland electrifies us on every page of this witty, wise, and unforgettable novel. Love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them ...and even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.

    A collection of poems parodying the Gabbie Hanna collection 'Adultolescence', written from the perspective of Kyra - a little dog with a big heart! Youtuber, Rachel Oates, and her dog worked together to create this collection of poems and photographs which will resonate with every dog lover, but will also provide plenty of giggles for 'fans' of Gabbie's 'poetry'.

    Clarke embarked on a 3,000-mile motorcycle journey around the coast of Great Britain during the wettest June on record, 2007, in spite of strong opposition from his wife for having bought a new bike and daring such an adventurous trip at his age.

    is the debut collection of prose and poetry by Malawian writer, Upile Chisala. This book explores the self, joy, blackness, gender, matters of the heart, the experience of Diaspora, spirituality and most of all, how we survive. soft magic. is a shared healing journey.

    Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and unable to face a return to his family home in rural Nova Scotia, he goes in search of freedom, change, anonymity and repair. We follow Walker through a sequence of poems as he moves through post-war American cities of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

    That Wagner is in love with the world and its transactions--perceptions, superficial and otherwise; childbearing, painful and otherwise; gains, financial and otherwise--allows for a poetry that is full of song yet brazenly topical.

    She spends her childhood and adolescence traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along with way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she s safe. Last Night in Montreal is a story of love, amnesia, compulsive travel, the depths and the limits of family bonds, and the nature of obsession. In this extraordinary debut, Emily St. John Mandel casts a powerful spell that captures the reader in a gritty, youthful world charged with an atmosphere of mystery, promise and foreboding where small revelations continuously change our understanding of the truth and lead to desperate consequences. Mandel's characters will resonate with you long after the final page is turned.

    The only life Ruby Proulx has ever known is that of a nomad, traveling across the country with her snake-oil salesman father. She dreams of taking root somewhere, someday, but, until she can, she makes her way by reading tarot cards. Yet she never imagined her own life would take such a turn...   After one of her father’s medical “miracles” goes deadly wrong, Ruby evades authorities by hiding in the seaside resort town of Old Orchard, Maine, where her estranged Aunt Honoria owns the Hotel Belden, a unique residence that caters to Spiritualists—a place where Ruby should be safe as long as she can keep her dark secret hidden.   But Ruby’s plan begins to crumble after a psychic investigator checks into the hotel and senses Ruby is hiding more than she’s letting on. Now Ruby must do what she can to escape both his attention and Aunt Honoria’s insistence that she has a true gift, before she loses her precious new home and family forever...