Meet Iain Reid: an overeducated, underemployed twenty-something who moves back in with his lovable but eccentric parents on their hobby farm. But what starts out as a temporary arrangement turns into a year-long extended stay, in which Iain finds himself fighting with the farm fowl, taking fashion advice from the elderly, fattening up on home-cooke …

Bestselling novelist Joe Logan walks out into a hot summer's evening in central London. The next day his body is found dumped in a disused Victorian crypt at the Brompton Cemetery. He has been tied up, shot, and castrated. The killing has the hallmarks of a professional hit. But what had Logan done to deserve such a brutal end?

Detective Mark Tartag …

Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Jewish Book Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize

In Far to Go, one of our most accomplished young writers takes us inside the world of an affluent Jewish family in Prague during the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are secular Jews whose lives are turned upside …

In The New Entrepreneurs, author and venture capitalist Andrew Heintzman introduces us to the innovative business leaders who are at the forefront of the green economy. From forestry, water, and energy to transportation and agriculture, Heintzman profiles the enterprises that are developing cutting-edge, clean-tech products and innovations for expo …

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once.

Only three people are privy to the secret — t …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured annually with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary awards. The 2010 edition of the anthology includes poems from all the books to be shortlisted this year by judges Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips. Th …

Governor General's Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton's considerable dramatic lyric powers reach a new sophistication and intensity in his astonishing collection Patient Frame. From the court of Medici to the My Lai massacre; from love for a daughter and mother, through nightmare and displacement, to moments of painful a …

The Good Body is a triumphant blend of mordant humour and heartbreak. It tells the comic and poignant story of a retired pro-hockey ruffian named Bobby Bonaduce who is stubbornly ignoring a disease - multiple sclerosis - that may be killing him. Bobby returns to his hometown and scams his way into university in a misguided attempt to redeem his mes …

The six essays that make up this compelling book view the long shadow of past guilt as a German experience as well as a global one. International bestselling author Bernhard Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. He considers how to use the lessons of history to motivate …

The Irrationalist is the acclaimed follow-up to the award-winning poetry collection, Past Imperfect, from one of Canada's best poets. At once whimsical and heartbreaking, these eccentric lyrics investigate the shifting grounds of knowledge while refusing to take any authority -- be it Epictetus, Therese de Lisieux, Nicolaus Copernicus, Ma Yuan, or …

This novel by Scotiabank Giller Prize nominee Pascale Quiviger is about the bonds of friendship; the ties between mothers and daughters; the act of creation itself. It's a magical, intricately wrought work of art that reveals layer upon layer, nuance upon nuance.

On a sparkling spring day a young woman finds the house of her dreams, complete with a …

Bloom is the electrifying debut collection from one of our best emerging poets. If a studio technician could "remix" poems by modern and contemporary poets so they retold the story of the Manhattan Project from the viewpoint of Louis Slotin, simultaneously putting Robert Lowell in whispered conversation with Ted Hughes, as vocalized by a Canadian p …

A. L. Kennedy's remarkable new collection of stories shows us exactly what becomes of the broken-hearted. She reveals the sadness, violence, hurt, and terror, but also the redemption of love, and she does so with enormous human compassion, wild leaps of humour, and the brilliantly original linguistic skill that distinguishes her as one of the world …

Literary legend Jim Harrison's collection of novellas, The Farmer's Daughter, finds him writing at the height of his powers, and in fresh and audacious new directions.

The three stories in The Farmer's Daughter are as different as they are unforgettable. Written in the voice of a home-schooled fifteen-year-old girl in rural Montana, the title novell …

Written in Marjorie Harris's trademark witty, engaging, and accessible style, Thrifty is chock-full of simple and savvy tips drawn from her own richly thrifty experience, and those of renowned experts such as bestselling author Margaret Atwood, actor R. H. Thomson, travel writer Sylvia Fraser, and the Globe and Mail Style columnists. With solid tip …

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.

In Polyne …

With her multiple-award-winning, bestselling, and critically acclaimed novel The Outlander, Gil Adamson established herself as one of our preeminent fiction writers. But ten years before The Outlander, when Adamson published another book of fiction with a small press, readers and critics immediately sat up and took note. Barbara Gowdy called Help M …

A dazzling portrait of twenty-somethings who grew up on text-messaging and the war on terror.

In this robust, elegantly plotted, and ultimately life-affirming novel, Zoe Whittall presents a dazzling portrait of the Millennial Generation — the twenty-five-year olds who grew up on anti-anxiety meds, text-messaging each other truncated emotional reac …

With this astounding fourth novel in her ongoing series of contemporary masterpieces (These Festive Nights, Thunder and Light, Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, and Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom), Marie-Claire Blais invites us again to enter a complex circle of unforgettable characters. But this time, the tone is different: Blais' writing ha …

National Book Award finalist Heather McHugh presents a fast-paced and brilliantly humorous book. Utilizing medical terminology to work through loss and detachment, McHugh's startling rhymes and rhythms -- along with her sarcastic self-reflection -- serve as antidotes to the sufferings of the world. Being upgraded to serious from critical condition …

Winner of Canada Reads 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twe …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured annually with the Griffin Poetry Prize. The 2009 edition of the anthology includes poems from all the books to be shortlisted this year by judges Michael Redhill, Saskia Hamilton, and Dennis O'Driscoll. The poems in the anthology are selected and introduced by …

The year was 2000. The alternative music scene had all but died, and pre-packaged pop stars had filled the vacuum. But in a basement apartment in the heart of downtown Toronto, two musicians were forming a creative partnership that would revive the mass appeal of indie music and forever change how we think of a band.

In this biography of the ever-ev …

David French's award-winning plays Leaving Home, Of the Fields, Lately and Salt-Water Moon are available for the first time in a special one-volume edition, with an introduction by Albert Schultz.

Set in the 1950s, Leaving Home tells the story of the Mercers, a Newfoundland family who have emigrated to the mainland and lost all sense of their place …

Award-winning author and poet Emily Schultz offers an immensely readable, funny, and sharp novel about a man who works for a Harlequin-like publisher, and gradually discovers that he has arrived in "heaven." Like Will Ferguson's international bestseller, Happiness, Heaven is Small is a smart, satirical novel from one of our best.

Heaven is Small is …

Karen Solie launched to prominence with her first collection of poems, Short Haul Engine (2001), finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winner of many other awards and citations. She continued her upward trajectory with Modern and Normal (2005), and is now considered one of Canada's best poets.

Pigeon is yet another leap forward for this singer o …

One autumn evening, shortly after ending a ten-year stint as a pop-music columnist for the Montreal Gazette, Eric Siblin attended a concert at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music. There, something unlikely happened: he fell in love with a piece of classical music -- Bach's cello suites. Part biography, part music history, and part literary myster …

Winner of several prestigious prizes, The Spare Room is extraordinary writer Helen Garner's intense, moving investigation of the boundaries and limits of a lifelong friendship.As the novel opens, Helen lovingly prepares the spare room in her home for her dear friend Nicola, who is coming to visit for three weeks while receiving controversial treatm …

With an updated preface by the author.

Since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, rights have become the dominant language of the public good around the globe. Indeed, rights have become the trump card in every argument. Long-standing fights for aboriginal rights, the issue of preserving the linguistic heritage of m …

The CBC Massey Lectures, Canada's preeminent public lecture series, are for many of us a highly anticipated annual feast of ideas. However, some of the finest lectures, by some of the greatest minds of modern times, have been lost for many years -- unavailable to the public in any form.

This is the second volume of recovered lectures, a follow-on to …

Hurting is her special skill.

On a snowy February morning, London art dealer Rachel Tenison goes for a jog through Holland Park. Still giddy from the previous evening, her legs wobbly from too much drink and too little sleep, she falls at the bottom of an icy hill. Lying on her back, she savours the sensation of snowflakes melting on her skin and th …

Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage's bestselling and critically acclaimed first book, De Niro's Game.

The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described thief has just tried but failed to commit suicide. Rescued against his will, the narrato …

Fascinating, revelatory, and powerful, Butterfly MindM is a memorable work from a renowned reporter on the front line of history.

In this memoir, award-winning journalist Patrick Brown weaves together three stories: the first is Brown's own education as a journalist over the past twenty-five years, and his parallel struggle with alcoholism. The seco …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize. The 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology includes poems from the exceptional books shortlisted by judges George Bowering, James Lasdun, and Pura Lopez Colome. The poems in the 2008 anthology are selected and introduced by …

Indian summer, 1607. Intrepid explorer and map-maker Samuel de Champlain has founded a new and precarious settlement in Annapolis Royal, New France (present-day Nova Scotia). As winter looms, two threats emerge: boredom amongst the men and the deadly sickness scurvy. Champlain hits upon the idea of a moveable feast -- an order of good cheer -- wher …

In February 1956, a remarkable young woman named Christina McCall began her working life as an editorial secretary at Maclean's magazine. It was a legendary time there, when the likes of Pierre Berton, Robert Fulford, June Callwood, Peter Gzowski, and Peter C. Newman graced the magazine's pages. McCall would come to join that illustrious group, and …

Drugs, weapons, migrant labour, women - these are just a few of the many goods that effortlessly cross national borders in this globalized age, often without the knowledge or permission of the nations concerned. How is this remarkable criminal feat managed?

From gun runners in the Ukraine, to money launderers in Dubai, cyber criminals in Brazil, rac …

In February 2003, American astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin were on a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station. But then the space shuttle Columbia exploded far beneath them. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost th …

Chameleon Hours, Elise Partridge's follow-up to her much-admired Fielder's Choice (2002), is evidence that lyric poetry -- clean, bracing, unadorned -- truly can be equal to challenging subject matter. In these poems, love for friends, family, and partners, and most impressively, the urge to love strangers in need, kindles the fire of the voice. Pa …

Jesus never said he was the son of God, he made no mention of the devil, and he didn't instruct his followers to wait for their reward in the eternal afterlife. Today, many people are shocked by these sober conclusions of modern biblical scholarship. So what did Jesus teach?

Social historian Rex Weyler uncovers the mystery surrounding the historical …

Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall takes us on a dreamlike voyage into nature at that secret moment when fall turns into winter. We find ourselves in a kind of paradise, which humans may be part of but which they have not despoiled.

A father and son lead us through forests, down rivers, over lakes and ponds. Along the way we experience the primordia …

The highly anticipated follow-up to the award-winning poetry collection Drift, Kevin Connolly's Revolver is a daring marriage of brilliant technical skill and explosive imagination. Each of the poems in this extraordinary collection is written in a different vocal register -- revolving through poetic voices with precise control and sharp wit. Conno …

Mortality, Love, Ethics, Civilization, Divine Presence, Human Body, Modernity, The Natural World, and Constructed Spaces. The Sentinel watches and reports back to us in a voice that is timeless and worthy of trust. Whether describing renewal and regeneration, the despair brought on by global capitalism, or a place where decay and loss meet their an …

The West was a lawless domain when Jerry Potts was born into the Upper Missouri fur trade in 1838. The son of a Scottish father and a Blood mother, he was given the name Bear Child by his Blood tribe for his bravery and tenacity while he was still a teen. In 1874, when the North West Mounted Police first marched west and sat lost and starving near …

Die. Die with me. Be mine forever. That's what he had said.

When fourteen-year-old Gemma Kramer's broken body is found on the floor of St. Sebastian's Church in a quiet London suburb, the official ruling is that she jumped to her death from the organ gallery. But when a witness claims to have seen Gemma kissing a much older man outside shortly befor …

The CBC Massey Lectures, Canada's preeminent public lecture series, are for many of us a highly anticipated annual feast of ideas. However, some of the finest lectures, by some of the greatest minds of modern times, have been lost for many years -- unavailable to the public in any form.

Important thinkers whose Massey Lectures are lamentably out of …

In the 2007 CBC Massey Lectures, Alberto Manguel leads us back into our literary tradition to find insight about one of the most contentious issues of our time: the rise of ethnic nationalism.

The end of ethnic nationalism -- building societies around sets of common values -- seems like a good idea. But something is going wrong. Manguel suggests we …

In 1939, Alfred Day had wanted war. And when he got it, he found purpose in its turmoil: he found his proper role as tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew; and -- most extraordinary of all -- he found Joyce, a woman to love. But now, that's all gone: the war took it away. And maybe the war has taken him a …

The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, originally published in French as La Petite Fille qui Aimait Trop les Alumettes, dominated the bestseller lists and captured major media attention when it appeared in Quebec. It was the first novel published in Quebec ever to be nominated -- let alone become a finalist -- for France's prestigious Prix Re …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary awards.

The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the 2007 Shortlist includes poems from the exceptional books shortlisted by jurors John Burnside, Charles …