The Man Booker Prize finalist Far to Go by acclaimed author Alison Pick is historical fiction at its very best.When Czechoslovakia relinquishes the Sudetenland to Hitler, the powerful influence of Nazi propaganda sweeps through towns and villages like a sinister vanguard of the Reich's advancing army. A fiercely patriotic secular Jew, Pavel Bauer is helpless to prevent his world from unraveling as first his government, then his business partners, then his neighbors turn th...

A woman finds her true self by reclaiming her family's lost Jewish identity in this "poignant and powerful memoir of family, religion, love, and healing" ( Kirkus ).Growing up in a tight-knit Christian family, Alison Pick went to church regularly. But as a teenager, she discovered a remarkable family secret: her paternal grandparents fled from the Czech Republic at the start of WWII because they were Jewish. Tragically, ot...

In her elegant new collection, Alison Pick, a brilliant poet of sensuous moods, atmospheres, and dreams, explores the mystery concealed within the world we know and recognize. Always evocative, always alluring, her poems are not interested in mere events, but in the fabric inside the emotions that events can provoke. She writes of love, of leaving, of wandering, and of home — not necessarily in that order. With captivating language and shining imagery, her poems travel out through layers o...

Discover some of Canada's best new writers with this highly acclaimed annual anthology, made possible by the generosity of Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A. Michener.For more than two decades, The Journey Prize Stories has been presenting the best short stories published each year by some of Canada's most exciting new writers. Previous contributors -- including such now well-known, bestselling writers as Yann Martel, Elizabeth Hay, Annabel Lyon, Lisa Moore, He...

“This year, eighty-one different stories battled for our affections, ranging in content from a post-apocalyptic suburb coping with rumours of cannibalism, to a movie theatre in Mauritius where dreams of a better future flicker onscreen, to a mattress store where a long-lasting friendship threatens to come undone. For each of us, it was a chance to partake in a process that now stretches back twenty-five years, a sneak peak at authors who – in the future – will likely become favourites.”

The Journey Prize Stories is Canada’s most celebrated annual fiction anthology. With settings ranging from Mount St. Helens, Barcelona, Halifax, Victoria Island, and Alberta’s Red River Badlands, these stories represent the year’s best short fiction by some of our most exciting emerging writers.Among the stories this year: After months of trying to sell the worthless collection of sports cards his no-good father left behind, a boy is unprepared for a bizarre and surprisingl...

Discover the next generation of great Canadian writers with this highly acclaimed annual anthology.For more than two decades, The Journey Prize Stories has been presenting the best short stories published each year by some of Canada's most exciting up-and-coming new writers. Previous contributors — including such now well-known, bestselling writers as Yann Martel, Elizabeth Hay, Michael Crummey, Annabel Lyon, Lisa Moore, Heather O'Neill, Pasha Malla, Timothy Taylor...

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. These remarkable stories explore the boundaries of the imagination in settings as various as an army training camp in China, the salt mines of Detroit, a divided Balkan town, and the eye of a hurricane. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an...

“The collection consistently does what the oeuvre does best: communicate intense emotion with force, give life to characters that struggle with their circumstances, illuminate the universal through the specific and the particular, and turn the commonplace into art.” Globe and Mail“[The anthology] amuses, astonishes, and enlightens; it is a delicious cacophony of voices and engaging stories . . .”Books in CanadaThe Journey Prize Stories is ...

"A classic tale of American initiative . . . A rich and rewarding read. . . . paints a moving picture of the rescue" of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Austria ( Wall Street Journal).In early 1939, America's rigid immigration laws made it virtually impossible for European Jews to seek safe haven in the United States. As deep-seated anti-Semitism and isolationism gripped much of the country, neither President Roosevelt nor Congress rallied to their aid.

Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller PrizeCritically lauded, The Beggar’s Garden is a brilliantly surefooted, strikingly original collection of nine linked short stories that will delight as well as disturb. The stories follow a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters, from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. These engrossing ...

From an emerging master of short fiction and one of Canada's most distinctive voices, a collection of stories as heartbreaking as those of Lorrie Moore and as hilariously off-kilter as something out of McSweeney's.In Better Living through Plastic Explosives, Zsuzsi Gartner delivers a powerful second dose of the lacerating satire that marked her acclaimed debut, All the Anxious Girls on Earth, but with even greater depth and darker humour. Whether she casts her eye...