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Summer Preserves
Publisher: Breton Books$16.00Smart, sassy, and sexy, Summer Preserves is a solid debut collection from poet, teacher, and activist Diane Reid.In Summer Preserves, Diane Reid serves up a generous collection filled with guts and good taste. A genuine keeper.“Bursting at the seams with ideas…powered by energetic engagement.. There is, at the core, a control and serious attention to craft.” —Matt Robinson, whose poetry collections include A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking, No Cage Contains a Stare that Well, and Against the Hard Angle.
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Woman From Away
Publisher: Breton Books$19.95Born in 1910 Montana, Tessie Gillis in the 1950s came with her husband Joe to Rear Glencoe in Inverness County to live the hard,satisfying life of rural Cape Breton. Illness finally gave her the opportunity to write, and her friend and editor Evelyn Garbary helped her bloom into one of Cape Breton’s finest writers.
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Down North
Editor: Ron CaplanPublisher: Breton Books$12.95A terrific and moving read!
These voices confirm the tenderness, good humor and rich story telling of Cape Breton Island. Down North stands as a solid tested play–whether on stage or among friends. And then, it encourages you to “Make this play your own!”–a unique and compelling invitation.
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Molly Poems
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95The Molly Poems and Highland Elegies contains rare poems written in tribute to the paintings of Molly Lamb Bobak, Canada s first woman war artist. Each poem, while inspired by Bobak s work, takes its own unique direction. And the Highland Elegies section offers powerful new poems that evoke more of the Maritimes world of Donovan s successful first collection, CAPE BRETON QUARRY.
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Acadian Tales from Cape Breton
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95An esteemed Canadian folklorist, Father Anselme Chiasson’s award-winning books include songs, tales and history of the Acadians of Cape Breton and the Magdalen Islands.
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The Midnight Murder
Publisher: Breton Books$16.95In his short, vigorous life, McKinnon was the courageous editor of three Cape Breton newspapers, and a successful novelist. He fearlessly found a voice in the Boston literary world. Then he became a Methodist minister and tried to burn his “evil” novels. He died at 33-after a life as romantic and passionate as any of his characters.
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Cape Breton Christ
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95An extraordinary, brave and provocative story told in the form of poetry that reads like a brisk, short novel. Denise Aucoin’s Cape Breton Christ is rare, risky, lighthearted and down-to-earth writing that challenges and encourages us all.
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Wild Honey
Publisher: Breton Books$9.95Stark and sensual, funny and frightening by turns, these are poems you can read and read again, for enjoyment and for insight.
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John R and Son
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95No one has ever written about Cape Breton quite like this! A rich daring short novel, plus 5 stories. A troubling, brutal, and compassionate book that is a riveting classic.
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Cape Breton Quarry
Publisher: Breton Books$7.95Born in Ingonish, Cape Breton, Stewart is the author of the popular comic novel, ‘Maritime Union’. He teaches at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, and is the founding editor of The Nashwaak Review.
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Stories From the Woman From Away
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A novel of a woman’s rural life, and of the people whose weaknesses and wit enrich her Cape Breton community.
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The Seven-Headed Beast and Other Acadian Tales from Cape Breton Island
Publisher: Breton Books$12.95This is the first book of Acadian tales now told in English, and establishes these stories as a part of Cape Breton heritage.
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Moonlight Skater 9 Cape Breton Stories and The Dream
Publisher: Breton Books$14.95A mischievous blend of Scottish and Acadian, these stories blossom, or explode softly, in your life.
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God & Me
Publisher: Breton Books$6.95In God & Me Sheila Green of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, offers a series of sort, unpretentious poems meant to share the experience of questions, answers an mysteries in discovering relationship with one another, and with God. The ease and caring of this little book make it a rare find for wide range of people. Alison R. Grapes has contributed drawings that, rather than illustrate, try to maintain the calm, urgent joy.
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Ashes of My Dreams
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and cut off from her family, free-spirited and independent Gracie is determined to keep her baby and to raise him on her own.
Protecting Elijah Blue from the nuns eager to adopt him out to a “better” home is only Gracie’s first battle…
It takes a whole community of colourful neighbours and friends—and the dream-wisdom of spirits that protect her—for Gracie to navigate the cruel and impoverishing systems that judge and harass her as a single mom on PEI.
She gets through with pride, grit, and humour—but nothing can protect her from her growing son’s desire to know his father’s identity.
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Variations on Blue
Publisher: Acorn Press$17.95This year’s poetry book by an Island writer is by former P.E.I. bookseller Pam Martin; this is her first book. As a child Pam Martin had four very sudden and unexpected encounters with death. These experiences shaped her emotional life as she struggled to understand them and to find beauty in a world that seemed fraught with peril. The poems also examine, with delicacy and humour, the world she encountered as a teenager, a social worker and a wife.
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The Grand Change
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95William Andrews’ first novel examines life in a small PEI communityin the 1940s and 50s as changes, so common in the restof the world, begin to take hold. Using a road as an allegory, heweaves a lyrical tale of simple country people, their strugglesand their joys. The story is told through the eyes of a boy calledJake: he is the witness to life on the Hook Road and the eventsthat change that life forever. The book is in some ways like along poem: the people and the world they inhabit are richlyand meticulously described, and the superb writing takes thereader to a world no one will ever see again.
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Riptides New Island Fiction
Publisher: Acorn Press$21.95A call was sent out asking writers to submit unpublished short stories for a fiction anthology featuring newer writers with a significant P.E.I. connection. There were no boundaries for setting or genre, only a limit of 5,000 words. PEI is strong on tradition, which includes out-migration and immigration. Thus, its culture and demographics are changing, and these PEI writers both are Island-born and hail from away – Australia and Calgary, Newfoundland and Ukraine. The result is twenty-three stories, which take the reader from a ritual gathering of PEI widows to Chernobyl in the nuclear disaster’s aftermath, from a menacing marital game of hide-and-seek through the Maritime landscape to gender clashes on an outback sheep ranch, from a religious commune in Alberta to the Enlightenment Tour bus into Quebec. Whether the characters are struggling for dear life in breaking surf, gasping for emotional air at a ladies’ candle party or fearing the Tall Tailor’s scissors, the authors demonstrate a rich variety of fictional talent and imagination emerging from what Island poet Milton Acorn called the “red tongue…In the ranged jaws of the Gulf,” and revising our perception of “the land of Anne.”
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What Really Happened is This A Poetry Memoir
Publisher: Acorn Press$18.95This collection of moving poetry puts into words the heartbreak and triumphs of looking after ailing parents.What Really Happened is This is a poetry memoir that focuses on the ten-year journey of an adult “only child” as her beloved parents face declining health and death. The wry, poignant, humorous, and sometimes heartbreaking, poems chronicle the poet’s struggle to find balance in her life, as she juggles the needs of her family with her own work and creative life. The poems touch on the universal in specific experiences, as the poet faces the death of each parent, and realizes she is now next in line.
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Beyond Silence
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Beyond Silence: Voices of Child Sexual Abuse is a collection of stories, poems, and images by twelve Island women. In these deeply personal accounts, the women tell about the abuse they suffered as children, the profound effect it has had on their lives, and the reasons why people need to join the fight to stop it. A prevention chapter, written by the group as a whole, focuses on five key areas that need to be addressed in order to end child sexual abuse. These include abusers taking responsibility for their actions and parents taking action to protect their children.Beyond Silence takes a fresh approach to the ongoing work of child sexual abuse prevention by focusing on the knowledge and wisdom of adult survivors. This book has the potential to dramatically change the ways communities respond to child sexual abuse. The stories are raw and real, honest and terrifying. The women dig into the darkness of the past so that others may see the light. They refuse to be silenced and they’re determined to make a difference.
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Shape of Things to Come
Editor: Richard LemmPublisher: Acorn Press$19.95In this new collection, Richard Lemm traces his own journey from the west coast of North America to the east coast of Canada with his first foray into the world of short fiction. His hard-living characters follow their own paths through relationships with parents and siblings, friends and lovers, discovering and sometimes crossing their limits as they try to find their own way in the world. A thirty-something man takes a chance on finding love after he encounters an exotic opera singer on an airplane. Two brothers face their own ghosts as they come to terms with the death of their father. A young man tries to live with his friends’ idea of justice after one of them crosses the line. The stories are decidedly masculine – sometimes apologetically so – but always honest. They resonate long after the pages are closed, offering a fresh voice from one of Atlantic Canada’s finest poets.
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A Bountiful Harvest
Editor: Alice Anna ReesePublisher: Acorn Press$22.95Little did organizers know when they planted the seed 15 years ago that the Literary Awards would reap such a bountiful harvest. This collection of over 35 first-prize short stories, poetry, and writing for children represents the best new writing in Prince Edward Island. Readers will recognize several of the names – people who have gone on to be published or produced – including Rai Berzins, Lesley-Anne Bourne, Judy Gaudet, Elaine Hammond, Hugh MacDonald, Brent MacLaine, Steve McOrmond, Dianne Hicks Morrow, Melissa Mullen, Libby Oughton, and Nancy Russell.
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Landmarks: An Anthology
Editor: Brent MacLainePublisher: Acorn Press$16.95Poetry by 50 of the Atlantic region’s finest poets
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Long Reach Home
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Reaching back through a family full of stories and characters, from Newfoundland on her mother’s side to New Brunswick on her father’s, the poems in Long Reach Home are characteristically personal, warm, and accessible- by turns humorous, by turns enraged- but always engaged with the world, distilling simple pleasures and fundamental human struggles from everyday experience.
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Dip & Veer Reflections on the Art of Alex Colville
Publisher: Acorn Press$14.95Frank Ledwell has previously published one volume of prose and poetry, The North Shore of Home (Acorn Press, 2002) and two collections of poetry, Crowbush and Other Poems (Ragweed, 1990) and Dip & Veer: Reflections on the Art of Alex Colville (Acorn Press, 1996). He has performed as a popular storyteller in venues across Prince Edward Island. Frank Ledwell is a Professor Emeritus of the English Department of the University of Prince Edward Island, where he taught creative writing for many years. He was the first recipient of the PEI Council of the Arts’ Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts, and for many years was known as the Island’s unofficial poet laureate.
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Fireflies in the Magnolia Grove
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95In this, John Smith’s sixth book of poetry, Prince Edward Island’s inaugural Poet Laureate offers up a dialogue about “being,” in the intellectual context of modern times. He explores stages of being, as an individual, as one in relationship to others, and as a part of the earth and of the universe. The poet’s acquaintance with physics, algebra, and geometry collides with his own philosophical questionings, using language to bridge the ephemeral and the infinite. The poems are the distilled, heady musings of a writer whose poetic voice spans millennia.
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Last Tomato
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Jane Ledwell grew up in Prince Edward Island. She won first prize for both prose and poetry in the Atlantic Writing Awards in 2001, and has been published in journals such as blueSHIFT and anthologies such as Landmarks and A Bountiful Harvest. She lives and writes in Charlottetown.
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Her Teeth are Stones
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Each of Judy Gaudet’s poems is a path to somewhere resonant, redolent of memories and anticipations both bittersweet and beautiful. She traces the paths the mind and body takes purposefully, as well as those it happens onto, by chance or consequence. The poems light on home and history, travel afar, return again. They are marked by the toughness of wholly looking and experiencing and are leavened by wry humour and true gratitude for the beauty and magic that touch the earth’s days — and our human ones, tripping over the stones of her path. Her Teeth Are Stones is Judy Gaudet’s first full-length poetry book, following her chapbook Poems, you say.
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Beautiful Veins
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95A Canadian poet’s last wordsA sense of ego-urgency has seemingly sucked hard on any high octane left in my system, and what used to take me a decade and more to accomplish as a writer has suddenly fruited within a 12-month time frame.- Joe Sherman, December 2005The result is Beautiful Veins, Joe Sherman’s final book of poems. Joseph Sherman, author of seven books of poetry, editor, and supporter of the arts, died on January 9, 2006, in Charlottetown. He was 60.Beautiful Veins begins with the picture of a child, of “one life with all the promise of its beautiful veins.” Some of the poems catch details of domestic life and its indwelling spirit and glancing irony; they explore the cache of memory. Others evoke history and landscape, opening them up to careful consideration. Always there is a love of language and its quirks, oddities, split-levels, riches. Out of the intricate and elliptical syntax, moments of joy are discovered, named against the threat of time and illness.
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And My Name Is Stories from the Quilt
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95In this, Margie Carmichael’s first collection of short stories, ordinary women have extraordinary skills, gifts and strengths; they are women who live next door or in the distance, shadowed by fear or absence of recognition. Age, race, and culture connect in the timeless fabric of the quilt, with craft, patience, and faith connecting the women through the threads of their diversity.Anna tells of life after residential school; Irini reflects on her life in war-torn Afghanistan. In Tansie, two adults survive childhood abandonment. Freelance cosmetician to the dead Flora Hill offers insight into the lighter side of love, marriage, and death.Featuring illustrations by Dale McNevin, the book is a collaboration that began with an original painting and companion poem first published in the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health 2000 Calendar.
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Hangman’s Beach
Publisher: Nimbus Publishing$21.95A skilful blend of romance and historical fact woven about Halifax, Nova Scotia, while the Napoleonic Wars were shaking the world. A few miles away on Melville Island, a French prisoner daily faces the agonizing question: What would be his fate if the British discovered that he had shot and killed Lord Nelson at Trafalgar?
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Poems and Lyrics by a Super-Centenarian I Needed the Quiet
Publisher: SSP Publications$9.95Garvie Samson’s 4th edition of poems penned in French and English by a Cape Breton teaching nun, who lived throughout 3 centuries (1891–2004).