The short story has developed into Canada's healthiest and most versatile literary genre. The twenty-eight stories in this collection have been carefully selected and introduced to provide both entertaining reading and an insight into the dominant themes and directions of Canadian literature from its beginning in the early nineteenth century to the present day.

Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories

Literature & Fiction

Grady, Wayne

British & Irish

Penguin Putnam

How far would a son go to belong? And how far would a father go to protect him? With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled, romantic Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock and is desperate to see the world. They marry against Vivian's family's wishes--hard to say what it is, but there's something about Jack that they just don't like--and as the war draws to a close, the new couple travels to Windsor to meet Jack's family. But when Vivian meets Jack's mother and brother, everything she thought she knew about her new husband gets called into question. They don't live in the dream home that Jack depicted, they all look different from one another--and different from anyone Vivian has ever seen--and after weeks of waiting to meet Jack's father, William Henry, he never materializes. Steeped in jazz and big-band music, spanning pre- and post-war Windsor-Detroit, St. John's, Newfoundland, and 1950s Toronto, this is an arresting, heartwrenching novel about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice, race relations and a time in our history when the world was on the cusp of momentous change.

Emancipation Day

Literary

Doubleday, Canada

"Grady's novel reads with the velvety tempo of the jazz music of its day. . . . Grady fearlessly explores heated race relations and the masks we all assume." Chatelaine With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock and longs to see the world. They marry against Vivian's family's wishes--there's something about Jack that they just don't like--and as the war draws to a close, the couple travels to Windsor to meet Jack's family. But when Vivian meets Jack's mother and brother, everything she thought she knew about her husband gets called into question. They don't live in the dream home Jack depicted, they all look different from one another--different from anyone Vivian has ever seen--and after weeks of waiting to meet Jack's father, he never materializes. Steeped in jazz and big-band music, spanning pre- and post-war Windsor-Detroit, St. John's, Newfoundland, and 1950s Toronto, this is an arresting, heartwrenching novel about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice, race relations and a time in our history when the world was on the cusp of momentous change.

United States

Anchor Canada

For readers of Colson Whitehead, James McBride, Yaa Gyasi and Lawrence Hill, Up From Freedom is a powerful and emotional novel about the dangers that arise when we stay silent in the face of prejudice or are complicit in its development. As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further. Moody even comes to think of Annie as his wife and Lucas as their son. Of course, they are not. As Annie reminds him, in moments of anger, she and Moody will never be equal. She and her son are enslaved. When their "family" breaks apart in the most brutal and tragic way, and Lucas flees the only life he's ever known, Moody must ask himself whether he has become the man he never wanted to be--but is he willing to hear the answer? Stretching from the war-torn banks of the Rio Brazos in Texas to the muddy waters of Freedom, Indiana, Moody travels through a country on the brink of civil war, relentlessly searching for Lucas and slowly reconciling his past sins with his hopes for the future. When he meets Tamsey, a former slave, and her family trying to escape the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act, Moody sees an opportunity for redemption. But the world is on the cusp of momentous change, and though some things may be forgotten, nothing is ever really forgiven.

Up From Freedom

Chasing the chinook: On the trail of Canadian words and culture

VIKING

A penetrating book on the very roots of our relationship with nature. Bringing Back the Dodo is about how the forces of evolution and extinction have shaped the living world, and the part that humans play therein. This strikingly thought-provoking book, in the tradition of John McPhee and David Quammen, explores the very roots of our relationship with nature and challenges us to look at ourselves and the natural world around us in new light. Wayne Grady searches our history and prehistory to explain why humans love nature and fear it at the same time. He explores the repercussions of our manipulations of nature through science, as exemplified by the Harvard Mouse, and suggests which extinct species we could clone (sadly, probably not the dodo), and whether we ought to try. He looks into the ramifications of getting up on our hind legs to walk, and what it meant to humankind when we lost our nocturnal vision. A visit to the supermarket leads him to uncover our vestigial longing for subtropical foods, and elsewhere he ponders how our instinct for “home” compares to that of other animals. These elegant and penetrating essays, based on pieces originally published in Explore magazine, linger long in the imagination. They speak to some of our most fundamental questions about the human and animal worlds, and confirm Wayne Grady’s standing as one of our foremost literary science writers.

Bringing Back The Dodo: Lessons In Natural And Unnatural History

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

MCCLELLAND STEWART

This is a strikingly thought-provoking book about how the forces of evolution and extinction have shaped the living world, and the part that humans play therein. These elegant and penetrating essays speak to some of our most fundamental questions about the human and animal worlds, and confirm Grady’s standing as one of our foremost literary science writers.

Bringing Back the Dodo: Lessons in Natural and Unnatural History

With its wealth of practical information and insight, Green Home is a must read for anyone who plans to build or buy a house and for all those who recognize that the housing decisions we make today will affect the planet we live on forever.

Green Home: Planning and Building the Environmentally Advanced House

Diane Pub Co.

Describes the characteristics and behavior of the coyote, looks at their relationship with humans, and argues that they are not a real threat to the sheep industry

The World of the Coyote

Sierra Club Books

A photographic portrait of one of the world's most adaptable and wily predators examines the long interrelationship between humans and coyotes, from ancient Native American legends, to attempts at extermination, to the coyote's current status and prospects.

Random House, Inc.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grady, Wayne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Grady, Wayne

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grady, Wayne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories

Emancipation Day

Emancipation Day

Up From Freedom

Chasing the chinook: On the trail of Canadian words and culture

Bringing Back The Dodo: Lessons In Natural And Unnatural History

Bringing Back the Dodo: Lessons in Natural and Unnatural History

Green Home: Planning and Building the Environmentally Advanced House

The World of the Coyote

The World of the Coyote