For readers of Colson Whitehead, James McBride, Yaa Gyasi and Lawrence Hill, Up From Freedom is a powerful and emotional novel about the dangers that arise when we stay silent in the face of prejudice or are complicit in its development.As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes a...

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, followin...

The Great Lakes have been central to the development of eastern North America. In this beautifully designed, comprehensive gem of a guide to the ecosystem at the heart of Canada” (The Tyee), award-winning science and nature writer Wayne Grady makes scientific concepts accessible as he reveals how human impact has changed this life-giving region.The Great Lakes: A Natural History of a Changing Region is the most authoritative, complete and...

For readers of Colson Whitehead, James McBride, Yaa Gyasi and Lawrence Hill, Up From Freedom is a powerful and emotional novel about the dangers that arise when we stay silent in the face of prejudice or are complicit in its development.As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes a...

A new edition of a contemporary natural history classic, with a new foreword by Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees.'A story that fills us with wonder: the tree keeps its soul and steals our hearts'Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of TreesAll across the planet, trees literally hold the world together. This is the awe-inspiring biography of a single tree, from the moment the seed is released from its cone un...

Did you keep a list of the words coined by Covid? Wayne Grady did! They're deftly woven into a journal/timeline, taking us through two years of surrealism and limbo.—Margaret AtwoodThis exploration of the many new terms of the Covid-19 pandemic provides insight into the ways an ever-evolving vocabulary helped us cope with our anxiety and adapt to a new reality.When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Wayne Grady started collecting the words ...

The premise is deceptively simple: a dirt-poor charwoman and former prostitute leans on her mop and tells her life story. But what a story! As she reminisces and rants, telling stories about herself, her friends and neighbours, the priest and his church, and every other aspect of life in her village, she is actually telling the story of Acadie.More than 30 years after its first publication in English, and five years since Wayne Grady completed this new translation, La Sagouine

Long-shortlisted, 2017 ReLit AwardsFacing the dwindling years of his life, an old man waits for his turn on the auction block, hoping to be sold to a family as decent as the one he is leaving. It is not the first time he has been here, and it may not be the last.Mute in life but loquacious on the page, the old man tells the colourful story of his rootless life. Abandoned by his family and first auctioned off at the age of seven — "Ladies and gentlemen, this...

Lesley Choyce's novella The Summer of Apartment X is a beach book for grownups who remember how they got that way. Fred Winger and his two buddies, Richard and Brian, intend to take the beach resort town by storm. It's the fateful summer between high school and university, early 1970s version. Equipped with two barely mobile cars and a seized-up MG motor, around which Richard wants to build an entire sports car, they plan to rent a suave apartment, get cool jobs, meet girls, and l...

In the 1920s, Jim, Bert and Rose Evans all move from Newfoundland to Brooklyn, New York, in search of work and a better life, leaving their sister Annie back home in St. John’s. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind. By the Rivers of Brooklyn transforms into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation New...

Where did passports come from? Why did 1930s stewardesses carry wrenches? And how did teetotalers shape the modern vacation? Wanderlust answers these questions and more, as author Laura Byrne Paquet delves into the social history of travel. Now a multi-billion dollar industry, travel is also one of the world's oldest. Paquet follows hypochondriac Greeks to the Oracle of Delphi, checks out the bedbugs in medieval coaching inns, enjoys a Finnish sauna with a group of well-bred Victorian ladi...

Over Our Heads is a novel that weaves together the histories of two very different half-sisters who return home to deal with the aftermath that occurs when the grandmother who raised them dies. Emma, a punk band singer and poet turned pet psychic, and Rachel, an actuary with an interest in astronomy, both carry the remnants of childhoods overshadowed by issues of bullying, abandonment, alienation and fear. In the raw terrain of profound loss, the two sisters struggle through the stages of ...