Books published by NeWest Press

In a flash, everything changes. After a group of radical environmentalists breaks into the house of a prominent oil company executive and holds him and his family hostage, the stage is set for a popular movement to coalesce around the incident. They call themselves "Tarstoppers", and by occupying Calgary''s parks and public areas they hope to shut down the oilsands. But even the most cynical of their number couldn''t anticipate what happened next. Now Tim and Shannon, an ordinary couple caught up in the middle of history, must navigate a world newly populated with fifth columnists, foreign radicals, agent provocateurs and black bloc anarchists as chaos ensues right outside their door.

As a long, hot Saskatchewan summer dawns, Darby Swank''s life is forever changed when she finds her beloved aunt floating dead in a lake. All at once, her blinders are lifted and she sees the country lifestyle she''s always known in a whole new way, with hidden pain and anguish lurking behind familiar faces, and violence forever threatening to burst forth, like brushfire smouldering and dormant under the muskeg. With her first novel, Lisa Guenther lays bare familial bonds, secret histories and the healing potential of art. This book the work of Ann-Marie MacDonald and Lynn Coady as it eviscerates small-town platitudes and brings important issues to light.

By turns tender and rough-hewn, and always structurally inventive, the poems in Wendy''s McGrath''s new collection show a writer reaching the height of her creative powers. Whether evoking the vulgar give-and-take of a men''s poker night, fleeting moments of connection between mothers and sons, afternoons spent in overgrown backyard gardens, or wondrous childhood trips to the drive-in, McGrath''s feel for the bygone details of working-class life is uncanny. The book''s highlight is the playful poetic sequence that gives the book its title, the product of a more-than-decade-long improvisational collaboration with printmaker Walter Jule, a series of not-quite-mirror poems whose meanings reflect on each other in kaleidoscopic ways.

Rebee Shore's life is fragmented. She's forever on the move, ricocheting around Alberta, guided less than capably by her dysfunctional mother Elizabeth. The Shore Girl follows Rebee from her toddler to her teen years as she grapples with her mother's fears and addictions, and her own desire for a normal life. Through a series of narrators--family, friends, teachers, strangers, and Rebee herself--her family's dark past, and the core of her mother's despair, are slowly revealed. The Shore Girl is a mosaic of Rebee: of her origins, of her past and present; from darkness and grief, to understanding and hope for a brighter future.

"Three weeks it's been raining, but no puddles". Author Sara Pierce is slowly drowning in Windsor, a city where water will seemingly not stay put long enough to form puddles. While living with her germophobic best friend Angie and dealing with her online gaming-addicted boyfriend Dan, Sara finds herself obsessively writing and rewriting her own story in order to gain some sense of control over her life. Reading like John Barth by way of Lena Dunham, this is a portrait of the artist as a young woman trapped in a world she never imagined would end up this way. Marissa Reaume's playful debut is a novel that makes and unmakes itself at the same time, as strikethroughs and compulsive editorial injections take us into the mind of a young writer struggling to finally come into her own.

"So I have always walked alleys alone, with my monster face, listening through a wall for the words that might cultivate me, that are contained within the homes of ex-lovers, the ones who caught a glimpse and ran away". In the neon-slick streets of Thea Bowering's imagination, monster girls and femme flâneurs roam, anthropologist's eyes on barroom denizens, disguising themselves in men's clothing and embarking on doomed love affairs. Old World meets New World as the cafés and piazzas of Europe's capitals intermingle with the dust and desolation of the 21st Century modern West. Strikingly modern while also filled with fin de siècle regret, Thea Bowering's first story collection is shot through with allusion and timeless themes given new life".