In an odd pilgrimage through the mountains, the townsfolk of Coalton—from the ski bum to the urbanite—embark on a bizarre adventure that walks the line between comedy and tragedy. As the rednecks mount their sleds and the hippies snowshoe through the cedar forest, we see rivals converge for the weekend. While readers follow the characters on their voyage up and over the mountain, stereotypes of ski-town culture fall away. Loco, the ski bum, is about to start his first real job; Alison, the urbanite, is forced to learn how to wield an avalanche shovel; and Michael, the real estate developer, is high on mushroom tea.In a blend of mordant humour and heartbreak, Angie Abdou chronicles a day in the life of these industrious few as they attempt to conquer the mountain. In an avalanche of action, Angie Abdou explores the way in which people treat their fellow citizens and the landscape they love.

    It is "one of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare." (Sunday Times)

    As her high school friends and boyfriend Murph head off to college, Anna still struggles to overcome the wounds of her past while navigating the challenges of the future. Anna wants to confide in Bridgett and Frances, the youngest and oldest of her siblings, but her family’s reticent past, despite their efforts to change, stops her. Meanwhile, as Anna’s friends of the fifth floor are released, they go on with their interrupted lives, and each is tested differently on the lessons they learned together. Nine years later, everyone receives a mailed letter from Jonny Love, a friend who Anna hasn’t seen or heard from since her days on the fifth floor. In the third book of The Fifth Floor trilogy, author Julie Oleszek reunites the patients of the locked psychiatric ward at Advocate Hospital.

    They will steal your life...if you let them. But there is good news! You can take control. In Mind Monsters Kevin Gerald shows you how to recognize destructive thoughts, take them captive, and use biblical truths to overcome them.   Today you have a choice: Will you allow your mind monsters to take up residence, affecting who you are and God’s plan for your life, or will you conquer them and experience a life that is positive, abundant, joyful, and overflowing with peace?

    Only one has told her story.three years after giving up alcohol, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was lemonade. 'It's a special occasion,' she said to her boyfriend. And indeed it was. It was a party celebrating the birth of their first child. It also marked Jowita's immediate, full-blown return to alcoholism and all that entails for a new mother who is at first determined to keep her problem a secret. Her trips to bottle shops stores are in-and-out missions. Perhaps she's being paranoid, but she thinks people tend to notice the stroller. Walking home, she stays behind buildings, in alleyways, taking discreet sips from a bottle she's stored in the nappy bag. She know she's become a villain: a mother who drinks; a mother who endangers her child. She drinks to forget this. And then the trouble really starts. Jowita Bydlowska's memoir of her relapse into addiction is an extraordinary achievement. the writing is raw and immediate. It places you in the moment - saddened and appalled but never able to look away. With brutal honesty, DRUNK MUM takes us through the binges and blackouts, the self-deception and less successful attempts to deceive others, the humiliations and extraordinary risk-taking. She shines a light on the endless hunger of wanting just one more drink, and one more again, while dealing with motherhood, anxiety, depression - and rehab. Advance Praise for Drunk Mom: 'Jowita is matter of fact, funny, fearless, and irreverent as she lifts the veil to chronicle what it means to be a young mother when both baby and mother have their own bottles - the shame and the inner voices, as well as the joy and relief. this book is for anyone who has ever struggled to make it through a day.' - Laura Albert, a.k.a. Jt LeRoy, author of Sarah, the Heart Is Deceitful Above All things and Harold's End 'Drunk Mom is a stunning, harrowing read. Why harrowing? Not just because of the dramatic story, of a new mother at the edge of her tether. And not only because of Jowita Bydlowska's skill as a writer, and the crisp, original way she tells it. What's most harrowing about Drunk Mom is that you can't stop reading it-this, the dark, now-told tale that lurks in the shadow of every seemingly normal family.' - Ian Brown, author of the Boy in the Moon 'A brave, brilliant and scathing self-portrait. Full of energy and insight. If Frida Kahlo had been a writer, she might have been compared to Jowita Bydlowska.' - Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety - Yours and Mine. 'Fearless and troubling, and so very humane, Bydlowska explodes the cutesy momoir genre. You'll read it in one sitting.' - Katrina Onstad, author of Everybody Has Everything.

    Murdered mother. Emotionally neglected children. An elaborate cover-up. Family dinners will never be the same."I think that my father murdered my mother."That terrible belief spurs author Jeff Blackstock to investigate the circumstances of his mother Carol's death in 1959. Carol Blackstock died at age 24--poisoned by arsenic--but the cause of her death remained shrouded in mystery for decades. George Blackstock was a career diplomat in Canada's foreign service, posted to glamorous Buenos Aires in the late 1950s with his wife Carol and their three children. A little more than a year after the family's arrival, the vivacious young mother, now emaciated and in terrible pain, was transferred to Montreal for treatment of a mysterious illness that proved fatal. Within a year, George Blackstock had remarried, and a young woman named Ingrid became the feared stepmother to Jeff and his two siblings.Carol's parents immediately had suspicions about their son-in-law George but were unable to get justice for their murdered daughter. Class privilege--George was the scion of a Toronto establishment family and Carol was from modest beginnings--and an aversion to scandal all figured in an apparent cover-up. But secrets have a way of eventually disrupting all families. A damning autopsy report about arsenic poisoning, found among their grandmother's effects, leads Jeff Blackstock and his sister to horrifying revelations about their father. Eventually, they confront him and accuse him of their mother's murder. But George offers only vague explanations that don't add up. George died a broken man, mostly abandoned by his adult children.A compelling story of a high-society murder, a heartbreaking tale of emotionally neglected children, and an inquiry into the power and privilege of the Anglo upper classes of the time, Murder in the Family chronicles the shocking legacy of deeply buried secrets and betrayal in one's own family.

    Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet (one of the only television shows available on CBC North) that come to her in her dreams. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Bernice heads for Molly’s Reach to find answers but they are not the ones she expected.With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Bernice finds the strength to face the past and draw the lessons from her dreams that she was never fully taught in life. Part road trip, dream quest and travelogue, the novel touches on the universality of women's experience, regardless of culture or race.Cover art by Cree author and artist, George Littlechild

    Nani always took Raina's side when she tried to push past the traditional expectations of their tight-knit Indian-immigrant community, but now she's ambushing Raina with a list of suitable bachelors. Is it too much to ask for a little space? Besides, what Nani doesn't know won't hurt her...As Raina's life spirals into a parade of Nani-approved bachelors and disastrous blind dates, she must find a way out of this modern-day arranged-marriage trap without shattering her beloved grandmother's dreams.

    Told through delicate and masterful narration, Jane Urquhart's new novel, Sanctuary Line, seamlessly weaves together fragments of present day farm life on the shores of Lake Erie with harrowing snapshots of deep family turmoil marred by stains of death and regret.

    Joe and his siblings escape the poverty and violence of the Pontiac, but as Joe travels the continent, building an empire and a bright young family with his wife, Iseult, he is never quite able to leave his past behind.Told from the perspectives of Joe, Iseult, and their children and spanning the construction of the Canadian railroad as well as both world wars, this novel mirrors the scope and sweep of what Wilfrid Laurier calls "Canada's Century." Tragic, romantic, and as vivid as the novel that preceded it, The O'Brien's is an epic of great heart, imagination, and narrative force.

    A solitary child, she spends her spare time learning the art of taxidermy, completely fascinated by the act of bringing new and eternal life to the bodies of the dead. At fourteen, her parents marry her off to Erastus Hammer, a polygamous horse breeder and renowned hunter, who does not want to bed her. The role he has in mind for his fourth and youngest wife is creator of trophies of his most impressive kills, an urgent desire in him as he is slowly going blind. Happy to be given this work, Dorrie secludes herself in her workshop, away from Mother Hammer’s watchful eyes and the rivalry between the elder wives.But as the novel opens, Hammer has brought Dorrie his latest kills, a family of wolves, and for the first time in her short life she struggles with her craft, dreaming each night of crows and strange scenes of violence. The new hand, Bendy Drown, is the only one to see her dilemma and to offer her help, a dangerous game in a Mormon household. Outside, a lone wolf prowls the grounds looking for his lost pack, and his nighttime searching will unearth the tensions and secrets of this complicated and conflicted family.Inspired by the real events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, Alissa York blends fact with fiction in a haunting story of a family separated by secrets and united by faith.

    It comes down broad and ale-coloured and joins the Saint Lawrence, the two streams embrace the pan of Montreal Island, the Ottawa merges and loses itself, and the main-stream moves northeastward a thousand miles to sea.”With these words Hugh MacLennan begins his powerful saga of Athanase Tallard, the son of an aristo-cratic French-Canadian tradition, of Kathleen, his beautiful Irish wife, and of their son Paul, who struggles to establish a balance in himself and in the country he calls home.First published in 1945, and set mostly in the time of the First World War, Two Solitudes is a classic novel of individuals working out the latest stage in their embroiled history.

    The band's story unfolds through the eyes of Jim, a small-town violin prodigy who struggles with her past as well as her present; and Rize, an emotionally charged trombone player who is stuck playing sidekick to his best friend, charismatic lead singer Jules. As the band's popularity mounts, the pressures of road-life and success begin to complicate relationships and The Angel Riots' chaotic world threatens to implode. Dark and dazzling, this novel will firmly establish Kaslik's reputation as a young literary talent.

    This new volume collects the author’s plays written in the past five years, including References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot ("effortlessly melds otherworldly fantasy with gritty realism to make sparks fly onstage."—The Journal News), Sueño (a reworking for Pedro Calderón’s Life is a Dream) and Sonnets for an Old Century, the author’s most recent work, which recently premiered in Los Angeles.Puerto Rican-born playwright José Rivera plays have been produced all over the world and his work has been translated into seven languages. His best known work includes Marisol and Each Day Dies with Sleep. "Rivera has a messianic mission to replace old and dying creeds with vibrant new visions."—Robert Brustein, New RepublicAlso available by José RiveraMarisol and Other Plays PB $15.95 1-55936-136-0 • USA

    He's sixteen years old and has had the most fleeting of relationships with the man. The rare moments they've shared haunt and trouble Frank, but he answers the call, a son's duty to a father. He finds Eldon decimated after years of drinking, dying of liver failure in a small town flophouse. Eldon asks his son to take him into the mountains, so he may be buried in the traditional Ojibway manner.     What ensues is a journey through the rugged and beautiful backcountry, and a journey into the past, as the two men push forward to Eldon's end. From a poverty-stricken childhood, to the Korean War, and later the derelict houses of mill towns, Eldon relates both the desolate moments of his life and a time of redemption and love and in doing so offers Frank a history he has never known, the father he has never had, and a connection to himself he never expected.    A novel about love, friendship, courage, and the idea that the land has within it powers of healing, Medicine Walk reveals the ultimate goodness of its characters and offers a deeply moving and redemptive conclusion. Wagamese's writing soars and his insight and compassion are matched by his gift of communicating these to the reader.