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“An intense, complex and disturbing story, bravely and beautifully told. I read Drunk Mom with my jaw on the floor, which doesn’t happen to me that often.” —Lena Dunham Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. It was a special occasion: a party celebrating the birth of her first child. It also marked Bydlowska’s immediate, full-blown return to crippling alcoholism. In the gritty and sometimes grimly comic tradition of the bestselling memoirs Lit by Mary Karr and Smashed by Koren Zailckas, Drunk Mom is Bydlowska’s account of the ways substance abuse took control of her life—the binges and blackouts, the humiliations, the extraordinary risk-taking—as well as her fight toward recovery as a young mother. This courageous memoir brilliantly shines a light on the twisted logic of an addicted mind and the powerful, transformative love of one’s child. Ultimately it gives hope, especially to those struggling in the same way.
"Guy is a successful talent agent who dates models, pop stars and women he meets on the beach. He's a narcissistic, judgmental snob who rates women's looks from one to ten; a racist, homophobic megalomaniac who makes fun of people's weight; a cheating, lying, manipulative jerk who sees his older girlfriend as nothing more than an adornment. His only real friend, besides his dog, is a loser who belongs to a pick-up artist group. Guy is completely oblivious to his own lack of empathy, and his greatest talent is hiding it all ... until he meets someone who challenges him in a way he's never been challenged before. Darkly funny and utterly offensive, Guy is a brilliant and insightful character study that exposes the twisted thoughts of the misogynist bro next door."--Publisher website.
“Equal parts Harlequin romance, Gothic horror story and Camusian moral tale.” — GLOBE AND MAIL Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award From the bestselling author of Drunk Mom, comes a story of romantic obsession, mental illness, and self-discovery as one woman travels to a haunted quarantine island. Josephine is obsessed. Or possessed — by unrequited love for a younger man who doesn’t promise anything, but who gives her a taste of intimacy that puts her on the brink of losing her mind. Oscillating between her elusive lover and her older former partner, stuck in the hell that is working in a cubicle, and obliged to tend to her destructive, senile mother, Josephine is trapped. After a work assignment promises to deliver distraction, Josephine makes a decision to visit a former quarantine island in the Adriatic Sea, where she meets an enigmatic, beautiful man with a haunting story. Intimate and erotic, Possessed is a dark and funny story exploring sexual obsession, mental illness, and the supernatural. A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Harold's end is a street hustler power ballad from San Francisco novelist JT Leroy. A young boy finds solace in a gift from an older, seemingly compassionate man. As with other Leroy stories, it goes from dark to incomprehensibly black. Internationally renowned Australiam artist Cherry Hood has created eight unique watercolour paintings based on the character descriptions in the story.
From the author of Canada Reads finalist The Bone Cage. Includes research on the shy child, parent-child bonding, social media issues, and the benefits of outdoor activity and nature immersion. Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter’s growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn’t. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter.
Lisa Smith was a bright, young lawyer at a prestigious firm in NYC in the early nineties when alcoholism started to take over her life. What was once a way of escaping her insecurity and negativity became a means of coping with the anxiety and stress of an impossible workload. Girl Walks Out of a Bar is Smith's darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story of her formative years, the decade of alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and her road to recovery. Smith describes how her spiraling circumstances conspired with her predisposition to depression and self-medication, nurturing an environment ripe for addiction to flourish. Girl Walks Out of a Bar is a candid portrait of alcoholism through the lens of gritty New York realism. Beneath the façade of success lies the reality of addiction.
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. 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.
A dark and comic novel, Congratulations On Everything tracks the struggles, frailties and cruelly pyrrhic victories of the middle-aged owner of a bar-restaurant and a 30ish lunch shift waitress. Jeremy has bought into the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he's risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack. Everyone assumes Ice Shack daytime waitress Charlene is innocent and empathetic, but in reality she's desperately unhappy and looking for a way out of her marriage to her high-school sweetheart. A drunken encounter between Charlene and her boss Jeremy sends them both careening. The Ice Shack stops being an oasis of sanity and, as Jeremy struggles to keep his business afloat, he'll stop at nothing to maintain his successful, good guy self-image. In an era when foodies rule and chefs become superstars, Congratulations On Everything is a hilarious and occasionally uncomfortable dose of anti-foodie reality that reveals what goes on when the customers and Instagrammers aren't around — and even sometimes when they are.
A woman has vanished on the Camino de Santiago. Daniel walks the lonely trail carrying his wife Petra's ashes, along with the damning secret of how she really died. Vibrant California girl Ginny seems like the perfect antidote for his grieving heart, until a nightmare figure begins to stalk them, and Daniel's mind starts to unravel as they are pursued by things he cannot explain.
Fans of The Historian won’t be able to put down this spellbinding literary horror story in which a Columbia professor must use his knowledge of demonic mythology to rescue his daughter from the Underworld. Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disap...