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A funny, poignant, and at times heartbreaking memoir about one mother and her love of beautiful objets — and how it ultimately proved destructive. Being left with a strand of even the highest quality milky-white pearls isn’t quite the same thing as pearls of wisdom to live by, as Karen von Hahn reveals in her memoir about her stylish and captivating mother, Susan — a mercurial, grandiose, Guerlain-and-vodka-soaked narcissist whose search for glamour and fulfillment through the acquisition and collection of beautiful things ultimately proved hollow. A tale of growing up in 1970s and 1980s Toronto in the fabulousness of a bourgeois Jew-ish family that valued panache over pragmatism and m...
From the celebrated author of February and Caught comes an exhilarating new novel that asks: What makes a family? How does it shape us? And can we ever really choose who we love? As the snowstorm of the century rages, twenty-one-year-old Xavier is beaten and stabbed in a vicious attack. His mother, Jules, must fight her way through the shuttered streets of St. John’s to reach the hospital where Xavier lies unconscious. When a video of the attack surfaces, Jules struggles to make sense of what she sees in the footage — and of what she can’t quite make out. While Xavier’s story unfolds, so, too, do the stories that brought him there. Here, across families and generations, are stories of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers; of children cared for, neglected, lost, and re-found; of selfless generosity and reluctant debt. Above all, Moore, in the inimitable largesse of her art, paints a shimmering portrait of the sacrifice, pain, and wild joy of loving. A tour de force of storytelling and craft, This Is How We Love brings us a cast of characters so rich and true they could only have been written by Lisa Moore.
"Allow me to introduce myself." But he needed no introduction. "Anansi the spider!" said Anansi the boy. "The tales were true!" "Traditional tales are always true," the spider answered, laughing. "Nothing lasts so long as truth, nor travels quite so far." Award-winning author of Ghana Must Go, Taiye Selasi, reimagines the story of Anansi, the much-loved trickster, for a new generation. Kweku has grown up hearing stories about the mischievous spider Anansi. He is given the nickname Anansi by his father because of his similarly cheeky ways. On a holiday to visit his beloved Grandma in Ghana, Anansi the spider and Anansi the boy meet, and discover a magical pot that can be filled with whatever they want. Anansi fills it again and again with his favourite red-red stew, and eats so much that he feels sick. Will he learn to share this wonderful gift? This charming retelling of a West African story teaches readers about the dangers of greed, and the importance of being kind. Tinuke Fagborun's colourful illustrations bring the magic and wonder of the tale to life.
Anansi the Spider uses a strange moss-covered rock in the forest to trick all the other animals, until Little Bush Deer decides he needs to learn a lesson.
The sixth and, on the surface, most innovative poetry collection from Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Michael Crummey. Eclectic, unpredictable, and strange, Passengers follows Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer on an imagined circumnavigation of Newfoundland; traces the island escapades of Lucifer from the time of his arrival as a stowaway in the Middle Ages; and wanders the pre-pandemic cities of Europe, touching down in Stockholm’s ABBA museum, the Belfast Public Library, Austria’s plague cemeteries, and the Czech Republic’s Punkva Caves. Widely considered “one of Canada's finest writers” (Globe and Mail), Crummey is noted for the immediacy and emotional impact of his poetry and fiction and for his ability to raise the vernacular to planes of “exquisite beauty.” Part travelogue, part archeological dig, Passengers is an eccentric guide to the wild geography, folklore, and misbegotten history of the human heart.
"Terheyden's narration makes the characters come alive. A truly delightful addition to any collection." - School Library Journal
Named after a local word meaning “soaked through” or “weighed down,” Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Megan Gail Coles’s debut poetry collection, Satched, is a vivid portrait of intergenerational trauma, ecological grief, and late-stage capitalism from the perspective of a woman of rural-remote, Northern, working class, mixed ancestry. Honest, penetrating, and often darkly comic, these poems explore the extraordinary will it requires to stay alive in the face of economic precariousness, growing inequality, and prevailing dissatisfaction. With a fierce dedication to place, the collection explores the conflict inherent to individualistic priorities and collective needs present in a hyper-commodified Newfoundland and Labrador. Satched demands compassionate advocacy for all as it resolutely strives for clarity and acceptance while celebrating the momentary glimpses of joy in the path toward shared values and resilience.
Alternates between a fictionalized portrait of French explorer Samuel de Champlain and his 1607 effort to establish a colony in Canada and the modern story of Andy Winslow, whose urban landscape is threatened by encroaching environmental and economic disaster. Original.
The new collection from RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award winner Mikko Harvey. Mikko Harvey’s new collection invites readers into a world that is and is not the world we know. In poems at once surreal, satiric, and tender, we encounter a cast of surprising non-human characters — the bear who sells herbal remedies, the politically influential lizard, the mean butterfly — yet at the core of this book is Harvey’s impulse to confront the challenges of human intimacy. Let the World Have You is a vibrant report on the ways in which we are delightfully, awkwardly, heartbreakingly entangled: with each other, with the environment we inhabit, and with the psychological environments that inhabit us.
Celebrate your year from New Year’s Day to Christmas Eve with this treasury of 52 best-loved stories from around the world! Turn the pages and get lost in a year full of stories as you journey around the world reading tale after tale to keep story time alive from one end of the year to the other. This rich resource collects together folk tales from home and legends and myths from distant lands to commemorate the changing seasons, cultural events and international festivals throughout the year. The book is divided into 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, and throughout, stories are matched to internationally celebrated dates, including St. Patrick’s Day and the International Day ...