Anvil Press Publishers Complete Catalogue

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

William Holt

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

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Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

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You recommended this title on September 12 2019

Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

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You recommended this title on September 12 2019

Amber Teething Necklaces for the Gullible

Peddling Snakeoil for the Modern Age

By William Holt

as a Loan Stars Smarchvember 2019 Adult top pick

This is a really great book that really opens your eyes to the use of hokey-pokey snakeoil based teething pain treatments that aren't Tylenol or Motrin based. Or then something else entirely that has nothing to do

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Anvil Press Publishers Complete Catalogue

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1.
Series: Brave New Play Rites Highlights plays from UBC's Creative Writing Department Paperback Bryan Wade 9781895636758 $25.00 DRAMA Mar 31, 2006

'Brave New Play Rites' presents twenty years of original and startling theatre from Canadas best young writers. The book is a collection of short one-act plays written by students in the Creative Writing Program at UBC and produced at the annual festival, Brave New Play Rites, for public performances. Many successful writers have had their plays produced in the festival, including Lynn Coady, Steven Galloway, Dennis Bolen, Kevin Chong, and Aaron Bushkowsky. The release of 'Brave New Play Rites' coincides with the 20th anniversary year of... + Read More
2.
Series: Cabalcor An Extracted History Mixed media product Sun Belt 9781772140033 $24.00 FICTION Jan 28, 2015

The debut work by Sun Belt is a genre-bending almanac depicting the rise and fall of a company town that, within the span of a century, becomes a desert wasteland. A full-length album of dusty, surreal songs by the Sun Belt music ensemble both informs and is informed by a blend of transcripts, photographs, micro fictions, wildlife plates, film stills, costume designs, environmental reports and other invented artefacts. The result is a multimedia portrait of a mythic place closer tohome than we'd like-and an artistic collaboration that defie... + Read More
3.
Series: Sugar Bush & Other Stories Stories of Sex, Discovery, & Emancipation on the Canadian Shield Paperback Jenn Farrell 9781895636765 $15.00 FICTION Oct 15, 2006

The stories in 'Sugar Bush & Other Stories' deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by their naïve quests for "individuality," while at the same time having an almost pathological need to be loved by everyone-especially men. While the stories in 'Sugar Bush' are intended for an adult audience, they employsome of the conventions of the young adult genre. They are s... + Read More
4.
Series: Breakneck Paperback Nelly Arcan 9781772140118 $20.00 FICTION May 01, 2015

Rose Dubois and Julie O'Brien find themselves on a burning roof together, on a summer's day, and from then on their fates intertwine, in a world where the natural force that is the changing climate foreshadows and encourages their predestined suffering. Rose and Julie's submissive love for the same man, Charles, creates in them an arms race of artificial beauty and debasement. The first in their common obsession for plastic surgery and their attempts to be the avatar for the perfect female, and possess the perfect female organ; the second in ... + Read More
5.
Series: Suburban Pornography Paperback Matthew Firth 9781895636772 $18.00 FICTION Oct 25, 2006

'Suburban Pornography' is contemporary literature, which documents Canadian urban life in a raw and naked manner. The prose is stripped-minimalist, direct, urgent, unflinching. The stories revolve around ordinary characters and problems-people stuck in bad relationships or jobs. Some yearn for something just beyond their grasp, something authentic to knock them out of their malaise. Their frailties and obsessions are front and centre. They are garbage men, bus drivers, waitresses, soupkitchen clients, and neighbourhood perverts-tired and busy, ... + Read More
6.
Series: Seep Paperback W. Mark Giles 9781772140125 $20.00 FICTION Sep 03, 2015

Dwight Eliot was born on a baseball diamond, during a dugout-clearing brawl between his hometown team, The Seep Selects, and a team of barnstorming Cuban All Stars. Decades later, when he sees his childhood home being moved on a truck down the highway, he begins a quest to research the history of his hometown and of his family. Seep is being dismantled, and the land is being redeveloped as a master-planned recreational townsite to complement a nearby First Nations casino. And then his brother Darryl arrives on his doorstep with the force of a b... + Read More
7.
Series: Black Rabbit & Other Stories Paperback Salvatore Difalco 9781895636789 $15.00 FICTION Jul 08, 2007

'Black Rabbit & Other Stories' is a debut collection of great intensity and versatility. The stories range from the fantastic to the gritty, from urban dystopias to worlds of dreamlike possibility. Even in their frequent explorations of brutality, the author remains honest and true to the motivations of his characters and the machinations of the worlds in which they find themselves. These are sure-footed narratives that move with a pre-destined deliberation into a universe that is oftenfraught with desperation and apparent hopelessness; but, ul... + Read More
8.
Series: Moss-Haired Girl The Confessions of a Circus Performer: By Zara Zalinzi; Annotated by Joshua Chapman Green Paperback Slansky R.H. 9781772140026 $16.00 FICTION Dec 03, 2014

Winner, 3-Day Novel Contest (2013) Joshua Chapman Green is searching for answers. He is combing through boxes in the attic of his recently deceased mother's home and uncovering childhood memories, mysterious letters, and perplexing photos of people he does not know. They appear to be circus performers, members of a travelling freak show, or Victorian era sideshow performers. Then he finds a crumbling copy of Moss-Haired Girl: Confessions of a Circus Performer by Zara Zalinzi . . . the clasp falls away and the pages open revealing a family stor... + Read More
9.
Series: I Cut My Finger Paperback Stuart Ross 9781895636796 $15.00 POETRY Apr 16, 2007

'I Cut My Finger' is Stuart Ross's first full-length poetry collection since his acclaimed 'Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New & Selected' (2003). The poems here show Ross's ever-expanding breadth, from his trademark humour and surrealism, to pointedly experimental works and poems of human anguish. Here, a poet includes a letter threatening suicide in his submission of poems to a literary journal; a businessman dons flippers to swim along the sidewalk to his downtown office; the U.S. military follows a trail of red ants to glacial redemption; t... + Read More
10.
Series: Savour The Obsessions of a Murderer Paperback Jackie Bateman 9781772140002 $20.00 FICTION Sep 17, 2014

Lizzy lives in the shadier part of London, far from her hometown in Scotland. In the three years since she fled, following the disappearance of her mother, she has escaped her prison of drugs and crime, only to live in constant fear of being found by dark figures from her past. She is unaware, however, that Oliver watches over her from the shadows. She belongs to him now, as he battles with his need to protect her, and the burning desire to take her soul. Savour is the follow-up toBateman's debut novel, Nondescript Rambunctious, and the sec... + Read More
11.
Series: At Home with History The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver's Heritage Homes Paperback Eve Lazarus 9781895636802 $20.00 HISTORY Apr 05, 2007

'At Home with History' is a collection of real life stories that bring to life the glamorous and not-so-glamorous social histories of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver-stories of brothels and bootleggers, secret rooms, and Shakespearean-style murders. An Italian family survives the depression by selling booze and sandwiches from their eastside home. A Shaughnessy mansion headquarters the Klu Klux Klan and then a children's hospice. A secret radio room is uncovered during renovations. Every home has a social history and a genealogy th... + Read More
12.
Series: Burqa of Skin Paperback Arcan Nelly 9781772140019 $18.00 SOCIAL SCIENCE Dec 10, 2014

Burqa of Skin is a dense collection of writings channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Nelly Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture's vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: the draw of death. Now beyond the ripples of scandal Arcan's work has caused, here are the last echoes of her work, and it is as stunning as it is brief. Burqa of Skin, with its gruesome title, catapults her... + Read More
13.
Series: Rental Van Paperback Clint Burnham 9781895636819 $14.00 POETRY Apr 24, 2007

Burnham's poetry works at the edges of meaning, propriety, and the commodification of language. Combining elements of found text-the overheard, the over-read-he recasts his findings in various combinations that are unique to their presentation on the page. The essentials of language, how people use it-and how it uses them-is Burnham's main concern. Whether inspiration arises from a 1920s newspaper clipping (poems formulated in the structure of newspaper columns that can be read either horizontally or vertically), as in "98Ruskin", or grows out ... + Read More
14.
Series: Chalk Paperback Doug Diaczuk 9781772140781 $18.00 FICTION Sep 01, 2016

Winner of the 38th Annual 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest "You" and L, a mysterious third gender runaway, hit the road on a mission to find the meaning of life. Traveling by plane, bus and car, You run into trouble with the cops, mourn a family tragedy, smoke hundreds of cigarettes, attend a retirement party, come to terms with a broken heart, and discover that all roads lead back to where You started - in the flowers drawn by two little girls in coloured chalk on the sidewalk. Selected Praise: The book's central conceit, that modern society is ... + Read More
15.
Series: Tacones High Heels Paperback Todd Klinck 9781895636840 $16.00 FICTION Nov 20, 2007

'Tacones' is a hangout for a subculture of outlaws and rejects-crackhead murderers, transvestite prostitutes, biastogerontophiles, hustler boys, and addicts-all painfully beyond denial, searching for connection, solace, humour, thrills, sex, and the perfect high. A rollicking and caustic romp through the violent and ambivalent world of the Toronto after-hours scene. Descend, if you dare...'Tacones' was first published in 1997 after winning the 19th annual 3-Day Novel Contest. It was immediately praised for its raw, unflinching portrait of an un... + Read More
16.
Series: Bad Engine New & Selected Poems Paperback Michael Dennis 9781772140774 $20.00 POETRY Apr 07, 2017

Selected and with an Introduction by Stuart Ross Michael Dennis has been hammering his love, his anger, his grief, and his awe into poems for over forty years. With seven books and nearly twenty chapbooks to his credit, Dennis isn't exactly a household name in Canadian poetry, but he is a natural heir to poets like Canadian icon Al Purdy and American legends Eileen Myles and Charles Bukowski. His poems are his life made into poems: direct, emphatic, honest. Bad Engine brings together mostly revised versions of about one hundred poems sele... + Read More
17.
Series: Body Breakdowns Tales of Illness and Recovery Paperback Janis Harper 9781895636864 $18.00 HEALTH & FITNESS Nov 23, 2007

'Body Breakdowns' is a collection of true tales about brushes with mortality and the medical establishment. Some are serious, some are funny; all are about illnesses, both minor and major. The pieces are all related to aging and are told in strong, engaging, and authentic voices. They are about people suddenly discovering they're vulnerable and the different ways they come to terms with that, as well as how they deal with the health professionals whose job it is to provide care for ourbodies. They are also about how people who have physically s... + Read More
18.
Series: Bad Endings Paperback Carleigh Baker 9781772140767 $18.00 FICTION Mar 15, 2017

Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award Finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Carleigh Baker likes to make light in the dark. Whether plumbing family ties, the end of a marriage, or death itself, she never lets go of the witty, the ironic, and perhaps most notably, the awkward. Despite the title, the resolution in these stories isn't always tragic, but it's often uncomfortable, unexpected, or just plain strange. Character digressions, bad decisions, and misconceptions abound. While steadfastly local in her choice of setti... + Read More
19.
Series: The Stone Face Paperback Sherry MacDonald 9781895636871 $13.00 DRAMA Nov 14, 2007

The year is 1964 and first-time film director Alan Schneider is about to embark on a project combining the talents of Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett. When Alan visits the home of Keaton to discuss the project, titled simply 'Film', he discovers the former star engaged in an imaginary card game with the long-deceased Irving G. Thalberg. It doesn't take long for Alan to realize that he has entered into an altered universe resembling the surreal world of the Buster Keaton film, a worldwhere doors solve problems and card games provide lessons in... + Read More
20.
Series: The Encyclopedia of Lies Paperback Christopher Gudgeon 9781772140750 $20.00 FICTION Apr 18, 2017

In these sixteen stories, Christopher Gudgeon, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Song of Kosovo, takes a heartbreaking and hilarious look into the lives, loves, sexual obsessions and delusions that inform a grand cast of off-kilter characters. Here is a gay couple who persevere with their marriage plans as the world, literally, crumbles around them, a woman who discovers the mysterious collection of letters that reveals a terrifying truth about her deceased fiancée, a dutiful son, locked in an life-or-death marathon race with hi... + Read More
21.
Series: Dirtbags Paperback Teresa McWhirter 9781895636888 $20.00 FICTION Nov 29, 2007

'Dirtbags' is a novel about reckoning-with one's past, one's choices, and one's expectations for the future. Spider is a scrappy kid growing up in rural B.C., and when a tragic event causes her world to implode she heads to Vancouver for solace, distraction, and experience. We witness a shifting morality as Spider moves through chaos and anarchy, often of her own choosing, with no certainty of truth besides what is found in brief encounters. She soaks up the world around her, getting swept up in an accelerated scene of punk music, partying, boo... + Read More
22.
Series: Kubrick Red: A Memoir Paperback Simon Roy 9781772140729 $18.00 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Nov 23, 2016

The Shining by Stanley Kubrick - that strange story in which a writer and his wife and young son with ESP stay in a mysterious hotel in low season - has been fascinating viewers since its release in 1980. Simon Roy first saw the film when he was 10 and was mesmerized by a particular line: "How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?" He has since seen the movie at least 42 times, because "it encompasses the tragic symptoms of a deep-seated defect that has haunted [it] for generations." The painstaking bond he has knitted with this story of evil has en... + Read More
23.
Series: DAMP Contemporary Vancouver Media Arts Paperback Oliver Hockenhull 9781895636895 $40.00 ART May 31, 2008

'DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Arts', is a singular effort, a visually exuberant work that is also on the vanguard of theoretical engagement, a symbiosis of form and content, in full-colour throughout, inclusive of extensive imagery, graphic intrigues and typographical accent-a rare and desirable art-infused statement of the city's media art scene-now. 'DAMP' is a long overdue critical engagement regarding the specificities of contemporary Vancouver media arts. The editors' effortis not so much to look to the past, nor to confine themselv... + Read More
24.
Series: Heroines Revisited Photographs by Lincoln Clarkes Paperback Lincoln Clarkes 9781772140712 $48.00 SOCIAL SCIENCE Sep 30, 2021

Heroines Revisited is a large format follow-up volume to the original Heroines: Photographs by Lincoln Clarkes that was released by Anvil in 2002. This new edition features over 150 portraits accompanied by three new critical essays that contextualize the five-year photo project and the controversial body of work. The Heroines Project is an epic photo documentary of the addicted women that were living and working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the late '90s and early 2000s. University of Western Ontario professor Kelly Wood writing in Phi... + Read More
25.
Series: Imagining British Columbia Land, Memory, and Place Paperback Daniel Francis 9781895636901 $18.00 LITERARY CRITICISM May 07, 2008

The twenty contemporary writers featured in this anthology have one thing in common: a connection to British Columbia, to a specific time, landscape, or community in BC. Their essays and memoirs have been inspired by, or are in some way affected by, the particular "sense of place" that sets that left-hand corner of the country apart from other provinces. Some are humorous? others are poignant. Whether describing a family history in Kitsilano, the difficulties fitting in as an immigrant, or a close encounter with a grizzly bear, these stories co... + Read More
26.
Series: Serpentine Loop Paperback Elee Kraljii Gardiner 9781772140545 $18.00 POETRY Apr 20, 2016

"Writers, like skaters, score the blank sheet and test the edge of inclusion and exclusion. Most of these poems begin with a word from skating and push off to another topic. Others revisit ideas of femininity, control and language as pattern, or visit the past through movement, or enact principles from the rink such as symmetry, joy, endurance, crescendo and accent, revolution, response. The blade melts ice via friction and pressure. I drifted away from skating but the language is imprinted in me, too, a tracing, a line extending beyond... + Read More
27.
Series: Elysium & Other Stories Paperback Pamela Stewart 9781895636918 $18.00 FICTION May 01, 2008

Pamela Stewart is a self-described "literary proctologist," and her writing often looks into places that people generally don't want to look. The stories in 'Elysium' are about the difficulties of life we all encounter as human beings, the fragility of life-the physical, mental, and spiritual challenges we must try to overcome. They are about ordinary people, characters searching for meaning. People are rescued, but not always in the way they hoped for or expected. Stewart's work is character-driven and empathetic. Pamela Stewart spent twenty ... + Read More
28.
Series: Ignite Paperback Kevin Spenst 9781772140538 $18.00 POETRY Apr 20, 2016

A finalist for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, Ignite is a collection of elegiac and experimental poetry powder-kegged with questions about one man's lifelong struggle with schizophrenia. Born into a strict Mennonite family, Abe Spenst's mental illness spanned three decades in and out of mental institutions where he underwent electric shock treatment and coma-induced insulin therapy. Merging memory and medical records, Kevin Spenst recreates his father's life through a cuckoo's nest of styles that both stand as witness and waltz to the ... + Read More
29.
Series: Suicide Psalms Paperback Mari-Lou Rowley 9781895636925 $15.00 POETRY Sep 27, 2008

'Suicide Psalms' is both hymn and visceral scream-of loss, despair, hope and ultimately redemption. These poems are drawn out with quick precision, as if they were indeed written in haste, or delirium, before tightening the noose or firing the pistol or jumping off of the ledge. Even though the media has recognized suicide as an epidemic, it is still not "talked" about outside of grief management and support groups. The subject remains taboo, and those left behind face a legacy of silence, shame and guilt. The poems in the first section of the ... + Read More
30.
Series: Assdeep In Wonder Paperback Christopher Gudgeon 9781772140521 $18.00 POETRY May 28, 2016

Assdeep in Wonder is a collection of new poems that explore the idea of identity in a myriad of contexts: personal, sexual, cultural, national, literary, and poetic. The poems are raw and immediate, exploring themes of addiction, sexuality, loss, love, and wonder in equal measures. Selected Praise: "Gudgeon's first poetry collection is a quirky valentine to irreverent readers, full of stark and pretty imagery, wry quips, and glorious bursts of vulgarity. ..." (Foreword Reviews)
31.
Series: Accelerated Paces Travels Across Borders and Other Imaginary Boundaries Paperback Jim Oaten 9781895636932 $18.00 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Dec 05, 2008

Dodging down back-alleys in bomb-torn Beirut. Wheeling past God and traffic in Mombassa, Kenya. Slipping around the edges of Alzheimer's disease, the Gulf War, and the eternity of CNN. Set somewhere between here and the heat-death of the universe, Jim Oaten's debut collection serves up random samples of literal and literary truth scooped up at top speed. Whether peeking out from the backseat of Mom and Dad's car or surveying the grimy wings of mental wards, 'Accelerated Paces' hurdlesthat uneasy terrain between creative fact and honest fiction... + Read More
32.
Series: Les Faux Bourgeois Paperback Andreas Seppelt 9781772140514 $26.95 COOKING Jan 15, 2021

Les Faux Bourgeois Bistro is an award-winning French bistro situated at the awkward intersection of Kingsway and Fraser Street in an equally disjointed neighbourhood in East Vancouver. Founded in 2007, Les Faux Bourgeois soon became a beacon of French bistro "amor" and garnered a loyal clientele and critical acclaim to match. Selected by the Georgia Straight as "Best French" in 2013, 2014, and 2015; Mia Stainsby of the Vancouver Sun proclaimed: "It either makes you pine for Paris, or transports you there!"; and, Vancouver Magaz... + Read More
33.
Series: Scalawags Rogues, Roustabouts, Wags & Scamps--Ne'er-Do-Wells Through the Ages Paperback Jim Christy 9781895636949 $20.00 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Dec 05, 2008

In these pages you will encounter gamblers and adventurers, conmen and conwomen, rodomontades and ragamuffins, outright fools and outrageous liars. Scalawags, the lot of them. But you can be an adventurer, a conman or conwoman, a fool, liar, gambler, rodomontade or ragamuffin and not be a scalawag. Many adventurers are not even interesting, come to think of it, let alone scalawags. There is an ineffable quality, an indefinable something or other that sets some people apart, places themin the special category that Jim Christy calls "scalawag." Y... + Read More
34.
Series: Garage Criticism Missives in the Age of Distraction Paperback Peter Babiak 9781772140507 $20.00 SOCIAL SCIENCE Sep 15, 2016

Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards) In Garage Criticism Peter Babiak eviscerates and deflates some of the cultural sacred cows of our time. From Fifty Shades of Grey ("Hot for Teacher: What Fifty Shades of Grey Taught Me About Salacious Grammar, Sexy Women and the Scandalous Conflation of Cultural and Literary Culture") to the disintegration of the "deep read" ("F You Professor: Tumblr, Triggers and the Allergies of Reading") to the Hunger Games ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - But It Might Be Carnivalized 'N' Shit") and Twil... + Read More
35.
Series: Tortoise Boy Paperback Charles Tidler 9781895636956 $15.00 DRAMA Dec 13, 2008

Four disparate people confront each other, their memory, and their responsibility at the emergency room of a hospital when brought together by the crisis of a teenager suffering a psychiatric episode. 'Tortoise Boy' is a "chamber play," four monologues, or mono-dialogues, if you will. The actors play many characters to tell the story, and they are also four voices, four instruments-a quartet-allowing them at times to step beside characters and show the story from other points of view. Can we have a future without a past? Is there any meaning to... + Read More
36.
Series: Cretacea & Other Stories from the Badlands Paperback Martin West 9781772140491 $20.00 FICTION Jul 28, 2016

Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards) The stories in Cretacea and Other Stories from the Badlands mostly take place in hot weather, where dust and sweat envelop everyone and everything. A teenage boy spends a summer with his hard-livin', hard-drinkin', messed up uncle and has to fight for a position in his new, temporary "family." A recent widower gets swept up in the world of the local swingers' scene. A band of misfits struggles to survive at a makeshift commune. An eccentric woman with OCD has a strange fetish that involves the pres... + Read More
37.
Series: Inventory Poetry by Marguerite Pigeon Paperback Marguerite Pigeon 9781895636970 $15.00 POETRY Apr 17, 2009

'Inventory' is a collection of 58 object poems. Taking as a starting point the reciprocal relation between subjects and objects, the book explores the unique way that objects appear in an individual consciousness. Each object in this inventory exists on its own and also reflects the author's experience, from the mundane stapler and tea bag, to the mysterious, extinct dodo bird, to entities that blur the line between person and thing. In this way, the collection highlights the often hidden dimensions of the objects we encounter, including their ... + Read More
38.
Series: As if Paperback Alban Goulden 9781772140484 $18.00 FICTION May 28, 2016

As If is a collection of stories that, as its title suggests, points at an indubitable truth: all literature is speculative. Goulden's, however, extends past the boundaries of conventional fiction into areas traditionally occupied by fantasy and magic realism. These stories rail against the industrial and digital mechanisms of our age and, in the great fabulist tradition, call upon its characters to take action, to reach beyond the repetitive anxiety of being a cog in the wheel of mechanical environmental destruction. Sound too ethereal and a... + Read More
39.
Series: loop, print, fade + flicker the moving images of david rimmer Paperback Mike Hoolboom 9781895636987 $15.00 PERFORMING ARTS May 01, 2009

The Pacific Cinematheque Monograph Series was initiated to explore the spectrum of contributions and innovations of Western Canadian filmmakers, videomakers, and fringe media artists. Monograph Number One focuses, fittingly, on David Rimmer, one of Canada's foremost experimental filmmakers. There is no better way to start off Pacific Cinémathèque's Monograph Series, celebrating West Coast filmmakers, than with the work of David Rimmer. Mike Hoolboom's essay tantalizes us with a romantic myth that contextualizes David, while Alex MacKenzie's in... + Read More
40.
Series: Jettison Paperback Nathaniel G. Moore 9781772140477 $20.00 FICTION Oct 06, 2016

Nathaniel G. Moore follows up his 2014 ReLit Award win for Savage with a diverse collection of short fiction, his first, Jettison, featuring stories which dangle somewhere between horror and romance. "Jaws" explores a father's desire to over-share the erotic origins of his children's "Aunt" Louise; "Blade Runner" uncovers the darkest and most hilarious aspects of dating by delineating the psych ward politics surrounding a male mental patient with five girlfriends who takes apart his bed when they visit; in "A Higher Power," readers are introdu... + Read More
41.
Series: Private Grief, Public Mourning The Rise of the Roadside Shrine in B.C. Paperback John Belshaw 9781895636994 $20.00 SOCIAL SCIENCE Sep 18, 2009

'Private Grief, Public Mourning' is an historical investigation of mourning sites and practices within the context of the province of British Columbia. The authors are concerned, primarily, with the rise of the roadside death memorial in the late twentieth century. They argue that RDMs are not a marginal, quirky phenomenon but part of a longer and complex story about the meaning of both death and grieving, one more thread in a long tapestry of public exhibitions of grief that serve to announce to the watching world who we are. " 'Private Grief... + Read More
42.
Series: No Flash, Please! Underground Music in Toronto, 1987-92 Paperback Derek von Essen 9781772140378 $28.00 MUSIC Apr 20, 2016

The music scene in the mid-eighties was in transition, just as the entire music business was, unaware that it was all about to change in 1991 when Nirvana's watershed release, Nevermind would unexpectedly hit number one on the Billboard chart. But that explosion didn't happen overnight. It was the product of many things: Toronto's developing music scene, club owners seeking original music, and the communities of musicians, artists, and fans supporting these new bands. No Flash, Please! documents an important period in Toronto's music community.... + Read More
43.
Series: Frenzy Paperback Catherine Owen 9781897535004 $15.00 POETRY Sep 15, 2009

In Greek mythology the muses preside over the arts and inspire writers and artists to produce works of genius. In 'Frenzy', Catherine Owen pays homage to the muses in a six-part compilation of muse-quests, some the author's, some those of others. In "Flood-Ghazals," she takes the leaping form of the Persian ghazal and makes it fluid, out of entirely, loosened from its couplet bounds and set free as an unravelled block of threads. "Cobalt Moments" are paeans to a place and its temporalinhabitants-a punk-metal bar in Vancouver and some of its c... + Read More
44.
Series: Under the Stone (Sous beton) Paperback Karoline Georges 9781772140361 $18.00 FICTION Apr 20, 2016

From birth, the child was locked away in a minuscule cell, at #804 of level 5969 of the Edifice. Around him ... only concrete, without a view of the outside world. And two people: the tyrannical father, slowly killing himself; and the mother, fearing eviction. Unmoving in his roost, the child's life will be disrupted by a transformation that will reveal an unexpected horizon. Praise for Under the Stone: "Although thematically this novel is not a relaxing read, it is beautifully written in short, sparse sections that cumulatively build toward a... + Read More
45.
Series: Animal Paperback Alexandra Leggat 9781897535011 $18.00 FICTION Apr 15, 2009

In a style reminiscent of Raymond Carver, the stories contained in 'Animal' depict people on the brink of major life change. They stand at crossroads they are often oblivious to; they suck thick air in rooms filled with palpable tension. Leggat's characters often seem captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroically resisting the ever-present pull of Fate. It matters little whether the characters take action or refuse to act; life acts for them. The reader is left to wonder: when does "meaning" cease to ha... + Read More
46.
Series: The Most Heartless Town in Canada Paperback Elaine McCluskey 9781772140354 $20.00 FICTION Apr 20, 2016

Myrtle is not one of those communities with a town historian or a roster of famous residents. Myrtle does, however, have a poultry plant, and looming above the plant are the eagles, massive birds that roost in trees and feast on entrails left by workers, creatures synonymous with power, freedom and might. The story starts with a newspaper photo taken in an obscure Nova Scotia town after the murder of eight bald eagles. The bizarre photo wins a contest and, over time, the unidentified girl in the foreground becomes, like Diane Arbus's Child with... + Read More
47.
Series: Cusp/detritus an experiment in alleyways Paperback Catherine Owen 9781895636741 $14.00 POETRY Sep 15, 2006

Rooted in the back alleys, squats and psychiatric wards of contemporary Vancouver and Montreal, these unyielding poems enter the intersecting tensions and intensities in characters such as Mike, a panhandler on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, Matthew, a runaway punk, and Dara, a single mother. 'Cusp''s central sequence, however, concerns the tragic life and death of Frank Bonneville, a schizophrenic and drug-addicted artist who became Ms. Owen's muse between their 2001 meeting and his 2003 suicide. Complemented by Karen Moe's haunting photograph... + Read More
48.
Series: Vancouver Vanishes Narratives of Demolition and Revival Paperback Caroline Adderson 9781772140347 $32.95 ARCHITECTURE Nov 15, 2015

Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes), 2016 #1 on the BC Bestseller List Since 2005, nearly 9,000 demo permits for residential buildings have been issued in Vancouver. An average of three houses a day are torn down, many of them original homes built for the middle and working class in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Very few are deemed significant enough to earn the protection of a heritage designation, but they are part of our heritage nonetheless and their demolition is not only an architectural loss. When these old ho... + Read More
49.
Series: Stolen Paperback Annette Lapointe 9781895636734 $16.00 FICTION Apr 14, 2006

Rowan Friesen has made a career of drug-dealing and small-time thievery on the outer edges of Saskatoon. Shiftless and seemingly friendless, he is, at first glance, an unlikely protagonist. But as 'Stolen' unfolds, we learn the details of Rowan's life: his well meaning but self-absorbed mother, his mentally ill father, and a high-school friendship both lustful and incendiary. This intriguing back-story runs alongside a current-day murder mystery, complete with road trips, arson, drinkand drugs, tech nerds and the RCMP. Rowan Friesen may not be... + Read More
50.
Series: Traversing Leonard Paperback Craig Savel 9781772140330 $16.00 FICTION Sep 15, 2015

Winner, 37th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest Paul is a young physics professor at a major university in New York state. He is drawn to Leonard Zavitsky, a once promising but now washed up and annoying ex-professor who is kept on the payroll as a custodian, more out of pity than any nod toward professor emeritus status. The once great Zavitsky has some wild theories about quantum time travel, but he convinces Paul to accompany him on a journey through time - back to the 1950s, then further back into the 1930s. Humorous, whimsical and dipped in sci... + Read More
51.
Series: Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit Electronic book text, EPUB Tom Osborne 9781895636727 $18.00 FICTION Mar 20, 2006

Longlisted for the ReLit Award Best Fiction 2006, Ottawa Xpress Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is a singularly Canadian novel featuring crime, culture, and sports. Written in the vein of John Kennedy Toole (Confederacy of Dunces) and JP Donleavy, Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is set in Vancouver during an early 80s Grey Cup weekend. Tourists and sports aficionados have descended on the city in record droves. There are, however, a few folks who have other interests and plans. Three small-time career crooks are planning a heist on one of the city’... + Read More
52.
Series: The Revolving City 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them Paperback Wayde Compton 9781772140323 $18.00 POETRY Sep 03, 2015

Finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them is a vibrant and diverse collection from a who's who of the west coast poetry scene. The poems assembled here range from the lyric to the experimental and address the theme of disconnection in an urban environment from a variety of positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives. The collection also includes short reflections on the poems, written by the poets themselves, providing readers with an intimate insight into the inspiration and mea... + Read More
53.
Series: Signs of the Times Paperback Bud Osborn 9781895636710 $16.00 POETRY Jan 03, 2006

'Signs of the Times' reunites the poetry of Bud Osborn and the woodprints of Vancouver printmaker and painter Richard Tetrault. As with their first collaboration, 'Oppenheimer Park', 'Signs of the Times' is both an unflinching look at Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and a beautiful object in its own right. "The linocut and woodcut prints that constitute half of the art of this volume are exquisite their elegance....This volume is the best value for your money you coulod ever hope as lovers of art, as lovers of people. It puts art into your swe... + Read More
54.
Series: 10 Women Paperback George Bowering 9781772140316 $20.00 FICTION Sep 15, 2015

Ten Women is a new collection of short fiction from one of Canada's preeminent writers. Each of these stories offers us a portrait of a woman with whom the author may or may not have had either an intimate and/or a meaningful relationship. You can't really tell for sure. Depending on your proclivities, some of them might even seem pretty hot - like the lurid fantasies that illustrate the covers of pulp fiction novels, the ethereal intellectual beauties that emanate from poetic fields of asphodels, or the petit bourgeois housewives that litter A... + Read More
55.
Series: Sleep of Four Cities, The Paperback Jen Currin 9781895636703 $15.00 POETRY Oct 30, 2005

Powered by lush imagery and lyricism, the poems in 'The Sleep of Four Cities' use the city as a metaphor for the complexity of self. This book invites the reader to take a journey through multiple cities-cities of memory, of desire, of imagination, of discovery, of loss-with only the map of language as a guide. The cities in this book are not always easily unlocked-they are at once tangible and invisible; they exist both inside and outside the speakers of the poems. Throughout the book, these speakers seek to discover what is within their gras... + Read More
56.
Series: M Is Dead a collaborative novel Paperback Brian Kaufman 9781772140309 $20.00 FICTION Jan 15, 2021

"M" is Dead is a collaborative novella written by five writers (Brian Kaufman, Annette Lapointe, Mary Ann Saunders, Michael V. Smith, and Madeline Sonik) about a FTM (female to male) transsexual performance artist known only as "M". Through five voices we learn the story of M, beginning with posthumous reminiscences from five friends who knew M in an intimate, personal, or professional capacity. The friends only learn of each other, and hear one another's reflection of M, at a small, private service organized by M's friend and manager. P... + Read More
57.
Series: A Small Dog Barking & Other Stories Paperback Robert Strandquist 9781895636697 $15.00 FICTION Nov 05, 2005

Following the success of his novel, 'The Dreamlife of Bridges', Robert Strandquist makes a much-awaited return to the short story form. As always, Strandquist's works explores relationships both familial and sexual, and plumbs the unspoken communications where things go haywire. This collection is more eclectic than his first collection, 'The Inanimate World', covering themes of nature, of building and destruction. Settings are extreme or post-apocalyptic and walk the line of magic realism. Despite the sometimes-alien landscapes his character... + Read More
58.
Series: Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer Paperback Stuart Ross 9781772140187 $18.00 LITERARY CRITICISM May 28, 2015

Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer is a continuation of the columns and essays that comprised Stuart's 2005 release, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer. Again, equal parts literary memoir, reckless tirade, and unsolicited advice for the aspiring writer, Further Confessions is drawn largely from Stuart Ross's notorious "Hunkamooga" column, his blog entries, essays for subTerrain magazine and other online venues. We bring them together here in their collected brilliance: alternately snarky, sincere, touching, honest, and always op... + Read More
59.
Series: Toy Gun Paperback Dennis Bolen 9781895636680 $22.00 FICTION Mar 01, 2005

'Toy Gun' continues the exploration of character and fate on the streets of Vancouver that began with the novel 'Stupid Crimes' (1992) and continued in 'Krekshuns' (1995). Written in the style of the "hard-boiled" detective thriller, 'Toy Gun' is very much a literary treatment of contemporary life in one of the world's most densely populated urban centres. The novel focusses more closely on the stormy life of the protagonist, parole officer Barry Delta-his loves and losses, his misfortunes, foolishness and struggle; all push Delta in directi... + Read More
60.
Series: Rogues, Rascals, and Scalawags Too More Ne'er-Do-Wells Through the Ages Paperback Jim Christy 9781772140170 $20.00 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Nov 15, 2015

Never before have as many outrageous and out-sized characters appeared in one place at the same time. Words like rogues, rascals, rapscallions, reprobates and rodomontades don't completely describe these individuals; they are more than each or any combination thereof. They are scalawags. People who claim to push the envelope are stamped, sealed and delivered compared with this bunch. They may be conmen or conwomen, adventurers, fabulists and/or delusional but they all share the extremepassion for life always more Life! Some are of the modern ... + Read More