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Sola is confused the first time she sees Judith, a fair skinned woman with dreadlocks dancing to reggae music. Meeting her gaze, Judith thinks Sola is judging her for appropriating Black culture. A few days later, up against an interlocking fence, Judith kisses Sola. Onlookers hurl stones and racial and gay slurs. Thus begins the complicated friendship between Judith and Sola who live in between the land they were born, the Caribbean, and the land where they presently live, North America.
Winner of the 2016 Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature and the 2015 Atlantic Writer’s Competition, Big Island, Small is a story of intimacy and friendship between two Caribbean/Canadian women with similar, yet vastly different, backgrounds who must dismantle their assumptions and biases around race, class, gender and sexuality in order to make amends with violent pasts, release shame, find joy and reconnect with themselves and each other.

In October 2023, upon witnessing the escalation of Palestinian genocide, Ktunaxa poet Smokii Sumac began writing poems reflecting on the stories of Palestinians in Gaza who were risking their lives to share news of the genocide of Palestinian culture, literature, and life. These 100 poems offer a witnessing of the escalation of colonial violence, both current and historical, across oceans, lands, cultures, and people, and the reckoning one has in the face of a genocide.

Vulnerable, eloquent, compassionate, and enduring, Born Sacred is an in-time reflection honouring the shared histories of Indigenous Peoples of North America and of the people in Palestine. Sumac offers this collection as a small piece of life dedicated to Palestinians and resounds the collective call for solidarity in our shared liberation.

“The life, work and activism of Rocky Jones are central to African-Canadian history and the civil rights movement in Canada. Canadians lost a great soul, with the recent death of Rocky Jones, but his autobiography – co-written by James Walker, a close friend of Rocky Jones and one of our foremost writers about Black history in Canada – is a wonderful gift to the entire country. Revolutionary will soon be required reading for any person who seeks to understand the civil rights movement in Canada.”
– Lawrence Hill
“A must read, a manual for all freedom fighters, and a testament to Rocky Jones’ and Black power and resilience.”
— Afua Cooper
“Any telling of human rights and social equity in Canada would be incomplete without reference to “revolutionary” Rocky Jones’ truth-telling about his life captured in this compelling exemplary autobiography. This insightful account is not only about life as an African Nova Scotian, but also about the community, law, politics.”
— Carl James
Born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, Burnley “Rocky” Jones is one of Canada’s most important figures of social justice. Often referred to as Canada’s Stokely Carmichael, Jones was tirelessly dedicated to student movements, peace activism, Black Power, anti-racism, women’s liberation and human rights reform. He was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, brought the Black Panthers to Canada, taught at Dalhousie and founded his own law firm.
This autobiography tells the story of Jones’s inimitable life and his accomplishments.
But it also does more. It illuminates the Black experience in Nova Scotia, it explains the evolving nature of race relations and human rights in recent Canadian history, and it reveals the origins of the “remedial” approach to racial equality that is now practised by activists and governments.
Finally, the story of Rocky Jones is a reminder that human rights are not a gift, but a prize that must be fought for.

Here is a contemporary Mi’kmaq legend of the life of a great man, who becomes chief, the embodiment of Mi’kmaq values of humility, courage, honour, service and sacrifice of personal gain for the sake of others. He lived a long and storied life, hundreds of years ago, before the arrival of the European scouts and, later, their warships. He was a renowned warrior but, more so, a peacemaker. His people followed him to the point of devotion, yet he was uncannily modest, even embarrassed by his own achievements. He suffered great loss, yet his understanding of his place, his role in a great society, a greater natural world and an inestimable metaphysical world, guided him through his pain.
Mi’kmaq readers may recognize these time-honoured themes based on traditional tales passing values generation to generation. Others will gain a new appreciation for what was lost under colonialism and the attempted genocide of this vibrant, sophisticated and successful culture and society.
With We Were Not the Savages, Daniel Paul changed the way the world understood the history of Eastern Canada and the fully developed civilization that existed before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers, and the nature of the subsequent violent attack on that culture. With Chief Lightning Bolt, Paul shows us exactly what was lost, the beauty of the Mi’kma’ki that once existed, the culture that survived and is only now beginning to recover.

Young, free-spirited Maya Mubeen leaves behind the pressures of family, marriage and tradition for a life of experience and adventure — proving to herself, and her mother, that she is anything but a typical Indian girl. After diving with sharks in the Philippines and a sordid breakup amidst the bustling nightlife of Tokyo, Maya’s sense of who she is — and where home is — starts to falter.
An ancient chai-making ritual holds the key to Maya’s past and present, unlocking the secret lives of her mother, Nina, who lived through Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda, her grandmother, Nargis, forced into marriage at thirteen, her great-grandmother, Sukaina, an underground radical socialist who fled an abusive husband, and lastly, her great-great grandmother, Zainab, who left behind a luxurious life in India.
Traversing the globe and historical eras, Taslim Burkowicz’s debut Chocolate Cherry Chai binds together themes of familial pressures, the immigrant experience, motherhood, love and loss into a poetic narrative.

Pris entre deux mondes, le puma a du mal à trouver un lieu où il est à sa place. En tant que chat fantôme, le puma vit comme il le devrait : dans la forêt, mais sans ses amis.
Misinsit miawe’k tapu’kl wskitqamu’kl, Ajik alme’si wejitoq ta’n tett tleyawit. Skite’kmujewey Mia’wj mimajit ta’n tel nenk — kisoqe’k pasik mu eymu’kk witapk.
French and Mi’kmaw version of Michael James Isaac’s How The Ghost Came to be Called the Ghost Cat / Ta’n Petalu Telui’tut Skite’kmujewey Mia’wj.
This version is available exclusively from Fernwood Publishing.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction In Memory of Robbie Robertson

Girl meets girl. Girl marries girl. They want to have babies…but they need a little help.

Double Pregnant is author Natalie Meisner’s light-hearted, poignant and informative true story about starting a family with her wife Viviën. Because Viviën is a woman of colour who was adopted into a white family, the couple wants their children to have a connection to their donor and decide against taking the anonymous, sperm clinic route. But they realize they are going to need some help. Taking matters into their own hands leads the couple to a series of often-hilarious “dates” with potential donors, all of whom have wildly different opinions on how the donation process should go, and how Natalie and Viviën should proceed as a new family.

Freeman Douglas Knockwood is a highly respected Elder in Mi’kmaw Territory and one of Canada’s premier addictions recovery counsellors. The story of his life is one of unimaginable colonial trauma, recovery and hope.
At age 6, Knockwood was placed in the Shubenacadie Residential School, where he remained for a year and a half. Like hundreds of other Mi’kmaw and Maliseet children, he suffered horrible abuse. By the time he reached his twenties, he was an alcoholic. He contracted tuberculosis in the 1940s, had one lung and several ribs removed.
Having hit rock bottom, Knockwood gained sobriety in his thirties through Alcoholics Anonymous. He went on to become a much sought after drug and alcohol rehabilitation counsellor in Canada. Many of Doug’s initiatives have been implemented across Canada and used by thousands of people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Looking back now, says Doug, “I realize I wasn’t only helping them. They were helping me to gather strength in my presentations, in feeding them the knowledge I received, the same as it was fed to me. That helped me to gain confidence in myself; doing all these things that I didn’t know I could yet do”.
This book is an in-depth look at Doug Knockwood’s life that also casts a wide and critical glance at the forces that worked to undermine his existence and the indomitable spirit of a man who recovered from, yet still struggles to overcome, those forces.

You can’t win a race you’re kept from running.

Set amid the cubicles and courtyards of Toronto City Hall, Kimia Eslah’s third novel centres on three women of colour navigating labyrinths at work, in love and in life. Faiza Hosseini is a cutthroat executive with a proven record — she knows she’s enough, but can she circumvent the old boys’ club? Sameera Jahani is passionate about equity but her girlfriend isn’t — can she bridge this gap, or has she had enough? Goldie Sheer has triumphantly landed her first job, but unexpected work drama makes her question — is she really enough? With grace and insight, Eslah bares three women’s experiences of structural discrimination, from microagressions to corruption.


Enough is an empathetic missive to anyone working on equity, diversity and inclusion — in cubicles, courtyards and countless other spaces.

The stories within Everything Is So Political explore the intersection between politics and the contemporary short story. From the overt to the subtle, this collection tackles a broad range of topics and themes, from women’s rights and Aboriginal culture to environmentalism, terrorism and totalitarianism. This is one of the few Canadian anthologies that focuses on political fiction, and it does so in a very powerful and artful way, flying in the face of readers, writers and critics alike who claim that writing with a political agenda occurs at the expense of literary quality.

Consisting of twenty short stories, this collection is proof that it is increasingly difficult, even impossible, for fiction not to be political. But make no mistake, the stories in this anthology are stories first: stories that are meant to be read, shared and enjoyed, but stories that will make you see things differently and question the world around you.

Finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography


All orders of Exiled for Love are 30% off. Use discount code exiled30 during checkout

To be gay in Iran means to live in the shadow of death. The country’s harsh Islamic code of Lavat is used to execute gay men, and LGBT individuals who avoid execution are often subjected to severe lashings, torture and imprisonment. It was in this unforgiving environment that Arsham Parsi came to terms with his identity as a gay man.
When a close friend committed suicide after his family learned he was gay, Arsham felt compelled to act. Risking his life as well as the safety of his family, he used the anonymity of the Internet to speak out about the human rights abuses against LGBT people in his country. In 2005 Parsi learned that an order had been issued for his arrest and execution. He was forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Turkey until, thirteen months later, he was granted asylum in Canada.

Exiled for Love follows Parsi’s incredible journey from his first understanding of his sexual orientation to his eventual exile. It explores the reality for LGBT people in Iran through the deeply personal and inspiring story of his life, escape and continuing work.

Nyla has an affinity to fire. A neglected teen in a small northern town—trying to escape a mother battling her own terrors—she is kicked out and struggles through life on the streets. Desperate for love, Nyla accidentally sets fire to her ex’s building and is then incarcerated for arson. Through community-led diversion, Nyla finds herself on a reserve as their firekeeper. But when climate change–induced wildfires threaten her new home, she knows intimately how to fight back.

The fourth book from acclaimed writer Katłıà brings a Northern Indigenous perspective to the destructive effects of ongoing colonialism. Displaying Katłıà’s enthralling storytelling style, Firekeeper is a coming-of-age tale that addresses intergenerational trauma by reclaiming culture, belonging and identity.

Join Nyla on her healing journey through the fire to sacred waters.

What are the long-term psychological costs of violence and war? Journalist Garry Leech draws from his experiences as a war correspondent, his ongoing personal struggle with PTSD and the latest research on this mental illness to provide a powerful and vivid answer to this question. For thirteen years, Leech worked in Colombia’s rural conflict zones where he experienced combat, witnessed massacre sites and was held captive by armed groups. This raw account of his journey from war on the battlefield to an internal, psychological war at home illustrates how those who work with traumatized populations can themselves be impacted by trauma.
Leech removes some of the stigmas, fears and ignorance related to PTSD in particular, and mental illness in general, by shedding light on a largely invisible illness that mostly manifests itself behind the closed doors of our homes. Ultimately, the book uses a journalist’s journey through PTSD to provide a message of hope for all those who suffer from this illness.

Winner of the 2015 Burt Award for First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Literature!

In a world without time and steeped in ceremony and magic, walks a chosen few who hold an ancient power: the Grey Eyes. True stewards of the land, the Grey Eyes use their magic to maintain harmony and keep evil at bay. With only one elderly Grey-Eye left in the village of the Nehiyawak, the birth of a new Grey-Eyed boy promises a renewed line of defence against their only foe: the menacing Red-Eyes, whose name is rarely spoken but whose presence is ever felt. While the birth of the Grey-Eyed boy offers the clan much-needed protection, it also initiates a struggle for power that threatens to rip the clan apart, leaving them defenceless against the their sworn ememy. The responsibility of restoring balance and harmony, the only way to keep the Nehiyawak safe, is thrust upon a boy’s slender shoulders. What powers will he have, and can he protect the clan from the evil of the Red Eyes?
Check out “Grey Eyes in the Classroom,” the IndieGogo campaign aimed to donate copies of Grey Eyes to underfunded First Nation schools across Canada:

Shortlisted for the 2015 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

“This is the story of how you were loved,” Penelope MacLaughlin whispers to her granddaughter.
Penelope MacLaughlin marries a miller and gradually discovers he is not as she imagined. Nonetheless she remains determined to make the best of life at the lonely mill up the Gunn Brook as she struggles to build a home around her husband’s eccentricities. His increasing absence leaves Penelope to run the mill herself, providing her with a living but also destroying the people she loves most. Penelope struggles with loss and isolation, and suffers the gradual erosion of her sense of self. A series of betrayals leaves her with nothing but the mill and her determination to save her grandchildren from their disturbed father. While she can prepare her grandsons for independence, her granddaughter is too young and so receives the greater gift: the story that made them all.

Felix Babimoosay is his most recent name, and it seems better than any other name he’s been offered. He journeys ever forward across a sharp landscape of flat plains, stung by insects, wind, and thirst. Unable to remember his past, he doggedly walks alone through the decaying world until he is pursued by a threatening man claiming a bounty on Felix’s head. Felix’s irritation spurs a slow memory of the days he left behind, until he stumbles into a corrupted town and a city of talking crows that push him to move beyond his lost memories.

Sparse and dreamy, Griffin Bjerke-Clarke’s debut novel explores memory, identity, trauma, and healing through a timeless journey. Métis storytelling methods and elements of horror infuse He Who Would Walk the Earth, an anti-colonial western that powerfully evokes a mood reminiscent of twentieth-century classics like Waiting for Godot. This book unsettles as much as it stokes, dystopian in Felix’s apathy yet optimistic in the way he addresses challenges along his listless way. In the end, Felix must learn from his earnest mistakes as he begins to understand that agency requires collaborating with those around him.

Holocaust to Resistance, My Journey is a powerful, awe-inspiring memoir from author and activist Suzanne Berliner Weiss. Born to Jewish parents in Paris in 1941, Suzanne was hidden from the Nazis on a farm in rural France. Alone after the war, she lived in progressive-run orphanages, where she gained a belief in peace and brotherhood. Adoption by a New York family led to a tumultuous youth haunted by domestic conflict, fear of nuclear war and anti-communist repression, consignment to a detention home and magical steps toward relinking with her origins in Europe.
At age seventeen, Suzanne became a lifelong social activist, engaged in student radicalization, the Cuban Revolution, and movements for Black Power, women’s liberation, peace in Vietnam and freedom for Palestine. Now nearing eighty, Suzanne tells how the ties of friendship, solidarity and resistance that saved her as a child speak to the needs of our planet today.

Human Misunderstanding is the latest work by award-winning poet Kathy Mac. The first of the book’s three long poems compares a fictional child soldier (a hero) with a real child soldier (a victim). The second juxtaposes eighteenth century philosophy with one person’s search for another in downtown Halifax. The final poem explores two court cases in which an immigrant faces deportation, and torture, if found guilty of assault in a Canadian court.

Ikwe is a new colouring book by Anishinaabe artist Jackie Traverse. Featuring brand new works, the stunning images in IKWE celebrate the spiritual and ceremonial aspects of women and their important role as water protectors.
“I had the privilege of going to Standing Rock twice. The strength and power that came from the women there inspired this book. To be a woman is to be a life giver and water protector. Even if you never have children, you have that sense, and the duty to honour and protect the water is within you,” writes Traverse.
Jackie Traverse is the mother of three daughters and a grandmother to Lily. She is an Anishinaabe multi-disciplined artist working in video, sculpture, mixed media and paint.

Wave goodbye to the American dream.
Just a heartbeat into the future, America is being dragged to its knees by social unrest and economic inequality. The furious pace of technological advancement has made medicine capable of near-miracles but has also enabled the widespread displacement of workers by automated systems. As unemployment and poverty levels rise to dangerous heights, those with fortunes to lose are pitted against those with nothing left. The threat of rebellion looms greater every day.
When a chance meeting in a Washington, D.C., slum leads journalist Richard LaPointe to a heinous discovery, he and his wife, internationally respected physician and medical technologist Allie MacKay, start down a path that exposes just how far those in power will go to protect themselves from the impending crisis. When their daughter, Skyie, an online video activist sensation, gets involved after pulling off a spectacular protest stunt, they are all plunged into a world in which no one is safe.
What they find behind the curtain is not an America made great again. It is an empire in ruin.

The only mention of Jude in Nova Scotia’s official history relates to her death: a slave-owning family was brought to trial for her murder in 1801. They were acquitted despite overwhelming evidence that they were guilty. Sharon Robart-Johnson pays tribute to such archival glimpses of enslaved people by re-creating the fullness of sisters Jude and Diana’s survival, emphasizing their joys alongside their hardship. She stories their movements through the U.S. to Nova Scotia, Canada, with the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists in 1783. As a child, Jude is sold away and then, by a lucky turn of fate, reunited with her fiercely loving family. Jude’s experiences harden her into a rebel who resists injustice without heeding consequences, and after her death, Diana is left alone to deal with racist and sexual violence.

Through Robart-Johnson’s research, we experience nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, when political debates about abolishing slavery were just beginning to emerge. Through Robart-Johnson’s creativity, we enter the historical fiction of Jude and Diana and their strong familial bonds, each character developed with nuance and care. While chronicling the cruelty they endured, Robart-Johnson’s storytelling powerfully honours their humour, strength, and shining dignity.

Winner of the 2017 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Non-Fiction!

Jen Powley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at fifteen. By thirty-five, she had lost the use of her arms and legs.

Just Jen is a powerful memoir that tells the story of Powley’s life at the time of her diagnosis, and the infinite, irrevocable ways it has changed since. Powley’s writing pulls no punches. She is lively, bold and unapologetic, answering questions people are often afraid to ask about living with a progressive disease. And yet, these snapshots from Powley’s life are not tinged with anger or despair. Just Jen is a powerful, uplifting and unforgettable work by an author who has laid her life — and her body — bare in order to survive.

A vexatious shapeshifter walks among humans. Shadowy beasts skulk at the edges of the woods. A ghostly apparition haunts a lonely stretch of highway. Spirits and legends rise and join together to protect the north.

Land-Water-Sky/Ndè-Tı-Yat’a is the debut novel from Dene author Katłįà. Set in Canada’s far north, this layered composite novel traverses space and time, from a community being stalked by a dark presence, a group of teenagers out for a dangerous joyride, to an archeological site on a mysterious island that holds a powerful secret.
Riveting, subtle, and unforgettable, Katłįà gives us a unique perspective into what the world might look like today if Indigenous legends walked amongst us, disguised as humans, and ensures that the spiritual significance and teachings behind the stories of Indigenous legends are respected and honored.

Live from the Afrikan Resistance! is the first collection of spoken word poetry by Halifax’s fifth Poet Laureate, El Jones. These poems speak of community and struggle. They are grounded in the political culture of African Nova Scotia and inherit the styles and substances of hip- hop, dub and calypso’s political commentary. They engage historical themes and figures and analyze contemporary issues — racism, environmental racism, poverty and, violence — as well as confront the realities of life as a Black woman. The voice is urgent, uncompromising and passionate in its advocacy and demands. One of Canada’s most controversial spoken word artists, El Jones writes to educate, to move communities to action and to demonstrate the possibilities of resistance and empowerment. Gathered from seven years of performances, these poems represent the tradition of the prophetic voice in Black Nova Scotia.

In most Canadian provinces, people with severe physical disabilities are simply warehoused in nursing homes, where many people, especially in the age of homecare, are in the final stages of their lives. It is difficult for a young person to live in a home geared for death; their physical assistance needs are met, but their social, psychological, and emotional needs are not. Jen Powley argues that everyone deserves to live with the dignity of risk.

In Making a Home, Powley tells the story of how she got young disabled people like herself out of nursing homes through developing a group home for adults with severe physical disabilities. This book makes a case for living in the community and against dehumanizing institutionalization.

When Canadian icon and original Canadian People’s Poet Milton Acorn was passed over for the Governor General’s Award for his 1969 collection I’ve Tasted My Blood, several of his peers, including Margaret Atwood, Pat Lane and Mordecai Richler, established the People’s Poetry Award, which they presented to Milton at a ceremony at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto in 1970.
When I’ve Tasted My Blood was re-issued in 1978 by Steel Rail Publishing, Milton wrote corrections and edits for the new edition on a copy of the original book. Milton Acorn: The People’s Poet reproduces that copy of I’ve Tasted My Blood with Milton’s handwritten notes. It also includes never-before-published photographs of Milton taken by Kent Nason, a studio recording of Milton reading many of his poems, and a 1971 documentary film about Milton Acorn made by Kent Martin and Errol Sharpe.
Though Milton Acorn died in 1986 at a young age, the prolific poet, writer and playwright is still remembered as one of Canada’s greatest poets. This one-of-a-kind multi-media collectors item and memorial is a must have for everyone who counts themselves a fan of the original Canadian People’s Poet.

This is the story of how a young northern girl picked herself up out of the rough and polished herself off like the diamond that she is in the land of the midnight sun.

Northern Wildflower is the beautifully written and powerful memoir of Catherine Lafferty. With startling honesty and a distinct voice, Lafferty tells her story of being a Dene woman growing up in Canada’s North and her struggles with intergenerational trauma, discrimination, poverty, addiction, love, and loss. Focusing on the importance of family ties, education, spiritualism, cultural identity, health, happiness, and the courage to speak the truth, Lafferty’s words bring cultural awareness and relativity to Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike, giving insight into the real issues many Indigenous women face and dispelling misconceptions about what life in the North is like.

During the 60s Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households.
Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh delves into the personal and provocative narrative of Colleen Cardinal’s journey growing up in a non- Indigenous household as a 60s Scoop adoptee. Cardinal speaks frankly and intimately about instances of violence and abuse throughout her life, but this book is not a story of tragedy. It is a story of empowerment, reclamation and, ultimately, personal reconciliation. It is a form of Indigenous resistance through truth-telling, a story that informs the narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women, colonial violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system.

Coming out of the innovative Book-in-a-Day event facilitated by the Global Afrikan Congress – Nova Scotia Chapter, R Is for Reparations invites readers to listen to the voices of young activists as they share their hopes and dreams about the global demand for redress, compensation and restitution for the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
This book is drawn from the voices of the children who participated in the Book-in-a-Day event and rode on an imaginary Underground Railroad Freedom ride, equipped with Elders who served as “conductors” and “station” stops. Their words address the tragedy and resulting political, social, and economic damage caused to African People by the slave trade, slavery, colonialism, poverty and anti-Black racism. Their reactions and reflections lead the contributions for this compelling, one-of-a-kind Alphabet Book suitable for all ages.

Rebel Without A Pause is the autobiography of Winnipeg’s best-known and most persistent political activist, Nick Ternette. For over forty years, Nick was one of the loudest voices of the Left, who ran for mayor multiple times and never shied away from asking elected officials tough questions. A champion of the rights of the poor and the disabled, sustainable ecology and public transit as well as a leader in Winnipeg’s peace movement, Nick was a thorn in the side of conservative politicians and city official for decades.

Written before his death in March 2013, Rebel Without A Pause invites us into the personal life and political memories of one of Winnipeg’s most cherished citizens.

“To all the young girls in care and women in corrections, never give up hope. I was once where you are. Life gets better. Be blessed.”

— Jackie Traverse

Sacred Feminine is a colouring book by Anishinaabe artist Jackie Traverse.
The beautiful and intricate works of art within depict images of strength, resilience and empowerment. With each image, the artist explains the symbolism and meaning represented. The first of its kind, Sacred Feminine is intended to heal and educate readers and colourers of all ages.

Under the crushing weight of the siege of Gaza, Laila and Nasser are members of the Palestinian resistance fighting desperately to free their people. Together, they learn of a plan to unite the disparate Palestinian factions and break Israel’s siege. Unknown to them, Ari, a brilliant Israeli spy, has decided that his conscience can no longer allow him to participate in the starvation of Gaza. A double agent whose every move is under mounting suspicion, Ari reaches out to the American contractors who trained him with a secret plan. As they all struggle to break the siege, they face the wrath of the Israeli military machine.

Socialist Cowboy is a political biography detailing the life and activism of longtime New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos, one of the most colourful and controversial political personalities in the history of Ontario politics. Throughout his illustrious twenty-three year career as a member of the Ontario legislature, Kormos’s unapologetic commitment to democratic socialism and his shoot-from-the-hip brand of small-town populism won him strong accolades back in his blue-collar hometown of Welland, while raising eyebrows at Queen’s Park and within his own party. From his days as a student strike leader, to his short-lived time in Bob Rae’s cabinet, to his run for the Ontario NDP leadership and his epic battles with the province’s political establishment, the book chronicles Kormos’s political trajectory, through interviews and archival research, with a view to unpacking the ideas and traits that have made him a New Democrat icon.

Baby’s a skater girl trying to get through high school like everyone else. Except she loves Victorian gothic fiction, experiences violent tremors, and gets visits from the ghost of her twin. Ravi never really died for her, not like her mom did last year. When Baby gets kicked out of the house for not conforming with her Indo-Canadian family’s gender expectations, everything changes. Her new, glamorous friend Delilah introduces her to all-night parties held in exclusive clubs, abandoned warehouses, and magical cornfields — the underground rave scene in 1990s Vancouver.

But how will Baby fit into this new world?

Join Baby on her wild search for belonging through the landscape of acid house, complete with extraordinary music, retro fashion, and copious substance use. Alongside eccentric DJs, misanthropic skaters, and denim-clad ghosts, Baby explores her sexual and cultural identity. A coming-of-age tale, Sugar Kids is an homage to the subcultures animating the nineties.

A corrupt mining company, repossessed gravestones, a man’s fractured past, mysterious notes posted to lampposts and murder deep in the highlands of Guatemala. In Tailings of Warren Peace, Stephen Law effortlessly weaves these elements into a powerful story of love and memory, exploring how the past haunts us and how solidarity can save us all. Mysterious, passionate and powerful, Tailings of Warren Peace shows us the interconnections that exist between us, transcending social class, culture and geography.

Estranged from her abusive parents as a teenager, Taraneh Pourani overcame poverty, isolation and self-hatred to build a happy home with her loving husband and children. Triggered by her young sons’ annual visit with their grandparents, Taraneh becomes psychologically distressed. She begins to doubt her memories and question her decision to remain distanced from her aging parents.
A journey into Taraneh’s family history reveals three generations of unaddressed mental illness and unresolved childhood trauma. Due to poverty in early twentieth-century Iran, Taraneh’s grandmother, Batoul, is married at the age of nine and sent to live with her husband’s family. Ashamed and traumatized, Batoul raises her children to expect hardships and to endure them in secret. The seeds of dysfunction are planted in Mojegan, Taraneh’s mother. Mojegan is a nurse in Tehran in the 1960s when she marries the charming, but alcoholic and impulsive, Reza. She stands by Reza throughout their marriage, even after he abruptly kicks out their teenage daughter, Taraneh.
A powerful and beautiful debut novel by Kimia Eslah, The Daughter Who Walked Away explores the lives of three Iranian women, across three generations, as they struggle to love and be loved unconditionally.

Gia and Serena Pirji are sisters, but as the first-generation born in Canada to immigrant parents, their lives play out in different ways because of their skin tone. Gia’s fair skin grants her membership to cliques of white kids as a teen, while Serena’s dark skin means she is labelled as Indian and treated as inferior. This superficial difference, imposed by a society obsessed with skin colour and hierarchy, sets the sisters into a dynamic that plays out throughout their lives. In a world where white skin is preferable, the sisters are pitted against each other through acts of revenge and competition as they experience adultery, ruined friendships, domestic abuse, infertility and motherhood.
Taslim Burkowicz’s vivid, sensory-rich writing style brings readers to the party scene in Goa, suburban supermarkets in Vancouver and a safari in Africa, where Gia and Serena navigate through the highs and lows of a tumultuous, loving relationship. The Desirable Sister reveals the bitter games of treachery women are forced to play to achieve the ranks of beauty and success, and ultimately shows the strength of love between sisters.

<p>Hunde/fräulein: Dog/nanny. For five and a half years (1995-2001) Kathy Mac lived in Sambro Head, NS, looking after anywhere from four to twelve English Setters. The post entailed maintaining the ocean-side doghouse and looking after the many, varied houseguests of the hundemutter – ocean activist Elisabeth Mann Borgese, youngest daughter of Thomas Mann. These poems take their tone from the days and dogs that inspired them – by turns extravagant, intense, celebratory, wistful.</p>

Shortlisted for the 2017 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award!

John Alexander MacNeil is eighty years old. Sharp-tongued and quick-witted, he lives alone in rural Cape Breton, but he still cooks breakfast for his wife, who’s been dead for thirty years. He silently starts to question his own mind after stopping to pick up a hitchhiker — a hitchhiker who turns out to be his neighbour’s mailbox.
Everything shifts, though, when Emily, a pregnant teenager, shows up at his house with no place else to go. Determined to help Emily as best as he can, John must also keep the wolves from his door and maintain some semblance of sanity.
The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil is a compelling, witty and heartwarming novel by renowned Nova Scotia author Lesley Choyce.

John Alexander MacNeil is back with another astonishing adventure. The ninety-year-old still lives alone on the blessed isle of Cape Breton. He still sometimes makes tea for his wife, who died decades ago. He accepts his lonely life, ignoring the world changing around him. But one night, he feels his heart stop. After willing himself back to life with sheer stubbornness, John Alex finds Death himself sitting at his kitchen table, perplexed and intrigued by his victim’s recovery. What follows is a tale on the edge of reality, full of love, doubt and the inexplicable details of an extraordinary life. Keeping what wits he has about him, John Alex needs to muster all the wisdom and courage he has to protect those around him from the dangers of an ever-changing world and the grim reaper he has come to know.

In his 103rd book, acclaimed author of The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil takes the reader through another beautiful adventure about time and love. Lesley Choyce tackles topics like dementia, elder sexuality and assisted dying with humour and grace.

After a hunting trip one fall, a family in the far reaches of so-called Canada’s north return to nothing but an empty space where their home once stood. Finding themselves suddenly homeless, they have no choice but to assimilate into settler-colonial society in a mining town that has encroached on their freedom.

An intergenerational coming-of-age novel, This House Is Not a Home follows Kǫ̀, a Dene man who grew up entirely on the land before being taken to residential school. When he finally returns home, he struggles to connect with his family: his younger brother whom he has never met, his mother because he has lost his language, and an absent father whose disappearance he is too afraid to question.

The third book from acclaimed Dene, Cree and Metis writer Katłįà, This House Is Not a Home is a fictional story based on true events. Visceral and embodied, heartbreaking and spirited, this book presents a clear trajectory of how settlers dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their land — and how Indigenous communities, with dignity and resilience, continue to live and honour their culture, values, inherent knowledge systems, and Indigenous rights towards re-establishing sovereignty. Fierce and unflinching, this story is a call for land back.

Thyme Travellers collects fourteen of the Palestinian diaspora’s best voices in speculative fiction. Speculative fiction as a genre invites a reconfiguring of reality, and here each story is a portal into realms of history, folklore and futures.

A man stands on the shore waiting to commune with those who live in the ocean. Pilgrims stretch into the distance, passing a stone cairn with a mysterious light streaming from it. Two Australian women fervently dig a tunnel to Jerusalem. Men from Gaza swim in the sea until they drown, still unconcerned. A father and son struggle to connect over the AI scripts prompting their conversation.

Building on the work of trailblazing anthologies such as Reworlding Ramallah and Palestine +100, this volume is the first of its kind in Canada. Editor Sonia Sulaiman brings together stories by speculative fiction veterans and emerging writers from Australia to Egypt, Lebanon to Canada.

Called to his dying father’s bedside, Gabriel Golden’s life is turned upside down after receiving his mother’s journal. The journal chronicles his mother’s life in post-war Britain, her genteel upbringing and her eventual marriage to Gabriel’s father, a complicated man raised in an aggressive, Jewish family who drinks to escape financial worries. Gabriel is shocked as the novel reveals dark secrets about his parents’ relationship, shaking Gabriel’s preconceptions about his father – and himself.
Based on a true story and winner of the H.R. Percy Novel Prize and the Beacon Award for Social Justice, Turn Us Again is a powerful exploration of the dynamics within family relationships, enticing the reader to embark on a journey towards a more complex understanding of the issue of abuse.
Read the review by The Chronicle Herald
here.

Tucked away in her tattoo studio in the port city of Halifax, Shaz draws meaning and symbolism onto the bodies of her clients. After the ransacking of her home, the brutal attack on her friend and the sudden appearance of her white father, Shaz is compelled to explore the racial divides in her life and in the city around her. A chance encounter with Rashid, a parkour-performing refugee from Sri Lanka, provides a stabilizing counterpoint to the tumultuous relationships in her life.
Ultimately, Shaz discovers the complexities of truth, the meaning of loss and how we are all coloured by our experiences. In a narrative that explores racism, family dysfunction and the experiences of refugees, Under Her Skin paints the canvas of our landscape, making us aware of who we are.

“There are people who break open and make a new, bigger, self. But some of us are … brittle.”

When stress causes an old trauma to surface, Lucy, a longtime community organizer, teacher and anti-poverty activist, loses control of her life. On probation and living on the streets of Halifax’s North End, all she has left is friends. Faithful friends like Judith, her lawyer, who is helping her take back her life.
Lucy begins to regularly sneak into Judith’s basement to take refuge from the cold, but Lucy’s presence in the house betrays their friendship, and she uncovers mysteries from Judith’s past. As events draw their lives closer, Lucy and Judith are forced to face the toll taken by their secrets. Each of them must choose between confronting past pain or remaining broken.

Many Canadians know that Viola Desmond is the first Black, non-royal woman to be featured on Canadian currency. But fewer know the details of Viola Desmond’s life and legacy. In 1946, Desmond was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Her singular act of courage was a catalyst in the struggle for racial equality that eventually ended segregation in Nova Scotia.
Authors Graham Reynolds and Wanda Robson (Viola’s sister) look beyond the theatre incident and provide new insights into her life. They detail not only her act of courage in resisting the practice of racial segregation in Canada, but also her extraordinary achievement as a pioneer African Canadian businesswoman. In spite of the widespread racial barriers that existed in Canada during most of the twentieth century, Viola Desmond became the pre-eminent Black beauty culturist in Canada, establishing the first Black beauty studio in Halifax and the Desmond School of Beauty Culture. She also created her own line of beauty products.
Accessible, concise and timely, this book tells the incredible, important story of Viola Desmond, considered by many to be Canada’s Rosa Parks.

Set in a small northern town, under the mythical shadow of the Sleeping Giant, Wake the Stone Man follows the complicated friendship of two girls coming of age in the 1960s. Molly meets Nakina, who is Ojibwe and a survivor of the residential school system, in high school, and they form a strong friendship. As the bond between them grows, Molly, who is not native, finds herself a silent witness to the racism and abuse her friend must face each day.

In this time of political awakening, Molly turns to her camera to try to make sense of the intolerance she sees in the world around her. Her photos become a way to freeze time and observe the complex human politics of her hometown. Her search for understanding uncovers some hard truths about Nakina’s past and leaves Molly with a growing sense of guilt over her own silence.

When personal tragedy tears them apart, Molly must travel a long hard road in search of forgiveness and friendship.

Yasmine enters Lebanon escaping a messy divorce and seeking the family, culture, and connection that her Palestinian mother hid during their life in Toronto. It’s 2006, and she’s meeting her cousin Reem for the first time after connecting over social media. Reem teaches Arabic and lives in a refugee camp with her mother and sister. Her brother Ahmed lived there too until he went to Syria for work and then disappeared. When Yasmine receives a package of mysterious letters suggesting her father might still be alive, the cousins embark on a discovery of political secrets no one in the family wants them to know.

Complicating her questions about identity, belonging, and healing even further, Yasmine runs into Ziyad — an old flame who’s incidentally taking Reem’s class. Though the cousins' lives could not be more different, Yasmine and Reem must learn from each other as they navigate abusive relationships, grief, displacement, and war.

Set amid the arid glamour of Lebanon’s beaches and urban landscapes, Where the Jasmine Blooms is at once a political historical thriller and a Muslim feminist love story. Turn-of-the-century Arab politics feature prominently, echoing loudly even twenty years later.