Stranger Music presents a magnificent cross-section of Cohen's work--including the legendary songs Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy, Bird on a Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat, I'm Your Man, and The Future; selections from such books as Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers, and Death of a Lady's Man, and eleven previously unpublished poems. This volume demonstrates definitively that Cohen is a writer of dazzling intelligence and a force that transcends genres.

    Told in the beguiling voice of a narrator who is fish, snake, girl, and woman - all of whom must struggle against adversity for survival - the novel is set alternately in nineteenth-century China and in a futuristic Pacific Northwest.At turns whimsical and wry, "Salt Fish Girl" intertwines the story of Nu Wa, the shape-shifter, and that of Miranda, a troubled young girl living in the walled city of Serendipity circa 2044. Miranda is haunted by traces of her mother's glamourous cabaret career, the strange smell of durian fruit that lingers about her, and odd tokens reminiscient of Nu Wa. Could Miranda be infected by the Dreaming Disease that makes the past leak into the present?Framed by a playful sense of magical realism, "Salt Fish Girl" reveals a futuristic Pacific Northwest where corporations govern cities, factory workers are cybernetically engineered, middle-class labour is a video game, and those who haven't sold out to commerce and other ills must fight the evil powers intent on controlling everything. Rich with ancient Chinese mythology and cultural lore, this remarkable novel is about gender, love, honour, intrigue, and fighting against oppression.

    Having to battle his new girlfriend's evil exes was nothing he planned on, but love makes you do funny things. Follow his story in the complete Scott Pilgrim saga in this Scott Pilgrim set. This set contains all six graphic novels in one handy shrink-wrapped pack.

    MacLeod’s young protagonist enters all the bright open avenues of peer-group play and the dark blind alleys of individual and collective terror, as she discovers within herself both the capacity for and the conflict between impulses of good and evil. In thinking back on the history of her own tight-knit group of friends, she begins to see how in the excitement of belonging to a ritualized, secret collective, the self is created by the increasing dehumanization of the other—of both the bully and the victim. The Shape of a Girl goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized Reena Virk murder in 1997 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.Jewel is also based on a real-life catastrophe—the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day, 1982. Three years later, a widow, Marjorie Clifford, at home in her trailer in Fort St. John, British Columbia, begins to take the first step in understanding that the humanity of love, in all of its tentative frailty, uncertainty and promise, can free a life paralyzed and dominated by loss.

    From the ramblings of an opium-riddled adventurer to treatises on life from a mind rattled by the world; from the tragic end of a teen queen to a day in the life of a rock star; from the execution of the Self by the Other to the pull between rules and freedom, this is a landscape located halfway between imagination and reality, a world that rocks between imagination and reality, a world that rocks between sleep and wakefulness, sanity and insanity, sobriety and inebriation. A must for fans of The Matthew Good Band, this book isn't Disneyland, but it will take you on a ride you will never forget.

    Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

    Eilleen Hoffman has just told Danny, her con-artist lover and father of her youngest daughter Grace, to get out — for good. Once a teacher, Eilleen lived a middle-class life, but her taste in men coupled with a predilection for pills and booze has brought her down. Desperate to prevent her family from sinking deeper into poverty, Eilleen reluctantly goes on welfare. Eventually she turns to the only friends she has left, hustlers and hookers, to learn how a woman makes fast money, no investment necessary.With Eilleen on welfare and her older daughter Charlotte a teenaged runaway, child welfare authorities descend on the Hoffmans. As Eilleen trails through several attempts at drying out, the well-intentioned Children's Protection Society finally intervenes to apprehend Grace. With the threat of prolonged separation now a stark reality, Eilleen and Grace must rally to confront their demons with grit, determination and humour. Unblinkingly observed and brilliantly written, Going Down Swinging is about the powerful bond between mother and child. And with her skilful narrative interplay, Billie Livingston illustrates poignantly how the truth of our stories lies not so much in the black and white, as it does in the grey.

    In Vancouver's red-hot real estate market, he doesn't have a chance--until he and his best friends take the last-ditch measure of staging a drive-by shooting on the property to push down the asking price. But when Scott's pretend gangland stunt attracts the attention of real criminals, his make-believe crew soon finds itself in the middle of a deadly rivalry.With wicked humour and a brilliant cast of desperate characters, Property Values explodes the crime novel genre while exploring the absurd lengths to which a man will go to in order to hold onto his home in today's market.

    Funny and charming, poignant and nostalgic, McLean's essays illuminate a world most of us take for granted. Among Stuart's favourites in this collection are:- the shocking truth about household dust- the importance of hardware stores- the sad, true tale of Anne, the street lady- an ode to the Popsicle, "one of the world's most perfect foods"- the story of the greatest game of Monopoly ever played.

    She’s just caught her son Jimmy in the barn with another man. She’s been accosted by Red the Twit, who claims to have done the unmentionable with her husband. And now her son’s gone and joined the only group that will have him: an army division on its way to Afghanistan.Setting aside her prim and proper ways, Our Woman promptly embarks on an odyssey of her own – one that forces her to look grief in the eye and come face-to-face with the mad agony of longing.

    Dhaliwal’s infectiously funny instagram comic follows the rebuilding process, tracking a group of women who have rallied together under the flag of “Beyonce’s Thighs.” Only Grandma remembers the distant past, a civilization of segway-riding mall cops, Blockbuster movie rental shops, and “That’s What She Said” jokes. For the most part, Woman World’s residents are focused on their struggles with unrequited love and anxiety, not to mention that whole “survival of humanity” thing.

    She relates her experiences living in different cultures; the issues and causes she so passionately upheld; her personal battle against censorship. She also pays tribute to the three women from whom she drew important spiritual strength. Including a selection of her articles, speeches, and letters – many never before published – and photographs selected by Margaret Laurence from her personal family albums, Dance on the Earth is a book in which Margaret Laurence speaks about her place in the world as a woman, a writer, and a concerned human being.

    . . to promote me. He promotes me again and again. I am wild with ecstasy.   Imagine a world where erotica was written by feminists: Their daydreams include equal pay, a gender-balanced Congress, and Tom Hardy arriving at their doorstep to deliver a fresh case of LaCroix every week.   Both light-hearted and empowering, New Erotica for Feminists is a sly, satirical take on all the things that turn feminists on. From a retelling of Adam and Eve to tales of respectful Tinder dates, New Erotica for Feminists answers the question of “What do women really want?” with stories of power, equality, and an immortal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    Searching for work, sex and big-city life is Ted Owen, who quickly finds himself swept into the complicated lives of the young and the jaded, people who thrive in a strange world of hip fashion and surreal night-clubs.

    In FUNNY BOY we follow the life of the family through Arjie's eyes, as he comes to terms both with his own homosexuality and with the racism of the society in which he lives. In the north of Sri Lanka there is a war going on between the army and the Tamil Tigers, and gradually it begins to encroach on the family's comfortable life. Sporadic acts of violence flare into full scale riots and lead, ultimately, to tragedy. Written in clear, simple prose, Syam Selvadurai's first novel is masterly in its mingling of the personal and political.