Meet Anne Graham, mother of two young children, young, attractive, heavily pregnant -- and alone. Things have not worked out at all the way Anne intended. Her promising academic career was cut short by an unexpected pregnancy and an early marriage. Her stable home life crumbled with her husband's announcement that he was leaving her to move into a commune with his secretary.Now she is a housebound single mother, whose intellectual life has shrunk to stolen moments of bedtime reading. The solution to her problem is clear to her friends and neighbours. She must find someone to mind the children and then go back to school or get a job. It's obvious. Or is it?Once again, Constance Beresford-Howe has approached a common theme from an uncommon point of view, with her own blend of perceptiveness and dry humour. Views: 43
Intrepid Mountie Jack Taggart is hurled into a world where morality, justice, and the legal system are pitted against one another. Taggart investigates the murder of someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wiretap information identifies a shadowy gang member known only as Cocktail as being responsible.Taggart and his partner go undercover to join one of a coalition of gangs who are at war in British Columbia. Their mission is to identify Cocktail and gain evidence to convict him of murder. Taggart soon finds himself knee-deep in drive-by shootings, meth labs, retaliatory murders, and date rapes.An offer of a truce pact to stop the gang warfare is arranged by Cocktail. Taggart, along with gang bosses, is taken to a remote location to discuss a peace agreement. What they find is that Cocktail has lured them into a trap of torture and murder. Views: 38
The eleventh Jack Taggart Mystery pits Taggart against the ruthless new leader of the Satans Wrath Motorcycle Gang. After the new leader of the Satans Wrath Motorcycle Club ordered the murder and torture of three people — one who was wrongly suspected of being an informant — a bloody message painted on the wall at the murder scene is personally addressed to Jack Taggart. Horrified by the discovery, Taggart's shock turns to rage when the bikers' next stop is to his home. When a new assistant commissioner orders Taggart to stay clear of the bikers, Taggart forms a deadly plan of vengeance to deliver justice as only he could. Views: 38
RCMP detective Jack Taggart has avenged the murders of his niece and nephew, but the consequences linger. His deal with Damien, leader of the Satans Wrath motorcycle gang, has put him in a bind and has jeopardized an informant in the gang. Meanwhile, other members of the gang, led by a mysterious figure known only as "The Boss", have been working to eliminate Taggart by destroying the lives of anyone with connections to him.And if the bad guys aren't enough of an obstacle, there are problems to be found on the force itself. Assistant Commisioner Isaac is becoming more and more suspicious that Jack may have been responsible for the death of a corrupt Crown prosecutor. With Jack's life and career on the line, Above Ground is a tough and gritty follow-up that will more than satisfy readers who were pulled into the dark Vancouver underworld by Loose Ends, the first Jack Taggart mystery. Views: 37
A stirring novel of coming of age within a dysfunctional familySweetly funny and deeply perceptive, this novel follows teenager Maya Devine's search for her mother, her father, and above all, herself, offering a fresh take on what it is to grow up and to be part of a family. Maya's mother Marigold is desperate for enlightenment: she drags Maya to library lectures on making money and gardening as part of her home schooling, attends AA meetings even though she never has more than two drinks at a time, and conscripts Maya for the very personal crusade of spreading the words of the Bhagavad Gita from street corners. When Marigold is diagnosed with cancer and vows to spend her final days in the tepee she's set up in the backyard, 11-year-old Maya starts hearing people's thoughts as neighbors and strangers, believing the dying Marigold to be a prophet, camp out on the family's front yard. As her father grows ever more distant, Maya finds solace in the music of Corey Hart, but when... Views: 36
What's left of us when we're gone? In When I Was Young and In My Prime, a young woman watches her grandparents begin to decline. As she sorts through the couple's belongings, she reflects on the untold stories and unsung bonds that make up our lives. Meanwhile, modern urban life places strains on her own marriage and on her sense of what, ultimately, we owe each other.Weaving together voices, diary entries, poems, conversations and lists, When I Was Young and In My Prime cuts to the heart of our search for intimacy and family, for what makes life meaningful and love real. The result is a smart, moving novel about personal and cultural decline, dignity and work, the urban and the rural, the old and the new, and the search for something ageless. Views: 36
In the tenth Jack Taggart Mystery, Taggart goes head to head with a longtime enemy who’s been eluding him for years …Jack Taggart is once again going head to head with his nemesis, Damien Zabat, national president of the Satans Wrath Motorcycle Gang. Taggart and Zabat’s lives have long been intertwined by a violent history of retribution and murder, dependent on unwritten rules of conduct — rules far outside the parameters of the law, but that each man feels are just. To Taggart, Zabat represents an unspeakable evil. He has eluded justice and left behind a trail of death. As Zabat approaches retirement, his son, Buck, joins the gang. When Taggart obtains evidence to send Buck to jail, he gives Zabat two days to disclose the details of a new European cocaine connection in return for his son’s freedom. Zabat’s refusal leads Taggart to gamble with his own life in a desperate attempt to destroy the man he has long been after. It is a gamble he wishes he had... Views: 35
These richly imagined tales, by turns playful and dark, and shot through with magic, depict the lives of East African Ismailis, a Muslim community with origins in India and a history of upheaval and dislocation. Set variously in Canada and East Africa, these stories portray characters caught between home and exile, between what is real and what is imagined, what is lost and what is found. A baby with wings, a disappeared life savings, a pearl diver's magical secrets—in each story, what is cursed is also blessed, and redemption, when it comes, will take your breath away. Reminiscent of the stories of Singer and O. Henry, Baby Khaki's Wings is an unforgettable reading experience and the mark of a singularly new and luminous literary talent. Views: 33
Jack Taggart, an undercover Mountie, lives in a world where the good guys and the bad guys change places in a heartbeat. Taggart is very good at what he does. Too good to be playing by the rules. The brass decide to assign a new partner to spy on him.Taggart's new partner discovers a society dependent upon unwritten rules. To break these rules is to lose respect. To lose respect is to lose one's life. Loose Ends is terrifying. It is a tale of violence, corruption, and retribution, but it is also a story of honour and respect. Views: 31
This is a new young adult novel by PEI's Poet Laureate. It is a dystopic story about Nora who lives in the walled city of Aahimsa, an idyllic community of girls and women working together to make a peaceful life free of the brutality of the outsiders. As the companion of the mayor of Aahimsa's daughter, Alice, she enjoys privileges that other women from the working class can only dream of. But when she and Alice find an outsider baby abandoned within the city walls, Nora starts to question whether the outsiders pose as much of a threat to her civilization as she's been taught. Views: 30
A remarkable debut novel and bittersweet tale of the unflinching love and devotion between a mother and daughter.Razor sharp and darkly funny Going Down Swinging chronicles two years in the life of the Hoffmans. Eilleen Hoffman has just told Danny, her con-artist lover and father of her youngest daughter Grace, to get out — for good. Once a teacher, Eilleen lived a middle-class life, but her taste in men coupled with a predilection for pills and booze has brought her down. Desperate to prevent her family from sinking deeper into poverty, Eilleen reluctantly goes on welfare. Eventually she turns to the only friends she has left, hustlers and hookers, to learn how a woman makes fast money, no investment necessary.With Eilleen on welfare and her older daughter Charlotte a teenaged runaway, child welfare authorities descend on the Hoffmans. As Eilleen trails through several attempts at drying out, the well-intentioned Children's Protection Society finally intervenes to apprehend Grace. With the threat of prolonged separation now a stark reality, Eilleen and Grace must rally to confront their demons with grit, determination and humour. Unblinkingly observed and brilliantly written, Going Down Swinging is about the powerful bond between mother and child. And with her skilful narrative interplay, Billie Livingston illustrates poignantly how the truth of our stories lies not so much in the black and white, as it does in the grey. Views: 28
"What the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!"—L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 filmHe had 57 seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escape (by John Sturges, starring Steve McQueen); the actor, though uncredited, is Michael Paryla. He was half Jewish. Shortly after filming he died.In This Great Escape, Andrew Steinmetz tenderly reconstructs the life of a man seen by millions yet recognized by no one, whose history—from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later—intersects bitterly, ironically, and often movingly with the plot of Sturges's great war film. Splicing together documentary materials with correspondence, diary entries, and Steinmetz's own travel journal, This Great... Views: 28
The Sacrifice is a haunting depiction of one family and its often tragic attempts to come to terms with a new life in a new country. It is a moving, almost biblical story of a father possessed by his hope for his only son; of a son who rebels against his father's ideals, yet sacrifices himself to preserve what his father most prizes; and of a grandson who must reconcile the flaws in his inheritance. Views: 26
