Books published by Biblioasis

Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens and other great ghost story writers felt otherwise!

A poet rediscovers the artistic passion of her youth-and pays tribute to the teacher she thought she'd lost.After thirty-five years as an "e;on-again, off-again, uncoached closet pianist,"e; poet and writer Robyn Sarah picked up the phone one day and called her old piano teacher, whom she had last seen in her early twenties. Music, Late and Soon is the story of her return to studying piano with the mentor of her youth. In tandem, she reflects on a previously unexamined musical past: a decade spent at Quebec's Conservatoire de Musique, studying clarinet-ostensibly headed for a career as an orchestral musician, but already a writer at heart. A meditation on creative process in both music and literary art, this two-tiered musical autobiography interweaves past and present as it tracks the author's long-ago defection from a musical career path and her late re-embrace of serious practice. At its core is a portrait of an extraordinary piano teacher and of a relationship remembered and renewed.

Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens and other great ghost story writers felt otherwise!

A poet's firsthand account of a month volunteering on the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis.

"e;A poet of direct speech and muscular lexicon."e;Quill & QuireNimbly slipping between personae, masks, and moods, the prosody-driven poems of Sum weigh the volatility and mutability of the self against the forces of habit, instinct, and urge. With homages to Hopkins, Graves, Wislawa Szymborska, Paul Muldoon, and more, and in allusion-dappled, playfully sprung stanzas, this third book from poet and critic Zachariah Wells both wears its influences openly and spins a sound texture all its own, in a collection far greater than its parts.Zachariah Wells is the author of two collections of poetry and a book of criticism (Career Limiting Moves, 2014).

Telephone wires, dark as a line in a schoolboy's notebook against the dawn; paint flakes from houses drifting down like dust; the hulking shadow of a desk that emerges, stock-still as a cow, in the moment of waking. Join poet Robert Melanon for a quiet celebration of his city, its inhabitants, and the language that gives it life.From "e;Eden"e;:You go forth drunk onthe multitudes, drunkon everything, whilethe lampposts sprinklenodding streets with stars.Robert Melanon, former poetry columnist for Le Devoir is a recipient of the Governor General's Award, the Prix Victor-Barbeau, and the Prix Alain-Grandbois.

First published in 1969, Ray Smith's Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada remains as refreshing, innovative and important today as it has in every previous incarnation. Sophisticated, playful, crafted, sly, self-referential and extremely funny, it marks the beginning of a long and important, if unfortunately under appreciated, career by one of Canada's best humorists and innovative story-tellers.

Cameron Dueck takes a motorcycle trip through Manitoba and Latin America in search of isolated enclaves of extreme Mennonites-and himself.

First in a series of five autobiographical novels, Aubrey McKee is a coming-of-age story for the '80s generation.

A history of bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter-and, most urgently, a manifesto.

The true story of North America's first known spree killer, written by a veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In this intimate portrait of a friendship between two young women, Lahey reflects on cancer and coming of age.

Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens and other great ghost story writers felt otherwise!

Norm Sibum's poems are field notes from the end of empire, a satirist's barbs, verse letters from a poet to his enemies and friends.

A must-read for anyone with a stake in contemporary Canadian literature, or with curiosity about poetry on the world stage.

An assured collection of short stories and a novella about faith, doubt, and grace.

A debut collection from a powerful new literary voice chronicling the intersection of politics and daily lives.

A neglected teenage girl connects with an older sectarian woman who reveals a secret that precipitates a devastating series of events.

A practical and illuminating collection of essays on writing and reading fiction, focusing on the relationship between form and theme.

Stunned by an unexpected blockbuster art show, three plucky misfits cycle the Camino de Santiago-backward.

Winner of the 2018 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction Runner-Up for the 2017 Danuta Gleed Literary AwardShortlisted for the 2018 Alastair MacLeod Prize for Short FictionIn Peninsula Sinking, David Huebert brings readers an assortment of Maritimers caught between the places they love and the siren call of elsewhere. From submarine officers to prison guards, oil refinery workers to academics, each character in these stories struggles to find some balance of spiritual and emotional grace in the world increasingly on the precipice of ruin. Peninsula Sinking offers up eight urgent and electric meditations on the mysteries of death and life, of grief and love, and never shies away from the joy and horror of our submerging world.

The characters in Bad Things Happen professors, janitors, webcam models, small-time criminals are between things. Between jobs and marriages, states of sobriety, joy and anguish; between who they are and who they want to be. Kris Bertin's unforgettable debut introduces us to people at the tenuous moment before everything in their lives change, for better or worse.

A feared cage fighter in Mixed Martial Arts, Daniel is closing in on greatness-until an injury derails his career. Out of work in his country hometown, Daniel slips into the underworld, moonlighting as muscle for a childhood-friend-turned-mid-level-gangster. While his wife works nights and his twelve-year-old daughter gets into scraps of her own, Daniel tries to escape and build a nobler life for his family-but he sinks deeper into a violent, unpredictable world, soon sparking a conflict that can only be settled in blood.Written with equal parts tenderness and horror, In the Cage weaves together a grittily masterful tale of violence, family, and resilience as Kevin Hardcastle penetrates what it means to survive in the rural underclass.

The National Hockey League is celebrating its hundredth anniversary in 2017-2018-but Bob Duff's The First Season reveals how close the league came to folding in its very first year. Set against the turmoil of the Great War and born out of a ruse to rid the league of reviled Toronto owner Eddie Livingstone, the new league suffered from a series of crises: from a shortfall of quality players due to military conscription, to rival leagues and divided fan loyalties, to the burning down of the Montreal Arena that was home ice to two teams. But despite all this, the league survived-and became the worldwide standard for competitive hockey.With chapters devoted to the first-ever NHL playoffs and Stanley Cup championships, in addition to team and player profiles and vintage black and white photos, Duff's The First Season is essential reading for every hockey fan, providing real insight about the first generation of hockey heroes.

As the sickly boy dreams in bed, the shadows beneath his parlor curtain are stirring, taking shapes inexpressible even in a child's dreams. "e;Real keeps us silent,"e; argues the taxidermied rabbit to the young air-rifle that shot it dead. "e;Real keeps us still. You must never ask anyone if they are Real."e;For exactly as long as history, a secret peace has bound the human and inanimate worlds. But the stories of the other world are pushing into our own, and that peace will be tested tonight...In this collection of twenty-six poems and the unbelievably weird happenings that link them, Noah Wareness steals electricity from nihilistic horror fiction and shaggy late-night cartoons to create a landscape of profound loss, vertigo and wonder.