Vassanji. That fateful evening in Kenya becomes “the obsessive and dark centre” of the young man’s existence and leads him, years later in Toronto, to unearth an even darker family secret.In “The Girl With The Bicycle,” a man witnesses a woman from his hometown of Dar es Salaam spit at a corpse as it lies in state at a Toronto mosque. As he struggles to fathom her strange behaviour, he finds himself prey to memories and images from the past–and to perilous yearnings that could jeopardize his comfortable, middle-aged life.Still reeling from the impact of his wife’s betrayal, a man decides to stop in on an old college friend in “Elvis, Raja.” But he soon realizes that it’s not always wise to visit the past as he finds himself trapped in a most curious household, where Elvis Presley has replaced the traditional Hindu gods. The other stories in the collection also feature exceptional lives transplanted. A young man returns to his roots in India, hoping to find his uncle and, perhaps, a bride. Instead, he becomes a reluctant guru to the residents of his ancestral village. A mukhi must choose between granting the final sacrilegious wish of a dying man and abiding by religious custom in a community that considers him a representative of God. A woman is torn between the voice of her dead husband–a cold and grim-natured atheist–and her new, kind and loving husband whose faith nevertheless places constraints on her as a woman. On Halloween night, a scientist lays bare his horrifying plan to seek vengeance on the man who thwarted his career. Set variously in Kenya, Canada, India, Pakistan, and the American Midwest, these poignant and evocative stories portray migrants negotiating the in-between worlds of east and west, past and present, secular and religious. Richly detailed and full of vivid characters, the stories are worlds unto themselves, just as a dusty African street full of bustling shops is a world, and so is the small matrix of lives enclosed by an intimate Toronto neighbourhood. It is the smells and sentiments and small gestures that constitute life, and of these Vassanji is a master.Vassanji’s seventh book and his second collection of short stories, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the 2006 Toronto Book Award. The jury said: "Vassanji's Naipaulian language is like a sharp short knife that cuts through the superficial and gets to the heart and soul of the narrative.”From the Hardcover edition.

    So begins Reva's "darkly hilarious" (Anthony Doerr) intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive.In "Bone Music," an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in "Letter of Apology" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in "Little Rabbit," a beauty-pageant crasher in "Miss USSR," a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in "Homecoming."

    Fly is a reader, too, and when he’s not in his taxi he is at home in the equally dizzying labyrinth of books that fills his tiny apartment. His best friend is Otto, a political activist who’s in and out of jails and asylums, mourning his dead wife and lost foster son. On one otherwise tawdry night Fly meets Mary, a book-loving passenger with a domineering husband. So begins a romance that is, for Fly, a brief glimmer of light amid the shadows and grit of the Carnival city.Along with Otto and Mary, Fly introduces us to madmen and revolutionaries, magicians and prostitutes as he picks them up and drops them off, traveling through a nightmarish town that is—we can’t help but notice—a parable for our own debauched, unjust world.Wildly imaginative and darkly ironic, Carnival is a magnificent achievement.

    For years, Paul has chafed at his boss’s insults and put–downs but he’s never found an opportunity to really screw his boss where it counts. Tonight is his lucky night. Paul takes his billionaire boss’s daughter in ways that would outrage Jules Norton were he ever to find out, thus relieving years of frustration. But, later, as Paul’s getting ready to leave the party, his boss has a surprise for him. How will Paul react?

    Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel’s sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories—the remnants—of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.

    These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.Shut Up You're Pretty is the first book to be published under the imprint VS. Books, a series of books curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour.

    Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won't be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking.But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

    A volcano unexpectedly erupts in Iceland and airspace is shut down over Europe. Harriet works in local radio in London, and with most of her colleagues abroad, she seizes a unique career opportunity. Her husband, Michael, stuck in New York on business, travels to visit an old flame, and their teenage son, Jack, feeling liberated from normal life, takes an unexpected risk only to find himself in trouble. Meanwhile Emily, a young TV researcher, loses her adoptive father to a heart attack, and half a world away, a Pakistani migrant worker named Yacub is stranded in a Dubai labor camp. Two years later, Yacub, attempting to stow away, falls out of the landing gear of an airplane onto Harriet’s car in a London supermarket parking lot—and survives—while Emily accidentally captures it all on film. Yacub’s sudden arrival in the lives of Harriet, Jack, Michael, and Emily catapults these characters into a series of life-changing events, ultimately revealing the tenuous, often unexpected ties that bind us together.Inspired by real-life accounts of airplane stowaways, Landing Gear is about the complex texture of modern life, and how we fight the loneliness of the nuclear family to hold on to one another.

    In a rush of confusion, a creature appeared and demanded that she and others be handed over. In the blink of an eye, she is back in her bed, but she remembers the creature, she remembers being taken, she remembers everything. The day her nephew went insane, she had her suspicions, and when she ran a test, she knew. He had gone naughty right before the holidays, and she was the only person who knew why. She had a mission. She had a goal. She had to go talk to a monster known for abducting children.

    They don't know who she is. They don't know where she is or her destination. All they have is a phone connection. Every clue draws them closer to her rescue...or pushes them to frustration. Within the next twelve hours, they must each make daring sacrifices and be tested to their limit.The clock is ticking, the odds are against them...will they be able find Mya?

     These 12 all new and original stories from Rusty Wilson, the World’s Greatest Bigfoot Storyteller, will keep you intrigued, hanging onto the edge of your seat, or wishing you could travel up north and see what all the excitement’s about for yourself. Come read about a young man who finally gets his wish to visit one of the world’s wildest places, where he quickly realizes that maybe his parents were right after all—then read about the strange case where a Sasquatch discovers a rare fossilized dinosaur skeleton—and then, if you dare, read about a woman who stops for a break on a remote Canadian backroad and ends up taking something home with her that she really doesn’t want—and there’s the Sasquatch that ends up saving peoples’ lives by stealing all their food in the dead of winter—and a Sasquatch that brings a couple together through its death—one who decides it wants to be in a painting—another who likes the taste of loons—and a man who discovers a secret Bigfoot food source—all these and more great campfire tales are guaranteed to make you happy you’re safe and sound in your house instead of listening to a Sasquatch screaming in the darkness from inside your thin nylon tent, deep in the Canadian wilds. Or, if you’re truly the adventurous type, maybe you’ll want to buy a thin nylon tent and head to British Columbia or Alberta. Fly-fishing guide Rusty Wilson spent years collecting these stories from his clients around the campfire, stories guaranteed to scare the pants off you—or make you want to meet the Big Guy! “I suspect that Canada has more wild things than we could imagine in our wildest dreams. If you take a look at a map, you’ll see just how immense and rugged many parts of this country are, especially those regions in the north and around the Canadian Rockies and Coastal Mountains. I’m sure there are things out there we could only imagine, one of them being Bigfoot—or Sasquatch, as our northern friends call him.” —Rusty Wilson

    But below the surface is tension and resentment; Patricia is tired of looking after their children single-handedly with no help from her husband, and George struggles with how his wife has changed and feels undesired.When George abruptly leaves the family for his assistant, Patricia decides it’s time to look after herself, become a real estate agent and encourage her boys to be the best they can be.Blessed with good looks and charm, and with the never-ending support of their mother, the Darlington boys start their adult lives. Can they follow their mother’s professional footsteps or become caught up in sexual escapades like their father? In this prequel, get an insight into the beginning of their unique journeys.

    And I’d dress as the helpline 1-800-C-O-R-E-Y that he set up when he was seventeen, when he was high and giving advice to young fans about how to stay off drugs.The pièce de résistance of my costume would be the contrast that the viewer makes in their mind between the image of Corey Haim in The Lost Boys with a beautiful smile and skin that looks healthier than you’ve ever seen and the TMZ report of pneumonia and the enlarged heart that killed him and the question about whether the reader would carry through the metaphor and make the link between the dolphins he said were in his blood and what they would look like now.

    In between he experiences tempests at sea, on land and in the mind; and relatives who kill for love and lovers who sacrifice their bodies; as all the while he moves ever closer to the central mystery of his and all existence. First Blast is Eric McCormack at his finest.

    Hector and Virgil think of their B&B as a refuge, a retreat, a haven, where folks may bring their own books or peruse the brothers' own substantial library. An antic blend of homespun and intellectual humor, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast is a place readers will want to return to again and again.Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast, originally published by Douglas & McIntyre, won Canada's prestigious Stephen Lecock Award for Humour in 1994, and was published in hardcover by A Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press in 1996. Its sequel, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book, is a Canadian bestseller, and will be published in hardcover by A Wyatt Book in October 1997.