Postcards of Essex County
Regular price $32.95A unique and rare collection of postcards from Essex County, David Newman’s Postcards from Essex County documents the churches, factories, fairgrounds, houses, beaches, trains and cars of old Essex. Over 315 cards have been catalogued into fourteen chapters, including sections on Harrow, Leamington, Kingsville, Maidstone and more. A beautiful gift book in hardcover with full-colour illustrations.
Ghost Road: and other forgotten stories of Windsor
Regular price $37.95The Future
Regular price $24.95
WJB Book Club Pick for February 2024!
Join us to discuss The Future on February 29th at 6:00pm at Craft Heads Brewing Company. Use code BOOKCLUB to get 20% off the list price!
Shortlisted for Canada Reads 2024 • One of Tor.com‘s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week • One of Kirkus Reviews‘ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023
In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.
When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.
Download The Future Reading Guide here!
Praise for The Future
“What makes The Future hopeful is its imagining of new, organic, co-operative (but not egalitarian) communities … savage but caring networks: small, local, and while living close to the edge still managing to get by. It may not be progress, but it is adapting to a vision of the future that hits pretty close to home.”
—Alex Good, Toronto Star
“This atmospheric novel elevates disparate voices, drawing a complex picture of community-focused life beyond the family unit.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The Future is a rewarding read, mostly because of the hope it instills. There is some violence, of course, but Leroux’s vision of the future is one where people go out of their way to help each other to survive.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Leroux brings believability, poetry, and hopefulness to the dystopian narrative of Fort Détroit by steering clear of the many pitfalls of end-times novel … This permits the novel to imagine infinite small beginnings within the ending, and to show how destruction is balanced by the ever-present promise of creation.”
—Bronwyn Averett, Montreal Review of Books
“At the heart of Catherine Leroux’s extraordinary novel are the rising and vanishing lifeworlds nurtured by the Rouge River. The children of the Rouge are hunters and prey, remorseless, capable, indelible—‘wildings’ who are simultaneously custodians and seeds of the future. This ferocious, provocative dystopia is a dance of knives, and a deeply moving exploration of our decaying, adapting, ever-changing world.”
—Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Unlike some dystopian books, The Future is suffused with a sense of optimism … Though their neighbourhood is decaying and the economy is crumbling, the characters reach beyond the every-person-for-themselves trope by celebrating community, the power of cooperation, and hope.”
—The Miramichi Reader
“An inherently fascinating, original, and carefully crafted novel that raises ‘alternate history’ science fiction to a high level of literary eloquence, The Future is unique, entertaining, and highly recommended.”
—Midwest Review of Books
“This is a wonderful and complicated story about unique and intertwined characters. Leroux includes perfectly subtle allusions, and her writing is absolutely beautiful.”
—McGill Daily
“At the height of her art, in a profound and teeming language marked by dialogues written in an invented patois, Catherine Leroux also gives us a glimpse of a world where nature flourishes against all odds, where legends are brought to life and where magical realism reigns.”
—La Presse, Montreal
“The novel answers concrete questions: what happens after the end of the world? … Nothing can erase the survivors’ traumatic memories but their hope persists and their present is full of intergenerational support and characters who create new ways of living among the ruins … Catherine Leroux delivers a dazzling and original novel, above all a testament to the humanity and resilience of communities in the margins.”
—Etudes, Montreal
“This poignant utopia captures how cities have souls, how they live and die, and how they sometimes miraculously rise from the dead. Far from the usual depressing post-apocalyptic novel, The Future is an exhilarating story in which Gloria, who relies on her daily horoscope to guide her, creates a future for her community that is finally able to find wonder after suffering loss.”
—Livres Hebdo, Montreal
“Despite the suffering and horror, despite the precariousness, the novel is full of hope, light and goodness, and offers a vision of intergenerational healing.”
—Le Devoir, Montreal
Ford City
Regular price $24.95Ford City was a town steeped in the history of the auto industry. Companies including Ford, E.M.F., Studebaker, Chalmers and Chrysler all called Ford City their home of Canadian operations. But it was more than just an industrial town. It was a rumrunning hub, a communist hotbed, and a thriving cultural centre for the people of the Border Cities. From the town’s inception, through amalgamation, to the revitalization of the Ford plant in the 1990s, Ford City is the story of the industrial heart of Windsor.
PRAISE FOR HERB COLLING
“Colling rebuts the curious notion that Canadian history, even when told in relation to major U.S. events, is not compelling or important.”—Quill & Quire
Border Cities Powerhouse The Rise of Windsor: 1900-1945
Regular price $32.95Border Cities Powerhouse chronicles one of the most dramatic urban transformations in Canadian history, documenting the shift from modest industry to manufacturing dynamo. The coming of the automobile in 1904 put the Border Cities on the map, sparking a period of explosive growth.
From the bright lights of hydro-electric power and the construction of the Ambassador Bridge to the Battle of Ford City, communist agitation, and the Border Cities’ forced amalgamation during the Great Depression, this was a period of unprecedented progress and open conflict.
Tracing the region’s development through Prohibition, the Dirty Thirties, and the military expansion of the First and Second World Wars, the era reaches its climax during the infamous 1945 Ford Factory Strike, when autoworkers faced off against corporate management in a struggle that would change the face of Canadian labour.
Following the success of The River & the Land: A History of Windsor to 1900, this second book in Patrick Brode’s comprehensive, three-volume history of Windsor captures an age of dramatic change and political struggle.
PRAISE FOR PATRICK BRODE
“Fascinating.”—The Windsor Star
“As with all of Brode’s books, it is thoroughly researched and superbly written.”—Biz X Magazine
Five Days Walking Five Towns
Regular price $24.95The Canadian border city facing Detroit was not always simply “Windsor, Ontario”—it was a patchwork of multiple communities that amalgamated into Windsor throughout the 20th Century. In Five Days Walking Five Towns, fabled local raconteur Marty Gervais puts on his boots and takes the reader on a street-by-street walking tour through Riverside, Ford City, Walkerville, Windsor, and Sandwich—weaving together his own memories with the booms and busts of his eclectic, storied city. Along the way, tales of Indigenous curses, rum-running, union-busting, and murderous ministers abound.
With intimate, conversational prose and an acute eye for lore that time forgot, Marty Gervais has created a work not just for Ontario history buffs but for anybody who cares about the evolution of cities and the strange, beautiful people who inhabit them.
Praise for Five Days Walking Five Towns
“Windsor like we’ve never seen it”—Nino Ricci, author of Where She Has Gone
“Gervais does not tire, and never fails to amuse.”—Patrick Brode, author of Border Cities Powerhouse
Dying For a Drink: How a Prohibition Preacher Got Away with Murder
Regular price $19.95AS SEEN ON TV ONTARIO’S THE AGENDA WITH STEVE PAIKIN
FINALIST FOR THE 2019 ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION CRIME BOOK
Known to history as “The Fighting Parson,” Reverend J.O.L. Spracklin broke into a notorious Windsor roadhouse one chilly November night in 1920 and shot and killed barkeep Beverly “Babe” Trumble. Easily acquitted by reason of self-defense, he never served a day of time. A provincial liquor license inspector already known for his brash tactics, Spracklin’s audacious tactics solidified across North America the Detroit-Windsor borderlands’ reputation as the new Wild West—an uncivilized outpost where whisky flowed freely, warrants were forged on the spot, and ministers toted guns to keep the peace.
To the rest of Ontario, a dry province, Spracklin was the saviour they’d been waiting for, the answer to the lawlessness of the Border Cities—that is, until he shot a man at point blank range. In this exploration of the period, decorated Ontario historian Patrick Brode unpacks this infamous piece of Prohibition lore and asks: Why did Babe Trumble die? What led to a hotheaded reverend taking the law into his own hands, killing a man, and getting away with it? Full of fire-and-brimstone preachers, crooked politicians, wily rum runners, grandstanding lawyers, and innocents caught in the crossfire, Dying for a Drink is a fascinating read that will captivate anyone interested in the real stories behind this fabled time.
PRAISE FOR DYING FOR A DRINK
“A brisk read that aptly describes Canada’s temperance movement and the move towards prohibition…quite enjoyable.”
—Canada’s History
“Nicely researched…Fast-paced…This slim, lively volume illuminates Ontario’s pre–Jazz Age cultural and legal history and that of prohibition in an informative fashion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Brode brings to his account a wealth of local knowledge about Windsor and its Prohibition-era past…well researched and peppered with fascinating characters.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“A fascinating book, thoroughly researched and tightly written.”
—Windsor Life
Original Six Dynasties: The Detroit Red Wings
Regular price $29.95For the Detroit Red Wings, this was the golden age of hockey. Gordie Howe, Sid Abel, and Ted Lindsay struck fear in goalies; hearts with their famous Production Line, one of the highest-scoring lines in NHL history. Terry Sawchuk astonished the world with shutout after shutout. Red Kelly was one of the game's wiliest defencemen and and Marcel Pronovost one of its fiercest checkers. Between them and with the help of great muckers, grinders, managers and coaches, the Wings claimed five Stanley Cups by 1955.
Original Six Dynasties: The Detroit Red Wings is a photo tour of this period and its players. With 283 rare and never-before-published shots, it presents spectacular glimpses into the most exciting games in Hockeytown history, from long before Detroit was even called Hockeytown. With expert captions by historian Bob Duff, Original Six Dynasties is a must-have collectible for Wings fans and hockey buffs alike.
100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer
Regular price $24.95By the end of the 2016 season, Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs both finally admitted to themselves and to each other that they were losing interest in the Tigers and, consequently, in baseball itself―a thread that had not only connected the two of them, but brought them together with their families and with their own histories as well. They weren’t sure what they were missing, but they had an idea where it might be found: in their own backyard. Drawing a radius of one hundred miles around their home in Windsor, Ontario, Heidi and Dale set a goal of seeing fifty games within that circle in one summer, a schedule that took them across southwestern Ontario and into Michigan and Ohio, from bleachers behind high schools, to manicured university turf, to the steep concrete stands of major league parks. 100 Miles of Baseball is the story of their rediscovery of their love of the game―and with it their relationships, and the region they call home.
Light Lifting
Regular price $19.95Two long-distance runners race a cargo train through a rat-infested tunnel underneath the Detroit River. A pre-adolescent drug store bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life, only to risk his own. A young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she’s caught in far more dangerous currents.
In Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod’s long-awaited first collection of short stories, the author offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies for a city and community on the brink. Anger and violence simmer just beneath the surface and often boil over, resulting in both tragedy and tragedy barely averted. But as bleak as these stories sometimes are, there is also hope, beauty and understanding.
Alexander McLeod's stories are as disturbing, compelling and true as any currently being written in this or any country.
Maple Leaf Moments
Regular price $19.95Leafs fans remember the ups. And, oh boy, do they remember the downs. But how many know Harry “Big Mum” Mummery’s (1911-1923) habit of broiling a steak on a shovel over the Mutual Street Arena’s coal furnace before each home game? Or that two-time Stanley Cup champ Ken Randall (1917-1927) once paid a fine with a sack of pennies? Or that legendary goalie Johnny “The China Wall” Bower (1958-69) wrote and recorded a children’s Christmas song that charted with The Beatles’ “Yesterday” on Toronto’s Top 100 list?
In this quirky collection of stories from the first century of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ history, renowned hockey columnist Bob Duff offers over 200 of the most memorable, unlikely anecdotes that all fans of the old Blue-and-White are sure to love.
Against Amazon and Other Essays
Regular price $22.95 Sale price $17.00A NEW YORK TIMES NEW & NOTEWORTHY BOOK
A history of bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter—and, most urgently, a manifesto.
Good bookshops are questions without answers. They are places that provoke you intellectually, encode riddles, surprise and offer challenges … A pleasing labyrinth where you can’t get lost: that comes later, at home, when you immerse yourself in the books you have bought; lose yourself in new questions, knowing you will find answers.
Picking up where the widely praised Bookshops: A Reader’s History left off, Against Amazon and Other Essays explores the increasing pressures of Amazon and other new technologies on bookshops and libraries. In essays on these vital social, cultural, and intellectual spaces, Jorge Carrión travels from London to Geneva, from Miami’s Little Havana to Argentina, from his own well-loved childhood library to the rosewood shelves of Jules Verne’s Nautilus and the innovative spaces that characterize South Korea’s bookshop renaissance. Including interviews with writers and librarians—including Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Luigi Amara, and Han Kang, among others—Against Amazon is equal parts a celebration of books and bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter—and, most urgently, a manifesto against the corrosive influence of late capitalism.
Praise for Jorge Carrión’s Against Amazon and Other Essays
“This is just the sort of book that bibliophiles—to say nothing of bibliomaniacs—will enjoy … A subtle pleasure for lovers of the printed word, even if they order books from the leviathan.” —Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Jorge Carrión’s Bookshops: A Reader’s History
“The perfect merging of love of travel and literature.”—Buzzfeed
“[Carrión’s] purpose is to celebrate bookstores. And he does so by wandering the globe in search of those that play—or have played—a special role in the intellectual and social lives of their communities. They become Carrión’s personal mappa mundi.”—New York Times
“‘Every bookshop is a condensed version of the world,’ begins Mr. Carrión’s literary and unabashedly sentimental exploration of bookstores around the globe . . . [Carrion] wanders through volume-laden aisles in Athens, Paris, Bratislava, Budapest, Tangier and Sydney, and invokes many other shops, both open and closed, telling stories about writers, readers and literary circles . . . By the end, you may feel poorly read—but well armed with titles and bookshops to visit on your own.”—Wall Street Journal
“Carrión explores the fine lines between pilgrimage destination, touristy gimmick, and decent bookshop. This is the perfect book for those who feel compelled to visit every bookstore they see.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
“Excellent . . . entertaining . . . this quietly intelligent little book speaks volumes.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Sublimely entrancing . . . brilliant . . . [Carrión’s] Borgesian book—it can be opened at any point and read forward, or backwards for that matter—is not at all sad. To read is to travel in time and space, and to travel from bookshop to bookshop is an ecstatic experience for Carrión, a joy he conveys page after page.”—Maclean’s
Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary
Regular price $24.95“You have taken our civil rights—we want our human rights.”
On April 14, 1971, a handful of prisoners attacked the guards at Kingston Penitentiary and seized control, making headlines around the world. For four intense days, the prisoners held the guards hostage while their leaders negotiated with a citizens’ committee of journalists and lawyers, drawing attention to the dehumanizing realities of their incarceration, including overcrowding, harsh punishment and extreme isolation. But when another group of convicts turned their pent-up rage towards some of the weakest prisoners, tensions inside the old stone walls erupted, with tragic consequences. As heavily armed soldiers prepared to regain control of the prison through a full military assault, the inmates were finally forced to surrender.
Murder on the Inside tells the harrowing story of a prison in crisis against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in the history of human rights. Occurring just months before the uprising at Attica Prison, the Kingston riot has remained largely undocumented, and few have known the details—yet the tense drama chronicled here is more relevant today than ever. A gripping account of the standoff and the efforts for justice and reform it inspired, Murder on the Inside is essential reading for our times.
Includes 24 pages of photographs.
Best Canadian Stories 2024
Regular price $23.95
Selected by editor Lisa Moore, the 2024 edition of Best Canadian Stories showcases the best Canadian fiction writing published in 2022.
Featuring:
Madhur Anand • Sharon Bala • Gary Barwin • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Xaiver Michael Campbell • Corinna Chong • Beth Downey • Allison Graves • Joel Thomas Hynes • Elise Levine • Sourayan Mookerjea • Lue Palmer • Michelle Porter • Sara Power • Ryan Turner • Ian Williams
Praise for Best Canadian Stories
“The legacy for Canadian literature in the Best Canadian Stories series can’t be overstated. For years the collection has been the place to discover Canadian writers.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Best Canadian Stories … combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”
—Open Book
“The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”
—Quill & Quire
On Community
Regular price $19.95One of CBC Books’ Canadian Nonfiction to Read in the Fall • A Tyee Best Book of 2023
We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it’s slipping away?
We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges.
Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community’s boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another.
Praise for On Community
“Don’t expect to walk away from On Community with easy answers. Plett refuses to explore the titular concept ‘blithely’ or to simplify it ‘to the point of untruth.’ Splitting it into practical and theoretical definitions is ‘too simple.’ Instead, she weaves together a nuanced narrative that unpacks the term’s intricacies while maintaining its importance.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“A tightly woven, academic and literary brain dump of concepts and notions, posits and prompts, with a flight of challenging questions.”
—The Miramichi Reader
“Plett uses her firsthand experiences to eventually reach a cumulative definition of community and explore how we form bonds with one another.”
—CBC Books
“Plett ruminates on the importance of community in succinct, snappy prose.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“With humour and verve, Plett cuts through the platitudes often associated with how we talk about community. She offers a welcome, incisive analysis of power and belonging that feels as lived-in as it is hopeful.”
—The Tyee
“Plett’s essay is a thoughtful, rich and engaging unpacking of the complexity behind simplistic ideas, and a clear-eyed consideration of what really is a universal human experience.”
—Pickle Me This
“Plett reflects on her Mennonite roots, trans literature, nationalism, Silicon Valley, and the idea of family, in this consideration of how and why we manage to live together at all.”
—Quill and Quire
Praise for Casey Plett
“Plett has a characteristic style that manages to merge tenderness with Prairie toughness—a style on display in these stories of trans women seeking something—groundedness, maybe, but that dreamlike quality of desire, too.”
—Globe and Mail
“Plett’s trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity.”
—Autostraddle (“Best Queer Books of the Year”)
“Plett tells beautiful stories of trans women as they exist in the world: tangible, fallible, tender and hardened.”
—Xtra
“I’ve always admired Plett’s ability to capture the tenderest and most complicated intimacies between characters. Exploring addiction, loss, consent, and shifting desires, each story in her extraordinary new collection is somehow even more tender and emotionally complex than the last.”
—Megan Milks, The Rumpus
“Both bittersweet and beautiful, Plett writes perfectly imperfect characters that make you feel less alone.”
—The Independent (UK)
On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer
Regular price $15.95Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it.
Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life. Along with his own history of rejection, Marche offers stories from the history of writerly failure, from Ovid’s exile and Dostoevsky’s mock execution to James Baldwin’s advice just to endure, where living with the struggle and the pointlessness of writing is the point.
Praise for On Writing and Failure
“The Canadian novelist and essayist describes the defining role rejection has played in his career and reflects on its importance in the lives of notable writers, from Ovid to Dostoyevsky and Baldwin.”
—New York Times
“I want to buy up a big lot of Marche’s contribution and hand them out to anyone struggling to write”
—Vanity Fair
“[Marche’s] writing style is buoyant and funny. […] When the stars are aligned, someone writes a work as provocative, informed and droll as On Writing and Failure.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
“While writing starts with one person, an empty page and an urge to say something, it ends with another person reading your words, digesting them and making a judgment. In the process the reader owns your words and makes something of them […] That’s why I’m keeping On Writing and Failure on my desk—for encouragement—which I am guessing is Marche’s true purpose in writing the book.”
—Globe and Mail
“On Writing and Failure romps through a series of anecdotes about the thwarted aspirations of authors so as to instruct a ‘kid writer’ not to hope for anything.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“In On Writing and Failure, Marche attempts to reset the way we talk about such struggles. He stomps Freytag’s Pyramid flat. […] Marche’s book isn’t a pep talk, but it’s not intended to cut you off at the knees. His sole prescription is stubbornness. ‘You have to write.'”
—Washington Post
“Marche reaches something deeper when he reminds us that many of these famous literary figures couldn’t make a living wage with their writing […] The book is endlessly quotable, and at times very funny.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Marche’s purpose is not to discourage young tyros from taking up the pen but to inform them—via repeated commands of ‘no whining’—that writing is not the path to success, riches or even, often, respect; writers write in spite of failure.”
—The New Statesman
“Marche is reluctant to give generalized advice, but what he does offer cuts right through the bullshit.”
—Broken Pencil
“On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer must be considered essential reading for anyone seeking to write for a living, be it as a novelist, essayist, poet, columnist, or any other writing genre. Itself exceptionally well written.”
—Midwest Book Review
“On Writing and Failure is a slim little truth bomb I wish had been written when I first harboured notions of writing to be published.”
—Policy Magazine
“Marche’s advice to writers, then, is to ‘keep throwing yourself at the door.’ Keep racking up rejections, keep amassing failures. Endure long enough, and eventually there will be a breakthrough, however arbitrary, however fleeting. On Writing and Failure is thus both a dark glimpse into the trials of creativity—and a comfort, a consolation.”
—Lean Out with Tara Henley
“Not only could I brave it; I managed to relish it.”
—Miramichi Reader
“On Writing and Failure is less about writing and more about perseverance. Reading it reminded me of all the things I thought impossible before I tried them and now find impossible to live without. Writing is one of those things.”
—Compulsive Reader
“A sparkling cocktail of bittersweet jokes and fizzing truth bombs.”
—Jonathan Coe, author of Bournville
“Number 6 in the Biblioasis Field Notes Series. A tiny book that holds enough to be a repeated reference. Any writer will benefit from having this honest exposure to the importance of failing. It is a harsh, and still kind, reminder that the effort is more important than the result—because without the effort there isn’t a chance of anything at all.”
—Carrie Koepke (Skylark Books), The Columbia Daily Tribune
“A paean to persistence, a celebration of art for its own sake, and my favorite entry yet in the excellent Field Notes series from Biblioasis.”
—James Crossley, Madison Books
“A central (perhaps the central) paradox of the writing life is this: in order to churn out the freest, most generous, truest work possible, the writer must embrace the utter and complete futility of the task of writing. As a writer at the beginning of a new project, I couldn’t ask for a better companion to carry me through the coming, inevitable, necessary days of failure, joy, and frustration. Marche’s essay is such a heartening guide through the writer’s life (of failure). As a reader, Marche’s perspective on the lives, hopes, frustrations, and failures of some all-time greats is nothing short of a marvel. It’s like being able to see into the upside-down of centuries of literature. Any person interested in language, books, stories, and meaning-making will find themselves richer for reading this exceptional little book.”
—Chris Lee, Boswell Book Company
Praise for Stephen Marche
“How Shakespeare Changed Everything is fun and informative, with more than its share of ‘Aha!’ moments packed between its diminutive covers. Mr. Marche’s thesis is compelling and probably more true than we ever imagined.”
—New York Journal of Books
“So dazzling, so unsentimental … A work that is both beautiful and confusing. In other words, an honest love story.”
—New York Times
“Stephen Marche is capable of writing … any darn thing he wants.”
—Globe and Mail
“Brilliant … Marche has created a stunning, evocative, and impressionistic account of the ascent of wealth in the twentieth century. . . . The Hunger of the Wolf could be Marche’s breakthrough novel.”
—Booklist, starred review
“A dazzling virtuoso piece. Marche turns the making of a family’s fortune into a fascinating, bloody fairy tale.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Frog Music
“Untrammelled, unfettered, unprecedented, unselfconscious and friggin’ unbelievable, this book busts the novel open, makes literature an open question, and maps out brave new worlds for the reader to spelunk. With Raymond and Hannah I knew this guy was up to something brilliant. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea tells me I hadn’t the faintest idea.”
—Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs
On Class
Regular price $18.95Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn’t make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor and those who are poor about what happens when we don’t talk about poverty or class—and what will happen when we do.
Growing up poor, Deborah Dundas knew what it meant to want, to be hungry, and to long for social and economic dignity; she understood the crushing weight of having nothing much expected of you. But even after overcoming many of the usual barriers faced by lower- and working-class people, she still felt anxious about her place, and even in relatively safe spaces reluctant to broach the subject of class. While new social movements have generated open conversation about gender and racism, discussions of class rarely include the voices of those most deeply affected: the working class and poor.
On Class is an exploration of the ways in which we talk about class: of who tells the stories, and who doesn’t, which ones tend to be repeated most often, and why this has to change. It asks the question: What don’t we talk about when we don’t talk about class? And what might happen if, finally, we did?
Praise for On Class
“The author uses her own experience of growing up poor to thread interviews with writers and activists about the barriers to success in Canada’s widening class divide.”
—Globe and Mail
“I really enjoyed Deborah Dundas’s small and brave book On Class. She addresses the need to speak about the different classes in Canada, and the ways it is almost impossible to cross their divides.”
—Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads
“On Class is urgent and wise, written with Dundas’ trademark wit and crisp prose. Raw and smart, it urges readers not to look away from the complexity of issues affecting the poor and working class, especially in a time of constant political, economic, and social turmoil.”
—Open Book
“A nifty, provocative little book.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“On Class is a great read, perfect for readers less familiar with the notion of class and what it really means, but also interesting and thoughtful enough for those who have already begun to engage with the topic. Dundas pulls a lot of threads together in this volume, but it works really well and serves as an excellent, broad starting point.”
—The Miramichi Reader
“On Class might be a quick read, but it is definitely an important one.”
—The Quarantine Review
“[Dundas] shares her own experience of growing up poor and facing class-driven barriers to success.”
—Zoomer
“Why does our society put so much emphasis on individual achievements and pay so little attention to collective ones? On Class doesn’t offer answers to these critical issues and questions—a task beyond any one volume—but it does offer a pleasing invitation to reflect upon them.”
—Monitor
Praise for the Field Notes series
“A clear-eyed assessment of the links between property, policing, and the subjugation of Black people … Walcott’s analysis of the ways in which white supremacy is baked into the legal systems of Canada and the U.S. is stimulating. Progressives will embrace this well-conceived call for change.”—Publishers Weekly
“Running a brief but far-reaching and punchy 96 pages, On Property has an absolute certainty of purpose: calling for the abolition of private property ownership … [If] statements such as ‘the problem of property is resolved through its removal’ or calls to ‘abolish everything’ can make some people quake, when Walcott’s pamphlet argues for the human ability to reconsider and rebuild societal structures, the stances come across as sensible and, better yet, doable.”—Toronto Star
“Rinaldo Walcott locates his contribution to the Field Notes series on current issues, On Property, in the present political moment, while using historical references and events to argue for the abolition of police and property … Walcott concludes his case by asking for a new ethics of care and economy that does not keep feeding into the incarceration system, a system rigged to continue Black suffering … It is a question we must ask ourselves after reflecting on the ways in which we, too, are complicit.”—Quill & Quire
“Kingwell offers a slender, thoughtful, sometimes meandering disquisition on risk that “is inflected (or infected) by the virus, but not precisely about the virus—except as it grants new urgency to old questions of risk and politics. A host of cultural allusions—from Shakespeare to the Simpsons, Isaiah Berlin to Irving Berlin, Voltaire, Pascal, and Derrida—along with salient academic studies inspire Kingwell to examine the many contradictory ways that humans handle risk … An entertaining gloss on an enduring conundrum.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Urgent, far-reaching and with a profound generosity of care, the wisdom in On Property is absolute. We cannot afford to ignore or defer its teachings. Now is the time for us-collectively-to take up the challenge in this undeniable gift of a book.”—Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst and Voodoo Hypothesis
Ordinary Wonder Tales
Regular price $22.95“This book is magical in every sense of the term.”—Amanda Leduc, author of The Centaur’s Wife and Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday.
“I’ve always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.
Praise for Ordinary Wonder Tales
“The mix of heady and magical will be spellbinding to memoir readers with a ready sense of wonder.”—Publishers Weekly
“Urquhart is a folklorist and, in this book, she explores in essays the truth that underlies the fairy tales we know, and the magic in the everyday.”—Toronto Star
“In Ordinary Wonder Tales, Urquhart stylishly combines her personal experiences with her academic expertise, leading to a reading experience that feels entertaining and casual yet also edifying … It’s a testament to Urquhart’s own formidable storytelling skill that each of her essays inspires a quiet awe.”—LIBER: A Feminist Review
“Ordinary Wonder Tales will have readers conjuring up memories of their first encounters with fairy tales, fables, and storytelling … if you’re compelled to imagine the mysterious forgotten worlds of imagination, of fables and possibilities … you’ll probably need to pick up [this book].”—Miramichi Reader
“A collective masterpiece of literary criticism, insights, observations, perceptions, and appreciation, Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart is an extraordinarily thoughtful and thought-provoking read.”—Midwest Book Review
“Urquhart’s corrobation of legends to day-to-day life offers the same getaway and warmth that indulging in a supernatural world can. So, to all the retired fantasy lovers out there, please do yourself a favor and read this book.”—The Link
“Ordinary Wonder Tales is so well-written, so full of enriching, unexpected connections, so captivating; a reader will be tempted to consume it in gulps, and then go back for seconds.”—The Telegram
“Urquhart draws connections between the experiences of everyday life—love, grief, pride, fear—and the imaginative universes of the stories we tell and retell.”—Quill & Quire
“I am devouring it … It’s incredibly current, even urgent.”—Joan Sullivan, Newfoundland Quarterly
“These essays—beautiful, rich and absorbing—will change the way you see your place in the world, and they’ll leave you noticing all the magic at its fringes.”—Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
“A highly readable, fascinating collection … The pieces are thoughtful and … enriching. The book is captivating, and as one critic has said, spellbinding.”—TheCommentary
“In this collection of essays, Urquhart seamlessly melds her research with snippets of everyday life on topics including death and dying, the plague, and pregnancy.”—Toronto Life
“With insight, compassion, and skill, Emily Urquhart’s essays delve into the intricate wonders of our lives. This book is magical in every sense of the term—a beautiful ode to both the natural world and the supernatural one, and all of the ways in which our human hearts traverse the space between these shifting places.”—Amanda Leduc, author of The Centaur’s Wife and Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
Praise for Beyond the Pale
“[Urquhart] isn’t afraid to make the personal political, to delve into her particular experience while also acknowledging its limits and investigating what lies beyond them. Urquhart’s as interested in championing individuality as she is in embracing our shared humanity. But she never shies away from the fact that cherishing both can be a knotty, contradictory affair.”
—Globe & Mail
“A courageous and ambitious book. Beyond the Pale offers an intimate account about raising a daughter with albinism, a lucid portrait of related genetic, medical and social issues, and a disturbing reminder of the brutal violence that many people with albinism continue to face today.”
—Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes and Blood: The Stuff of Life
“A brave, thoughtful, clear, and always graceful journey through the terrifying randomness of genetics and the unexpected ways genetic anomalies can mark not just children, but all the lives around them.”
—Ian Brown, author of The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for his Disabled Son
“A graceful, perceptive rendering of a misunderstood condition.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Folklorist Urquhart writes poetically and movingly about her daughter … readers will weep and smile.”
—Booklist
Chemical Valley
Regular price $22.95A Siskiyou Prize Semi-Finalist
A Miramichi Reader Best Fiction Title of 2021
Oil-soaked and swamp-born, the bruised optimism of Huebert’s stories offer sincere appreciation of the beauty of our wilted, wheezing world.
From refinery operators to long term care nurses, dishwashers to preppers to hockey enforcers, Chemical Valley’s compassionate and carefully wrought stories cultivate rich emotional worlds in and through the dankness of our bio-chemical animacy. Full-hearted, laced throughout with bruised optimism and sincere appreciation of the profound beauty of our wilted, wheezing world, Chemical Valley doesn’t shy away from urgent modern questions—the distribution of toxicity, environmental racism, the place of technoculture in this ecological spasm—but grounds these anxieties in the vivid and often humorous intricacies of its characters’ lives. Swamp-wrought and heartfelt, these stories run wild with vital energy, tilt and teeter into crazed and delirious loves.