BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
'The Skeleton Dance' takes place on th emean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millenium. The story follows Robert Walker, a musician, and his fried, Klin Abrams, a criminal lawyer, as external forces threaten and strain their long-term friendship and lead, eventually, to horrific conequences. The writing is graphic and colourful, pulling the reader into the novel's swirling maelstrom of drugs, sex, motorcycle and drug gangs, and missing women. The narrative moves relentlessly forward with the quick pacing of a crime novel. 'The Skeleton Dance' will appeal to readers who like their literature raw, and who have spaces reserved on their bookshelves for Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen's 'Beautiful Losers', Kerouac, Bret Easton Willis, and W.S. Burroughs.
But what's most interesting about the novel is its examination of masculinity and sexuality-in particular, Robert's ambivalence about desire, his convoluted "queerknot", and the suggestive fissures through which he and Klin interact. At its heart, 'The Skeleton Dance' is a love story, but one from which "beauty's long gone." - Quill & Quire
"Robert Walker, the novel's protagonist, is a drug-addicted ad writer who always seems to be on the verge of intensified trouble. You could call him down and out, it would be a fair assessment. The reader is close to all the dirty-doings through and through, whether or not one can sympathize with the circumstances depicted in the pages of the book doesn't really matter, it's all happening at hyper-speed, death-obsessed narration, with barbed dialogue and characters pitted against one another with the calculating cruelty of a brutal war." -Broken Pencil Magazine
Philip Quinn is the author of 'Dis Location, Stories After the Flood', 'The Double' (a novel), and, most recently, a first collection of poetry, ' The SubWay'. His work has appeared in the journals 'subTerrain', 'blood-aphorisms', 'The White Wall Review', 'Front & Centre', ' Kiss Machine', 'Lichen journal', 'Urban Graffiti', 'shard', 'Broken Pencil', 'Snow Monkey' and 'Anemone Sidecar'. Mr. Quinn lives in Toronto.