This is a story of people who exist simultaneously in two different and unusual worlds. It addresses both mental illness, and the realities of health care in the current climate of cutbacks and hospital closures.It is a humorous foray into the mind of a young man in a mental institution who, although given up as unreachable, is in fact very aware of what is going on around him. Jamie perceives things rather differently from everybody else, however, and creates a strange parallel uni...

Few conditions cause as much agony and frustration in women as endometriosis. The treatments can be as debilitating as the disease, so when a new medication is released, it is widely regarded as a breakthrough. Unfortunately it, too, can have some unexpected side effects and those involved in pointing this out find themselves in trouble -both legally and physically.Some illegal and unethical experiments are discovered to have been performed at a popular daycare facility, resulting ...

Sound Bites is a story about a precocious boy, Joseph, who grows up with a fascination for words. They pop up unannounced and unrequested in his head.He enrols in the faculty of Engineering but discovers the only thing he likes about it is Asa, a girl he meets in class one day. He decides to drop out and finds a job with her friend Jason who runs an acoustic engineering firm that specializes in improving the sound quality in buildings.One of Joseph's first jobs is in a church...

Linda is advised to have a mammogram but even though she is the wife of a gynaecologist she mistrusts the advice. While exploring the limited choices available to her, she discovers a mysterious group with a charismatic leader who suggests an alternative solution.This is an exploration, factual in content but fictional by intent, of the problems that envelop mammography.

This is the story of two close friends, Teddy and Jamie, growing up in Winnipeg. Neither are popular, Teddy because he is quiet and unassuming, Jamie because he is not, but each is content with his role. Jamie has always been the precocious, brilliant outsider in the class, and Teddy his unpretentious admirer. Upon graduation from high school, they both leave home to attend university in Hamilton, Ontario and decide to room together. It is then that changes begin: Jamie shows increasing si...

Andro is a boy obsessed with trees, just like his father. When his father leaves, however, his mother decides to move from their house on the edge of a forest to Calgary. Andro is unhappy there and can't make anyone understand why. When he tries to run away, his mother takes it as an opportunity to ship him off to his grandfather's farm in the Fraser Valley, near Vancouver. There he is happy and eventually meets a girl at school with the same interests. Accidents begin to happen around the...

IBR is a novel dealing with an unusual idea for preventing human genital herpes infections. I have taken the concept of 'viral interference' -that is, the interference by one type of virus with the growth and replication of another similar type- and borrowed an animal virus from my veterinary colleagues. This virus (infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus -or IBR for short) has remarkably similar characteristics and requirements to that of the herpes strain, but is not usually considered t...

The first story is about Jason's early life in Winnipeg in the 50ies. He is being moved out of his brother's room into an unfinished room in the attic. He is of mixed feelings about this because up there his imagination runs riot. He thinks of the rafters as the ribs of a sleeping animal -a bear- and the crawl space over the porch as being inhabited by a mysterious old lady. Life is good, however, and he travels into the winter with a boy named Billy who he always seems to find in a little...

Dermoid cysts of the ovaries are interesting because they contain several mature types of tissues, often including hair, teeth, sebum, cartilage -even thyroid tissue and occasionally neural elements.What causes dermoids? There are several hypotheses, but Julie, a young woman doing a first year university biology project on parthenogenesis (virgin birth) discovers an interesting observation from a scientist long ago that may offer another explanation -one that involves an operation ...

Easy-to-understand material on endometriosis, which can often be debilitating and is increasingly common. Endometriosis affects one in five women and is also a leading cause of infertility. This book covers: diagnosis and treatment options; pain management techniques; self-care strategies; fertility issues; and how to take control of your health and gain support. This book is essential reading for women with endometriosis, their partners and families - it answers many freq...

In Charles Stross's novel The Atrocity Archive and its sequels, the "Laundry" is a secret British agency responsible for keeping dark interdimensional entitities from destroying the cosmos and, not incidentally, the human race. The battles with creatures from beyond time are dangerous; however, it's the subsequent bureaucratic paperwork that actually breaks men's souls. Now, in "Down on the Farm," Laundry veteran Bob Howard must investigate strange doings at another obscure, moth-...

2016 Governor General's Literary Award Finalist2017 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Winner2017 Joe Shuster Award NomineeTeva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 37. In this brilliant and inspiring graphic memoir, she documents through comic illustration and short personal essays what it means to live with the disease. She confronts with heartbreaking honesty the crises of identity that canc...