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Short stories

  • Auteur:
    Klaus, Kathy
    Sommaire:

    Inspired by a whimsical sculpture by the same name, Wild Ride began as part of a workshop at the Humour Academy. Kathy Klaus collected stories from fifty-five women reflecting on an event or stage of their life. These guest Storytellers responded with authentic stories and life lessons that cover a wealth of topics from city to farm, travels abroad and everyday family life. Without filters for age, topic or writing experience, these stories capture the authentic voice of each woman and include a piece of advice they would offer their younger self. Flowing from the stories, the Surrounded by Story Retreat component of the book includes four Keynotes that illuminate the relationship of story, memory, emotion and gratitude and provide the results of research, personal account and commentary. Combined with the insights from the Storytellers, Breakout Rooms with writing prompts encourage the Reader to record their own thoughts and emotions, providing them an opportunity to consider their own memories and the realization that our lives are made of stories from which we can benefit when we more closely integrate them into our lives.

  • Auteur:
    Hogan Safer, Catherine
    Sommaire:

    One has lost a child and paints her house blue, another has found a not-so-handy man she can't get rid of; one perches in a tree and observes the neighbourhood, and yet another goes off into the woods with Jesus. These are some of the "wild pieces" that fill Catherine Hogan Safer's remarkable new book, Wild Pieces - characters as wry and quirky and heart-wrenching as the short stories in which Safer brings them to life. In language, taut and beautifully controlled, perfectly pitched and witty, Safer creates an array of unforgettable people. She finds the humble beauty in the life of a woman who spends each day knitting unmatched socks in the mall, and the pathos of a man who gathers small pieces of his father's life. At once very funny and very sad, here is the dignity of lives lived slightly slant.To enter these stories is to engage the wildness, the deep ache, the possibility of being alive.

  • Auteur:
    Curtis, Wayne
    Sommaire:

    There is a dreamlike quality to many of the stories in this new collection from Wayne Curtis. In Wild Apples, he returns to familiar themes of love and longing, and the push-pull emotions which inevitably accompany any attempt to break free of the ties that bind. Simple pleasures abound in these evocative stories, be it fishing on the river, gathering beans for an evening supper (are they beans or has-beens?), or listening to the jukebox at the local diner. Curtis mines the shaft of everyday experiences, turning each one into a meditation on human nature. In the title story, an afternoon drive yields fertile ground as a father and son stop to shake down a gnarled crab apple tree for the sweet-sour orbs of autumn. With a seemingly effortless style, he casts his line into the river of the past, reeling in tales of youthful folly, the Christmastime birth of a little sister, and life on the Miramichi River, which could be any river, anywhere. Curtis also shares his insight into well-known friends, including novelist David Adams Richards and Yvon Durelle, the Fighting Fisherman. His contemplation of the life and work of Robert Frost casts a fresh light on the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

  • Auteur:
    Vernon, Steve
    Sommaire:

    A new collection of ghost stories from every corner of New Brunswick. Pull up a seat and listen closely-storyteller Steve Vernon has another collection of classic, bone-chilling tales to tell. Steve takes readers from one end of New Brunswick to the other, unearthing dark tales of strange happenings along the way-from the headless ghost that haunts those who pass through Johnville's covered bridge, to the spirit of a murdered man that guards long-buried treasure at Wolf Point. Drawing on both documented stories and legends passed on by word-of-mouth, Steve sets one spooky scene after another with a storyteller's attention to every creepy detail, and just a touch of wry humour. It's as though you're sitting beside him at the campfire, getting goosebumps as each story unfolds.

  • Auteur:
    Thompson, Judith
    Sommaire:

    This book collects some of Judith Thompson’s earlier, hard-to-find plays, including White Biting Dog, a poetic black comedy about a divorced lawyer who prepares to kill himself by jumping off the Bloor Street Viaduct—until he encounters a small dog who sets him on a different path; I Am Yours, a harrowing story about a group of characters on the brink of despair as each tries to escape what haunts them the most; and Pink, a moving monologue set in 1970s South Africa that centres on a young girl’s surprising reaction after her nanny is murdered during a protest.

  • Auteur:
    Soop, Alex
    Sommaire:

    Following the immense success of his debut collection of horror stories, Midnight Storm, Moonless Sky, Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop once again scares the wits out of readers while uncovering overlooked social anxieties and racism affecting Indigenous Peoples across North America. Whistle at Night and They Will Come: Indigenous Horror Stories Volume 2 delivers stories ranging from supernatural mythology and the paranormal to post-apocalyptic scenarios, and zombie lockdown-12 tales in all in short story and novella formats. Whistle at Night coincides with the launch of Durvile & UpRoute Books' new horror series, "Dark Tales."

  • Auteur:
    Wangersky, Russell
    Sommaire:

    Winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, 2013, short-listed for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and finalist for the 2012 BMO Winterset Award From critically acclaimed and award-winning writer, Russell Wangersky, comes a new collection of short fiction. Everyone has something they’re good at: one particular personal skill that they use to keep their lives moving forward when their worlds suddenly become difficult or near-impossible. For some, it’s denial; for others, blunt pragmatism. Still others depend on an over-inflated view of self to keep criticism and doubt at bay. In his new short story collection, Whirl Away, Russell Wangersky – author of critically-acclaimed fiction and non-fiction including The Glass Harmonica, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself and The Hour of Bad Decisions – looks at what happens when people’s personal coping skills go awry. These are people who discover their anchor-chain has broken: characters safe in the world of self-deception or even self-delusion, forced to face the fact that their main line of defense has become their greatest weakness. From the caretaker of a prairie amusement park to the lone occupant of a collapsing Newfoundland town, from a travelling sports drink marketer with a pressing need to get off the road to an elevator inspector who finds himself losing his marriage while sensuously burying himself in the tastes and smells of the kitchen, these are people who spin wildly out of control, finding themselves in a new and different world.

  • Auteur:
    Lee, Fonda, Szal, Jeremy, Sun, Amanda, Smith, Angela Yuriko, Abad, Anne Carly, Jim, Calvin D., Bharathan, Deepak, Mak, Derwin, Xin, Diana, Myers, E.C., Chapman, Elsie, Lee, Gabriela, Chng, Joyce, Lowachee, Karin, Law, Lucas K., Yuan-Innes, Melissa, Dare, Miki, Kang, Minsoo, Sundar, Naru Dames, Fernandes, Pamela Q., Sridhar, Priya, Mehrotra, Rati, Wang, Regina Kanyu, Zhao, Ruhan, Divya, S.B., Hu, Shaoyan, Pi, Tony
    Sommaire:

    All emotions are universal. We live, we dream, we strive, we die... Stories that explore magic and science. Stories about love, revenge, and choices. Stories that challenge ideas about race, belonging, and politics. Each wrestling between ghostly pasts and uncertain future. Each trying to find a voice in history. Orphans and drug-smuggling in deep space. Mechanical arms in steampunk Vancouver. Djinns and espionage in futuristic Istanbul. Humanoid robot in steamy Kerala. Monsters in the jungles of Cebu. Historic time travel in Gyeongbok Palace. A rocket launch in post-apocalyptic Tokyo. A drunken ghost in Song Dynasty China. A displaced refugee skating on an ice planet. And much more. Embrace them as you take on their journeys. And don't look back...

  • Auteur:
    Law, Lucas K., Mak, Derwin, 1963-
    Sommaire:

    All emotions are universal. We born, we dream, we strive, we die...Where the stars rise? Stories that bind us together regardless where we come from or where we are going-on Earth or in space. Futuristic Istanbul. Kerala waters. Cebu jungles. Gyeongbok Palace. Post-apocalyptic Tokyo. Follow twenty-three science fiction and fantasy authors and their stories seen from an Asian perspective and envisioned through Asian eyes. Even beyond being Asian, the characters are diverse within themselves as they explore magic and science and deal with love, race, and politics. Immigrants dealing with racial tension and war camp internment. Orphans facing genocide or questioning the meaning of blood. Families struggling in aftermath of natural disasters or absence of technology. Individuals wrestling between ghostly pasts and uncertain future. Folks striving above class structures or finding a voice in history. But no one is perfect-each is unique, honest, real-a reflection of lives in profound and moving ways.

  • Auteur:
    Harrs, Norma
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    Dreams vanish in most of the masterful stories that make up Norma Harrs’s new collection. A young Irish girl falls in love with an older married professor and has her first date with heartache; a middle-aged woman attends her niece’s wedding and drunkenly surveys the wreck of her own life and love affairs; a young woman admires her kind and beautiful neighbour so much that she is almost drawn into a not so innocent profession … Adversity, sometimes disaster, befalls Norma Harrs’s characters, but instead of destroying these people, it often miraculously enriches their existence, bringing them a sudden awareness of what had been wrong with their lives and inspiring them to make a fresh start. Ms. Harrs seamlessly weaves together plot and evocative detail, wildly funny turns of events and inconsolable sadness; her stories’ earthy eroticism, their startlingly vivid dialogue and, above all, their breathtakingly original rendering of suffering and joy will remain with the reader long after the final page.

  • Auteur:
    Parmar, Prabhjot, Somaia-Carten, Nila
    Sommaire:

    This collection features the writing of women from places as diverse as Slovakia and Portugal, India and Uruguay, Korea and Kenya, Italy and Iran. They look and think differently. They have distinctive traditions, cultures and history. They speak a world of languages. All of these women are immigrants with unique heritages, who have come to North America in search of a new life. In When Your Voice Tastes Like Home these women write about their lives back home, the journey here and the challenges of being an immigrant. Their stories resonate with joy, despair, sadness and strength. These women, while writing sometimes of the past, look to the future with hope and determination. They live here now, and they want the rest of us to know it.

  • Auteur:
    Labatut, Benjamín
    Sommaire:

    When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger--these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

  • Auteur:
    Sommaire:

    This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today's leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

  • Auteur:
    Martz, Sandra
    Sommaire:

    This enchanting collection of writings and photographs evokes the beauty, humor and courage of women living in their later years and tells of the endearing moments of joy--and passion--to be found in the rich and varied world of midlife and beyond. An award-winning anthology that takes a refreshing look at issues of aging in a society that glorifies youth. This groundbreaking collection was one of the first non-clinical and positive books on women and aging, and was written by older women themselves. It challenged stereotypes and confronted the invisibility of older women in America.

  • Auteur:
    Boswell, Joan, Pike, Sue
    Sommaire:

    This newest anthology of short crime fiction from the Ladies’ Killing Circle takes a spirited look at baby boomers as they go from young, hairy and hip to old, bald and bad. The children of the sixties are are up to no good in another wicked anthology from this prolific collective of writers. The editors, themselves celebrated short crime fiction writers, have assembled such luminaries of crime fiction as Barbara Fradkin, H. Mel Malton, Vicki Cameron and Melanie Fogel, as well as Arthur Ellis Award winners Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini and Sue Pike.

  • Auteur:
    Yee, Paul
    Sommaire:

    This collection of short stories by Governor General’s Award winning author Paul Yee takes readers into the lives of Chinese teens in Canada, who must deal with their cultural backgrounds as well as battle parents over schooling, careers and peer relationships. Like all teens, they grapple daily with issues around sexuality, religion and fitting in.

  • Auteur:
    Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn
    Sommaire:

    Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's haunting "What Had Become of Us," is from her 2003 debut book of short fiction, Way Up.Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also part of the six@sixty collection.

  • Auteur:
    Hobsbawn-Smith, Dee
    Sommaire:

    In her first collection of short fiction, dee Hobsbawn-Smith creates protagonists struggling to navigate the troubles common to life everywhere, including children attempting to make their parents proud, the collapse of romantic relationships, and dealing with death and loss. Her stories are rife with the disasters of homelessness, domestic violence, and child abuse, and expose the difficulties that arise in relationships between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and parents and children. What Can’t Be Undone is a collection anchored in the Western Canadian landscape, and the natural imagery which has become synonymous to the area reigns supreme. These stories are powerfully influenced by local colour. Horses’ hooves echo from coulee walls, bluejays, crows, and eagles announce the seasons, and coyotes wail from distant valleys as Hobsbawn-Smith travels with her protagonists across rolling prairies, unforgiving mountain ranges, and along coastal highways. Hobsbawn-Smith introduces readers to characters of all ages, from a teenager navigating her crush on an older man in “Exercise Girls” to the recently widowed seamstress who rediscovers her zest for life in “Needful Things”. Loss is explored on various levels, from the ending of friendships and romantic relationships in stories such as “The Good Husband” and “Fallen Sparrow”, to a mother’s paralyzing fear of her children’s death in “The Quinzie”. Hobsbawn-Smith combines keen observation with an unflinching eye on her characters’ flaws to bring into painful focus the challenges of coming to terms with loss.

  • Auteur:
    Flood, Cynthia
    Sommaire:

    In these twelve stories that unfold over a few hours or a weekend or five decades, adults deceive themselves about their motives'greed, desire for control, jealousy, fear, ambition. With unflinching realism, reminiscent of William Trevor, Cynthia Flood exposes the failings of the human heart and, with a marvellous unsentimental brutality, leaves many a character unredeemed.

  • Auteur:
    Jones, Amy.
    Sommaire:

    Amy Jones's Metcalf-Rooke Award-winning short fiction collection What Boys Like brings together a motley assemblage of urban misfits and outsiders, and explores their love/hate relationships with their city and one another. Whether a parent and a child struggling with poverty, sisters trying to find their place in a family, two friends separated by distance and time, or between lovers who find themselves growing apart, Jones's characters grapple with lust, love and loss with an unsentimental eye, while remaining open to the sharp-edged humour caused by the chaotic and random nature of life, and the absurdity of the world around them. What Boys Like introduces another thrillingly original literary voice.

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