In the tradition of Allende, this is a magical novel, written in the form of an opera, and set in Seville and Mexico in the late 1800s. Act I opens in Seville. Emilio has been forced by his overbearing mother into the priesthood. Monica is a governess in a wealthy household who falls pregnant by the head of the house. A chance meeting in Seville cathedral suggests a solution to both their predicaments - they decide to marry, though it is not a love match. Emilio raises Monica's son Diego as his own, and they form a close bond over their mutual love of language, books, maps and birds. When Emilio dies, Monica reveals that he was not Diego's father. She grows ever more embittered and eventually dies, leaving Diego to pursue his true calling - his love of birds. Act 2 follows Diego's life in Mexico - his apprenticeship to an American who is mapping the birds of Mexico; his love for Sofia, the beautiful, independent daughter of a Mexican farmer; and his obsession with saving the Passenger Pigeon from extinction. The cities of Seville and Merida are so central to the narrative, and evoked so beautifully, that they are almost characters themselves. Taking in many of the stock characters that appear in the best operas - the philanderer, the wronged wife, the harassed servant, the star-crossed lovers - The Mapmaker's Opera is an original and magical novel which will appeal to lovers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende.

Mapmakers Opera

Literature & Fiction

Gonzalez, Béa

Contemporary

Harper-perennial

A GLOBE 100 Best Book of the Year
In the grand tradition of Michener's Alaska and Rutherford's Sarum, bestselling authors David Cruise and Alison Griffiths have captured the essence of one of Canada's richest settings. Beginning in the dying era of the last Ice Age and spanning thousands of years, Vancouver starts with the story of the last survivor of a Siberian people and moves through history in a dynamic tapestry. Fascinating characters come to life, including a Russian cartographer, a Scottish trapper, a Chinese peasant boy and a young woman from the desperate streets of Vancouver's downtown eastside. All share a powerful attraction to this unique, storied place.
An absorbing historical chronicle, Vancouver is a tale of human struggle and adventure, and a dazzling feat of storytelling.

Vancouver: A Novel

Cruise, David

Griffiths, Alison

Genre Fiction

Acclaimed author Thomas King is in fabulous, fantastical form in this bestselling short story collection. From the surreal migrations of the title story to the misadventures of Coyote in the modern world and the chaos of a baby's unexpected arrival by airmail, King's tales are deft, hilarious and provocative. A National Post and Quill &amp; Quire bestseller, and an Amazon.ca Top Pick for 2005, A Short History of Indians in Canada is a comic tour de force.

A Short History Of Indians In Canada

King,Thomas

Humor & Satire

In the summer of 1963, the year of the sensational release of the movie Cleopatra, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of-season party. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip. But this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all. From the award-winning author of Honey and Ashes and Thieves, The Ladies’ Lending Library is a richly evocative story for anyone who has longed for the heady days of bygone summers and the risky promises of change.

The Ladies' Lending Library

KEEFER, Janice Kulyk

Literary

First things first, stay calm. If you are reading this, I'm not around anymore. Take the phone and speed dial 1. Tell the woman who answers that you are Eric Sanderson. The woman is Dr. Randle. She'll understand what has happened. With regret, and also hope,The First Eric Sanderson.
When Eric Sanderson wakes to amnesia and a haunting note from himself, he discovers an eerie world of thought and concept, a world in which ideas have a life of their own. Attacked by a force he cannot see and memories he cannot ignore―including those of a perfect love now lost―Eric discovers he is being relentlessly pursued by a shark that may exist only in his mind but which stalks him through the flows and streams of language and human interaction.Hunting the answers as he is hunted, Eric is led on a journey that will either bring the First Eric Sanderson back to life or destroy bothEric Sandersons forever.
An astounding and daring book by debut novelist Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts confronts readers with a fascinating puzzle aswell as an intensely absorbing story.

The Raw Shark Texts

Hall, Steven

New Page 1
A Maclean’s national bestseller, now with P.S.the story of a revolutionary thinker whose ideas changed our cities.
When urban planning activist Jane Jacobs died in April 2006, Canada mourned the passing of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. But the ideas and insights of her richly packed life of social actionincluding her groundbreaking Death and Life of Great American Cities, written over 40 years agostill resonate. In Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary, journalist Alice Sparberg Alexiou explores the ideas of this incisive, passionately engaged mind and celebrates Jacobs’ contributions to the debates that have directly informed how many of us live today.
From the controversy that erupted when Jacobs dared to take on conventional urban planning wisdom in the 1960s to Jacobs’ immigration to Canada in 1968 and her immeasurable influence on Toronto’s cityscape, as well as her lesser known and equally provocativeworks on economics, Alexiou offers a thoughtful tribute to the award-winning and inspirational thinker, writer and activist.

Jane Jacobs

Politics & Social Sciences

Alexiou, Alice

Social Sciences

Helpless

Celia is the single mother of an exceptionally beautiful child: nine-year-old Rachel. All too aware of the precarious balance of the life she has built for the two of them, Celia worries about her daughter’s longing for the father she has never met. When Rachel disappears one night during a blackout, Celia is stricken with guilt and terror. But her desperation is only half the story as Ron, the man who has taken Rachel, struggles with feelings that are at once tender, misguided and chillingly fixated.A suspenseful and haunting novel of obsessive love, Helpless once again showcases Barbara Gowdy’s incredible talent for bringing the reader face to face with the provocative and discomforting. At the height of the story’s tension, she leads us with a steady hand into territory that is unexpected but ultimately as transcendent as the passing of a storm.

GOWDY, BARBARA

Naiko works in the Undeliverable Mail Office where, immersed in things lost and missing, she searches for clues to match undeliverable mail with addresses. Her job allows her to achieve a semblance of order in a disorderly world. It is ashock, then, when Naiko’s co-worker Andrei, an enigmatic Romanian refugee, suddenly vanishes.
This astonishing debut novel unfolds in compelling, delicately wrought layers. Naiko’s shifting understanding of Andrei’s past becomes an opaque reflection of her own existence, and objects―from the pens hoarded by Naiko’s motherin her retirement home to the personal effects of Jewish women that Andrei’s grandmother sorts through at Birkenau―become touchstones for memories and meaning, loss and love.

The Letter Opener

Kyo Maclear

National Bestseller and Finalist for the Donner Prize
Politicians and the media may claim that youth gangs are an American export, but the truth, says youth-gang expert Michael C. Chettleburgh, is that Canada has been cultivating its own homegrown gang culture for years. And gang culture isn’t relegated to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver—it’s also in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Halifax and Hobbema, Alberta. It includes not only poor black kids but privileged white youth, First N ations and Southeast Asian teens in large and small communities across Canada.In a powerful narrative driven by chilling real-life stories of gang members, victims, families and police—and anchored by rigorous research and thoughtful commentary—Chettleburgh creates a touchstone guide that acts as a wake-up call for Canadians.

Young Thugs

Chettleburgh, Michael

On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. Accompanied by his wife, Margaret, and baby Michel, Trudeau was greeted in Havana by 250,000 cheering Cubans and a 30-foot poster of himself. “Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!” Trudeau would famously shout at the love-in.In this fascinating portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life three days of Canadian politics played out on the international stage. In a revealing look at both leaders’ personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how these two towering figures―despite their official positions as allies of rival empires―determinedlyrefused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States and forged a long-lasting relationship.

Three Nights In Havana

History

WRIGHT, Robert

Americas

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