Fall 2012magical transformation of their lives. For the protagonist in “Ava’s Compendium” one...

Fall 2012

Thistledown Press

RePResenTed by AmPeRsAnd Inc

dIsTRIbuTed by unIveRsITy oF ToRonTo PRess

contents

ordering Information Inside Back cover

new releases 1-8

Recent Fiction 9-10

Recent Poetry and non-Fiction 11

Recent teen and Juvenile Fiction 12-13

eBooks 14-15

Index of titles and Authors 16

Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Saskatchewan Arts Board; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Grants to Publishers Program.

RIGHts AnD PeRMIssIons

For permission to use material from Thistledown Press publications for reprint, electronic or new media form, translation, book club, or film, please contact Thistledown Press at [email protected].

Desk AnD RevIew coPIes

Desk copies will be provided upon request and invoiced after 180 days without a course adoption. Review copies may be obtained by contacting Thistledown Press

RetURns PoLIcY

Books may be returned for credit no sooner than 90 days and no later than 365 days after the invoice date of purchase. All returns not meeting these conditions will be returned to the customer at the customer’s expense and the customer’s account will not be credited. All returns must be forwarded to University of Toronto Press, 5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON M3H 5T8.

Thistledown Press118 - 20th Street WestSaskatoon, SK, Canada S7M 0W6

Tel: 306-244-1722 Fax:: 306-244-1762www.thistledownpress.com

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New Release: Fiction

Fall 2012 1


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Dibidalen: Ten StoriesSeán Virgo

Seán Virgo knows the power of short fiction. He knows that the act of story-telling is hardwired into human consciousness and that the well-told story can appear in various shapes and sizes. The full force of Virgo’s writing energy in Dibidalen is directed by this knowledge. We see this clearly in the exquisite simplicity in the collection’s opening pieces — “Before Ago” and “Eggs in a Field” — where he uses verse fable and folktale interchangeably forging the stories’ links to a preliterate oral culture. Other stories employ the power of allegory as witnessed in “Shark Mother” and “The Scapegoat”. Here Virgo employs traditional transcen-dentalism to allow nature to open a deeper understanding of human affairs. How does a boy transform into a shark? Why was the woodsman abandoned in the deserted city? Virgo’s commitment to the form’s mercurial possibilities continues in “The Doorway” and “The Castaway” where the reader must grapple with how to personalize archetypal symbols in order to understand a woman’s fate, or assign meanings to the actions of a doubting priest to realize his destiny. Again in “Rendezvous” and “Gramayre” we discover a blended mix of fantasy and magical realism where fusions of the everyday, the illusory, the mythical, and the morbid blur traditional distinctions between what happened and what we think happened. Finally, in Virgo’s most extrapolated stories, “The Likeness” and “Dibidalen”, we are led on with the fractures and abstractions of the narratives that redirect each story’s unexpected conclusion. The result is a fascinating dance between reader and text that is as rewarding as it is challenging, reminding us of what Anaïs Nin meant when she said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

m

Seán Virgo was born in Malta, and grew up in South Africa, Malaya, Ireland and the U.K. He immigrated to Canada in 1966 and became a citizen in 1972. He has lived on Haida Gwaii, Newfoundland, various Gulf Islands, the Bruce Peninsula and for a decade in Southwest Saskatchewan.

Virgo has published a number of works of both poetry and fiction, most recently, A Traveller Came By (2000); nonagon fugue ( 2007); and, Begging Questions (2007). He has read his work around the world, and has worked as a writing teacher, actor, and television host.

Short Fiction

ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-06-9 ISBN-10: 1-927068-06-1 $18.95 CDN 17.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 168 pages / paper

BISACS: FIC029000 Short Stories (single author)FIC010000 Folk Tales, Legends MythologyFIC019000 Literary

Ship Date: September 15, 2012 Pub Date: October 1, 2012

Marketing & Publicity

• Appearance at the Vancouver International Writers Festival

• Two-city tour Vancouver and Victoria Fall 2012

• Social media campaign (Fall 2012)

• Print and online advertising

• National review copy send out

ISBN 978-1-927068-06-9

Fall 20122


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GivenSusan Musgrave

Perhaps because the single bequest a writer can hope to give her characters is eternal life and because Susan Musgrave’s creations from A Cargo of Orchids intend to take her up on it, they are back with a new story in a brilliantly engaging novel, Given. Rainy, the Mexican-American woman, and Frenchy, the African-American, along with Musgrave’s narrator X have returned and convincingly insist their story is not done. Once inmates on death row, now reunited and hanging out at an old house in a BC outport, they create a grand new afterlife adventure because death was just too weak to contain them. As we are shuttled along an energetic story line in an old hearse, through gated communities in Vancouver to BC’s First Nations island outposts, we witness the transformation of lives on the slopes of purgatory. The passageways are rife with wild rides, social satire and visually hilarious encounters. Of course, Musgrave’s trademark undercurrents of lurking peril and unexpected havoc play out against murder, drug encounters, and sexual tension but Given is always a novel with its own rules of engagement. Musgrave’s comic gifts and ability to transcend this earthly plane create a ghost story that becomes a masterful allegory for personal loss and the potency of love. Diabolical and tender, action-packed and meditative, it is another Musgrave must-read caper.

m

Author of 27 books SuSan

MuSgraVe has published poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature. Her most recent titles include: When the World Is Not Our Home (poetry, Thistledown), Origami Dove, (poetry M&S); You’re in Canada Now . . . A Memoir of Sorts (essays, Thistledown Press); and, Cargo of Orchids (novel, Knopf). Musgrave is also an editor, and has written for film and music. She has been labelled

everything from eco-feminist to anti-feminist, from stand-up comedian to poet of doom and gloom, from social and political commentator to wild sea-witch of Canada’s northwest coast. She remains one of Canada’s most unique writers. Musgrave divides her time between Vancouver Island and Haida Qwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands). She says of Haida Gwaii, “This may be the one kind place on Earth.”

NovelISBN-13: 978-1-927068-02-1 ISBN-10: 1-927068-02-9 $19.95 CDN / $18.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 268 pages / paper

BISACS: FIC044000 (Contemporary Women)FIC002000 (Action & Adventure)FIC039000 (Visionary & metaphysical)



• Launch at Victoria Writers Festival, Camosun College October 12-13 2012


• Large social media campaign.

• Appearance at the Vancouver International Writers Festival

• National review copy mailing

• Targeted mailing to websites & bloggers

ISBN 978-1-927068-02-1

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Fall 2012 3


A Year At River MountainMichael Kenyon

Part intellectual mystery and part spiritual adventure, A Year At River Mountain tells the story of an aging actor from Vancouver who has immersed himself in monastic life in China and is now examining his past as an actor, husband, and father. As his Western consciousness grapples with Taoist philosophies and acupressure techniques, he assesses his life and records the struggles of transformation that accompany such thinking.

The monastery’s Old Master has given the narrator permission to write the commentary he shares with us while raising the question of who “reader and narrator” really are. At times uncertainty leads him to confuse the monastery with another kind of institution. Fellow monks, particularly the American bellringer, Frank, are often as humorously baffling as they are ritualistically inviting. But the force driving his obsessive commentary and his year at River Mountain is the anticipation of the arrival of Imogen, an American actor and monastery patron.

Kenyon balances the narrator’s interior life with hints of external disturbance and with purposeful missions outside the monastery. Village unrest threatens the monks’ balance and harmony; the nightmarish rape of a village woman uncovers a trapdoor to chaos; travel over the mountain conjures a snow leopard in a blizzard-choked pass; an arduous journey to wild islands off the coast offers ancient discoveries; and a trip to the city to find a prophet changes time forever. Crises build as war threatens; floods occur and a devastating event leads our narrator to a beautiful and surprising formulation of how things are.

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Michael Kenyon was born in Sale, England and has lived for over forty years on Canada’s West Coast. He presently divides his time between Pender Island and Vancouver, having in both places a private therapeutic practice. He is the author of nine books,

most recently The Beautiful Children, a novel (Thistledown Press, Spring 2009), and a collection of poems, The Last House (Brick Books, Autumn 2009).

Short Fiction ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-04-5 ISBN-10: 1-927068-04-5 $19.95 CDN / $18.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 216 pages / paper

BISACS: FIC019000 (Literary)FIC039000 (Visionary & Metaphysical)

Ship Date: August 15, 2012 Pub Date: September 1, 2012


• BC reading tour in September with John Lent that will run through the Okanagan to Vancouver, Victoria and Duncan.


• Social media on Facebook and twitter, including a series of “tease excerpts” to Facebook audiences beginning July 2012.

• Book launch on Pender Island


ISBN 978-1-927068-04-5

Fall 20124


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Pious RobberHarriet Richards

Central to Harriet Richards’ character-driven stories in The Pious Robber are girls and women who have captured the revelations and disclosures that life’s complications have offered to them. Some are bold and blunt women who know loneliness, loss and don’t suffer fools; others are girls brimming with vim and wit who see life changes clearly but cannot totally grasp their meanings. In “A Blue Felt Bird” the life-long bonds that girls form in friendship shape memory and tilt the emotions of retrospection even after death. How Richards’ characters not only experience but measure such relationships is part of the magical transformation of their lives. For the protagonist in “Ava’s Compendium” one tragic incident with a boyfriend in her teens haunts her life and alters her family loyalties into her sixties; for the sisters in “The Pious Robber” the mystery of a madman in the summer of their youth is held like a sacred truth that only they can know as they grow older. As girls become women the forces that shape and transform have even greater complications. Whether they are in clean up mode after a divorce as Alicia in “Tangible Reminders of Regrets and Negative Memories”, or staring down the onset of depression as in “Sometimes It Seems”, reconciliation with self and the momentous sorting of emotions are new quests that must be travelled. For some like Olivia in “Bagatelle redux” the threads of betrayal and the fragility of life seem to overwhelm any strengths that might be mustered, whereas the women in “The Direction of the Three Sisters” defy their own possibilities as fate sweeps them along its path. Richards’ women are all touched by vulnerability and often with a dark intrigue that allows them to rise off the page and take their place in the reader’s mind.

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harriet richardS has published two books of fiction: The Lavender Child was nominated for the Fiction Award and won First Book Award, Saskatchewan Book Awards 1998; Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die was nominated for the Saskatchewan Book Award Book of the Year in 2003. Her fiction has been featured on CBC Radio, and published in literary journals in Canada and Wales. She lives in Saskatoon.

Short Fiction ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-18-2 ISBN-10: 1-927068-18-5 $18.95 CDN / $17.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 152 pages / paper

BISACS: FIC 29000 (stories by single author)FIC 044000 (fiction contemporary women)



• Launch in Saskatoon

• National mailing review



ISBN 978-1-927068-18-2


New Release: Non-Fiction

5Fall 2012

A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden:Writing from Prison

Stephen Reid

Stephen Reid has grown old in prison and seen more than his share of its solitude, its vicious cycles, and its subculture relationships. He has participated in the economics of contraband, the incredible escapes, the intimacies of torture, the miscarriages of justice, and witnessed the innocent souls whose childhood destinies doomed them to prison life.

He has learned that everything is bearable, that the painful separation of family, children, and friend is tolerable, and that sorrow must be kept close, buried in a secret garden of the self, if one is to survive and give others who love you hope. Within his writing runs the motif that his prison life has never been far from his drug additions, but the junkie or drunk who has some straight time and means to stay that way knows a lot about the way we really live, think, feel, hope, and desire in this country.

Each of the essays in this collection is a recognition of how Reid’s imprisonment has shaped his life. Some describe his fractured boyhood and the escalation in crimes that led to his imprisonment, others detail the seductive rush and notoriety of the criminal life. There are the regrets too of how his choices have impacted the lives of his daughters, wife and family. But in each essay the refrain is “prison life”, whether it is measuring the integrity of the books in the prison library, the violence and primal intimidation inherent in all-male communities, or the torment and solace of solitary confinement.

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Stephen reid began writing in 1984 while serving a 21-year prison sentence for his role as a member of the “Stopwatch Gang”, so named for their ability to rob banks and armoured cars in less than two minutes. During his sentence, he submitted a manuscript to Susan Musgrave, then writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. This developed into an ongoing correspondence, and Reid and Musgrave were married in 1986 at

Kent Institution. Reid also published his only novel, Jackrabbit Parole, that year. He has taught creative writing, worked as a youth counselor, and served on boards such as the John Howard Society, Prison Arts Foundation, PEN Canada, Spirit of the People and the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Essay ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-03-8 ISBN-10: 1-927068-03-7 $18.95 CDN / $17.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 140 pages / paper

BISACS: LC010000 (Literary Collection Essays)SOC030000 (Penology)BIO024000 (Biography/Autobiography/ Criminals & Outlaws)


ISBN 978-1-927068-03-8


• Social media campaign

• Targeted mailing to websites and bloggers



Fall 20121

New Release: Juvenile Fiction

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Barnabas Bigfoot: A Hairy TangleMarty Chan

As A Hairy Tangle, the second book in the Barnabas Bigfoot series, begins we pick up the action from Book One, A Close Shave. We are in the woods with Barnabas, Hannah and Ruth and Barnabas’ father has just fallen off a cliff. The three, now fast friends, know they must soldier on to rejoin their tribe and escape the hunting baldfaces. Throughout this book and the next, these three characters grow closer and closer. Barnabas and Hannah emerge as a possible “couple”, which is dealt with subtly and appropriately in the context of the action, as their growing friendship becomes tinged with, at least on Barnabas’ part, growing romantic feelings. But Barnabas’ betrayal by Dogger Dogwood and his family and the capture and rescue of Hannah from the creature compound of the evil Mr. Roland place Barnabas again in a human sphere, but this time he does so voluntarily to rescue Hannah. He has grown from resourceful victim to brave hero. Along the way Barnabas and Hannah cross paths with Lysander, a mysterious human who proves to be a pivotal figure from Sasquatch history. Lysander, whose presence both tests and cements the friendship between Hannah and Barnabas, fills in more gaps regarding the history of the tribe, laying the groundwork for the primary storyline of the series.

Throughout Book Two readers continue to be educated in the unique features of the Sasquatch culture. Chan has created a social structure, history and vocabulary for his sasquatch society that is both accessible and fascinating, contributing richness to this non-stop adventure.

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Marty Chan is a nationally known dramatist, screenwriter and author. He is the recent winner of the Edmonton Book Prize for his juvenile novel The Mystery of the Frozen Brains and former Gemini-nominated and gold medal winner for “The Orange Seed Myth and Other Lies Mothers Tell”. His second book in the Marty Chan Mystery Series, The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul was been

shortlisted for two 2007 young Readers’ Choice awards and the 2007 Arthur Ellis Crime Writers of Canada Award in the Best Juvenile category. Chan lives in Edmonton.

Juvenile Novel ISBN 13: 978-1-927068-05-2 ISBN-10: 1-927068-05-3 $10.95 CDN / $9.95 USD 5" x 7" / 104 pages / paper Ages 8–11, Grades 3–6

BISACS: JUV012040 JUV022000



• School readings and workshops through the Canadian Children’s Book Centre



• School readings throughout Western Canada

• Canadian review copy send out

ISBN 978-1-927068-05-2

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Fall 2012 7

Poetry ISBN-10: 1-927068-08-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-08-3 $9.95 CDN / $8.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 64 pages / paper

POE011000 (Canadian poetry)POE021000 (Gay & Lesbian Poetry)

Ship Date: October 1, 2012 Pub Date: October 15, 2012

Poetry ISBN-10: 1-927068-67-X ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-07-6 $9.95 CDN / $8.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 64 pages / paper

POE011000 (Canadian poetry)POE023030 (nature-themed poetry)


Riot LungLeah Horlick

Riot Lung is a well-balanced introduction to a new voice. Horlick’s poems vibrate with spontaneity and yet retain an intimacy that is emotionally intoxicating. Whether reflecting on her coming of age moments within her family, or measuring the impact of both the rural and urban prairie landscapes on her life, she never strays far from how her identity as a queer writer has been shaped.

leah horlicK is a writer, poet, and spoken word artist from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. As a spoken word artist, she has presented her best work at venues from New York City’s Bluestockings Bookstore to the Vancouver Poetry Slam.Her poems have been published in Grain magazine and are forthcoming in So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. She is the recipient of a 2008 Short Grain Award for her prose poem who’s to know, and has published a limited edition chapbook, wreckoning, through Jack Pine Press.

ISBN 978-1-927068-08-3

Bone SenseLaurie Lynn Muirhead

These are narrative poems that resonate with the simplicity of rural life but evolve from the great traditions of Emerson, Thoreau, and have the emotional connections of the poetic works of Patrick Friesen and Glen Sorestad. The poems reflect how the lands, the climate, cattle, coyotes and weather unfold with circadian rhythm. Muirhead’s language is straight-forward and yet she creates fresh and useful metaphors to embody those mystical connections that are entrenched between her and the rural world she inhabits.

laurie Muirhead has been writing and performing both contemporary and cowboy poetry for a decade while running a ranch in Shellbrook, Saskatchewan. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals including The New Quarterly, and Transition and has been broadcast on CBC Radio. This is her first book.

ISBN 978-1-927068-07-6

New Leaf Series

Fall 20128

New Leaf Series

Emily Via The Greyhound BusAllison Kydd

We meet Emily on a bus, suffering from morning sickness, and reflecting on her past life — on jobs she has worked, relationships she has had, and her years of growing up as a First Nations girl. Years of making the wrong choices, especially with men, have left her confidence shaken and with a legacy of unexpected children. Without much money and not even a suitcase, Emily becomes a tragic figure but somehow through her independence and determination rises above this stereotype. As the bus rolls west from Toronto across the prairies various passengers engage Emily in conversations some with evil intentions of taking advantage of her. Throughout these incidents we discover Emily’s hard-edged attitude for survival and her instinctual savvy.

ALLISON KyDD works as an English distance instructor/tutor for Athabasca University, is on the board of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and has been widely published in magazines and journals.

ISBN 978-1-927068-09-0

Violet QuesnelCoby Stephensen

Even though the stories take place in different times and places with different characters’ points of view, the character of Violet Quesnel is the unifying thread. Because Violet experiences bi-polar disorder, her existential anxiety is further complicated. She is aware of her outside world but has limited self-awareness. The portrait of Violet that emerges through her family and friends is one of a young woman who has faced down the denial, anger and depression of her bi-polarity, but from Violet herself we learn that she has bargained for her place in the world as a sister, daughter and mother.

COBy STEPhENSON is a writer presently based in Regina, Saskatchewan. She received a BA Hons from the University of Regina in 2009. Coby has presented the tales of Violet Quesnel at various conferences and “open mic” events and has used it to explore her studies of fiction. It is her first book.

ISBN 978-1-927068-10-6

Short Fiction ISBN-10: 1-927068-10-X ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-10-6 $9.95 CDN / $8.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5" / 64 pages / paper

FIC029000 (single author)FAM028000 (Relationships: Learning Disabilities)


Short Fiction ISBN-10: 1-927068-09-6 ISBN-13: 978-1-927068-09-0 $9.95 CDN / $8.95 USD 5.5" x 8.5"/ 64 pages / paper

FIC044000 (contemporary women)


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Fall 2012

Recent Fiction

The Weeping ChairDonald Ward

SHORT FICTION 978-1-927068-00-7 $18.95 CAD

Don Ward’s stories in The Weeping Chair gently prod the reader to consider serious human foibles but balance that with a wicked sense of humour. In Ward’s universe readers will find a race of superior chickens who investigate their earthly origins, a badger who shares his fears with a monk, a listless professor roused into life through a late-night dialogue with his distraught female student, and a female dwarf from the seventeenth century pursuing the love of an octogenarian at Starbucks. Always bubbling just below the surface of these stories with their oddities of plot and character is something unexpected and frequently profound.

DONALD WARD sold his first story to CBC when he was nineteen-years-old and he has been writing professionally for the last forty years. In 2004 his short fiction collection Nobody Goes to Earth Any More, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year, and his story “Badger” won the 2009 CBC Literary Award. Ward is also an editor and book designer.

The Path to ArdroeJohn Lent

NOVEL 978-1-927068-01-4 $19.95 CAD

The Path To Ardroe follows a small group of men and women who grew up on the south-side of Edmonton in the 50s and 60s. It is an exploration of friendship and its limits, life changes and the transforming culture and sub-cultures that altered North American life in the 80s and 90s, especially changes in sexual awareness and the aesthetics of art.

John lent was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1948, and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. For twenty years he taught English and Creative Writing at a number of univer-sities. He has published six books of poetry, three books of fiction and one book of non-fiction (with Robert Kroetsch). Lent lives in Vernon, BC

The Sometimes LakeSandy Bonny


“Sandy Bonny[‘s] stories move effortlessly from the microcosm of intimate details in the lives of her characters to the macrocosm of great forces that animate the universe and sustain life on earth. Look at the science, she seems to say, and at the fragile miracle of life around us.” — David Carpenter“ . . . these subtle skillful tales have crisp and new flavors; they yield discovery upon discovery. This is a powerful debut collection.” — Fred Stenson

SANDy BONNy has travelled extensively and presently lives in Saskatoon where she is engaged with sessional teaching and laboratory research, in addition to writing and editing. She has published short fiction since 2002, when her story “Mandala” received second place in the CBC Literary Awards.

Fall 201210


The Cast StoneHarold Johnson

NOVEL 978-1-897235-89-8 $19.95 CAD

Ben Robe is a retired political science professor who has returned to his reserve at Moccasin Lake to live out his life in relative peace and solitude. But the complications of a sudden and intense US annexation of Canada change his plans. Cued into a Canadian resistance movement by his former student and lover, Monica, Ben soon learns that the layers of political and military activity go far beyond his careful social conscience in this dystopian world. Born and raised in Northern Saskatchewan, hAROLD JOhNSON has a Master of Law degree from Harvard University. Johnson is the author of three novels, Billy Tinker, Back Track, and Charlie Muskrat all set against a background of traditional Cree mythology and all shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards. Johnston is of Swedish and Cree descent.

The MaladjustedDerek Hayes


Derek Hayes’ collection The Maladjusted concerns people who are unable to react successfully to the demands of their environment or to social exchange. When they fail to cope with their life realities, or lack the skill, readiness, or ingenuity to adapt to change they become Hayes’ maladjusted.

DEREK hAyES has been writing professionally for ten years. He lives in Toronto.

Leaving BerlinBritt Holmström


The intimate portraits in Britt Holmström’s first collection of short fiction at times have a strong journalistic sense while at other times evoke the intimacy of a diary. The stories employ underlying humour — particularly irony, incongruity, paradox, and derision. They move fluidly through time operating in the present tense while creating tangents to the past.

BRITT hOLMSTRÖM was born in Malmö, Sweden, and immigrated in Canada in the 1970s. Her novels The Wrong Madonna (Cormorant 2002) and The Man Next Door (Cormorant 1998) garnered Saskatchewan Book Award finalist nominations. Claudia was published by Coteau Books in 2008. She lives in Regina, SK.

Recent Fiction

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Fall 2012

The Ditch Was Lit Like ThisSean Johnston

POEMS 978-1-897235-94-2 $17.95

Poetry is the closest thing to silence, which alone on earth is as close as we can get to heaven. — from “The Ditch Was Lit Like This”

In order to place themselves in their art, poets must return to their roots. This is Sean Johnston’s return to the roots – ancestral and poetic — that have shaped his language and his consciousness. Structured in five sections, the work interplays the convergence of memory and personal history. Although such a pattern is familiar ground in the world of poetry, Johnston’s movements to establish roots through his use of the anecdotal, unexpected, and profound are both wise and revealing. We are all invited to that universal moment where “there is always a man with a guitar/ somewhere/ and the response is either love returned or love withheld — that is, of course, if something has been risked.”

SEAN JOhNSTON has worked as a journalist and is the author of the novel All This Town Remembers (Gaspereau 2006) and the story collection A Day Does Not Go By (Nightwood 2002). He lives in Vernon, BC.

Our Kind of WorkDwayne Brenna

NON-FICTION 978-1-897235-95-9 $18.95

Twenty-fifth Street Theatre Players was established in 1972 as an artists’ collective under the direction of the enigmatic Andreas Tahn. The company would proceed to incorporate in 1974 and become the first professional theatre company in Saskatoon, and the legacy it would leave would be nationally acclaimed. But as Brenna details in this succinct genesis of the theatre, how it managed its personality conflicts, confronted its obstacles of inadequate funding, and grappled with the shifting of its artistic vision makes this account of 25th Street Theatre a unique and original history.

Our Kind of Work offers photographs of theatre personalities both onstage and in the dressing rooms, but it is the story of the theatre’s own personality, its small, youthful beginnings, its risky devised performances, its original scripts, and its improvised collective creations with famed icons such as Theatre Passe Muraille’s Paul Thompson that give this book its edge.

DWAyNE BRENNA has acted at the Stratford Festival and at the Edinburgh Fringe. He has appeared on television in various nationally and internationally broadcast programs including “For the Record”, “Judge” (CBC Toronto), “The Great Electrical Revolution”, and The Incredible Story Studio (Mind’s Eye). His movie credits include The Wars, Painted Angels, and Black Light. His recent publications include Emrys’ Dream: Greystone Theatre in Photographs and Words (Thistledown Press) and Eddie Gustafson’s Guide to Christmas. He lives in Saskatoon, SK.

Recent Poetry and Non-Fiction

Fall 201212 Fall 201212

Redcoats and RenegadesBarry McDivitt

TEEN NOVEL 978-1-897235-97-3 $15.95 CAD / AGES 14+

In the 1870s, a teenage criminal from New York makes history when he becomes the first person arrested by Canada’s newly created national police force — the original RCMP. Following this encounter, he unwillingly accompanies the North West Mounted Police on their 1874 expedition into Canada’s untamed and lawless west. At first the street-smart youth privately mocks his Mountie companions, but after sharing their hardships he comes to identify with them. The March West, as it became known, was quite well documented. The Mounties first commis-sioner, George A. French, gathered 275 policemen (the youngest of whom was a 16-year-old), 339 horses, 142 oxen, 114 Red River carts, 73 wagons, and two cannons each weighing a ton. From Fort Dufferin, near Winnipeg, they headed 800 miles west toward the Rocky Mountains to restore order in the northwest. They endured terrible hardships: lack of water and firewood, and insect plagues. Most of the horses died, and the equipment soon proved to be inadequate. Their fate changed when the force met up with Jerry Potts, an extraordinary guide, who led them to the hub of the illegal whisky trade at Fort Whoop-up.

BARRy MCDIVITT is a writer/producer for Global Television, and author of the novel The Youngest Spy (Thistledown Press 2007). He lives in Kelowna, BC.

VoicelessCaroline Wissing

TEEN NOVEL 978-1-897235-98-0 $15.95 CAD /AGES 14+

Nicknamed Ghost because she has no speaking voice, runaway teen Annabel’s interaction with her world is limited to how well she can convey her wants and feelings to others, and how intuitive the other characters are in interpreting her expressions and gestures. Danger lurks in many places and she faces harrowing situations when she leaves her foster home with a tough and messed-up boy and hitchhikes to the city.

CAROLINE WISSING has a BA in English Literature from Queen’s University as well as a diploma in Print Journalism. Two of her stories, “Surrender” and “Gemini”, received second and third place in Ottawa’s Audrey Jessup short crime fiction contest.

Recent Teen and Juvenile Fiction

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Recent Teen and Juvenile Fiction

Fall 2012

The Source of LightDavid Richards

TEEN NOVEL 978-1-897235-93-5 $15.95 CAD / AGES 14+

The Source of Light profiles two seventeen-year-olds, Badger and Mike, as they put on their detective mind sets and physical disguises to seek answers to serious questions such as Mike’s mother’s infidelity and Mike’s father’s involvement in industrial espionage. Obsessed with sleuthing and science, these grade-twelve geeks begin a transformation that will change the lives of everyone they know. Setting the mystery against the background of a synchrotron, a football field-sized facility that uses light millions of times brighter than the sun to peer inside matter, the teen detectives soon begin to connect the world’s most powerful microscope to nefarious black market schemes and the powerful men who spawn them. The result of their investigative surveillance uncovers the complicated truth of a parent’s infidelity, the secret plans of a synchrotron physicist with a split personality, evidence of a foreign agent, and the discovery of a powerful secret code named the Genesis Project that has become the target for international corporate theft.

DAVID RIChARDS is the author of three novels. Soldier Boys (Thistledown Press 1993), Lady at Batoche (Thistledown Press, 1999), and The Plough’s Share (Thistledown 2005).

Barnabas Bigfoot: A Close ShaveMarty Chan

JuVENILE NOVEL 978-1-897235-92-8 $10.95 CAD / AGES 9–12, GRADES 4–5

The first book in the Barnabas Bigfoot Series introduces us to Barnabas, adolescent sasquatch, and his family and tribe who live in the woods of BC. The story is told in the first person by Barnabas, who is a wonderfully engaging and genuine character, immediately relatable to preteens. He is experiencing the normal pangs of growing up: physical changes, pesky girls, embarrassing parents. On top of all that he experiences what for sasquatches is a dire handicap: small feet. He is determined to keep this terrible flaw a secret.

His friendship with a helpful human girl, Jaime, weaves in threads of multicultural understanding and personal identity, as Barnabas must sacrifice his unique sasquatch appearance to literally save his hide! Of course young readers will be able to identify with the fish-out-of-water flavour of these adventures: “Do I look normal? How will I fit in? Does how I look define who I am? What happens when my own friends reject me?”

Novelist, playwright, television writer, and radio humorist, MARTy ChAN is the author of the award-winning Marty Chan Mystery Series.

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eBooks

Fall 201214

Monkeyface Chronicles

Richard Scarsbrook

Teen Novel 978-1-927068-21-2 (ePuB) 978-1-927068-28-1 (WEB PDF) $11.95

Philip Skyler learned early in life that his face was going to get him into trouble. Though medical scientists named his condition Van der Woude syndrome, his classmates — especially the bullies — just called him “Monkeyface”. This is Philip’s story of sweet revenge.

“Scarsbrook is an excellent writer with great comic overtones.” — Resource Links

•Winner of the 2011 OLA Forest of Reading White Pine Award

Featherless Bipeds

Richard Scarsbrook

Teen Novel 978-1-927068-19-9 978-1-927068-27-4 (WEB PDF) $11.95 CAD

The second novel in the Dak Sifter Series, Featherless Bipeds, finds Dak firmly centred in the minefield of youth with the temptations, seductions, and subterfuge that rock and roll, young love, and university life are sure to provide.

•Nominated for the 2008–09 Stellar BC Teen Readers’ Choice Award

Cheeseburger Subversive

Richard Scarsbrook

Teen Novel 978-1-927068-20-5 978-1-927068-29-8 (WEB PDF) $11.95 CAD

•Finalist, 2004 CLA young Adult Book Award

•Finalist, 2005 OLA White Pine Award

•Finalist, 2006 BC Teen Readers Choice Stellar Award

Scarsbrook’s novel enters the world of his young protagonists through the front door and rivals the best writers in cunning and humour.

Nobody Cries at Bingo

Dawn Dumont

Short Fiction 978-1-927068-11-3 $11.95 CAD

It’s all here — life on the Rez in rich technicolour — as Dawn, the narrator, invites the reader to witness first-hand Dumont family life on the Okanese First Nation as she emerges from home life, through school life, and into the promise of a great future. Nobody Cries At Bingo is a book that embraces cultural differences and does it with the great traditional medicine of laughter.

•Shortlisted for the 2012 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Award

•Shortlisted for the 2012 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award

Mennonites Don’t Dance

Darcie Friesen Hossack

Novel 978-1-897235-96-6 $11.95 CAD

•Shortlisted for the 2011 Danuta Gleed Award and the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean Region

“Darcie Hossack’s stories reverberate with what has been left unsaid, the silence between people that speaks of betrayal, forgiveness, and the power of love to prevail. This is a fine debut by a very promising writer.” — Sandra Birdsell

“Arresting, mesmerizing, stunning . . . ” — Globe & Mail

Memoir of a Good Death

Anne Sorbie

Novel 978-1-927068-14-4 $11.95 CAD

“When the dead speak we must listen. Anne Sorbie’s dead and eloquent narrator is full of wild humour, pain, rebellion, compassion, wisdom. And she tells a wickedly good story.” — Robert Kroetsch

“This is a highly literary novel that I could easily see standing the test of time and getting a lot of scholarly attention. . . . a dark and esoteric novel that will haunt you long after it is back on the shelf.” — Canadian Book Review

The Cast Stone

Harold Johnson

Novel 978-1-927068-13-7 $11.95 CAD

Ben Robe is a retired political science professor who has returned to his reserve at Moccasin Lake to live out his life in relative peace and solitude. But the complications of a sudden and intense US annexation of Canada change his plans. Cued into a Canadian resistance movement by his former student and lover, Monica, Ben soon learns that the layers of political and military activity go far beyond his careful social conscience in this dystopian world.

Thistledown eBooks are available through Kobo, Kindle, Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, Follett, and OverDrive. Ebooks in WEB PDF format may be purchased from these sites as well as through our website.

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Fall 2012 15Fall 2012

eBooks

15Fall 2012 15Fall 2012 15Fall 2012

The Weeping Chair

Donald Ward


The stories in The Weeping Chair gently prod the reader to consider serious human foibles and balance that with a wicked sense of humour. In Ward’s universe readers will find a race of superior chickens who investigate their earthly origins, a badger who shares his fears with a monk, and a female dwarf from the seventeenth century pursuing the love of an octogenarian at Starbucks. Always bubbling just below the surface of these stories with their oddities of plot and character is something unexpected and frequently profound.

To the Edge of the Sea

Anne McDonald

Novel 978-1-927068-12-0 $11.95 CAD

Set on Prince Edward Island in the late nineteenth century, this is the story of three young people who yearned for escape and experience. Alex would find himself on a circus trapeze fated to meet the Niagara Falls tightrope artist, Farini. Reggie would join the farmers’ protests against the tax collectors, and Mercy would find herself landlocked on John A. Macdonald’s hard-drinking and dancing campaign to sell confederation Anne McDonald weaves a series of spells that pull this beautifully written novel through a tightly woven script.

In the Embrace of the Alligator

Amanda Hale


The narratives that make up this book have their origins in Hale’s travel journal, but emerge as stories, arriving at that place just beyond creative non-fiction. Vivid and sensitive portraits are balanced with the dark undercurrents of Cuban life.

Leaving Berlin

Britt Holmström


The intimate portraits in Britt Holmström’s first collection of short fiction at times have a strong journalistic sense while at other times evoke the intimacy of a diary. The stories employ underlying humour — particularly irony, incongruity, paradox, and derision. They move fluidly through time operating in the present tense while creating tangents to the past.

Redcoats and Renegades

Barry McDivitt

Teen Novel 978-1-927068-26-7 $11.95

In the 1870s, a teenage criminal from New York makes history when he becomes the first person arrested by Canada’s newly created national police force — the original RCMP. Following this encounter, he unwillingly accompanies the North West Mounted Police on their 1874 expedition, which became known as the March West, into Canada’s untamed and lawless west. They endured terrible hardships but their fate changed when they met up with Jerry Potts, an extraordinary guide, who led them to the hub of the illegal whisky trade at Fort Whoop-up.

The Path to Ardroe

John Lent

Novel 978-1-927068-22-9 $11.95 CAD

The Path To Ardroe follows a small group of men and women who grew up on the south-side of Edmonton in the 50s and 60s. It is an exploration of friendship and its limits, life changes and the transforming culture and sub-cultures that altered North American life in the 80s and 90s, especially changes in sexual awareness and the aesthetics of art.

Voiceless

Caroline Wissing

Teen Novel 978-1-927068-25-0 $11.95 CAD

Nicknamed Ghost because she has no speaking voice, runaway teen Annabel’s interaction with her world is limited to how well she can convey her wants and feelings to others, and how intuitive the other characters are in interpreting her expressions and gestures. Danger lurks in many places and she faces harrowing situations when she leaves her foster home with a tough and messed-up boy and hitchhikes to the city.

The Sometimes Lake

Sandy Bonny


“Sandy Bonny[‘s] stories move effort-lessly from the microcosm of intimate details in the lives of her characters to the macrocosm of great forces that animate the universe and sustain life on earth. Look at the science, she seems to say, and at the fragile miracle of life around us.” — David Carpenter

“ . . . these subtle skillful tales have crisp and new flavors; they yield discovery upon discovery. This is a powerful debut collection.” — Fred Stenson

Fall 201216

Index

16 Fall 201216

Index

16

A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden .................................. 5

A year At River Mountain .............................................. 3

Barnabas Bigfoot: A Close Shave ................................... 13

Barnabas Bigfoot: A hairy Tangle .................................... 6

Bone Sense ............................................................... 7

Bonny, Sandy .............................................................. 9

Brenna, Dwayne .........................................................11

Cast Stone, The .................................................. 10, 14

Chan, Marty .......................................................... 6, 13

Cheeseburger Subversive ............................................ 14

Dibidalen: Ten Stories .................................................. 1

Ditch Was Lit Like This, The ........................................ 11

Emily Via The Greyhound Bus ........................................ 8

Featherless Bipeds .................................................... 14

Friesen Hossack, Darcie................................................ 14

Given ..................................................................... 2

Hayes, Derek ............................................................10

Holmström, Britt ........................................................10

Horlick, Leah ............................................................. 7

Johnson, Harold .................................................... 10, 14

Johnston, Sean ..........................................................11

Kenyon, Michael .......................................................... 3

Kydd, Allison ........ ..................................................... 8

Leaving Berlin ......................................................... 10

Lent, John ........................................................... 9, 15

Maladjusted, The........................................................ 9

McDivitt, Barry ..................................................... 12, 15

Memoir of a Good Death............................................. 14

Mennonites Don’t Dance ............................................ 14

Monkeyface Chronicles .............................................. 14

Muirhead, Laurie Lynn ................................................ 7

Musgrave, Susan ......................................................... 2

Our Kind of Work ..................................................... 11

Path to Ardroe, The .................................................... 9

Pious Robber ............................................................. 4

Redcoats and Renegades ....................................... 12, 15

Reid, Stephen............................................................. 5

Richards, David ..........................................................13

Richards, Harriet ......................................................... 4

Riot Lung ................................................................. 7

Sometimes Lake, The .................................................. 9

Sorbie, Anne .............................................................14

Source of Light, The ................................................. 13

Stephensen, Coby ........................................................ 8

To the Edge of the Sea .......................................... 10, 15

Violet Quesnel ........................................................... 8

Virgo, Seán ................................................................ 1

Voiceless ................................................................ 12

Ward, Donald ............................................................. 9

Weeping Chair, The ..................................................... 9

Wissing, Caroline .................................................... 4, 12

All prices are subject to change without notice.

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