Read Local BC 2016
Created by ABPBC on September 19, 2016As if
As If is a collection of stories that, as its title suggests, points at an indubitable truth: all literature is speculative. Goulden's, however, extends past the boundaries of conventional fiction into areas traditionally occupied by fantasy and magic realism. These stories rail against the industrial and digital mechanisms of our age and, in the great fabulist tradition, call upon its characters to take action, to reach beyond the repetitive anxiety of being a cog in the wheel of mechanical env …
Garage Criticism
Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards)
In Garage Criticism Peter Babiak eviscerates and deflates some of the cultural sacred cows of our time. From Fifty Shades of Grey ("Hot for Teacher: What Fifty Shades of Grey Taught Me About Salacious Grammar, Sexy Women and the Scandalous Conflation of Cultural and Literary Culture") to the disintegration of the "deep read" ("F You Professor: Tumblr, Triggers and the Allergies of Reading") to the Hunger Games ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - …
Jettison
Nathaniel G. Moore follows up his 2014 ReLit Award win for Savage with a diverse collection of short fiction, his first, Jettison, featuring stories which dangle somewhere between horror and romance.
"Jaws" explores a father's desire to over-share the erotic origins of his children's "Aunt" Louise; "Blade Runner" uncovers the darkest and most hilarious aspects of dating by delineating the psych ward politics surrounding a male mental patient with five girlfriends who takes apart his bed when they …
Serpentine Loop
"Writers, like skaters, score the blank sheet and test the edge of inclusion and exclusion. Most of these poems begin with a word from skating and push off to another topic. Others revisit ideas of femininity, control and language as pattern, or visit the past through movement, or enact principles from the rink such as symmetry, joy, endurance, crescendo and accent, revolution, response. The blade melts ice via friction and pressure. I drifted away from skating but the language is imprinted in m …
Vancouver Vanishes
Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes), 2016
#1 on the BC Bestseller List
Since 2005, nearly 9,000 demo permits for residential buildings have been issued in Vancouver. An average of three houses a day are torn down, many of them original homes built for the middle and working class in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Very few are deemed significant enough to earn the protection of a heritage designation, but they are part of our heritage nonetheless and their demolition is not …
Cold Case Vancouver
The untold story behind some of Vancouver's notorious unsolved murder cases.
Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes)
While Vancouver is much loved by tourists and locals alike for its spectacular natural scenery and diverse culture, behind that facade lurks a violent past. Cold Case Vancouver takes a look at the city's disreputable side by revisiting some of its infamous cold murder cases from 1944 to 1996.
There are literally hundreds of murders that remain unsolved in Va …
The Last Gang in Town
Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize finalist; Canadian Historical Association's Clio Prize for BC winner
Decades before organized crime syndicates brought sensational drug wars to Vancouver, street gangs held sway over its unruly east side. None was considered tougher or more feared than the Clark Park gang, a wild, two-fisted crew of characters from Vancouver's post-1960s counterculture.
In 1972, after a number of headline-making riots and clashes with police--including an infamous altercation …
The Mercy Journals
Winner, Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction
This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes n …