Book picks similar to
The Refrigerator Memory by Shannon Bramer
poetry
canadian
canadian-authors
memory
Jean Beliveau, 2d Edition: My Life in Hockey
Jean Béliveau - 1994
Retiring from active play in 1971, he went on to a successful twenty-two-year career as the Canadien's senior vice-president of corporate affairs and to life-long service as a goodwill ambassador for the sport. For half a century, he has been universally acknowledged as a prince of our national game and unofficial royalty to four generations of Canadians.
The People Who Didn't Say Goodbye
Merrit Malloy - 1985
From the author of My Song For Him Who Never Sang to Me and We Hardly See Each Other Any More, another intimate, illustrated collection of verse to share with those we love.
Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-95
Michael Barclay - 2001
Bands like The Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, and Sloan created a fever pitch for Canadian music, but there were also numerous others in the underground who created equally exciting work. This vital, lively, and entertaining examination of a groundbreaking decade contains vivid original photographs and interviews with all the major players.
Lear's Shadow
Claire Holden Rothman - 2018
When the opportunity to work for an outdoor production of King Lear arises, she grabs it despite her utter lack of theatre experience.Things get off to a rocky start when Bea learns the artistic director, Arthur White, is a childhood friend whose presence stirs up painful memories. Then she inadvertently sparks the lascivious attentions of the aging star of the play and alienates the stage director, who happens to be his former wife. As Bea learns the ropes of her new role, her beloved but demanding father begins behaving erratically and losing himself in forgetfulness and her younger sister Cara reveals cracks in the foundation of her apparently perfect life as a devoted mother and co-owner, with her charismatic husband, of a successful raw foods restaurant.The sisters do their best to care for their father, but his deteriorating condition soon exceeds what either can handle. To make matters worse, the star of Lear is also faltering amidst the confusions of age, illness, and regret over transgressions from his past. In a masterful scene of raucous celebration whirling out of control, the various forces in Bea's life collide in a shocking act that could destroy more than one life--or reveal how those lives might come together in new and stronger ways.Tender, vivid, and powerful, Lear's Shadow is a richly satisfying exploration of how the ties of love can both bind and liberate us, and of how, even in the face of grief, we can embrace life.
Half Life
Krista Foss - 2021
Her formidable mother's health is declining, her fearless teenage daughter wants to leave but won't say where, and the new high school principal has problems with her unorthodox teaching of physics.And then there is the upcoming ceremony at the Art Museum. In ten days, a gallery will be named after her late father, Tig Henriksen, a modernist furniture designer whose sought-after cult pieces hide a troubled narrative. With a mixture of anticipation and dread, Elin prepares to reunite with her once-estranged siblings--Mette, a free-spirited singer-songwriter, and the serious, emotionally distant architect Casper--hoping they'll finally grapple with hard truths they've so far refused to accept.In the countdown to the event, as her daughter's risk-taking mounts, her mother's fragility intensifies and strange packages land on her doorstep (including a yellow-eyed dog), Elin's only relief is confiding to a dead physicist.Struggling with the paradoxes of truth and clarity, love and witness, genius and ambition, and her own ambivalent connection to her confessor, she inches toward confronting not just the explosive potential of memory but the costly fallout of silence.Told with dazzling insight, intelligence, and compassion, Half Life is a beautifully rendered story about family truths and the profound human need to be believed.
War of the Eagles
Eric Walters - 1998
When the military sets up a naval base in town, Jed is hired to help out, honored it seems, for both his father's bravery and his own native skills as a hunter. Presented with a military jacket, Jed finds an allegiance to his country and a pride in his mixed heritage that he's never felt before.
Debris
Kevin Hardcastle - 2015
Written in a lean and muscular style and brimming with both violence and compassion, these stories unflinchingly explore the lives of those — MMA fighters, the institutionalized, small-town criminals — who exist on the fringes of society, unveiling the blood and guts and beauty of life in our flyover regions.
Moving for Moksha
Alok Mishra - 2020
In this collection, you will find images and poems that relate to life, love, loss, gain, realisation and the final thing called Moksha. The poems may sound philosophical, intellectual and emotional from time to time. You will also find a surprise at the end of this wonderful poetry collection if you read everything carefully. And, like the previous poetry collection by Alok Mishra, this book will also not take more than 15 minutes from your daily routine. However, you may want to read the book at least twice or maybe thrice to understand what do the poems mean. Alok has devised a style of his own to communicate his thoughts to the readers of Indian English poetry. A 4-3-6 style has perfectly settled with this collection having 14 wonderful poems. Here are some reviews for Moving for Moksha:The collection of poems takes us on a journey to ponder the truth and fallacies of life that come our way. The poems are mostly mystic in nature, having more than what it seems to be... you will certainly love it if you have a taste for English poetry.by: Amit Mishra (founder of The Indian Authors & Indian Book Lovers)...beauty, truth, eternity.... a very close observation of life, these poems sneak into nothing but the philosophy of life that people confront during life-span.by: Ravi Kumar, Research Scholar with expertise in Indian English Literature, a writer for many online literary platformsThe poems reflect disillusion, rejection, realisation and answer to the final call – Moksha, as called in Indian philosophy. The innovative form with a 4-3-6 pattern looks very apt for the emotional and intellectual and also cryptic nature of the poems in this collection.The Last Critic
Operation Wormwood
Helen C. Escott - 2018
John’s, setting off a chain of events that leaves doctors mystified. He is the first of many victims suffering from severe nosebleeds and excruciating pain. Dr. Luke Gillespie and Nurse Agatha Catania investigate their symptoms but are unable to diagnose them. The only thing they have in common is Sgt. Nicholas Myra, an investigator with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.Dr. Gillespie and Sgt. Myra join forces to solve this twisted mystery. But the story takes a critical turn when Sister Pius, a nun from Mercy Convent, informs them about Wormwood: a disease she believes is created by God to kill perpetrators of the most heinous crimes. Wormwood becomes an international media storm when parish priest Father Peter Cooke holds a news conference on the steps of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist and announces that God has unleashed a plague upon the earth.Is God truly punishing these criminals, or is a serial killer targeting them? Dr. Gillespie and Sgt. Myra race to find answers, while the Roman Catholic hierarchy starts bringing people back to the Church in droves . . . by cashing in on what it claims to be a miracle.
Irving vs Irving
Jacques Poitras - 2014
They have a monopoly on New Brunswick’s English-language print media and billions of dollars in offshore accounts.They are the Irvings. And they have always placed a premium on discretion and family unity. They built their empire—which includes Canada’s largest refinery, soon to be linked by pipeline to Alberta’s oil fields—by remaining private. Irving vs Irving tells the story of how these ambitious, often ruthless entrepreneurs came to dominate the economic and political affairs of Atlantic Canada, and how they learned to love the property that perplexed them most: their media monopoly.The Irvings’ control of all of New Brunswick’s daily newspapers often allowed the family’s business pursuits to escape journalistic scrutiny. Readers frequently wondered what wasn’t in the newspaper, such as the Irving’s lobbying for their logging interests and the sinking of their tanker loaded with PCBs.In Irving vs Irving, veteran reporter Jacques Poitras uses the empire’s media holdings to examine previously untold episodes of this family epic from patriarch K.C. Irving’s manipulation of his mother’s affections to a Shakespearean confrontation between generations.
The Murder of Napoleon
Ben Weider - 1961
Napoleon himself, expiring at 51 after a lifetime of robust health, suspected otherwise and ordered a thorough autopsy. His suspicions were well founded. So clever was the crime, however, that until recent developments in forensic science, it was impossible to prove a case of murder, let alone name the killer. Now, the authors of The Murder of Napoleon assert, it has been done-by a brilliant man whose 20-year inquest, a feat of detection, has produced one of history's greatest surprises. "Sensational...as gripping as a detective novel yet scrupulously observant of historical fact" (Publishers Weekly) Author Biography: David Hapgood was an editor and writer for The New York Times. He is author or co-author of The Murder of Napoleon, The Screwing of the Average Man, Monte Cassino, and Africa from Independence to Tomorrow. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and lives in New York City.
Brighten the Corner Where You Are
Carol Bruneau - 2021
One glimpse of the tiny painted house that folk art legend Maud Lewis shared with her husband, Everett, in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, during the mid-twentieth century and the startling contrast between her joyful artwork and her life's deprivations is evident. One glimpse at her photo and you realize, for all her smile's shyness, she must've been one tough cookie. But, beneath her iconic resilience, who was Maud, really? How did she manage, holed up in that one-room house with no running water, married to a miserly man known for his drinking? Was she happy, or was she miserable? Did painting save or make her Everett's meal ticket? And then there are the darker secrets that haunt her story: the loss of her parents, her child, her first love. Against all odds, Maud Lewis rose above these constraints—and this is where you'll find the Maud of Brighten the Corner Where You Are: speaking her mind from beyond the grave, freed of the stigmas of gender, poverty, and disability that marked her life and shaped her art. Unfettered and feisty as can be, she tells her story her way, illuminating the darkest corners of her life. In possession of a voice all her own, Maud demonstrates the agency that hovers within us all.
Liberty Street
Dianne Warren - 2015
The reverberations drive her back to the past and her mother’s old rental property, the lone house in a failed subdivision called Liberty Street.There, memories are ghosts: Frances’s mother on her way to Nashville to become a country singer; her father determined to run his farm despite his failing eyesight; the town’s bad apple, Dooley Sullivan; a string of renters including the December bride, Esme Bigalow, and a man who met a tragic end, Silas Chance.When a domestic mishap and a torrential hailstorm send Frances to the questionable safety of an eccentric neighbour’s kitchen, she learns just how unreliable memory is, and that she was not the only one whose life after Elliot, Saskatchewan was determined by half-truths and bad decisions.With depth, insight and the subtle humour for which she is known, Dianne Warren gives us an engrossing and touching new novel about disappointment, anger and the redemptive power of kindness.
The Sudden Weight of Snow
Laisha Rosnau - 2002
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.
The Whisky King: The remarkable true story of Canada's most infamous bootlegger and the undercover Mountie on his trail
Trevor Cole - 2017
One, Rocco Perri, from southern Italy, rose from the life of a petty criminal on the streets of Toronto to running the most prominent bootlegging operation of the Prohibition era, taking over Hamilton and leading one of the country’s most influential crime syndicates. Perri was feared by his enemies and loved by the press, who featured him regularly in splashy front-page headlines. So great was his celebrity that, following the murder of his wife and business partner, Bessie Starkman, a crowd of 30,000 thronged the streets of Hamilton for her funeral.Perri’s businesses—which included alcohol, drugs, gambling and prostitution—kept him under constant police surveillance. He caught the interest of one man in particular, the other arrival from Italy, Frank Zaneth. Zaneth, originally from the Italian north, joined the RCMP and became its first undercover investigator—Operative No. 1. Zaneth’s work took him across the country, but he was dogged in his pursuit of Rocco Perri and worked for his arrest until the day Perri was last seen, in 1944, when he disappeared without a trace.With original research and masterful storytelling, Cole details the fascinating rise to power of a notorious Prohibition-era Canadian crime figure twinned with the life of the man who pursued him.