Call it America. Vast the tumble-rocket-particle-wave shows the world in a rush to arrive depart and become and forget and remember everything all at once. Call it history. Call it time and memory the way water is the measure of the clock your bones the measure of love. I mean everything passes. I said the earth is a sentry, everything passes and nothing escapes. Call it home; call it exile in a kingdom of rain. - Empire Burlesque, Charles Talkoff
276 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-42-8 (pbk.) | Softcover
276 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-42-8 (pbk.) | Softcover
"Call it America. Vast the tumble-rocket-particle-wave shows the world in a rush to arrive depart and become and forget and remember everything all at once. Call it history. Call it time and memory the way water is the measure of the clock your bones the measure of love. I mean everything passes. I said the earth is a sentry, everything passes and nothing escapes. Call it home; call it exile in a kingdom of rain." - Empire Burlesque, Charles Talkoff
The first novel in an upcoming trilogy, "Empire Burlesque" is an attempt at reaching a realism with modernity, finding a continuity in fractured timelines and significance in chaos in a world in which these very things--realism, continuity and significance--have been deconstructed and possibly destroyed. In this "Empire Burlesque" of modernity, many things occur in the novel (life) with no apparent significance until imbued with meaning by the subject (us) and narrative authority (authority) itself is assailed by arbitrary, chaotic and decentralizing forces. This means the plot (political framing) to the extent one exists, may be ignored or contradicted and information might arrive to intrude into the narrative for no apparent reason and with no obvious connection to the events in the story. Welcome to the modern, schizoid, fragmented,unhinged burlesque empire that the West has become where Trumpian characters define reality and distort reason. An existential detective story with Theseus and the Minotaur as characters, taking on the many forms of man versus beast, citizen versus state, liberty versus control, "Empire Burlesque" renders our modernity with all its farcical, Faustian fog.
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
5 x 8 | 302 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-10-7(pbk.) | Hardcover
God’s Wife and the Synonymous X, Jesse Chase's first novel follows the protoganist on his search for a new cultural and literary theory while he champions an ethics of self-recovery and rehabilitation of personal narrative in a world of masks, capitalism and oppression.
170 pages | 5.5 x 8 | ISBN 978-1-926716-43-5 | Softcover
Rathwell’s writing is “a fistful of sentences written with the subtlety of a geisha and the terse certainty of stainless steel.” - John Olson, Author
“There must have been a bad bite. Something had gestated. He wasn’t imagining it. There were wet, frozen pebbles tumbling in his veins. There was a sugary sense of euphoria, a smell of orange blossoms, of piss, of diesel.”
"This is not just a collection of poems and short stories; it is a granary of artistic abundance! For here, will you find a rich variety of masterfully crafted pieces in a range of style, including those that draw from the African oral storytelling tradition. It is a montage of pieces of literary art, curated in a manner that allows for the ‘strict grammarian’ forms of expression to coalesce with those given to poetic licentiousness."
Whichever your favourite genre is, this anthology of East African literature has delivered something that has not been served to readers in many years. It is a fitting gift to the lovers of literary art in this first quarter of the 21st century.
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
5 x 8 | 302 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-10-7(pbk.) | Hardcover
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
222 pages | 210mm x 148mm | ISBN 978-1-926716-81-7 (pbk.)
Estuaries, translated by Tiago Silva, brings to the English-speaking world one of the most powerful works of Portuguese neorealism: Esteiros by Soeiro Pereira Gomes.
“They were the sons of men who were never children…”
Discover a foundational novel of Portuguese neorealism — In "Estuaries", Tiago Silva’s translation brings the haunting beauty and political urgency of Soeiro Pereira Gomes’s original to today’s readers.
With lyrical clarity and historical urgency, Estuaries reintroduces a forgotten Europe and a timeless call for justice. This new translation is both faithful and fearless, reviving a classic for a new generation of readers who are unafraid to confront the past.
"Perfect for fans of social realism, European history, and international literature."
"A lost gem of Portuguese resistance literature enters the English canon."
The FLQ have bombed the Montreal Stock Exchange. The streets are charged and a referendum is called on secession. Frederick E. Bryson captures a defining moment in Canadian history in his latest novel "Crossing to Tadoussac".
"Crossing to Tadoussac" evokes the experience of being a Quebecker in the reader, awakening the historical and spiritual struggles that have formed the province and its people.
438 pages | 5 x 8 | ISBN 978-1-926716-00-8 | Softcover
This book is a response to ongoing literary trends: the treatment of words as images in art writing; the evolution of criticism as a form of creativity; and contemporary literary narrative that treats fiction as the greatest truth.
THE MATCHSTICK GIRL brings LGBT undercurrents to nineteenth-century Russia, as our young protagonist struggles with class differences, schoolgirl relationships and her search for self-empowerment._x000D_
Set in Montreal, Ensemble takes us through the throes of existential crises as lives and marriages are overturned by a man’s restless yearning.
A philosopher is suddenly forced to face the questions he lectures on when they materialize out of the theoretical and into the practical after he falls for a student in his class. Meanwhile his wife, an accomplished musician is left to deal with the disintegration of their marriage and the new silence that descends upon her life as she dissects her husband’s inner workings and confronts the object of his desire. Told in clinical honesty, Ensemble deconstructs love and relationships in the 21st century.
4.72 x 7.48 | 148 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-29-9 (pbk.) | Softcover
Lock 7 is the highest and last lift up the historic Welland canal. In this literary novel, it is also the dominant metaphor for Leo’s final life epiphany. The one that always seems to come too late...
230 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-50-3 (pbk.) | Softcover
THE WAR OF NONEXISTENT WOMEN by Jason Price Everett
'Nonexistence' represents the paradox at the pinnacle of the human mind, of evolved intelligence: the ability to conceive of something that is not real and does not exist. The word itself is a tribute to imagination.
Suddenly thrust into the middle of a battle between evil and more evil that has been raging for centuries she learns of another world co-existing with ours, but invisible to her until that fateful day.
The Award-Winning, Best-Selling Series "Arielle Queen" by Michel Levesque
5 x 8. | 230 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-32-9 (pbk.) | Softcover
Daniel is in the twilight of his life, tormented by doubts, of cuckolding, illegitimate children, horrors of war and the inanity of all human activity. A miraculous childhood survivor of the Nazi prison camps at Bergen-Belsen, Daniel recounts how he is shipped to Canada when the war is over...
182 pages | 5.5" x 8.25' | ISBN 978-1-926716-57-2 (pbk.) | Softcover
"All the fireworks of James Joyce's Ulysses its sleight of hand, and the streaming consciousness of Faulkner are at play..."
"...a unique roller coaster, and it's not one you want to get off."
--Author, Mark Jay Mirsky
Haystacks Kane is a 607-pound professional wrestler and dedicated butterfly collector. He’s been preyed upon, his innate kindness and gentle good nature harvested by unscrupulous promoters and conniving managers; an ex-wife who keeps him on the hook for alimony; fellow denizens of the sordid netherworld he inhabits; and the raucous ravenous crowds with a thirst for violent cheap thrills. After suffering a severe injury in the ring, Haystacks lies in his hospital bed, unable to speak and struggling to uncover the deeper truths of his existence.
Schlam’s exceptional talent as a writer shines through in this novel, as he skillfully weaves together a tapestry of voices, perspectives, and emotions to create a powerful and thought-provoking literary work that is sure to leave a lasting impression on readers.
From hitch-hiking across the 49th parallel to plane trips to Montreal, road trips to Halifax, drinking in parkades and jamming in friends’ lofts, Unwanted Hopeless Romantic Morons captures the trials and disenchantment of a disconnected generation. Lost in the vastness of Canada, the “Dead-at-25s” isolated in suburbia are lured somnabulistically to cities where they find further alienation and disappointment.
"The prose flows, liquid with passion..." Levi Asher, Literary Kicks.
172 pages | 5 x 8 | ISBN 978-0-9809108-9-6 (pbk.) | Softcover
Price$18.88
Call it America. Vast the tumble-rocket-particle-wave shows the world in a rush to arrive depart and become and forget and remember everything all at once. Call it history. Call it time and memory the way water is the measure of the clock your bones the measure of love. I mean everything passes. I said the earth is a sentry, everything passes and nothing escapes. Call it home; call it exile in a kingdom of rain. - Empire Burlesque, Charles Talkoff
276 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-42-8 (pbk.) | Softcover