Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

    These stories showcase Miranda Hill's astonishing range and virtuosity, introducing us to a protean variety of characters, each as well-realized as the next. Here is a writer who can seamlessly inhabit the consciousness of a sixteen-year-old navigating an embarrassing sex-ed class, a middle-aged minister experiencing a devastating crisis of faith in a 19th century rural village, a pilot's widow coping with her grief by growing an unusual "victory garden" during World War II, and well-heeled modern professional women juggling jobs, kids, and husbands, and trying to cope with the arrival of a beautiful bohemian neighbour, on a gentrified street in downtown Toronto.The qualities that unite these remarkable stories are a pervasive sense of mystery and magic, a wonderful wit and sophistication, and most surprisingly, the slight disorientation implied by the title: In Miranda Hill's beguiling universe, the "real world" is recognizable and slightly askew, as if you were experiencing one of those strange dreams where you think you are awake--or as if you've been "sleeping funny" and are on the cusp of waking into the everyday world you thought you knew.

    Twelve episodes in the everyday life of the community of Mariposa

    In its harrowing chronicle of the breakup of a relationship, Interiors confirmed Cash's remarkable talents as a lyricist, with songs that were intelligent and astonishingly frank, songs that with their stark empathy transcended the self-involvement that had come to confine the work of many "confessional" singer-songwriters. The Wheel (1993) was further evidence that she had few equals in her field. As one of our most literate lyricists, Cash naturally began to turn to longer prose pieces, and in her first collection, Bodies of Water, she reveals the full breadth and depth of her talent. These stories are a series of portraits of the inner lives of women seeking self-forgiveness, resolution, and freedom in the face of the familiar betrayals of everyday existence. A mother spends a comically forlorn New Year's Eve alone with her young children. Alone in Paris, a traveler faces her loneliness as middle age approaches. A dinner party becomes a battleground of concealed disappointment. It is at the margins of reality and dreams, the boundaries between art and insanity, that Cash's characters come to learn that their redemption is to be found in facing the past, and finally, in retrieving power from it.

    He has chosen 49 stories by a wide array of writers including Alistair MacLeod, Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, Dionne Brand, Mavis Gallant, Stephen Leacock, Glenn Gould, Alice Munro, Rohinton Mistry, David Adams Richards and many more. Full of diversity and surprise, these writings reveal the geographical, emotional and literary range of the country. Above all, Michael Ondaatje's personal selection offers good reading and great entertainment.

    But in a Scarborough subdivision populated by newcomers from all over the world, a series of sudden catastrophic events reveals that not everyone’s dreams come true. Moving from house to house, Carrianne Leung explores the inner lives behind the tidy front gardens and picture-perfect windows, always returning to June, an irrepressible adolescent Chinese-Canadian coming of age in this shifting world. Through June and her neighbours, Leung depicts the fine line where childhood meets the realities of adult life, and examines, with insight and sharp prose, how difficult it is to be true to ourselves at any age.

    Infused with a close and present danger, these stories tighten the knot around power, identity, and sexuality, and draw the reader into the pivotal moments where - for better or for worse - we see ourselves for what we truly are.

    It confronts difficult material in a frank and unflinching manner, yet remains grounded in an abiding authorial intelligence. Pedal marks the debut of a hugely promising writer.”–Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire“Julia, the protagonist of this intense first novel, is a psychology grad student who risks everything to pursue scientific research in truly forbidden territory: sexual attraction between adults and children. She persists in her quest in spite of skeptical friends, fragile relatives, a squeamish thesis advisor, an enigmatic bike-tour companion, severe social taboos, and her own painful memories of a birth father she calls Dirtbag–not to prove any point but to find out what lies beyond the conventional wisdom. This is an unsettling novel–smart, fierce, confident, funny, and full of surprises–with an unforgettable young woman at the heart of the storm.”–Mary Schendlinger, Senior Editor, Geist“[…] a taut, unsettling, and provoking debut novel […] [Chelsea Rooney] ought to be commended for perceptively addressing such a difficult and inflammatory (and decidedly uncommercial) topic with a subtlety that’s buoyed by ample empathy.”–Brett Josef Grubisic, Vancouver Sun“Pedal is a brave and captivating book, written with an unflinching eye and a deep understanding of the torment that is the human condition. Chelsea Rooney is a major talent.”–Steven Galloway, author of The Confabulist and The Cellist of SarajevoJulia Hoop, a twenty-five-year-old counselling psych student, is working on her thesis, exploring an idea which makes her graduate supervisor squirm. She is conducting interview after interview with a group of women she affectionately calls the Molestas—women whose experience of childhood sexual abuse did not cause physical trauma. Julia is the expert, she claims, because she has the experience; her own father, Dirtbag, disappeared when she was eight leaving behind nothing but a legacy of addiction and violence.When both her boyfriend and her graduate advisor break up with her on the same day, Julia leaves her city of Vancouver on a bicycle for a cross-Canada trip in search of her father, or so she tells people. Her unexpected travel partner is Smirks, a handsome athlete who also has a complicated history. Their travel days are marked by peaks of ecstatic physical exertion, and their nights by frustrated drinking and drugs. After an unsettling incident in rural Saskatchewan involving a trio of aggressive children, Julie wakes up in the morning to discover Smirks has disappeared. Everything, once again, falls apart.Sometimes shocking in its candour, yet charmed with enigmatic characters, Pedal explores how we are shaped by accidents of timing—trauma and sex, brain chemistry and the landscape of our country—and challenges beliefs we hold dear about the nature of pedophilia, the essence of innocence and the idea that the past is something one runs from.

    Eighteen years on, the baby, Hanora, now a young woman, is told about her adoption, but given no details. As a second world war looms, Hanora is determined to uncover the mysteries of her identity. This quest will take her across the ocean with her cousin, Billie, and headlong into the tumult of Europe. Amid the tensions of World War II, the music and the great dance halls of the era beckon, and a career as a journalist becomes possible, even as her great love, Tobe, enlists in the Infantry. But Hanora will not let the past lie, even though, decades later, the truth remains beyond her grasp. Billie, whose memory is fading as she slips into dementia, provides elusive clues, but it isn’t until Hanora discovers a set of diaries written by a late local artist and that she begins to piece together the central issue of her own identity, hidden from her since birth.Itani’s vivid storytelling, infused with music and seamless historical detail, reveals how memory, no matter how imperfect, can shape the person we believe ourselves to be.

    ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Vampires in the lemon grove --Reeling for the Empire --Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --Proving up --Barn at the end of our term --Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --New veterans --Graveless doll of Eric Mutis

    The Goon Squad 2014 Summer Special contains an introduction to the Squad, and four short stories: "Red Wolf, Red Wolf, Does Whatever a Red Wolf Can," "Changes," "No-No Dojo," and "Tale of Terror." Join Puppet Girl, the Revenant, Red Wolf, and Talos as they protect the fairly innocent, are sharply critical about modern newspapers, talk to a door in Salford, and recount the day the city nearly blew up.

    What people don’t understand is that Earl and Linda are still keeping Roxanne company, reincarnated in the forms of a wiener dog and standard poodle. But this relationship—not idyllic, it’s true, but at least relatively harmonious—is disrupted when Roxanne accidentally hits a pit bull with her car. On the precipice of having the dog put down, she recognizes the eyes of her daughter’s killer, Helmut. Should she choose retribution, or forgiveness?This is the highly original set-up of “You’re Home Now,” the opening story in Rachel Rose’s debut work of fiction. These are clever, engaging stories with a compelling link: the characters, generally living on the fringes of society for some reason or another, all have better relationships with animals than with other humans. There’s a diverse range of creatures, with stories featuring a parrot, an octopus, rats, a chameleon, a pig (Francis Bacon), deer and bats, as well as the more traditional dogs and a pair of kittens named Yin and Yang.The stories in The Octopus Has Three Hearts combine vivid characters and original premises with Rose’s trademark combination of whimsy and irony to explore universal elements of the human condition, from parenthood to sexuality, identity to fidelity. It is a collection that will appeal to animal lovers, readers of literary fiction and anyone looking for their place to belong.

    P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe), as well as the 25th anniversary of Field of Dreams, the film that he inspired.In addition to his classic baseball tales, W. P. Kinsella is also a critically-acclaimed short fiction writer. His satiric wit has been celebrated with numerous honors, including the Order of British Columbia.Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the “real” story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.Eclectic, dark, and comedic by turns, The Essential W. P. Kinsella is a living tribute to an extraordinary raconteur.Table of Contents Introduction by Rick WilberTruthHow I Got My NicknameThe Night Manny Mota Tied the RecordFirst Names and Empty PocketsSearching for JanuaryLieberman in LoveThe Grecian UrnThe FogBeefDistancesHow Manny Embarquadero Overcame and Began His Climb to the Major LeaguesThe Indian Nation Cultural Exchange ProgramK MartThe FirefighterDr. DonBrother Frank’s Gospel HourThe Alligator Report—with Questions for DiscussionKing of the StreetWavelengthsDo Not Abandon MeMarco in ParadiseOut of the PictureThe Lightning BirdsPunchlinesThe Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory SocietyThe JobRisk TakersThe Lime TreeDoves and ProverbsWaiting on Lombard StreetShoeless Joe Jackson Comes to IowaAfterward - Where It Began: Shoeless Joe

    Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.

    Montgomery presents charming and poignant tales of orphans and children brought up by unloving families but who eventually find warmth and caring in homes of their own. An enchanting collection of 19 stories never before published in the U.S.