Fiction
Coming Attractions 02
Edited by Maggie Helwig, Mark Anthony Jarman
Here are three new writers. Chris Labonté is a former editor of Prism international. Starting with the fabric of everyday life, his stories work toward a climax that involves more (or maybe less) than the light of common day. Kelly Cooper, who lives on a dairy farm in New Brunswick, writes deft, intelligent stories that seem at first essentially uncomplicated; before long, however, one realizes that everything matters and that nothing of importance has been left unsaid. Lawrence Mathews teaches at Memorial University. His stories suggest that if there’s much to laugh at in our lives there’s also plenty of room for understanding and compassion.
8.5 by 5.5 by 151 pages, cover by André Derain
$19.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1207 8
$39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1206 1
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Hunger
Jane Eaton Hamilton
 | A teenaged boy is embarrassed by his mother at his high-school graduation. A man loses his wife to another woman. A lesbian falls in love with a straight woman. Dry, witty and graceful, these stories are about longing and loss. “Jane Eaton Hamilton is a superb writer. Those who do not know this should read the book and judge for themselves”—Joy Kogawa. “These stories will grab you by the throat and not let you go. Highly original, gripping, sharp and deeply moving, they deserve the prizes they have won, and those to come”—Emma Donoghue. “Jane Eaton Hamilton is a fine and accomplished writer”—Carol Shields. Second printing.
8.5 by 5.5 by 159 pages, cover by Egon Schiele
$19.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1203 0
$39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1202 3
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Not the Orient
Maureen Moore
Maureen Moore is the daughter of an American vaudeville musician. In 1960 she moved from Montreal to Vancouver, where she worked as a waitress and shop assistant, later attending university as a mature student. She began writing fiction twenty years ago and now writes full time. In Not the Orient she tells the story of a poor immigrant family lost in the Canadian underclass. The family is ruled with an iron hand by Granny Olive, whose daughter, Thelma, is a stripper; her granddaughter, Claire, is afraid of normal love. The story is about Claire’s struggle to survive in a world where she counts for nothing. Second printing.
8.5 by 5.5 by 158 pages, cover by Amedeo Modigliani
$19.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1198 9
$39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1197 2
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The Obstacle Course
Richard Cumyn
 | “I wanted to plummet to earth and burn in plain sight, then crawl, broken and grateful, to some ruined accommodation of love.” Such is the longing of one of the characters in this, Richard Cumyn’s fourth collection of stories. From starting-block to finish line, this is Cumyn’s most ambitious book yet. “His scenes are so clear, and the prose so austere, that they seem like etchings in black and white”—Ottawa Citizen. These stories are all “enriched by Cumyn’s humorous, tart writing and sense of poetry”—Now Magazine. They “can stand comparison with the best”—Toronto Star.
8.5 by 5.5 by 180 pages
$19.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1216 0
$39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1215 3
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Losers
F.G. Paci
Losers is about teenagers, the teenagers with low self-esteem, the teenagers who are marginalized. It’s about the teachers who care enough to make a difference in their lives. The story is told from the point of view of both youngsters and teachers, so we get a true picture of what life is like in a typical high school. In an era when school shootings have become commonplace, this is a timely book. F.G. Paci himself teaches in Etobicoke.
8.5 by 5.5 by 165 pages, cover by Ghitta Caiserman-Roth
$19.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1211 5
$39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1210 8
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A Stranger to Myself
Don Bailey
 | Don Bailey began writing seriously while serving time in prison during the nineteen sixties. This book is a selection of the best stories he has written during the past thirty years. His stories may be realistic and tough, but as often as not they open up into moments of sheer astonishment. He writes about loneliness and marriage, about hunger and love. Now and then one suspects that Don Bailey is trying to find a resolution where none exists. But in his best stories, all the things he knows are held in balance, leaving things to speak, as they must, for themselves. In the end, what he’s writing about is the complicated adventure that we call living. Winner of the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction.
8.5 by 5.5 by 180 pages
$21.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1213 9
$42.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1212 2
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Non-Fiction
Real Bodies
Maggie Helwig
There are essays in this book about sex with robots as a motif in science fiction, the death of Princess Diana, violence against women in Indonesia and the women’s peace movement in Yugoslavia. The millennium has passed and now we’re waiting for the strength to live the millennium out. Waiting for the Great Change that may come at any time. That is where this book begins, with a question. Maggie Helwig looks at the answers that are being proposed to this question—which is, how do we live in this world? A world of incarnation, of real bodies we cannot escape from. A world of fragmentation and identity, a world of wars and rumours of wars, a world of danger and love.
8.5 by 5.5 by 174 pages, cover by Amedeo Modigliani
$21.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1196 5
$42.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1194 1
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Poetry
Jacob’s Dream
Elizabeth Brewster
 | This collection, as the title implies, is preoccupied with religion and the bible. Many of the poems take the form of prayers, based on the Amidah, prayers that reflect the gentle, elegiac mood that is typical of Elizabeth Brewster’s most recent work. But though she lives each day in the presence of the uncomfortable facts of age—she is 80—there’s a luminous beauty, a fragile radiance that informs the whole book. Last year Elizabeth Brewster was awarded the Order of Canada.
$18.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1209 2
$38.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1208 5
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Sea Voyage with Pigs
William Aide
Frédéric Chopin and his lover, George Sand, returned from their stay in Majorca, driven home by bad weather and the composer’s worsening health, in a ship that was carrying pigs in its cargo. Hence the title of this suite of poems, one for each of the 24 Preludes that Chopin completed on the island in 1839. Each copy is bound up with a compact disc of the Preludes, performed by William Aide himself. Second printing.
8.5 by 5.5 by 56 pages, with CD, cover by Gustav Klimt
$38.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1199 6
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Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Raymond Souster
 | Raymond Souster pitched for the Columbus Grads in West Toronto when he was still in his teens. Years later, when he started writing poetry, he wrote from the first about baseball, about playing ball, about watching ball. Now, at the age of 80, he’s still writing about baseball, still a faithful fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. These are the best baseball poems he’s ever written, introduced by W.P. Kinsella, creator of Field of Dreams and, like Souster, a baseball nut.
8.5 by 5.5 by 94 pages, cover photo by Jim Cummins
$38.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1191 0
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