After returning from a campaign in the Third Afghan War, Major Thomas Waller and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment are assigned to escort two mysterious ladies into the unknown lands of the new world. With the help of an American drifter named Smith, Waller and his men must face daunting hordes of 'savages' that roam the steppes of the alien planet, and help to uncover the ladies' secrets - and the secrets of the new world itself. A dangerous mission awaits on the Grasslands...

    Roach, caught in the same turmoil as everyone believing half-truths in order to blame other people. (p. 141)These are the forlorn thoughts of Alex Chapman, the tragic anti-hero of David Adams Richards’ masterful novel The Lost Highway. An exploration of the philosophical contortions of which man is capable, the novel tracks the desperate journey of an eternally lost and orphaned child/man who has nearly squandered his frail birthright but might yet earn some degree of redemption.Alex spent a stunted childhood watching his gentle mother defiled by rough-handed men including Roach, his biological father. Upon his mother’s death Alex is passed into the care of his hard-nosed great-uncle Jim Chapman, nicknamed “The Tyrant” by their Miramichi community. Alex’s uncle becomes a symbol of all that he loathes. Alex distinguishes himself from this brutal masculinity that stole his mother from himby becoming a self-imposed ascetic, entering the local seminary and rehearsing his own version of piousness. But when he is tempted by the Monsignor’s request to deliver charitable funds to the bank, Alex pockets the money and flees to the home of Minnie, whom he worships and who he has learned is now pregnant by Sam Patch, a good man, but too rough in Alex’s eyes. He attempts to talk Minnie into using the money for an abortion, and it is only her refusal that sends him back to the seminary to return the money. “Do you remember if the phone rang in the booth along the highway that night?” (p. 87) asks MacIlvoy, a fellow seminarian who had gotten wind of the theft and tried to detour Alex from this path. But of course Alex had ignored the rings, as he would ignore many warnings in his tragic life.Caught red-handed and forced to return as a prodigal son-that-never-was to his uncle’s house, Alex again flees to yet another refuge, this time to the safe moral relativism of academia, where he becomes an expert at reducing meaning to ethical dust. However, he finds himself unable to navigate the easy duplicity in which his peers are fluent, and takes an isolated and idealistic stand which causes him to be drummed out of the facultyas a figure of ridicule. A bitter and alienated Alex once again returns defeated to a shack on his uncle’s property, spending his days in the family scrapyard forging dreadful humanoid creatures out of junked metal, a modern-day Prometheus. One day he is asked by MacIlvoy, now the local priest, to create a Virgin for the church grotto. Some part of him still influenced by divinity guides his hand to create a beautiful Madonna, her face inspired by a lovely young girl he spots one day in the market. Two days later he finds out that the girl is Amy Patch, the child he urged his childhood sweetheart to abort fifteen years earlier. He will also find out that it is once again the fate of this innocent girl, at his own hands, that will determine whether he will ever experience the grace he so dearly craves.Trudging the lost highway while mulling over his grievances as usual, Alex runs into Burton Tucker, whose own mind and body have been stunted by the brutality of his birth mother. The generally pliant Burton runs the local garage, offering lotto tickets as a bonus for oil changes. He is on his way to deliver some good news: Jim Chapman is a winner, to the tune of $13 million. Alex realizes that he could have been the one to bring Jim’s truck to Burton and receive the winning ticket, but he had refused because of the grudge he held against Jim. Once again, Alex has been thwarted by an ironic twist of fate and it is too much to bear. He decides at that moment that his uncle must never see the money, and begins a treacherous intrigue, which he justifies through the tortured ethical logic with which he has become so skilled. He unwittingly aligns himself with a very dangerous partner, Leo Bourque, the childhood bully who made his schooldays such hell, and whose days of playing cat-and-mouse with the weak Alex are not over. Their twinned descent will become deadly, marked by murder both actual and intended. How far would any of us go to avenge a terrible wrong done to us at birth? To whom shall we assign blame? And can we achieve redemption, no matter how grievous our sins? David Adams Richards’ The Lost Highway is a taut psychological thriller that goes far beyond the genre into the worlds of Leo Tolstoy, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, as well as classical Greek mythology, testing the very limits of humankind’s all too tenuous grasp on morality.

    Albee there is a theme beneath the surface, in this case the corruption of money and the rottenness of this bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard, beautifully played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. Then abruptly there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their fourteen-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning." More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.

    As Sawai deftly turns over the stones of these people's lives and reveals the squalor, the fear and the unhappiness that lie beneath, she also uncovers that most precious of human qualities - hope.

    But at a time when women are second-class citizens, can her charm and spirit protect her from the dangers of the court? And at what cost?

    [MacIvor is a writer with an angular sense of humour and an uncommon knack for probing basic elements and truths of human behaviour." ?Vit Wagner, Toronto StarThis Is a Play is a hilarious postmodern romp through the interior lives of actors in a bad play."Ingenious, whimsical, a lyrical lunacy in the writing, This Is A Play is a theatre experience comedy you might associate with Tom Stoppard." ?Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

    For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy.“I have Stayed. I have Stayed – I have Stayed for as long as I possibly can.”

    Just before his works are celebrated at an exhibition in London, Jonathan journeys to the village where his former lover, Patricia, lives with her British husband, Nick. Archaeologists working on a dig, their spare existence is spent sifting through a Roman rubbish heap to discover the past. In their cold, remote house, Jonathan discovers an early painting of Patricia he'd done when they were young lovers. The subsequent struggle for the painting embodies the unreconciled passions of the past. Patricia has never forgiven Jonathan for leaving her, Nick despises Jonathan and the kind of art he produces, and Jonathan has never been able to recapture the inspiration and purity he felt when he painted Patricia. In taut scenes that dart from past to present and back, the characters are forced to deal with the unanswerable question of anti-Semitism, the legacy of the Holocaust and assimilation, the sadness of lost love, the role of the artist and the location of the human soul at the end of a ragged century.

    Overseas, war is raging in Vietnam, Civil Rights marches are on the streets, and women’s liberation is stirring – but at home in Corrigan Charlie Bucktin dreams of writing the Great Australian Novel. Charlie’s 14 and smart. But when 16-year-old, constantly-in-trouble Jasper Jones appears at his window one night, Charlie’s out of his depth. Jasper has stumbled upon a terrible crime in the scrub nearby, and he knows he’s the first suspect – that goes with the colour of his skin. He needs every ounce of Charlie’s bookish brain to help solve this awful mystery before the town turns on Jasper. Kate Mulvany’s adaptation of Craig Silvey’s award-winning novel is wise and beautiful. A coming-of-age story, Jasper Jones interweaves the lives of complex individuals all struggling to find happiness among the buried secrets of a small rural community.Whether you know the book or not, this piercing adaptation is very much worth seeing for the way it depicts – and shows ways across – some of the deep and enduring divides in our society." - Jason Blake SMH

    It is an astounding work of literature that questions the loyalties of friends, family and the heart. At the centre of this story is a mystery: the suspected murder of a child. This sweeping tale immerses us in St. John's, Princeton and North Carolina at the close of the nineteenth century. Landish Druken is a formidable figure: broader than most doorways, quick-witted and sharp-tongued. As a student at Princeton, he is befriended by George Vanderluyden, son of one of the wealthiest men in America. Years later, when Landish and his adopted son turn to Vanderluyden for help, he invites them to his self-constructed castle and pulls them into his web of lies and deceit.

    Her inner fire burns brightly, even in the harsh conditions of turn of the century Birmingham. For behind Mercy's pale and haunting face, there is a mind of steel, as her harsh foster mother; Mrs Gaskin, soon discovers. Beatings, threats and poverty cannot halt Mercy's efforts to improve herself, or to create a new life for Susan, Mrs Gaskin's crippled daughter. Even in the worst times, it is as if someone is watching over Mercy. Willing her to succeed...Through the dark shadow of world war, Mercy continues her fight for survival. She will first earn her freedom and security. Then at long last she can give her love...

    "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book.

    The Kos family argue, adapt, fall in and out of love.I will never understand why dinner conversation with you lot always turns so damn contentious. Why can’t we have some pleasant anecdotes for example.World after world is erected and torn down around them. The one constant is the ivy-clad house in Zagreb, built by aristocrats, partitioned, owned by all, owned by a few; witness to four increasingly educated and independent generations of women.But when the family assemble for Lucia’s wedding, Alisa learns that her nouveau-riche brother-in-law has bought the once nationalized house. For the bride this is progress, for her sister it’s a shady act of greed. For their principled parents, finally, it’s one battle too many.

    Someone - or something - is leaving bite marks in the avocados, Clay and Kelly's little daughter has an itch, and Carol can't remember who played Gandhi. This work takes a look at phoney liberal values.

    Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.