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32 products
Caitlin Galway
A Song for Wildcats
Regular price $17.99 Save $-17.99An arresting, vividly imaginative collection of stories capturing the complexity of intimacy and the depths of the unravelling mind.
Infatuation and violence grow between two girls in the enchanting wilderness of postwar Australia as they spin disturbing fantasies to escape their families. Two young men in the midst of the 1968 French student revolts navigate — and at times resist — the philosophical and emotional nature of love. An orphaned boy and his estranged aunt are thrown together on a quiet peninsula at the height of the Troubles in Ireland, where their deeply rooted fear attracts the attention of shape-shifting phantoms of war.
The five long-form stories in A Song for Wildcats are uncanny portraits of grief and resilience and are imbued with unique beauty, insight, and resonance from one of the country's most exciting authors.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
A. Gregory Frankson
Alphabet Soup
Regular price $16.99 Save $-16.99
“At once experimental literature and alchemical apparatus — designed to take all the flavours of one man’s life experiences and transform them into something that nourishes.” — ANDREA THOMPSON, author of A Selected History of Soul Speak
A tasty yet experimental recipe of creative memoir in poetic prose cooked up for your consumption — one letter at a time.
Alphabet Soup is a poetic exploration of the deeper meaning discovered by stirring up the depths of one’s most personal lived experiences. Twenty-six letters, one missive addressed to each letter of the alphabet, dive into the scalding heat of memory through themes that recall and reframe love, death, joy, sorrow, victory, devastation, and more.
Using prose that is by turns startling, revelatory, humorous, sorrowful, and triumphant, these introspections on the nature of living engage the mind and heart in the difficult, unending work of grappling with one’s past in the present, with the hope it can help create a more satisfying future.
A tasty yet experimental recipe of creative memoir in poetic prose cooked up for your consumption — one letter at a time.
Alphabet Soup is a poetic exploration of the deeper meaning discovered by stirring up the depths of one’s most personal lived experiences. Twenty-six letters, one missive addressed to each letter of the alphabet, dive into the scalding heat of memory through themes that recall and reframe love, death, joy, sorrow, victory, devastation, and more.
Using prose that is by turns startling, revelatory, humorous, sorrowful, and triumphant, these introspections on the nature of living engage the mind and heart in the difficult, unending work of grappling with one’s past in the present, with the hope it can help create a more satisfying future.
Dennis E. Bolen
Amaranthine Chevrolet
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99A teenage boy’s curious road trip across a radically changing country.
In the year 1967, fifteen-year-old Robin drives an antique pickup truck west from Saskatchewan, travelling on farmland and on unmapped roads to avoid police. Like Odysseus striving toward home, he encounters trying situations: men on the run, hippies creating utopia, marijuana farmers, mechanical breakdowns, a raging forest fire. Robin passes through a massively changing society — a rural culture that, though eroding, hangs on to values of kindness and endurance, and one in which Robin must be both heroic and vulnerable.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
J.D. Kurtness
Aquariums
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
An intimate yet wide-sweeping story of a marine biologist working to save ocean ecosystems from climate change.
With the world’s oceans ravaged by climate change, Émeraude, a young marine biologist, works to preserve aquatic ecosystems by recreating them for zoos. When her work earns her a spot aboard a research vessel with an extended mission in the Arctic, it is the inescapable draw of the ocean that will save her when the world she leaves behind is irrevocably changed.
Stories of Émeraude’s ancestors — a young sailor abandoned at birth, a conjuror who mixes potions for her neighbours, a violent young man who hides in the woods to escape an even more violent war, and a talented young singer born to a mother who cannot speak — weave their way through her intimate reflections on a modest life, unknowingly shaped by those who came before.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
With the world’s oceans ravaged by climate change, Émeraude, a young marine biologist, works to preserve aquatic ecosystems by recreating them for zoos. When her work earns her a spot aboard a research vessel with an extended mission in the Arctic, it is the inescapable draw of the ocean that will save her when the world she leaves behind is irrevocably changed.
Stories of Émeraude’s ancestors — a young sailor abandoned at birth, a conjuror who mixes potions for her neighbours, a violent young man who hides in the woods to escape an even more violent war, and a talented young singer born to a mother who cannot speak — weave their way through her intimate reflections on a modest life, unknowingly shaped by those who came before.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Victoria Hetherington
Autonomy
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
In a near future ravaged by illness, one woman and her AI companion enter a dangerous bubble of the superrich.
It's 2035: a fledging synthetic consciousness “wakes up” in a lab. Jenny, the lead developer, determined to nurture this synthetic being like a child, trains it to work with people at the border of the American Protectorate of Canada. She names it Julian.
Two years later, Slaton, a therapist at a university, is framed by a student for arranging an illegal abortion. She follows the student to America and is detained at the border, where she meets Julian in virtual space. After a week of interviewing, he decides to stay with her, learning about the world, the human condition, and what it means to fall in love. Meanwhile, a mysterious plague is spreading across the world. Only the far-seeing and well-connected Julian can protect Slaton from the impending societal collapse.
Autonomy is an ambitious philosophical novel about the possibilities for love in a world in which human bodies are either threatened or irrelevant.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
It's 2035: a fledging synthetic consciousness “wakes up” in a lab. Jenny, the lead developer, determined to nurture this synthetic being like a child, trains it to work with people at the border of the American Protectorate of Canada. She names it Julian.
Two years later, Slaton, a therapist at a university, is framed by a student for arranging an illegal abortion. She follows the student to America and is detained at the border, where she meets Julian in virtual space. After a week of interviewing, he decides to stay with her, learning about the world, the human condition, and what it means to fall in love. Meanwhile, a mysterious plague is spreading across the world. Only the far-seeing and well-connected Julian can protect Slaton from the impending societal collapse.
Autonomy is an ambitious philosophical novel about the possibilities for love in a world in which human bodies are either threatened or irrelevant.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Andrew Brobyn
Babble On
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A mid-level drug trafficker and self-proclaimed low-life with a big vocabulary comes to terms with his actions and his mental health.
Andrew Brobyn’s relationship was in shambles before he took the terrible acid that sent him on an almost decade-long journey seeking redemption. His immediate plans following university were to liquidate his illicit assets, sell his client list, pack up shop, and retire to his parents’ home in Toronto while he figured out what to do with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a quarter million in cash. As his drug use and bipolar disorder spiral, his situation gets stranger and stranger, taking him from his university campus to strip clubs, psych wards, and the slammer.
Equal parts hilarious and terrifying, Babble On is a psycho-philosophical memoir that tracks Brobyn as he navigates the consequences of his eccentric choices and struggles with profound ambivalence toward his own health and well-being.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Andrew Brobyn’s relationship was in shambles before he took the terrible acid that sent him on an almost decade-long journey seeking redemption. His immediate plans following university were to liquidate his illicit assets, sell his client list, pack up shop, and retire to his parents’ home in Toronto while he figured out what to do with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a quarter million in cash. As his drug use and bipolar disorder spiral, his situation gets stranger and stranger, taking him from his university campus to strip clubs, psych wards, and the slammer.
Equal parts hilarious and terrifying, Babble On is a psycho-philosophical memoir that tracks Brobyn as he navigates the consequences of his eccentric choices and struggles with profound ambivalence toward his own health and well-being.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez
Celestina's House
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99The secrets of the house are the secrets of the heart.
CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2024
It begins with an act of betrayal that destroys the tenuous bonds of Celestina Errantes’s family. For years afterwards, Celestina longs for an escape from her unhappy home. Then an unexpected gift from her wealthy Lolo offers that chance: a long-forsaken property in Manila’s bohemian district, close to where ladies of the evening ply their trade. It is no place for a proper young woman, but this house, even with its ghosts, makes Celestina feel at home.
Celestina tears into life, losing herself in the pleasures of the night, but soon finds that the emptiness within her is not easily filled. When finally a true chance at happiness promises to save her, a sinister voice from the past returns, threatening to destroy it all.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Xue Yiwei
Celia, Misoka, I
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A meditation on the meaning of life in an increasingly global world, from acclaimed Chinese-Canadian author Xue Yiwei.
Set in modern-day Montreal, Celia, Misoka, I is the story of a middle-aged Chinese man who has been living in the city for fifteen years. After the death of his wife, he begins to reflect on his past and how he has ended up alone in Canada, a solitary member of the Chinese diaspora. It is in this period of angst and uncertainty, during the most unusual of winters, that he meets two women by Beaver Lake, on Montreal’s Mount Royal. They, too, have their own stories: stories of their own personal plights, which connect present to past, and West to East.
The distinct paths taken by these three characters — Celia, Misoka, and “I” — span continents and decades, but, whether by chance or design, converge in Montreal, like mysterious figures in an ancient Chinese Zen painting. After coming together, the three begin to examine who they are, where they might belong, and how to navigate otherness and identity in a globalized world.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Set in modern-day Montreal, Celia, Misoka, I is the story of a middle-aged Chinese man who has been living in the city for fifteen years. After the death of his wife, he begins to reflect on his past and how he has ended up alone in Canada, a solitary member of the Chinese diaspora. It is in this period of angst and uncertainty, during the most unusual of winters, that he meets two women by Beaver Lake, on Montreal’s Mount Royal. They, too, have their own stories: stories of their own personal plights, which connect present to past, and West to East.
The distinct paths taken by these three characters — Celia, Misoka, and “I” — span continents and decades, but, whether by chance or design, converge in Montreal, like mysterious figures in an ancient Chinese Zen painting. After coming together, the three begin to examine who they are, where they might belong, and how to navigate otherness and identity in a globalized world.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Cian Cruise
Dad Bod
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A brisk, humorous collection of essays that redefines the mythos of fatherhood depicted in film, television, and video games.
What do dads tell us about the world? Not your real dad, but dads in general. Dads are everywhere. Lurking in our movies, television shows, and video games. Spouting homespun wisdom and atrocious jokes, wallowing in might-have-beens and back-in-my-days, or rigidly defending the status quo. These fictional dads fuel a myth of fatherhood. What is that myth trying to tell us? And what is it trying to sell us?
Dad Bod is a clever, riveting collection of essays about father figures in popular culture. From Gandalf to Homer Simpson, Die Hard to The Mandalorian, these essays unpack the tropes that inform our collective image of fatherhood. Follow Cian Cruise, newly minted dad, as he riffs on the stereotypes and lore of fatherhood, traces a contemporary art history of dads in popular culture, and journeys to the heart of dadness to become a better father.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
What do dads tell us about the world? Not your real dad, but dads in general. Dads are everywhere. Lurking in our movies, television shows, and video games. Spouting homespun wisdom and atrocious jokes, wallowing in might-have-beens and back-in-my-days, or rigidly defending the status quo. These fictional dads fuel a myth of fatherhood. What is that myth trying to tell us? And what is it trying to sell us?
Dad Bod is a clever, riveting collection of essays about father figures in popular culture. From Gandalf to Homer Simpson, Die Hard to The Mandalorian, these essays unpack the tropes that inform our collective image of fatherhood. Follow Cian Cruise, newly minted dad, as he riffs on the stereotypes and lore of fatherhood, traces a contemporary art history of dads in popular culture, and journeys to the heart of dadness to become a better father.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Jeff Dupuis
Devouring Tomorrow
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
An anthology of speculative short fiction imagining the possibilities of our food-insecure future.
Our lives, our culture, our community all start with and revolve around food and eating. Sharing meals with family and friends has been a hallmark of human society from our earliest beginnings. But we are entering an era of unprecedented change. Climate, technology, the global spread of crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators threaten to change not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.
Devouring Tomorrow explores this strange new menu through the eyes and palates of some of Canada’s most exciting authors. See a world with no bees left to pollinate our crops. Encounter lab-grown meat so advanced that it becomes sentient. Visit a land where diseases wipe out a common fruit and the society of a nation changes around its loss. This is not the world of the distant future — this is tomorrow.
Featuring stories from:
Sifton Tracey Anipare • Carleigh Baker • Gary Barwin • Chris Benjamin • Eddy Boudel Tan • Catherine Bush • Jowita Bydlowska • Lisa de Nikolits • Dina Del Bucchia • Terri Favro • Elan Mastai • Mark Sampson • Ji Hong Sayo • Jacqueline Valencia • Anuja Varghese • A.G.A. Wilmot
Our lives, our culture, our community all start with and revolve around food and eating. Sharing meals with family and friends has been a hallmark of human society from our earliest beginnings. But we are entering an era of unprecedented change. Climate, technology, the global spread of crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators threaten to change not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.
Devouring Tomorrow explores this strange new menu through the eyes and palates of some of Canada’s most exciting authors. See a world with no bees left to pollinate our crops. Encounter lab-grown meat so advanced that it becomes sentient. Visit a land where diseases wipe out a common fruit and the society of a nation changes around its loss. This is not the world of the distant future — this is tomorrow.
Featuring stories from:
Sifton Tracey Anipare • Carleigh Baker • Gary Barwin • Chris Benjamin • Eddy Boudel Tan • Catherine Bush • Jowita Bydlowska • Lisa de Nikolits • Dina Del Bucchia • Terri Favro • Elan Mastai • Mark Sampson • Ji Hong Sayo • Jacqueline Valencia • Anuja Varghese • A.G.A. Wilmot
Sara Flemington
Egg Island
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
Two laconic teenage runaways plunge deep into backcountry, farther and farther away from civilization, searching for an extraordinary place that may or may not exist.
On the move for who knows how long, Julia, age unknown, walks into a gas station. There, the tall, ominous kid with a studded belt and crusty eyebrow ring who’s stocking the fridge stops his work and leads her out back to the restroom. What happens next is technically grand theft auto.
Egg Island is the peculiar and darkly humorous story of Julia: a runaway in search of the elusive locale known as Egg Island, a place where, she has been told, the sky breaks the exosphere and the path to a new home will be revealed. Julia’s journey is the story of the shy camaraderie between two bruised teens, stretching beyond roads, forests, and outer space, as they learn to reconcile their histories with the big, open future.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
On the move for who knows how long, Julia, age unknown, walks into a gas station. There, the tall, ominous kid with a studded belt and crusty eyebrow ring who’s stocking the fridge stops his work and leads her out back to the restroom. What happens next is technically grand theft auto.
Egg Island is the peculiar and darkly humorous story of Julia: a runaway in search of the elusive locale known as Egg Island, a place where, she has been told, the sky breaks the exosphere and the path to a new home will be revealed. Julia’s journey is the story of the shy camaraderie between two bruised teens, stretching beyond roads, forests, and outer space, as they learn to reconcile their histories with the big, open future.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Larry Gaudet
Eris
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99An anarchist online group sets out to assassinate the corporate elites they believe have turned culture into a digital nightmare.
Don Barton is the visionary creator of Greenhouse, a popular immersive game where millions play at “saving the environment” in the surreal digital landscapes of the metaverse. Now retired to his plutocratic wealth, he learns his teen son, a gifted gamer, has suddenly gone missing, having joined a terrorist group led by a mysterious young woman, Eris, a former cryptocurrency trader. She’s on a mission to destroy the world’s entertainment and social media platforms and assassinate the corporate elites who run them.
In desperation, Barton roams Greenhouse, the only place his radicalized son will talk to him, learning that the game — his life’s work — is on the terrorist hit list. And both his life and his son’s are in danger.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Sky Gilbert
I, Gloria Grahame
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
Shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Award
A professor of English literature writes the autobiography of his fantasy alter-ego, wanton movie star Gloria Grahame, while his own sexual desires go frustrated.
Denton Moulton — a shy, effeminate male professor — lives inside his head, where he is really a long-dead movie star: the glamorous Gloria Grahame, from the golden age of Hollywood. Professor Moulton is desperate to reveal Gloria’s shocking secret before he dies. Does he have the right to tell this woman’s story? Who, in fact, has the right to tell anyone’s story at all?
A scandalous, humorous novel of taboo desires and repression, I, Gloria Grahame alternates between Gloria’s imagined life with her film-director husband, Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause, and Denton’s increasingly frustrated real-life attempts to produce his own work of art: an all-male drag production of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The novel takes us from high-strung film sets to dark bars and the puritanical offices of government arts granting agencies, where Denton runs up against the sternest warnings that he may not, in fact, imagine himself as someone else, even in art.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
A professor of English literature writes the autobiography of his fantasy alter-ego, wanton movie star Gloria Grahame, while his own sexual desires go frustrated.
Denton Moulton — a shy, effeminate male professor — lives inside his head, where he is really a long-dead movie star: the glamorous Gloria Grahame, from the golden age of Hollywood. Professor Moulton is desperate to reveal Gloria’s shocking secret before he dies. Does he have the right to tell this woman’s story? Who, in fact, has the right to tell anyone’s story at all?
A scandalous, humorous novel of taboo desires and repression, I, Gloria Grahame alternates between Gloria’s imagined life with her film-director husband, Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause, and Denton’s increasingly frustrated real-life attempts to produce his own work of art: an all-male drag production of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The novel takes us from high-strung film sets to dark bars and the puritanical offices of government arts granting agencies, where Denton runs up against the sternest warnings that he may not, in fact, imagine himself as someone else, even in art.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
André Forget
In the City of Pigs
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 • SHORTLISTED FOR THE AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD •
LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he’s ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city — until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he’s ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city — until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Tanya Turton
Jade Is a Twisted Green
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
For readers of Queenie and Honey Girl, a coming-of-age story about queer Black identity, love, passion, chosen family, and rediscovering life’s pleasures after loss.
Jade Brown, a twenty-four-year-old first-generation Jamaican woman living in Toronto, must find a way to pick up the pieces and discover who she is following the mysterious death of her twin sister.
Grappling with her grief, Jade seeks solace in lovers and friends during an array of hilarious and heartbreaking adventures. As she investigates some of life’s most frustrating paradoxes, she holds tight to old friends and her ex-girlfriend, lifelines between past and present. On the journey to turning twenty-five, she finally sees that she belongs to herself, and goes about the business of reclaiming that self.
Through a series of whirlwind love affairs, parties, and trips abroad, Jade stumbles toward relinquishing the weight of her trauma as she fully comes into her own as a young Black woman and writer.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Jade Brown, a twenty-four-year-old first-generation Jamaican woman living in Toronto, must find a way to pick up the pieces and discover who she is following the mysterious death of her twin sister.
Grappling with her grief, Jade seeks solace in lovers and friends during an array of hilarious and heartbreaking adventures. As she investigates some of life’s most frustrating paradoxes, she holds tight to old friends and her ex-girlfriend, lifelines between past and present. On the journey to turning twenty-five, she finally sees that she belongs to herself, and goes about the business of reclaiming that self.
Through a series of whirlwind love affairs, parties, and trips abroad, Jade stumbles toward relinquishing the weight of her trauma as she fully comes into her own as a young Black woman and writer.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Eve Lemieux
Like Animals
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
Too much sex in the city: a young woman goes into a self-destructive spiral after becoming obsessed with a downtown Montreal hipster.
Reality, that speedy bitch, is catching up to me.
In downtown Montreal, everyone is in a band or making a movie. Philomena Flynn and her best friend, Tania, are living fast and hard. There is sex when and where they want it, as well as drugs of all kinds. Not enough work, but lots of parties. Cute boys or nice boys, but rarely both at once. Philomena has no idea how to protect herself from her roaring feelings and goes into a spiral of self-destruction when her heart is broken. Too bad for Tania. Too bad for Philomena’s dad. Too bad for boys who are too nice to her, and too bad, above all, for Philomena.
Like Animals is a glimpse into the raucous, sex-filled lives — infused with self-doubt and euphoria — of young, creative people who are far more sensitive than their cool facades will admit.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Reality, that speedy bitch, is catching up to me.
In downtown Montreal, everyone is in a band or making a movie. Philomena Flynn and her best friend, Tania, are living fast and hard. There is sex when and where they want it, as well as drugs of all kinds. Not enough work, but lots of parties. Cute boys or nice boys, but rarely both at once. Philomena has no idea how to protect herself from her roaring feelings and goes into a spiral of self-destruction when her heart is broken. Too bad for Tania. Too bad for Philomena’s dad. Too bad for boys who are too nice to her, and too bad, above all, for Philomena.
Like Animals is a glimpse into the raucous, sex-filled lives — infused with self-doubt and euphoria — of young, creative people who are far more sensitive than their cool facades will admit.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Nathan Whitlock
Lump
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99A dark, satiric novel about a woman whose attempt to escape crises in her health and marriage ends up causing more chaos.
Cat's career has stalled, her marriage has gone flat, and being a stay-at-home mom for two young kids has become a grind. When she finds out, all within a few days, that she is pregnant, that a lump in her breast is the worst thing it could be, and that her husband has done something unforgivably repulsive, she responds by running away from her marriage and her life — a life that, on the outside, looks like middle-class success. Her actions send waves of chaos through the lives of multiple characters, including a struggling house cleaner, a rich and charismatic yoga guru, and even an ailing dog. What follows is a dark comedy about marriage, motherhood, privilege, and power.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Aley Waterman
Mudflowers
Regular price $18.99 Save $-18.99
FINALST FOR THE 2023 BMO WINTERSET AWARD
“A gorgeous depiction of the tender, painful stretching required to love well and expansively, to recast our ideas of romance and family.” — Aimee Wall, author of We, Jane
In the year following her mother’s death, Sophie navigates a complicated love triangle between a new flame and a past partner.
It’s the west end of Toronto, the apartments are small, and everybody is twenty-seven and making some kind of art. In the wake of her mother’s death, Sophie pays rent by making stained glass mosaics for rich people and plays house with her childhood friend and sometimes-lover, the beautiful boy Alex. Both are from Newfoundland but move easily in this world of crowded patios and DIY movie shoots.
When Sophie meets the glamorous poet Maggie, who is the downtown product of a hundred cool queer bars, she falls into a bewildered infatuation, but secrets emerge that threaten to crumble the foundation of her relationship with Alex and Maggie both.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
“A gorgeous depiction of the tender, painful stretching required to love well and expansively, to recast our ideas of romance and family.” — Aimee Wall, author of We, Jane
In the year following her mother’s death, Sophie navigates a complicated love triangle between a new flame and a past partner.
It’s the west end of Toronto, the apartments are small, and everybody is twenty-seven and making some kind of art. In the wake of her mother’s death, Sophie pays rent by making stained glass mosaics for rich people and plays house with her childhood friend and sometimes-lover, the beautiful boy Alex. Both are from Newfoundland but move easily in this world of crowded patios and DIY movie shoots.
When Sophie meets the glamorous poet Maggie, who is the downtown product of a hundred cool queer bars, she falls into a bewildered infatuation, but secrets emerge that threaten to crumble the foundation of her relationship with Alex and Maggie both.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Tara McGowan-Ross
Nothing Will Be Different
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction 2022 — Shortlisted
A neurotic party girl's coming-of-age memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die.
Tara has it pretty good: a nice job, a writing career, a forgiving boyfriend. She should be happy. Yet Tara can’t stay sober. She’s terrible at monogamy. Even her psychiatrist grows sick of her and stops returning her calls. She spends most of her time putting out social fires, barely pulling things off, and feeling sick and tired.
Then, in the autumn following her twenty-seventh birthday, an abnormal lump discovered in her left breast serves as the catalyst for a journey of rigorous self-questioning. Waiting on a diagnosis, she begins an intellectual assessment of her life, desperate to justify a short existence full of dumb choices. Armed with her philosophy degree and angry determination, she attacks each issue in her life as the days creep by and winds up writing a searingly honest memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
A neurotic party girl's coming-of-age memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die.
Tara has it pretty good: a nice job, a writing career, a forgiving boyfriend. She should be happy. Yet Tara can’t stay sober. She’s terrible at monogamy. Even her psychiatrist grows sick of her and stops returning her calls. She spends most of her time putting out social fires, barely pulling things off, and feeling sick and tired.
Then, in the autumn following her twenty-seventh birthday, an abnormal lump discovered in her left breast serves as the catalyst for a journey of rigorous self-questioning. Waiting on a diagnosis, she begins an intellectual assessment of her life, desperate to justify a short existence full of dumb choices. Armed with her philosophy degree and angry determination, she attacks each issue in her life as the days creep by and winds up writing a searingly honest memoir about learning to live before getting ready to die.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Rowan McCandless
Persephone's Children
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
Finalist for 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction • Co-Winner of 2022 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing.
She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell.
Persephone’s Children chronicles Rowan McCandless’s odyssey as a Black, biracial woman escaping the stranglehold of a long-term abusive relationship. Through a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays, McCandless explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma. Multiple mythologies emerge to bind legacy and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, racism and intergenerational trauma, mental illness and resiliency.
It is only in the aftermath that she can begin to see the patterns in her history, hear the echoes of oppression passed down from unknown, unnamed ancestors, and discover her worth and right to exist in the world.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing.
She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell.
Persephone’s Children chronicles Rowan McCandless’s odyssey as a Black, biracial woman escaping the stranglehold of a long-term abusive relationship. Through a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays, McCandless explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma. Multiple mythologies emerge to bind legacy and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, racism and intergenerational trauma, mental illness and resiliency.
It is only in the aftermath that she can begin to see the patterns in her history, hear the echoes of oppression passed down from unknown, unnamed ancestors, and discover her worth and right to exist in the world.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Jowita Bydlowska
Possessed
Regular price $17.99 Save $-17.99
“Equal parts Harlequin romance, Gothic horror story and Camusian moral tale.” — GLOBE AND MAIL
Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award
From the bestselling author of Drunk Mom, comes a story of romantic obsession, mental illness, and self-discovery as one woman travels to a haunted quarantine island.
Josephine is obsessed. Or possessed — by unrequited love for a younger man who doesn’t promise anything, but who gives her a taste of intimacy that puts her on the brink of losing her mind. Oscillating between her elusive lover and her older former partner, stuck in the hell that is working in a cubicle, and obliged to tend to her destructive, senile mother, Josephine is trapped.
After a work assignment promises to deliver distraction, Josephine makes a decision to visit a former quarantine island in the Adriatic Sea, where she meets an enigmatic, beautiful man with a haunting story. Intimate and erotic, Possessed is a dark and funny story exploring sexual obsession, mental illness, and the supernatural.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award
From the bestselling author of Drunk Mom, comes a story of romantic obsession, mental illness, and self-discovery as one woman travels to a haunted quarantine island.
Josephine is obsessed. Or possessed — by unrequited love for a younger man who doesn’t promise anything, but who gives her a taste of intimacy that puts her on the brink of losing her mind. Oscillating between her elusive lover and her older former partner, stuck in the hell that is working in a cubicle, and obliged to tend to her destructive, senile mother, Josephine is trapped.
After a work assignment promises to deliver distraction, Josephine makes a decision to visit a former quarantine island in the Adriatic Sea, where she meets an enigmatic, beautiful man with a haunting story. Intimate and erotic, Possessed is a dark and funny story exploring sexual obsession, mental illness, and the supernatural.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Russell Smith
Secret Sex
Regular price $21.99 Save $-21.99
New risky fiction — with no names attached.
If authors could write their sex scenes anonymously, would they be less reticent? Would they include the stuff they didn’t want their mom, or the newspapers, to read?
Here are twenty-four original short pieces of fiction on the theme of sex, by twenty-four prominent authors living in Canada. Heather O’Neill, Lisa Moore, Michael Winter, Zoe Whittall, Pasha Malla, francesca ekwuyasi, Drew Hayden Taylor, Tamara Faith Berger, and Susan Swan are among these. But we won’t tell you who wrote what.
The pieces are uncensored, unpredictable; they veer from graphic to subtle to surreal. There is straight sex and gay sex. There is frustrated sex. There is sex that happens entirely through text messages. Secret Sex is a book of erotic imaginings by some of Canada’s most sophisticated and respected writers, working in total freedom, secretly.
Featuring Angie Abdou, Jean-Marc Ah-Sen, Tamara Faith Berger, Jowita Bydlowska, Xaiver Campbell, K.S. Covert, francesca ekwuyasi, Anna Fitzpatrick, Drew Hayden Taylor, Victoria Hetherington, Marni Jackson, Andrew Kaufman, Michael LaPointe, Pasha Malla, Sophie McCreesh, Lisa Moore, Heather O’Neill, Lee Suksi, Susan Swan, Heidi von Palleske, Aley Waterman, Zoe Whittall, David Whitton, Michael Winter
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
If authors could write their sex scenes anonymously, would they be less reticent? Would they include the stuff they didn’t want their mom, or the newspapers, to read?
Here are twenty-four original short pieces of fiction on the theme of sex, by twenty-four prominent authors living in Canada. Heather O’Neill, Lisa Moore, Michael Winter, Zoe Whittall, Pasha Malla, francesca ekwuyasi, Drew Hayden Taylor, Tamara Faith Berger, and Susan Swan are among these. But we won’t tell you who wrote what.
The pieces are uncensored, unpredictable; they veer from graphic to subtle to surreal. There is straight sex and gay sex. There is frustrated sex. There is sex that happens entirely through text messages. Secret Sex is a book of erotic imaginings by some of Canada’s most sophisticated and respected writers, working in total freedom, secretly.
Featuring Angie Abdou, Jean-Marc Ah-Sen, Tamara Faith Berger, Jowita Bydlowska, Xaiver Campbell, K.S. Covert, francesca ekwuyasi, Anna Fitzpatrick, Drew Hayden Taylor, Victoria Hetherington, Marni Jackson, Andrew Kaufman, Michael LaPointe, Pasha Malla, Sophie McCreesh, Lisa Moore, Heather O’Neill, Lee Suksi, Susan Swan, Heidi von Palleske, Aley Waterman, Zoe Whittall, David Whitton, Michael Winter
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
David Whitton
Seven Down
Regular price $17.99 Save $-17.99
In this quirky, character-driven debut novel seven hotel employees puzzle out the events of a botched assassination attempt — the next read for fans of Fredrik Backman (Anxious People) and Matt Haig (The Midnight Library).
Finalist for the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best First Novel
Seven ordinary hotel employees. Catering, Reservations, Management. Seven moles, waiting for years for a single code word, a trigger that will send them into action in a violent event that will end their dull lives as they know them.
The event has failed: the action was a disaster. Each employee is being debriefed by an agent of an invisible organization. These are the transcripts of those interviews. What they reveal is not just the intricate mechanism of an international assassination, but the yearnings inside each of its pawns, the desperation and secret rage that might cause any one of us to sign up, sell out, and take a plunge into darkness.
Both sinister and absurd, Seven Down is a puzzle to be solved, a comedy, and a panorama of life. At once sociological, satirical, and scary, it paints portraits of the mundane human failings behind geopolitical machinations.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Finalist for the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best First Novel
Seven ordinary hotel employees. Catering, Reservations, Management. Seven moles, waiting for years for a single code word, a trigger that will send them into action in a violent event that will end their dull lives as they know them.
The event has failed: the action was a disaster. Each employee is being debriefed by an agent of an invisible organization. These are the transcripts of those interviews. What they reveal is not just the intricate mechanism of an international assassination, but the yearnings inside each of its pawns, the desperation and secret rage that might cause any one of us to sign up, sell out, and take a plunge into darkness.
Both sinister and absurd, Seven Down is a puzzle to be solved, a comedy, and a panorama of life. At once sociological, satirical, and scary, it paints portraits of the mundane human failings behind geopolitical machinations.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Babak Lakghomi
South
Regular price $17.99 Save $-17.99
South is a hallucinatory reimagination of life in a world under totalitarianism, and an individual’s quest for truth, agency, and understanding.
“A quiet meditation on imagination and reality, absence and presence, and the world around us. Lakghomi achieves a poetic and hypnotic effect with his tightly constructed, spare prose.” — Brandon Hobson, author of The Removed
“A Lynchian descent into the paranoia and alienation of totalitarianism, South is a haunting and dreamlike novel” — SHELF AWARENESS
B, a journalist, travels to the South of an unnamed desert country for a mysterious mission to write a report about the recent strikes on an offshore oil rig. From the beginning of his trip, he is faced with a cruel and broken landscape of drought and decay, superstitious believers of evil winds and spirits, and corrupt entities focused on manipulation and censorship. As he tries to defend himself against his unknown enemies, we learn about his father’s disappearance, his fading love with his wife, and his encounter with an unknown woman. A puzzle-like novel about totalitarianism, surveillance, alienation, and guilt that questions the forces that control us.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
“A quiet meditation on imagination and reality, absence and presence, and the world around us. Lakghomi achieves a poetic and hypnotic effect with his tightly constructed, spare prose.” — Brandon Hobson, author of The Removed
“A Lynchian descent into the paranoia and alienation of totalitarianism, South is a haunting and dreamlike novel” — SHELF AWARENESS
B, a journalist, travels to the South of an unnamed desert country for a mysterious mission to write a report about the recent strikes on an offshore oil rig. From the beginning of his trip, he is faced with a cruel and broken landscape of drought and decay, superstitious believers of evil winds and spirits, and corrupt entities focused on manipulation and censorship. As he tries to defend himself against his unknown enemies, we learn about his father’s disappearance, his fading love with his wife, and his encounter with an unknown woman. A puzzle-like novel about totalitarianism, surveillance, alienation, and guilt that questions the forces that control us.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Camille Hernández-Ramdwar
Suite as Sugar
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
Suite as Sugar is a testimony to the unseen forces, always vigilant, ever ready, imbuing the characters in this collection with both resilience and trauma.
From Winnipeg winterscapes to Toronto’s condo culture, from Havana’s haunted streets to Trinidad’s calamitous environs, the stories in Suite as Sugar are permeated with the violence of colonial histories, personal and intimate, reflecting legacies of abandonment and loss. The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands.
Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone. Tying this collection together is the casual brutality of our everyday lives, whether seen through the eyes of animal, spirit, or human being.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
From Winnipeg winterscapes to Toronto’s condo culture, from Havana’s haunted streets to Trinidad’s calamitous environs, the stories in Suite as Sugar are permeated with the violence of colonial histories, personal and intimate, reflecting legacies of abandonment and loss. The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands.
Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone. Tying this collection together is the casual brutality of our everyday lives, whether seen through the eyes of animal, spirit, or human being.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Jim Bartley
The Bliss House
Regular price $17.99 Save $-17.99
Two young men bringing up a small child in the middle of nowhere. Everything could be fine, but strangers start to meddle.
For near a century the reclusive Bliss clan farmed the same land. Now it’s 1963 and everyone’s gone except teenage Cam, his older cousin Wes, and little Dorie. They buried Gran over a year ago. But Gramp is still with them, wrapped tight as a mummy in an old tarp in the cold room off the kitchen. Life’s better now without the old man’s rants and terrors.
There are problems with the land lease and the meddlesome, moralizing neighbours, and rumours are spreading in town that there’s something not quite right about Cam and Wes, but they’re taking care of it all as best they can. Then the local Children’s Aid drops by to say Dorie needs schooling and proper parents, and it’s clear they can’t hide their secrets any longer. They’re on the road, heading north, with a body in the trunk. Wes knows a place, a cabin deep in the woods …
No matter what they do, gruesome casualties seem to follow them. It could be funny if it wasn’t so nightmarish. And through it all, a tender secret love thrives, as they try to hold on to the family they’ve built together.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
For near a century the reclusive Bliss clan farmed the same land. Now it’s 1963 and everyone’s gone except teenage Cam, his older cousin Wes, and little Dorie. They buried Gran over a year ago. But Gramp is still with them, wrapped tight as a mummy in an old tarp in the cold room off the kitchen. Life’s better now without the old man’s rants and terrors.
There are problems with the land lease and the meddlesome, moralizing neighbours, and rumours are spreading in town that there’s something not quite right about Cam and Wes, but they’re taking care of it all as best they can. Then the local Children’s Aid drops by to say Dorie needs schooling and proper parents, and it’s clear they can’t hide their secrets any longer. They’re on the road, heading north, with a body in the trunk. Wes knows a place, a cabin deep in the woods …
No matter what they do, gruesome casualties seem to follow them. It could be funny if it wasn’t so nightmarish. And through it all, a tender secret love thrives, as they try to hold on to the family they’ve built together.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Fraser Sutherland
The Book of Malcolm
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A father reflects on the rich life of his son, who died suddenly at twenty-six after living with schizophrenia.
On the morning of Boxing Day 2009, the poet Fraser Sutherland and his wife found their son, Malcolm, dead in his bedroom in their house. He was twenty-six and had died from a seizure of unknown cause. Malcolm had been living with schizophrenia since the age of seventeen.
Fraser’s respectful narration of Malcolm’s life — his happiness as well as his sufferings, his heroic efforts to calm his troubled mind, his readings, his writings, his experiments with religious thought — is a master writer’s attempt to give shape and dignity to his son’s life, to memorialize it as more than an illness. And in writing about his son’s life, Fraser creates his own self-effacing memoir — the memoir of a parent’s resilience through years of stressful care.
Fraser Sutherland, one of Canada’s finest poetry critics and essayists, died shortly after completing this book.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
On the morning of Boxing Day 2009, the poet Fraser Sutherland and his wife found their son, Malcolm, dead in his bedroom in their house. He was twenty-six and had died from a seizure of unknown cause. Malcolm had been living with schizophrenia since the age of seventeen.
Fraser’s respectful narration of Malcolm’s life — his happiness as well as his sufferings, his heroic efforts to calm his troubled mind, his readings, his writings, his experiments with religious thought — is a master writer’s attempt to give shape and dignity to his son’s life, to memorialize it as more than an illness. And in writing about his son’s life, Fraser creates his own self-effacing memoir — the memoir of a parent’s resilience through years of stressful care.
Fraser Sutherland, one of Canada’s finest poetry critics and essayists, died shortly after completing this book.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Adnan Khan
The Hypebeast
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
Striving to get ahead in a world of scams, Hamid is caught in the fervour surrounding a charismatic social-media imam with questionable intentions.
Hamid Shaikh is a small-time crook in the big city, hoping that one of his cons will lead to riches. Tax fraud, telemarketing tricks, government scams. Whatever it takes. When he’s not working the phones hustling fake promises, he dreams of a move that will finally announce his arrival.
When his girlfriend Natalie Mendoza vanishes, Hamid finds himself pulled into the orbit of former Guantanamo Bay detainee turned social-media imam Abdul Mohammad. On the surface, Abdul’s organization is virtuous: they are helping other detainees rehabilitate to life outside the prison. But as Hamid dives deeper into Abdul’s nebulous and luxurious world, he finds a confusing mix of religious zeal and cynical self-advancement. With his connection to the imam deepening, Hamid must decide just how far into darkness he can go before losing sight of himself.
Hamid Shaikh is a small-time crook in the big city, hoping that one of his cons will lead to riches. Tax fraud, telemarketing tricks, government scams. Whatever it takes. When he’s not working the phones hustling fake promises, he dreams of a move that will finally announce his arrival.
When his girlfriend Natalie Mendoza vanishes, Hamid finds himself pulled into the orbit of former Guantanamo Bay detainee turned social-media imam Abdul Mohammad. On the surface, Abdul’s organization is virtuous: they are helping other detainees rehabilitate to life outside the prison. But as Hamid dives deeper into Abdul’s nebulous and luxurious world, he finds a confusing mix of religious zeal and cynical self-advancement. With his connection to the imam deepening, Hamid must decide just how far into darkness he can go before losing sight of himself.
Timothy Taylor
The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
“A sumptuously written story about culinary ambition, restaurant-world vice, and the frailties of the heart.” — KEVIN CHONG, author of The Double Life of Benson Yu
Restaurateur Teo Wolf’s culinary fame is peaking just as a series of scandals and reckless decisions threaten to destroy everything.
Restaurateur Teo Wolf’s culinary fame is peaking just as a series of scandals and reckless decisions threaten to destroy everything.
Teo’s life as a Paris brasserie apprentice is filled with challenges and triumphs, as well as all the regular abuses of slammed commercial kitchens. Still, he rises through the ranks, eventually returning to his hometown of Vancouver to open Rue Véron, a French restaurant that goes on to become a sensation. His second restaurant, Orinoco, is also successful. But on the cusp of opening his third, a news story breaks filled with troubling accusations against Rue Véron’s popular executive chef, Frankie.
The media firestorm and subsequent public relations disaster threaten to destroy Teo’s empire, as well as his own personal life. And when the compounding consequences lead to unimaginable tragedy, Teo is left to question the impact of both individual action and people acting in great numbers.
Sumaiya Matin
The Shaytan Bride
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
The true story of how one Muslim woman shaped her own fate and escaped her forced wedding.
Sumaiya Matin was never sure if the story of the Shaytan Bride was truth or myth. When she moved at age six from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Thunder Bay, Ontario, recollections of this devilish bride followed her. At first, the Shaytan Bride seemed to be the monster of fairy tales, a woman possessed or seduced by a jinni. But everything changes during a family trip to Bangladesh, and in the weeks leading to Sumaiya’s own forced wedding, she discovers that the story — and the bride herself — are much closer than they seem.
The Shaytan Bride is the true coming-of-age story of a girl navigating desire and faith. Through her journey into adulthood, she battles herself and her circumstances to differentiate between destiny and free will. Sumaiya Matin’s life in love and violence is a testament to one woman’s strength as she faces the complicated fallout of her decisions.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Sumaiya Matin was never sure if the story of the Shaytan Bride was truth or myth. When she moved at age six from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Thunder Bay, Ontario, recollections of this devilish bride followed her. At first, the Shaytan Bride seemed to be the monster of fairy tales, a woman possessed or seduced by a jinni. But everything changes during a family trip to Bangladesh, and in the weeks leading to Sumaiya’s own forced wedding, she discovers that the story — and the bride herself — are much closer than they seem.
The Shaytan Bride is the true coming-of-age story of a girl navigating desire and faith. Through her journey into adulthood, she battles herself and her circumstances to differentiate between destiny and free will. Sumaiya Matin’s life in love and violence is a testament to one woman’s strength as she faces the complicated fallout of her decisions.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Chelsea Wakelyn
What Remains of Elsie Jane
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99“A poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, weird, and heartbreaking window into being bereft and being in love… a striking reminder that there can be beauty in devastation.” — EMILY AUSTIN, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
A heartbreaking and darkly funny portrait of a woman unravelling in the wake of tragedy.
Sam is dead, which means that Elsie Jane has just lost the brilliant, sensitive man she planned to grow old with. The early days of grief are a fog of work and single parenting. Too restless to sleep, Elsie pores over Sam’s old love letters, paces her house, and bickers with the ghosts of Sam and her dead parents night after night. As the year unfolds, she develops an obsession with a local murder mystery, attends a series of disastrous internet dates in search of a “replacement soulmate,” and solicits a space-time wizard via Craigslist, convinced he will help her forge a path through the cosmos back to Sam.
Examining the ceaseless labour of motherhood, the stigma of death by drug poisoning, and the allure of magical thinking in the wake of tragedy, What Remains of Elsie Jane is a heart-splitting reminder that grief is born from the depths of love.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Sifton Tracey Anipare
Yume
Regular price $19.99 Save $-19.99
A captivating fantasy novel about demons, dreams, and a young woman teaching English in Japan.
“With empathetic characters, terrifying monsters, and a cinematic feel, Yume is a dream that will keep readers awake at night.” — RICHARD FORD BURLEY, author of Displacement
Cybelle teaches English in a small city in Japan. Her contract is up for renewal, her mother is begging her to come back to Canada, and she is not sure where she belongs anymore. She faces ostracism and fear daily, but she loves her job, despite its increasing difficulties. She vows to do her best — even when her sleep, appetite, and life in general start to get weird, and conforming to the rules that once helped her becomes a struggle.
Meanwhile, yokai feast and cavort around Osaka and Kyoto as the barrier between their world and the human world thins. Zaniel spends his nights walking the dream world and serving his demon “bodyguard,” Akki. But there is a new yokai on the scene, and it has gotten on Akki’s bad side. When Cybelle gets caught up in the supernatural clash, she has to figure out what is real and, more importantly, what she really wants … before her life spirals out of control altogether.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
“With empathetic characters, terrifying monsters, and a cinematic feel, Yume is a dream that will keep readers awake at night.” — RICHARD FORD BURLEY, author of Displacement
Cybelle teaches English in a small city in Japan. Her contract is up for renewal, her mother is begging her to come back to Canada, and she is not sure where she belongs anymore. She faces ostracism and fear daily, but she loves her job, despite its increasing difficulties. She vows to do her best — even when her sleep, appetite, and life in general start to get weird, and conforming to the rules that once helped her becomes a struggle.
Meanwhile, yokai feast and cavort around Osaka and Kyoto as the barrier between their world and the human world thins. Zaniel spends his nights walking the dream world and serving his demon “bodyguard,” Akki. But there is a new yokai on the scene, and it has gotten on Akki’s bad side. When Cybelle gets caught up in the supernatural clash, she has to figure out what is real and, more importantly, what she really wants … before her life spirals out of control altogether.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
