Rat palms

Homel, David

Harpercollins

Sonya & Jack: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

Rat Palms

When they hear that Simon the hunter is coming, the council of animals meets and decides to take action

Now You See Them, Now You Don't

Caumartin, Francois

Scholastic Canada, Limited

What would happen if the Messiah was a woman, and not the man people have always taken her to be? What if she showed up in rural America, instead of riding triumphantly into Jerusalem? If she preached moral license, not repentance? All of that does happen, and more, in this startlingly original, mischievous and penetrating novel by David Homel. In Homel’s tale of theology and erotics, Nathan Gazarra, a Hebew peddler, travels the backroads, from town to town, among tobacco-growers, mystics and illiterates, selling notions and sundries. While he’s at it, Gazarra mixes in a little preaching, because he has a secret, burning wish: to be the one to discover the Messiah in this most unlikely of places. When he meets up with Sabbitha Hunter, a woman of disturbing beauty on the run from her home town, he decides to make her his Chosen One. Sabbitha takes the mantle of the Messiah, because with it comes the kind of power she had always dreamed of. When she invites the townsfolk and country people to follow her into heroic sinning, all hell breaks loose. But it takes a lot of energy and imagination to sin and keep on sinning. And when Sabbitha’s followers start getting rough, even the Messiah’s life will be in danger. David Homel has created an irreverent, earthy, astonishing story, full of insight into the nature of eviland love.

Get on Top

Humor & Satire

Talonbooks

Instead of dream vacations to Disney World and motels with swimming pools and water slides, the parents in Travels with My Family insist on obscure destinations even if it means driving for hours to get to the middle of nowhere, countless back-seat games of Twenty Questions that end badly, and reading aloud the How to Change a Tire” chapter from the Owner’s Manual. To say nothing of what happens when they arrive: eating grasshoppers in Mexico, forgetting the tide schedule while collecting sand dollars off the coast of Georgia, and mistaking alligators for logs in the middle of Okefenokee Swamp. Husband-and-wife team David Homel and Marie-Louise Gay have combined their writing and illustrating talents with their own family memories to produce a very different kind of travelogue. Travels with My Family is told from the point of view of a long-suffering big brother who must fulfill many roles in this eccentric family keep little brother out of trouble; humor artist Mom while she seeks out beauty and inspiration in the least likely places; and discourage nearsighted, tone-deaf Dad from pulling out the road map to search for yet another strange destination.

Travels with My Family

Children's Books

GAY, MARIE-LOUISE

GROUNDWOOD BOOKS *

Instead of dream vacations to Disney World and hotels with swimming pools and water slides, the parents in Travels with My Family insist on obscure destinations in the middle of nowhere. They're determined to go, even if it means hours of dull driving filled with countless back-seat, argument-inducing games of Twenty Questions and out-loud readings of the How to Change a Tire” chapter from the owner’s manual. But bad as the travel is, it's nothing compared to what happens when they arrive: eating grasshoppers in Mexico, forgetting the tide schedule while collecting sand dollars off the coast of Georgia, and mistaking alligators for logs in the middle of Okefenokee Swamp. Travels with My Family is told from the point of view of a long-suffering big brother who must attend to many responsibilities in this eccentric family keep little brother out of trouble; humor artistic Mom while she seeks out beauty and inspiration in the least likely places; and discourage nearsighted, tone-deaf Dad from pulling out the road map to search for yet another strange destination.

Travels with My Family (Travels with My Family, 1)

Charlie and his family are taking another trip  this time to spend a year in a tiny village in southern France. Typically suspicious and resentful at first (they're going all the way to France, and they're not even going to be living in Paris!), big brother Charlie soon finds himself drawn into life in sleepy Celeriac. The family experiences the spring migration of sheep up to the mountain pastures, Dad is threatened by a raging bull, a spring flood makes a mess, and everyone forages for snails and mushrooms and has other adventures large and small. Most of all, though, Charlie and his little brother, Max, make friends of their eccentric new neighbors  the man who steals ducks from the local river, the neighbor's dog who sleeps in the middle of the street, and their new pals Rachid and Ahmed, who teach them how to play soccer using the open front door of the Catholic church as the goal! It's enough to make Charlie wonder if it's really so important to get to Paris. On the Road Again’s mix of rollicking humor, comic characters, and universal concerns like making new friends and living in a new place are a welcome addition for Gay's many fans.

On the Road Again (Travels with My Family, 2)

Growing Up & Facts of Life

How to Make Love to a Negro (English and French Edition)

LAFERRIÈRE, Dany

Contemporary

Coach House Pr

In the tradition of such great Latin American magic realists as Jorge Amada, Sergio Kokis recreates the magic world of a child in Brazil. The novel is told from the point of view of a Brazilian painter in exile somewhere in the northern climes - man who longs for the warmth and vibrancy of his childhood. But his childhood and adolescence were not easy. Torn between a deeply religious (and superstitious) mother and his father, a man of science and reason, the young man survives his home life, life at boarding school, and life abroad to become an artist and a person in his own right. Funhouse (Le pavillon des miroirs in French) has won four major literary awards in Quebec: Grand Prix du livre de Montrl, Prix de L’Acadie des lettres du Quec, Prix Quec-Paris, and Prix Desjardins.

Funhouse

KOKIS SERGIO

Dundurn Press

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