Big Sky Falling

Big Sky Falling
Author: Kelsey Andrews
Publisher:
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781553806592

For Kelsey Andrews, the metal-scarred Vancouver skyline is an emblem of distance from her family home in Grande Prairie, Alberta, where nothing breaks the sky but the curve of the Earth. As she adjusts from a thirsty countryside filled with little wonders to a lush cityscape with fewer miracles, depression nests within her, weighted by loneliness and past secrets that remain unsayable. These poems lessen the weight of those burdens. She befriends, rather than beats, depression with the help of a natural world populated by winged things, animals, trees, water and sky. Her poems play with earthy whimsy, though they are not without gristle and little violences -- the moon's ancient bruises, gargoyles that shriek and moan, the thunk when you split a chicken. From snails to suicide and picking blackberries to killing flies, through it all, Kelsey finds beauty and the light that persists. Poetry.

The Amateurs

The Amateurs
Author: Liz Harmer
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345811259

In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over. Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past. In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared. Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie. The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.

The Museum at the End of the World

The Museum at the End of the World
Author: John Metcalf
Publisher: Biblioasis
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1771961082

Set in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Ottawa, Ontario, the stories in The Museum at the End of the World span the life of writer Robert Ford and his wife Sheila. Playing with various forms of comedy throughout, author John Metcalf paints a portrait of 20th century literary life with levity, satire, and unsuspecting moments of emotional depth.

In a Cafe

In a Cafe
Author: Mary Lavin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1999
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780141180403

On an island teeming with masters of the short story, Mary Lavin's distinct voice and devoted following set her apart. Before her death in 1996, this Irish writer had received many honors and prizes not only for her luminous short stories but also for several highly regarded novels. William Trevor praised Lavin's ability to "make moments timeless, to illuminate people and places, words and things, by touching them with the magic of the rarely-gifted storyteller." In a Cafe makes available for the first time in the United States a collection of her most beloved pieces as compiled by her daughter. In masterworks such as the title story, an unsettling portrayal of widowhood, and "The Will, " which Layin considered the finest expression of her art, the justice in Trevor's declaration we recognize that "the short story of today owes her a very great debt."

My Father, Fortune-Tellers and Me

My Father, Fortune-Tellers and Me
Author: Eufemia Fantetti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781896949758

A resilient and witty story of fate, free will and superstition by an award-winning author. As the daughter of Southern Italian immigrants joined by an arranged marriage, Fantetti grew up witnessing and weathering the devastating consequences of her mother's schizophrenia. Moving to the other side of the country to escape the constant turmoil, Fantetti casts a canny eye on her painful childhood through writing and performing stand-up comedy. When her dad develops depression, a host of long-buried ancestral beliefs spring forward--like the three witches of the Macbeth-- Mal'occhio, Maledictions and Stregheria -- Fantetti blends old customs with new traditions in an ancient and modern pot to heal a fractured self; studying the sky for planetary alignment; consulting her trusty tarot deck for guidance and visiting her dad's psychic healer for a prescription for prescience. Throughout her journey the enduring father-daughter bond shines through the wisecracks, with great love, determination, and grace.

Siege 13

Siege 13
Author: Tamas Dobozy
Publisher: Dundurn.com
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1771022639

2012 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize — Winner 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award — Finalist, English-Language Fiction In December of 1944, the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects were to be felt for decades afterward. Siege 13 is a collection of thirteen linked stories about this terrible time in history, both its historical moment, but also later, as a legacy of silence, haunting, and trauma that shadows the survivors. Set in both Budapest before and after the siege, and in the present day – in Canada, the U.S., and parts of Europe – Siege 13 traces the ripple effect of this time on characters directly involved, and on their friends, associates, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and adoptive countries. Written by one of this country’s best and most internationally recognized short story authors – the story "The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kallman Once Lived" won the 2011 O. Henry Prize for short fiction – Siege 13 is an intelligent, emotional, and absorbing cycle of stories about war, family, loyalty, love and redemption.