Fiction

“The Net” features a girl and her mother, known only as the mother and the daughter, who arrive at their secluded cabin on a frozen lake to find their fishing net has been attacked, a massive hole ripped through the middle. After the net has been mended and the night’s catch eaten, the daughter sits awake playing with a bit of leftover netting string. When she was a girl, her grandmother taught her to make string figures—just as her mother had taught her—a game played by Inuit for generations, but a game not to be taken lightly . . . as the daughter plays late into the night, and the mother sleeps, other monstrous forces are soon awakened from beneath the frozen lake.

In “Before Dawn” a young boy runs out onto the tundra to play with his new friend by his side, venturing far beyond his mother’s rule that he not stray past the inuksuk on the horizon. The boy’s friend beckons him farther and farther, and the farther they get from home, the more the friend seems to change . . . and shift . . . until he is no longer human at all. Horrified, the boy listens to the creature’s proposition: return home before dawn, or be lost forever to the other side . . .

Complemented by colour illustrations from illustrator Toma Feizo Gas, The Other Ones is a fresh take on modern horror by an exciting new Inuit voice.

Educator Information
Short stories.

Additional Information
50 pages | 6.75" x 8.75" | Hardcover

Against the backdrop of a never-colonized North America, a broken Ojibwe detective embarks on an emotional and twisting journey toward solving two murders, rediscovering family, and finding himself.

North America was never colonized. The United States and Canada don’t exist. The Great Lakes are surrounded by an independent Ojibwe nation. And in the village of Baawitigong, a Peacekeeper confronts his devastating past.

Twenty years ago to the day, Chibenashi’s mother was murdered and his father confessed. Ever since, caring for his still-traumatized younger sister has been Chibenashi’s privilege and penance. Now, on the same night of the Manoomin harvest, another woman is slain. His mother’s best friend. This leads to a seemingly impossible connection that takes Chibenashi far from the only world he’s ever known.

The major city of Shikaakwa is home to the victim’s cruelly estranged family—and to two people Chibenashi never wanted to see again: his imprisoned father and the lover who broke his heart. As the questions mount, the answers will change his and his sister’s lives forever. Because Chibenashi is about to discover that everything about their lives has been a lie.

Reviews
“An excellent example of an imagined alternative North America where restorative justice is at the forefront, and with characters who are well-developed, this is a great debut from an author to watch.” —Shondaland

Additional Information
318 pages | 5.50" x 8.25"

the tales are of loss and forgiveness
and they fill the room

The Punishment is the latest addition to the oeuvre of prolific Kwantlen writer Joseph Dandurand, whose stunning previous collection, The East Side of It All, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

In The Punishment, Joseph Dandurand's now-familiar storyteller's voice wrangles trauma, grief, forgiveness and love. His poems illustrate the poet's solitary existence. With scenes of residential school, the psych ward, the streets and the river, Dandurand reveals an arduous journey: one poet's need to both understand his life and find ways to escape it. Through poetry, he shares with us all his lovers. He shares the streets. He shares what he sees: the great eagles and small birds; his culture and teachings; the East Side; self-pity; the deception of love; the deception of hate; sasquatches; spirits; and his people, the Kwantlen.

At root, The Punishment is about survival. Dandurand's poems will show you disease. They'll show you cedar. They'll show you music. They'll show you shadows. They'll show you forgiveness, and they'll show you punishment.

Reviews
"Hands down, Joseph Dandurand is one of my all-time favourite writers ... Good Lord―what a voice!" — Richard Van Camp,

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

In this unusual and forceful novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Soul's Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Soul’s Day 2019 and ends on All Soul’s Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.31" x 8.00" | Paperback

From the bestselling author of The Break comes a staggering intergenerational saga that explores how connected we are, even when we’re no longer together—even when we’re forced apart.

Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly.

After time spent in foster homes, Cedar goes to live with her estranged father. Although she grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and sister, Phoenix, she’s hoping for a new chapter in her life, only to find herself once again in a strange house surrounded by strangers. From a youth detention centre, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she’ll never get to raise and tries to forgive herself for all the harm she’s caused (while wondering if she even should). Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the idea of being reunited with her daughters and strives to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother. These are the Strangers, each haunted in her own way. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that pretends to offer success but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, they urge one another to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they’ll ever emerge safely on the other side.

A breathtaking companion to her bestselling debut The Break, Vermette’s The Strangers brings readers into the dynamic world of the Stranger family, the strength of their bond, the shared pain in their past, and the light that beckons from the horizon. This is a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds that—despite everything—refuse to be broken.

Reviews
“Katherena Vermette’s The Strangers is a deeply moving story of how colonial institutions continue to bear down on and disrupt the lives of Indigenous women and girls. It is a powerful collective portrait of struggle and resistance, of what it’s like to be in an Indigenous body in twenty-first century Canada. In the end, it adds up to an engrossingly written ode to another kind of care, one against the grain of suffering. A brilliant follow-up!”—Billy-Ray Belcourt, bestselling author of A History of My Brief Body

“The Strangers is a unique and essential triumph of a novel. It is revelatory in its artistry—in its constellating of family against violent separation, in its austere poetics of voice and consciousness.  Katherena Vermette has proven once again that she is among the most gifted and relevant writers of our time: someone with everything to teach us about the telling of necessary stories, about grieving the fallen, honouring survival, and revealing the fiercest beauty.” —David Chariandy, award-winning author of Brother and I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You

Additional Information
352 pages | 5.10" x 7.90" | Paperback

A poignant and evocative novel about the bonds of family and the gifts offered by the land.

When a troubled father and his estranged teenage daughter head out onto the land in search of the family trapline, they find their way back to themselves, and to each other.

Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Could it be her fault that he seems intent on throwing everything away, including their relationship?

Following a devastating tragedy, Matthew and Holly head out onto the land in search of a long-lost cabin on the family trapline, miles from the Cree community they once called home. But each of them is searching for something more than a place. Matthew hopes to reconnect with the father he has just lost; Holly goes with him because she knows the father she is afraid of losing won’t be able to walk away.

When things go wrong during the journey, they find they have only each other to turn to for support. What happens to father and daughter on the land will test them, and eventually heal them, in ways they never thought possible.

Reviews
“Robertson shines in A Theory of Crows, a multilayered story of love, loss, healing and ultimately belonging. A family on the brink of shattering finds its way through ancient teachings of infinite connection and the roots of truth in the earth’s living memory.” — Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians, winner of CBC Canada Reads

“In weaving together themes of identity, belonging, grief and land, The Theory of Crows is a novel that approaches rapture.” — Yann Martel, author of The High Mountains of Portugal and Life of Pi

“A brilliantly empathetic story that is both gentle and fierce.” — Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

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.

Reviews
"Absolutely exquisite. Told with such love and gentle ferocity, I’m convinced This House Is Not A Home will never leave those who read it. I am in awe of what I’ve witnessed here. Mahsi cho, Katlia. Bravo! " — Richard Van Camp author of The Lesser Blessed and Moccasin Square Gardens

Additional Information
192 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

From epic ventures into mythic and fantastical tales to the everyday trials of getting the laundry done, NShannacappo’s debut poetry collection follows many journeys through darkness to hope, healing and heroism. Pure and hauntingly beautiful turns of phrase sound out in the voices of angels, monsters and demons, mythic characters, and the sometimes wry, sometimes grieving voice of a man once broken in heart, spirit, and mind. Through the Eyes of Asunder begins and ends with hope, and takes the reader through sorrow and sadness to bright moments of happiness and love.

Reviews
“Neal Shannacappo is a spiritual thinker. The poetry and life’s perspectives he shares in this collation remind us of the unconditional love and support one can access through the Creator-given learning ways we as human beings are blessed to be born with. Read his words! Feed them to your heart, digest them spiritually and you will benefit from the medicine intended in every word and stanza.”—Albert Dumont, 2021–2022 Poet Laureate for Ottawa and author of Sitting by the Rapids.

“Reading this book, it felt many times like I had stumbled upon a shoebox filled with letters not sent and journals put away for safekeeping. You feel like you shouldn’t pry, but you just can’t help yourself. It was a wonderful read.”—John Brady McDonald, author of KITOTAM

Additional Information
143 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 6 illustrations | Paperback

The poems in Trailer Park Shakes are direct and vernacular, rooted in community--a working-class Métis voice rarely heard from.

These poems, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice--how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love. Trailer Park Shakes is a book that seems to want to hold everything--an entire cross-section of lived experience--written by a poet whose courage, attention, and capacity to trace contradiction inspire trust in her words' embrace. Dion-Glowa's poems are quietly philosophical, with a heartfelt, self-possessed politic.

Reviews
"Dion-Glowa's voice crackles with frank, startling insight." — Sachiko Murakami, author of Render

"As I read this work, I was taken back, time and again, to those days when I was a young street poet who had so much to say at a time where it felt like no one was listening. There are many times when sentiment needs to be expressed in the most bold and unapologetic way it can, and the brashness and frank delivery found in this work is the hallmark of a collection that should and will rattle your cage and shine a light where it is needed. These are not exploitative poems, nor are they the Victim Impact Statement of a wounded spirit. This collection is the chronicle of an eyewitness to reality, without compromise." — John Brady McDonald, Nehiyawak-Metis poet and artist, author of Kitotam

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | Paperback

Celeste, a card sharp with a need for justice, takes on the role of advocatus diaboli, to defend her sister Mariel, accused of murdering a Virtue, a member of the ruling class of this mining town, in a new world of dark fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse.

The year is 1883 and the mining town of Goetia is booming as prospectors from near and far come to mine the powerful new element Divinity from the high mountains of Colorado with the help of the pariahs of society known as the Fallen. The Fallen are the descendants of demonkind living amongst the Virtues, the winners in an ancient war, with the descendants of both sides choosing to live alongside Abaddon’s mountain in this tale of the mythological West from the bestselling mastermind Rebecca Roanhorse.

Reviews
“Rebecca Roanhorse… [is one] of the Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror and fantasy — genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked.” — The New York Times

“Readers are in for intricate world-building, engrossing adventure and stunning backdrops.” — The Washington Post

"The pages turn themselves. A beautifully crafted setting with complex character dynamics and layers of political intrigue? Perfection. Mark your calendars, this is the next big thing." — Kirkus, starred review

Additional Information
208 pages | 5.00" x 7.00" | Hardcover

In this final installation of the Overhead Series, Lucy Hemphill once again transports the reader with intimate revelations on identity by exploring both her personal and ancestral relationship to the forest and the quiet sentinels that root together everything. Hemphill’s prose is extraordinary in its combination of self-awareness yet unselfconscious honesty and skillful restraint, creating a sense of connection under the tangle of foliage and limb that ever-reach skyward. Masterfully illustrated by artist Michael Joyal, his evocative dendrological drawings contribute to the overall sensory and transcendent experience.

Reviews
"Lucy Hemphill has done a marvellous thing. Her book is a passkey that opens a door into the forest of her childhood. Her voice is gentle but direct, the author tells us the story of trees, their gift and our loss if we are not careful. Enhanced with Michael Joyal’s rich illustrations, Hemphill uses her Indigenous language to teach us that trees are our ancestors, living spirits, and as such we are to honour them." – Mary Barnes

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Overhead Series.

Additional Information
96 pages | 8.50" x 5.50" | 20 illustrations | Fiction

In the winter of 1876, a baby is born to Anishinaabe parents along the trapline in the northern Ontario wilderness. Seventy-five years later, her granddaughter is seeking information about her grandmother's life, why her family is so fractured, and what part the residential school played in the dysfunction and estrangement which has shaped her own life. To that end, twenty—two-year-old Janey enlists the help of a hypnotist who regresses Janey back to a time when Indigenous people in Canada lived off the land, supported each other and raised their children without outside interference. But when settlers began to arrive and residential schools were established, all that changed.

In her hypnotic state, Janey is able to follow her grandmother, Wabanang (Morning Star) as a child, as a residential school student and as a medicine woman for her people. But the seeds of distrust and fear sown along the way are destroying her family. Estranged from her mother and living with her only relative, Janey must find her own way through the smoke of confusion to discover who she is.

Although this is a work of fiction. The author has drawn on her own family's history, ceremonies and visions from her own life, stories shared with her by respected elders, as well as many years of researching her own and other families.

Additional Information
232 pages | 5.51" x 8.46" | Paperback

Wapke—meaning “tomorrow” in the Atikamekw language—is Quebec’s first collection of science fiction short stories by Indigenous writers. Fourteen authors from various nations and different backgrounds project us into the future through their moving, poetic, worrying, and sometimes fantastical tales, addressing current social, political, and environmental themes. From time travelling Indigenous warriors to rebellious language and knowledge keepers, from Big Trees in a lake to a human sausage factory, from living on the land to living in cyberspace, these stories provide a trans-Indigenous colonial critique. The brainchild of Michel Jean, Wapke can be read on different levels: as pure entertainment for sci-fi fans or as a stimulant to serious reflection. It offers an often-captivating social commentary that reveals how Indigenous people view the future as well as a hope that change will come.

Educator Information
This book is available in French: Wapke

Additional Information
160 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.

Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her “warm, oracular voice” (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks “from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all” (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love.

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo’s inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo’s “poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times” (Sandra Cisneros, Millions).

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.65" x 8.53" | Hardcover 

A “kunik” is a traditional Inuit greeting, often given to loved ones, in which a person places their nose on another’s cheek and breathes them in. Where the Sea Kuniks the Land extends that gesture of love to the Arctic landscape, in a suite of poems that celebrates the interconnectedness of people and place, past and present.

The importance of land, culture, and identity play key roles in these poems, and the collection will move readers to think deeply about colonization, intergenerational trauma, and grief.

This collection paints beautiful pictures of Arctic landscapes, love stories, and growth. It will take readers on a journey through the seasons, from fierce snowstorms to a warm field of Labrador tea flowers.

Additional Information
80 pages | 7.00" x 9.25" | Paperback