Money. Gobs of it. In the blink of an eye - or the drop of a ball-- it's all yours.
Everyone dreams about striking it rich by winning a lottery. We all feverishly line up to purchase our tickets, and watch TV or scan the newspapers to see if we have won, even though the odds are better that we will be struck by lightning. Still, we perservere, be …

The genre of horror has in the past been the exclusive province of heterosexual writers and themes, stereotypically involving a male antagonist and a female victim. Although the incursions into the field by such writers as Anne Rich and Poppy Z. Brite have largely blurred sexual orientation boundaries, there has never been an anthology of horror s …

Other Conundrums, copublished with Vancouver's Artspeak Gallery and the Kamloops Art Gallery, is an extraordinary collection of essays on Canadian artists of colour by Monika Kin Gagnon, one of Canada's most respected art writers and curators. The essays explore the history of cultural production in this country with an emphasis on race, cultural …

Sex, once the great unspoken, is now regularly commodified and prepackaged for wide consumer consumption, on TV, in films, on billboards. In this context in which nothing is shocking--no boundary too sacred to cross--what does sex mean, particularly to those born under these conditions? Carnal Nation collects stories about sex by an exciting new g …

Close to Spider Man marks the debut of an exciting new literary talent: a collection of connected stories whose female narrators seek out lives for themselves amidst the lonely, breathtaking landscape of the Yukon. The young people in Ivan Coyote's deeply personal stories are looking to make a break from their circumstances, but the North is in the …

nathalie stephens' book, Somewhere Running, irreverently examines the tensions between two women ("the artist"), a photographer ("the eyes that watch"), and "the city." Beginning with a very simple premise--two women standing at a distance from one another--the text circles hypnotically as details come into focus and the pull between figures inten …

Billeh Nickerson is a poet for our times--a witty, urbane chronicler of life through lavender-coloured glasses. His poems, full of astonishing pleasures, speak to the wonders of the world: about "the push of knowing you're different" and "the pull of wanting to belong." Whether it is professing his unrequited love for Wayne Gretzky, or offering his …

A dead man is discovered in his apartment, surrounded by notes, books, and other assorted fragments of his life. A distant acquaintance is called in to clean up the mess, clear out the space, and try to make sense of the suicide, which leads to his own world being turned upside down. As he sifts through the evidence of his friend's life and death, …

Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to kill. Tomorrow, a life will hang in the balance. Watermelon Row, a suspenseful, intricately plotted novel, tracks a day in the life of three men on the brink of violence and ruin.
It tails Ed Harrison, a tough old man in his seventies, Scott Venn, a yuppie lawyer/sports agent, and Peter James, an unemployed l …

"When I look in the mirror, I don't know who I am."
-Kerri
Being a teenager in today's complex world is a difficult enough task, but adopted teens have a unique struggle: to discover their identity and a sense of belonging and place in the world, which often means coming to terms with their past. The Face in the Mirror, based on numerous intervi …

Kareers is a satirical hot button collection of alternative career opportunities that - at the cusp of the millennium - pokes fun at America's corporate malaise. It's a book for those who've read What Color Is Your Parachute? and decided that bungy-jumping is more their style.
Kareers lists job descriptions for 100 questionable callings, from al …

They are familiar comic images--a man on a psychiatrist's couch, confessing his sins; lecherous men ogling a buxom server at a cocktail party; a man and woman in tattered clothing, bickering on a deserted island the size of a living room. They are the adult cartoons popularized in literary and men's magazines and collected in pulp digests--single …

An anthology of new poetic voices from Vancouver. Contributors include Lori Maleea Acker, Shane Book, Adam Chiles, Brad Cran, Carla Funk, Chris Hutchinson, Aubri Keleman, Ryan Knighton, Billie Livingston, Teresa McWhirter, Billeh Nickerson, and Karen Solie.
A publication of Smoking Lung Press.

Work by writers of Chinese-Canadian heritage have achieved international success: this includes books by Wayson Choy, SKY Lee, and Denise Chong, as well as the acclaimed anthology of Chinese-Canadian fiction, Many Mouthed Birds. Swallowing Clouds collects the work of some of the most vibrant and exciting Chinese-Canadian poets working today, being …

Sarah and Tanya are long-time friends and self-described "lazy vegetarians" whose love of animals made them want to completely eliminate animal products from their diet. Their decision to "go vegan" was a challenge not only to their palate but to their way of thinking about food and nutrition. With some imagination and a little know-how, the trans …

The first Hot & Bothered, a 1998 collection of short short stories on lesbian desire, went through three printings within its first year and appeared on numerous gay/lesbian bestseller lists, rising as high as No. 2 in the Lambda Book Report in 1999. Hot & Bothered 2, the sequel, contains even more sensuous tales of lesbian seduction and fantasy. …

Bud Osborn's point of reference is the street of the disenfranchised – literally, the street corners bordered by Main and Hastings on Vancouver's notorious East Side, known as "Hundred Block Rock"--the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. While this area is well-known for its drug users, criminals, and prostitutes, it is also home to recovering addi …

Provocative, suspenseful, and dangerously sensual, Jane tells the story of a young woman's need to be loved, her wish to be wanted. Perplexed by a world that treats her as an outsider--a girl with foolish, impudent desires--she becomes that girl, using her youth and sexuality to attract and repel. Yearning to be older, to be an adult, she dances a …

Wayde Compton's first poetry book: a stunning set of poems documenting the migration of Blacks to Canada, specifically when the first Black settlers-facing an increasingly hostile racist government-left San Francisco and travelled north to British Columbia beginning in 1858.
With recurring themes of the unknowable, the crossroads, the trickster, …

The X-Files was a pop culture phenomenon. When it first hit the airwaves, The X-Files was heralded for being radically different than anything else on television. The rainy, foggy "Wet Coast," which was home to the show, affected the look of the series--dark, haunting, mysterious--and its storylines--paranoid, conspiratorial, fantastic.
Written b …

What do the terms "Master of Ceremonies," "Husbandman of Nature," "Old Faithless," and "My Body's Captain" refer to? How about "Cully-Shangy," Hogmagundy," or "Horizontal Refreshment"? Synonyms for these and other phrases can be found in The Bald-Headed Hermit & the Artichoke, a unique guide to the lingo of sex. Extensive historical research condu …

Above all
a poem records speech:
the way it was said
between people animals birds
a poem is an archive for our times
-Dorothy Livesay, "Anything Goes"
Dorothy Livesay, who died in 1996, is considered a pioneer of Canadian poetry; her work is infused with an extraordinary grace and power, and shaped by a prescient feminist sensibility which le …

Ice and Fire is a collection of nonfiction narratives from award-winning writer Stephen Osborne, who retains an abiding sense that the places and the people he encounters are still to be discovered.
Negotiating the Trans-Canada Highway near Moncton during a whiteout, visiting Timothy Eaton's grave in Toronto, leaving offerings of tobacco at a Nez …

Bad Jobs is an anthology of tales--both humorous and tragic--about the worst jobs people have ever held.
This collection of stories, comics, and photographs depict, in gory true-life detail, examples of bad jobs. We all shudder at the thought of our own worst jobs-waiter, cashier, parking lot attendant-but these take the cake, demonstrating just …

Once Upon an Elephant is a contemporary tale of Hindu deity Ganesh and what happens when worlds, cultures, and stories collide.

A whimsical, contemporary retelling of the creation story of Ganesh--the elephant-headed Hindu deity--Once Upon an Elephant is rife with humour and political satire.

When the police find unusual boy parts--a young man's hea …

Contra/Diction is an anthology of gay men's fiction to re-establish the queer in queer.
The book is a gay men's fiction anthology that represents the plurality of gay identity; an attempt to show that not all gay men "drive to Ikea, go to the gym, and buy new ties for their management-level positions before taking in the latest stage hit," as sug …

Small Worlds is a fascinating compendium: photographs of aspects of everyday objects-coins, keys, cutlery-that, in photographer Matthew Wheeler's hands, are not readily recognizable.
How well do you know the world around you-the things right under your nose and at your fingertips?
The 100 photographs, extreme close-ups of objects that surround u …

As lead singer of the two-person band Mecca Normal, Jean Smith is regarded as one of the forerunners of the Riot Grrrl movement-unapologetic, in-your-face music by women rockers who are front and center, no strings attached. Her long-awaited second novel attempts to find the razor's edge between order and chaos in a complicated, male-dominated worl …

Quickies, together with Hot & Bothered, are hot his-and-her follow-ups to the highly successful Queer View Mirror 1 and 2 books of queer "short short" fiction. Quickies includes work by 69 writers (67 men and 2 women) from the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, South Africa, and Ireland, on aspects of gay male desire, from first kisses …

Hot & Bothered, together with Quickies, are hot his-and-her follow-ups to the highly successful Queer View Mirror 1 and 2 books of queer "short short" fiction. Hot & Bothered includes work by 69 women from the US, Canada and elsewhere-stories about danger, romance, humor, and of course, hot sex. From a woman in love with Marge Simpson (asking the …

The modern tales in Stories to Hide From Your Mother provide directions for conduct in a difficult world, filled with hysterical wedding parties, abusive lovers, and judgmental mothers. In Stories to Hide From Your Mother, the body plays a central role--a site of lurid spectacle and misplaced lust; and the various characters--a woman who obsesses …

The Yellow Pear is a brave and moving document, using words and art, of what it means to be Canadian.
Co-published with the Burnaby Art Gallery, this is a collection of deeply moving narratives (in both English and Mandarin) and illustrations about the artist's transition to a new life in a new land; his life in Canada resonates with the memories …

As Canadians, we remember the stories told to us in high-school history class as condensed images of the past--the glorious Mountie, the fearsome Native, the Last Spike. National Dreams is an incisive study of the most persistent icons and stories in Canadian history, and how they inform our sense of national identity: the fundamental beliefs that …

Scrambled Brains is a decidedly offbeat cookbook for those living and eating on the edge-urban warriors and young hipsters low on funds but high on attitude. Robin, a visual artist, and Pierre, a chef, are roommates who joined forces to create a spirited yet highly usable book of recipes, comics, and anecdotes based on their solemn belief that it …

A publishing oddity, Death Writes: A Curious Notebook is both what you might expect--a handwritten notebook with doodles in the margins and clippings in the back; and what you might not expect--the perspective of Death him/herself, ruminating about the land of the living.
This unusual, stylish book is Death's personal notebook, which has been une …

You're Not As Good As You Think You Are is an important addition to the field of self-help literature.
You think you're swell, don't you? That you're God's gift to the Universe, the cream in everyone else's coffee. Well, you're wrong, and it's getting on everyone's nerves. The problem is you're too good, too pumped, too motivated. You need to com …

Silence Descends: The End of the Information Age, 2000-2500 is not as much a novel as it is an imaginary book of non-fiction: a history of the future, written in the year 2500--a look back at where we have yet to go. Silence Descends is a cautionary tale; it is a critique of "the Microsoft mentality"--the belief in the power of technology to save …

Queer View Mirror 2 is a second volume of lesbian and gay short short fiction: snapshots of queer life that articulate, in one thousand words or less, different ways of the world. One hundred and one stories from writers in eight different countries make up Queer View Mirror 2. Their subject matter ranges the wide spectrum of gay experience, from …

Out of this World is a lively biography of Canada's "People's Poet," Milton Acorn, exploring – and exposing – his larger-than-life myths, and tracing his tragic rise and fall: from his youth in Charlottetown, to Montréal in the late '50s, to Toronto and Vancouver in the '60s. His poetry was at once political and personal, informed by both Marx …

Co-published with Presentation House Gallery, It Pays to Play: British Columbia in Postcards, 1950s--1980s reveals the province as it was represented in popular, photographic colour postcards from the early '50s through to the emergence in the '80s of the present post-industrial, global economy.
Following the Second World War, North America under …

Bringing It Home: Women Talk About Feminism in Their Lives is a kitchen sink to corporate boardroom collection of essays that peels away the rhetoric from feminist discourse.
Thirty-something years after the resurrection of the modern Women's movement--at the height of skepticism about the relevance of feminism (some say it's dead)--this lively g …

Everything But the Truth is a stunning debut of short fiction by Christopher McPherson, a carpenter by trade, who constructs, with disarming detail, stories of desire and loss, and the thin line between truth and fiction in people's lives.
These are confessionals by characters whose emotional lives are laid bare, from a lovelorn hippo-keeper at th …

Spare and incisive, these stories present a voyeuristic glimpse into imperfect lives rooted in philosophies and deities, imbued with love, humour, and irony. Davey Bryant is an aging gay man who, while his lover sleeps, embarks on electronic odysseys with strangers surfing the Internet--from a lonely widow, to a cross-dressing naval officer, to a t …

Queer View Mirror is the first international assembly of lesbian and gay short short fiction including the work of 99 writers from all over the world, each offering fresh, once furtive glimpses of queer experience imbued with the rich possibilities of life, love, and language.
Contributors include: Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Maureen Brady, Beth Brant, Mic …

Bloodlines collects trivia, lore, and quotations on vampires, from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice, shedding light on this darkest of horror legends.

Coffee is the soma of the nineties, and Higher Grounds is your guidebook to the zeitgeist, whether it's truck-stop "Swedish gasoline" or a "half-double decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon." Includes quotations, recipes, definitions, and a lexicon of essential coffeeisms.

An unsettling study of two tragic events at an Indian residential school in British Columbia which serve as a microcosm of the profound impact the residential school system had on Aboriginal communities in Canada throughout this century. The book's focal points are the death of a runaway boy and the suicide of another while they were students at th …

A raga is a melodic composition in Indian classical music that imparts certain emotions. Ragas From the Periphery is a collection that uses language as its instrument.
Phinder Dulai is first and foremost a South Asian writer, and while issues of identity and cultural immersion are central to his work, they are not all-encompassing. His poems are i …

A hip-shakin', pelvis-twistin' trip through Elvis World. Includes quotations from the King and those who knew him, as well as trivia about the Man from Memphis. Long live the King!
Before Elvis there was nothing. -John Lennon

There are countless money books by innumerable experts on how to make it, save it, invest it, and spend it, but only The Little Book of Money will help you laugh about it.
Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem. -
Bill Vaughn