It is a Canadian summer in 1939 and Robert and Annie’s love has blossomed, even as the inevitability of the boys joining up means separation and the first of many losses. Fearing he might not return, Robert makes William promise to take care of Annie. Every arena of their lives is infiltrated by the war, from the home front to the underground of queer London to the bloody battlefields of Italy. Even in the aftermath, in the shadow of The Dreamland, these friends fight their own inner battles: to have faith in their right to love and be loved, to honour their promises and ultimately find their way “home.”

    From illusions of permanence and ownership to the pain of estrangement, Liar masterfully explores feelings familiar to anyone who has ever loved — and lost. Crosbie also goes beyond this territory, examining the lover’s own complicity in her joy and suffering. Liar is a grotesque, beautiful meditation on the nature of love.

    But when Hawk discovers he has leukemia, his identity as a star athlete is stripped away, along with his muscles and energy. When he finds an osprey, “a fish hawk,” mired in a pond of toxic residue from the oil sands industry, he sees his life-or-death struggle echoed by the young bird.Slipping in and out of consciousness, Hawk has visions of the osprey and other animals that shared his childhood home: woodland caribou, wolves, and wood buffalo. They are all helpless and vulnerable, their forest and muskeg habitat vanishing. Hawk sees in these tragedies parallels with his own fragile life, and wants to forge a new identity — one that involves standing up for the voiceless creatures that share his world. But he needs to survive long enough to do it.

    Ranging from an island holiday gone wrong to a dive bar on the upswing to a yuppie mother in a pricey subdivision seeing her worst fears come true, these deftly written stories are populated by barkeeps, good men down on their luck, rebellious teens, lonely immigrants, dreamers and realists, fools and quiet heroes. In author Kerry-Lee Powell’s skillful hands, each character, no matter what their choices, is deeply human in their search for connection. Powell holds us in her grasp, exploring with a black humour themes of belonging, the simmering potential for violence and the meaning of art no matter where it is found, and revealing with each story something essential about the way we see the world.A selection of these stories have won significant awards including the Boston Review fiction contest and The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons award for short fiction. For readers of Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson and Michael Christie.

    Powerless to change their fortunes, they are separated, and each put into different foster homes. Yet over the years, the bond between them grows. As they each make their way in a society that is, at times, indifferent, hostile, and violent, one embraces her Métis identity, while the other tries to leave it behind. In the end, out of tragedy, comes an unexpected legacy of triumph and reclamation.In this Critical Edition, editor Cheryl Suzack has chosen ten critical essays to accompany one of the best-known texts by Canadian Aboriginal author Beatrice Culloden/Mosionier.

    The banal finality of this event triggers an introspective voyage through the events of her life and how she became who she is: wife of business executive Rick, citizen of the suburb of Rowanwood, mother to two accomplished daughters in university. Before Betty Friedan coined the term feminine mystique, The Torontonians told a classic feminist story of suburban ennui and existential self-discovery, tracing a detailed portrait of femininity in the 1950s through the eyes of its perceptive and thoughtful heroine. The book is also a unique contemporary meditation on community and social ties from a time when Canada's major cities were just beginning to spread out into suburban sprawl.

    Here, one of the most famous ethnographers of the late 19th century has written them down and published his collection. The cover displays the N.C. Wyeth painting Spring.

    Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with the cast of variously pathological regulars. But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to serve himself more often than his customers, and the moments he lives outside the bar become more and more painful: he loses his wife, his way, himself. Trapped by his habits and his loneliness, he realizes he will not survive if he doesn't break free. And so he hatches a terrible, but necessary plan of escape and his only chance for redemption. Step into Ablutions and step behind the bar, below rock bottom, and beyond the everyday take on storytelling for a brilliant, new twist on the classic tale of addiction and its consequences.

    But he doesn’t count on snapping shots of a dead body languishing in a newly completed luxury condo resort built by the local Indian band. It’s a mystery that Thumps can’t help getting involved in, especially when he realizes the number one suspect is Stick Merchant, anti-condo protester and wayward son of Claire Merchant, head of the tribal council and DreadfulWater’s sometimes lover. Smart and savvy, blessed with a killer dry wit and a penchant for self-deprecating humour, DreadfulWater just can’t manage to shed his California cop skin. Before long, he is deeply entangled in the mystery and has his work cut out for him.A novel that will appeal to mystery fans as well as Thomas King’s loyal audience, DreadfulWater is a catchy, clever read.

    . . . The Eskimo survives freezing weather, an attack by a polar bear, and the long journey that brings him safely home. . . . The author’s distinctive drawings help make this a memorable book.”--The New York Times Book Review

    . . . It renders a complex and complete human world, which by the end we have learned to love."— The Boston Book ReviewChinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides the backdrop for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant Chinese family. The siblings grapple with their individual identities in a changing world, wresting autonomy from the strictures of history, family, and poverty. Sister Jook-Liang dreams of becoming Shirley Temple and escaping the rigid, old ways of China. Adopted Second Brother Jung-Sum, struggling with his sexuality and the trauma of his childhood in China, finds his way through boxing. Third Brother Sekky, who never feels comfortable with the multitude of Chinese dialects swirling around him, becomes obsessed with war games, and learns a devastating lesson about what war really means when his 17-year-old babysitter dates a Japanese man.Mingling with life in Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghosts, and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, who is the heart and pillar of the family. Side by side, her three grandchildren survive hardships and heartbreaks with grit and humor. Like the jade peony of the title, Choy's storytelling is at once delicate, powerful, and lovely.The Jade Peony was selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the "100 Most Important Books in Canadian History" in 2005. It was also an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year in 1998, and was winner of the 1995 Trillium Award (shared with Margaret Atwood).

    Carol Daniels adds an important perspective to the Canadian literary landscape.Taken from the arms of her mother as soon as she was born, Sandy was only one of over twenty thousand Aboriginal children scooped up by the federal government between the 1960s and 1980s. Sandy was adopted by a Ukrainian family and grew up as the only First Nations child in a town of white people. Ostracized by everyone around her and tired of being different, at the early age of five she tried to scrub the brown off her skin. But she was never sent back into the foster system, and for that she considers herself lucky.From this tragic period in her personal life and in Canadian history, Sandy does not emerge unscathed, but she emerges strong--finding her way by embracing the First Nations culture that the Sixties Scoop had tried to deny. Those very roots allow Sandy to overcome the discriminations that she suffers every day from her co-workers, from strangers and sometimes even from herself.

    Seventeen-year-old Sylvia (Harper) Kostak is caught between her mother’s regrets and the strictures of small-town life in the interior of British Columbia. When Harper meets Gabe, an intense and enigmatic young man living on the ’60s-style arts commune outside of town, she is transfixed. Gradually we learn Gabe’s story and what led him to join his estranged mother on the commune, where, in a bid for freedom, Harper eventually finds herself, setting in motion a series of events leading to tragedy. Resonant with longing and a sense of isolation, the novel brings alive the agonies and ecstasies of growing up, sexual discovery, and how the need to belong can shape both decisions and destinies.Author Biography: Laisha Rosnau was born in Pointe Claire, Quebec, and grew up in Vernon, British Columbia. She has worked as a child-care worker, a landscaper, a waitress, a fruit picker, an interpretive guide, a journalist, and an editor. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she was the Executive Editor of PRISM international. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, and Australia. The Sudden Weight of Snow is her first novel. Laisha Rosnau lives in Vancouver, where she is at work on a collection of poetry and on her second novel.

     For Liza Peterson and her family, the gold rush is a chance for them to make a fortune by moving their general store business from Vancouver to Dawson City, the only established town in the Yukon. For Constable Ben Turner, a recent recruit of the North-West Mounted Police, upholding the law in a place overrun with guns, liquor, prostitutes, and thieves is an opportunity to escape a dark past and become the man of integrity he has always wanted to be. But the long, difficult journey over icy mountain passes and whitewater rapids is much more treacherous than Liza or Ben imagined, and neither is completely prepared for the forbidding north. As Liza’s family nears the mountain’s peak, a catastrophe strikes with fatal consequences, and not even the NWMP can help. Alone and desperate, Liza finally reaches Dawson City, only to find herself in a different kind of peril. Meanwhile, Ben, wracked with guilt over the accident on the trail, sees the chance to make things right. But just as love begins to grow, new dangers arise, threatening to separate the couple forever. Inspired by history as rich as the Klondike’s gold, At the Mountain’s Edge is an epic tale of romance and adventure about two people who must let go of the past not only to be together, but also to survive.

    Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through magic realism, serial killings, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact.This is one of the 200 exceptional projects funded through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter initiative. With this $35M initiative, the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada.