Praise for 1979

"[An] entertaining new novel." —Metro Toronto

"As Robertson traces Tom’s coming of age, he explores themes of innocence lost, wisdom gained and learning to forgive ... [Robertson's] talent as a writer shows in his clear prose and ability to create unique and believable characters." —Winnipeg Free Press

"Richly and sympathetically imagined...beautifully crafted, a rich and textured perspective of small town life, a nostalgic journey that resonates with the world of today." —Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This

"Brilliant...what [1979] does most brilliantly is show us how we’re conditioned (in literature and in life) to notice only the shiny objects, the noise, to watch the magician’s hand, even though we know full well that’s not where the magic is." —Matilda Magtree

"I'm always on board for a new Ray Robertson novel, and one wonders what will have to happen for him to get to the front rank of Canadian writing, as he so richly deserves…Ray has a light touch; writes clean, punchy sentences; and has a musicality and movement in his prose that is a singular gift. I'll drop pretty much anything to read whatever he writes." —49^th Shelf

"Robertson has a knack for capturing the texture of adolescent life, and his version of small-town Ontario is vividly rendered."—Quill & Quire

"One to watch for, if you enjoy small-town Canadian stories, is 1979 by Ray Robertson. Tom Buzby, a thirteen year-old living in Chatham, Ontario, narrates this sweetly nostalgic coming-of-age story about Tom's developing interest in girls, his understanding of his parent's divorce, and his discovery of various rock bands (you could make an amazing playlist from records mentioned in this novel). I also loved reading about the dynamic between Tom and his sister, Julie. What makes this story a true gem however, is how Tom’s narrative is interspersed with a glimpse into the very private lives of his neighbours, including the people whose papers he delivers, and those whose paths cross his for other reasons." —Ottawa Public Library

"Robertson does an impeccable job."—Full Disclosure Praise for Ray Robertson

"Sharp-tongued … as Robertson ponders family and home as well as ‘what it means to love someone and to lose someone and to have to go on living anyway,’ he presents an intriguing character whose very real troubles are offset by bright flashes of hope."—Publishers Weekly

"… filled with sly wit and keen observation … an exceptional novel by one of the country’s finest literary voices."—The National Post

Praise for Where's Bob?

"An expert of her craft, Ireland doesn’t just portray this theme from the perspective of the one left behind, but also explores the impulse that causes people to leave others behind...Where’s Bob? is a novel full of contrasting characters who show us the depth of the book’s central issues, written by a woman who grasped the Canadian experience in a global context. Ireland has captured what it means to overcome the past and become the one who leaves." —Prairie Fire

Praise for Ann Ireland

"Scrupulous, vivid detailing of emotion, compulsion, struggle—bloody awful old love…It’s chilling, the way you feel the artist in her, not just the women, going under. The huge disparity between what one lover is ready to give and the other is able to take—when you realize what her role in his life is and his in hers—that’s to me the real discovery. And that’s when the story transcends this story, these particular people. It doesn’t say, 'Good thing she got away from that asshole, about time she figured him out' in the standard, boring feminist style. It says something like, 'Look—this is how we are, this is how we live.'"—Alice Munro

“Ireland’s writing has remarkable humour, and gentle but unshying insight into character. As a past president of PEN, no doubt she’s heard tales to make one shudder.” —The Globe and Mail “[Ireland] is unquestionably an engrossing read.” —The Toronto Star

“[Ireland] has a gift for alternating dialogue with long paragraphs describing complex emotional shifts. These nuanced interior musings mirror the unstated counterpoint to conversations between two people who have an involved history, who know one another’s thresholds – emotionally, intellectually physically. Ireland has created a physical look on the page for this state.... she is a strong graphic writer.” —Ottawa Citizen

PRAISE FOR ZOLITUDE

"The consensus newcomer of the year." —Montreal Gazette

"[A] spikily surreal debut collection...vivid, complex...brilliant." —Library Journal (starred review)

"[A]cross fourteen stories Cooper builds strange, genre-defying, sci-fi- and fantasy-infused realities that are distinctly her own. Truly, they’re like nothing else you’ve read lately." —Toronto Star

"A timely exploration of love and humanity...urgent and energetic." —Winnipeg Free Press

"One of this year's most adventurous and technically accomplished debuts ... Cooper appears almost frighteningly assured in her approach and execution. The author wields language like a finely tuned instrument." —Quill & Quire Book of the Year citation

"...Raw talent and breathtaking writing. Zolitude is a book of short stories that demand to be read slowly like poetry, each image being at once perplexing and containing prisms of meaning. Cooper’s portraits of young women and the way their bodies merge their identities with one another and are at once invisible and present in every object they touch are so wonderful. Cooper’s descriptions of lost girls in foreign lands are reminiscent of the melancholy meanderings of Jean Rhys, but are wholly new." —Jury Citation for the 2018 Danuta Gleed Literary Award

"Cooper has a keen eye for the quirks of human behavior." —Publishers Weekly

"Each of Zolitude's fourteen stories explores intimacy as a basic need and the ways love can be articulated, perceived, and frustrated. The result is a collection that is often astonishing and occasionally crests the extraordinary." —The Walrus

"Rarely have love stories seemed less cliché and predictable...tenderness and violence and doom are so densely layered as to deliver the affective impact of a novel...these stories are so well made, so viscerally moving, I often found the need to take a break between them to recover. "—Quill & Quire (starred review)

"Cooper proves that she can do just about anything. She's as comfortable telling a story from the perspective of a hip young record-label employee... whose hand is blown off by a mail bomb (‘Ryan & Irene, Irene & Ryan’) as she is telling the story of a mounted police officer who lives on the edge of loss and violence (‘The Emperor’) ... Readers willing to give themselves over to some mystery will be rewarded." —Kirkus

"Zolitude is Cooper’s first short story collection, but it reads like the work of a far more seasoned writer. Her stories are painful and wise, ugly and moving, and at their best, reveal uncomfortable truths about human connection and its limits ... With each opening paragraph, she pitches us into a new atmosphere, full of gorgeous detail and emotional rawness, a world that feels too real to be a fantasy, or perhaps just fantastic enough to be real." —Montreal Review of Books

"When I read a Cooper story, “Vazova on Love” for example, I feel I have been transported into a strange country, a puzzling one, sensuous and potentially hostile, and I know she will reveal something to me if I stay very focused." —André Forget

"Exhilarating." —Calgary Herald

"Daring, endlessly inventive, cryptic, sometimes eerie...By eluding our grasp time and time again, Cooper’s stories challenge us to put aside our misgivings, to follow their lead, to forget how we think fiction should behave and give ourselves over to something unapologetically strange and disquieting...Weird, unsettling fiction may be nothing new, but rarely do we encounter a writer who renders their peculiar creative universe with such clarity and confidence." —The Antigonish Review

"Paige Cooper’s finely-crafted debut collection...crackles and spits with intelligence. Cooper has honed a style that lends itself to unusual, crystalline landscapes.... Even worlds that are familiar are made strange in [her] lucid imagination." —The Arkansas International

"As strange and wonderful as the characters in these pages are, they are grounded in real emotion and experience, longing and loneliness." —Open Book

"Paige Cooper's stories screw down into the earth, holding fire in their gaps. Her characters turn zero sum games into bloodsport. Zolitude will not leave you alone." —Sasha Frere-Jones

"Zolitude is the literary equivalent of a non-stop action film. These stories are tough and visceral and fraught. Cooper’s characters – sometimes reckless, sometimes tender, always fierce – are breathtakingly fresh and wonderfully complicated. When you finish this book – about how the world marks us and how we mark ourselves – the word ‘culpability' will have new meanings. These are worlds that are keenly observed and then forged into the kind of wild and uncompromising stories the times demand." —Aislinn Hunter, author of Stay and The World Before Us

"Cooper's stories feature far-flung worlds, magnified consciousness. This is mesmerizing work.—Tamara Faith Berger, author of Maidenhead

Praise for Transparent City

"Vibrant...Ondjaki is experimentally bold, and his prose shifts through a kaledioscope of registers, from the poetic to the political, the erotic to the absurd...Stephen Henighan's thoughtful translation has an energetic lyricism and is alive to the echoes and vestiges of the African languages that imbue Ondjaki's text...The novel begins and ends with a raging inferno, and yet it is as full of hope, appetite and libidinal energy as it is of grief and mourning." —Times Literary Supplement

"darkly pretty...peppered with poetry...These disparate stories are woven into a beautiful narrative that touches on government corruption, the privatization of water, the dangers of extracting oil for wealth, and the bastardization of religion for profit.. The novel reads like a love song to a tortured, desperately messed-up city that is undergoing remarkable transformations."—Publishers Weekly

"A poetic, chaotic web of a book, hilarious and touching, written in a compelling run-on narrative, flowing and sensory. It has a wide scope and won’t be for the faint of heart, but those willing to take the leap will happily swim through the rushing current of this strange, dark comedy, with its tender characters and bizarre tales."—Book Riot

"It’s been a long time since I read a novel like Ondjaki’s Transparent City...It’s a hugely risk-taking book, in the way that it’s structured above all else, but also in its blend of stylized surrealism and harrowing realism. As it tells the story of a man whose body is gradually losing its presence, amidst chaos in the city around him, Transparent City achieves a tremendous sense of clarity. And its blend of the familiar and the uncanny seems decidedly suited to the experience of living through 2018." —LitHub

"In telling the story of a man named Odonato, who is slowly fading out of existence, and the chaotic city around him, Ondjaki takes risks that actually smooth the flow. In other words, he’s experimental without being off-putting; it helps that his tale is both ecstatic and bittersweet. The language immerses the reader in the novel’s milieu, but also charts out unexpected dimensions." —Vulture

"Ondjaki’s prose pulses with life...shine[s] with an unexpected clarity." —World Literature Today

"A richly imagined, tender and also critical portrait of the city in apocalyptic times." —CBC's Writers & Company

"A lively and invigorating novel...With Transparent City, Ondjaki takes his place among the great fabulists of the past century...so rich in heart, and so startlingly fresh in structure and delivery, [he] has gifted us with a contemporary masterpiece." —Toronto Star

"The prose in which Ondjaki tells this story is deftly stylized, suggesting the hazy interconnections between the cast of this sprawling, stunning work. Over time, the plot threads begin to converge, and both the miraculous and the absurdist aspects take on tragic qualities as the novel reaches its stunning conclusion." —Words Without Borders

Praise for Ondjaki

“Ondjaki delivers playful magical realism with delightful defiance.” —The Barnes & Noble Review

“As with Ondjaki’s other novels—including Bom dis camaradas (2001; Good Morning Comrades) and Os Transparentes (2012)—this is a strangely deceptive read. Although the narrative often feels rather whimsical, Angola’s long history of colonialism and conflict, its various foreign allies and enemies, and the extraordinary suffering of its population, are menacingly present . . . a brave and highly political work.” —Times Literary Supplement

Praise for The Year of No Summer

“Disparate musings cohere into a lyrical meditation on violence, disaster, and humanity’s yearning for solace.” —Kirkus

“Follows in the footsteps of Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne Carson...these essays cling to you long after you’ve read them, like lingering grains of wet, black sand.” —Literary Review of Canada

“Lebowitz has found in this event a rich vein to mine in her impressionistic lyric essay, combining history, poetry, memoir, fable and storytelling to bring to the page her take on that apocalyptic time.” —Toronto Star

“Darkly fascinating...Lebowitz highlights the parables, fables and myths we humans created in order to weave meaning into our lives and to which we return for comfort.” —Atlantic Books Today

“Sobering.” —Geist

“An inherently fascinating and informative read from first page to last...as thoughtful and thought-provoking as it is historically accurate and contemporarily relevant. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented.” —Midwest Book Review

"In these surprising, melancholic, and perceptive essays, Lebowitz finds a new form to witness, if not explain, the “still body—the still-fierce beating heart” of life on earth." —Canadian Literature

Praise for Rachel Lebowitz

“Lebowitz succeeds in extracting gems from the ambitious sweep of time and geography that the narrative embraces, and her presentation of her subject matter welcomes us into a strange and brutal world.”—ARC Poetry

“Rachel Lebowitz is quickly becoming one of the best collagist poets in Canada today…What unfolds is a breathtaking, eerie and oddly beautiful look at the vicious underbelly of capitalism…”—Fiddlehead

Praise for Dark Woods

“The rueful, lucid, deliberately casual poems in “Dark Woods” can surprise you with their tenderness, but also with their prickly intelligence.” —The New York Times

“In the poems' accentual, lightly metered stanzas we are made conscious of time passing, the body aging, and those quiet moments outside time...understated and moving.” —The Malahat Review

"[Sanger's] poems are tender and often funny. Sometimes arch, sometimes bemused, he is a humane observer of daily life....Throughout Dark Woods, his cleverness and verbal mischief enliven traditional forms." —Canadian Literature

Praise for Richard Sanger

“Splendidly-shaped and imagistically adroit. These are outstanding poems.”—The Globe and Mail

“[Sanger] naturalizes the traditional influences in his poems so thoroughly they are almost covert. This gives his poems an inner voice running under the colloquial surface and suggests an attitude toward consciousness in a lyric poem as interesting as the dislocated subject…” —Books-in-Canada

“Spectacular… Sophisticated metrical sense, teasing wit and limitless linguistic resources… The real thing: an original poet of rare talent.” —The Montreal Gazette

“Very accomplished… [Sanger] writes in a voice that is all his own, and its groundtone is a cleverly, progressively sophisticated one which is never merely adroit.” —Journal of Canadian Poetry

Praise for Years, Months, and Days

"[Years, Months, and Days] is carried by Jernigan’s obvious respect for her sponsoring material and by her superb ear." —The New York Times

"Exquisite . . . deeply resonant . . . There’s often a metaphysical cast to her forthright observations, which makes them both evocative and poignant." —Toronto Star

"Amanda Jernigan’s small and beautiful book should be on your bedside table even if it is as heaped as mine. Just 4” by 5” and fewer than 70 pages, the book consists of untitled, spare, and simply-worded poems which evoke the cycles of life, the seasons, and human longing for meaning and connection. The poems expand in your head, opening your mind to matters beyond the day-to-day."—Arc Poetry Magazine

"The poems are tiny, seeds only, bare of flourish, each containing the germ of an idea so large the mind can hardly hold it . . . . If you seek to tune those numbered days of yours to what is most frightfully vital, you might carry this book in your satchel awhile. It’s tiny enough to conceal in a large pocket, but it thunders, and its seeds carry fields." —Image

"Singular . . . stirring . . . invites pauses and contemplation. It is [Jernigan's] keen sense of what is essential that guides . . . these meditations." —Hamilton Review of Books

"An elegant little book . . . Jernigan crafts pithy yet piercing poems that echo in the mind."—Canadian Literature

"Vespers. Devotional. Breathtakingly sparse. Elegant. Wondrous. Moving. Rare." — Jeff Kirby, knife | fork | book

Praise for Christmas Ghost Stories

“[This] series of Christmas ghost stories, miniature books chosen and illustrated by the cartoonist Seth ... [offers] chills—and charm.”—John Williams, New York Times Book Review

“I just bought my set of these and they ... are ... PERFECT. I hope they do these every year.”—Patton Oswalt

“These are beautiful little books ... [My family’s] been reading them at home, and we’ve actually put them away so we can re-read them on Christmas Eve.”—Matt Galloway, CBC’s Metro Morning

“For Seth, this is really a labour of love.”—Peter Robb, Ottawa Citizen

“The two classic Christmas ghost stories that Seth and Biblioasis fashioned last year were a huge success for us. Nifty packaging, striking design—so Seth.”—Ben McNally, Ben McNally Books, Toronto, ON

“Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories series resurrects the legacy of fireside tales at Christmas with these beautifully illustrated editions.”—John Toews, McNally Robinson Booksellers, Winnipeg, MB