Click here to purchase The Book of Michael at Fitzhenry.ca.

How To Make A Wave

By Lisa Hurst-Archer

0889953953
5.25 x 7.25,
224 pages,
Trade Paper
Ages 12 +
Juvenile Fiction
Social Issues
Adolescence

$12.95 CAD
 

Delia keeps people away - she thinks she's ugly, she thinks her family is weird; her mom took off and went to India when Delia was a little girl. Delia keeps her distance from others though she has a good friend in Aunt Shirley who helps her to realize that all people have hurts and problems. Through her conversations with Shirley and her explorations in art class, Delia uncovers memories of a car accident, which lead her to discover a hurtful secret at the centre of her family.

Shirley is compassionate and honest, though she doesn’t allow Delia to wallow in self-pity and anger. She shares with Delia her own hurts and disappointments and so does the art teacher, Ms. Murti. Delia discovers that she’s been self-absorbed and has built walls to separate herself from others.

Gradually, she is able to accept truth, and to be honest about her pain. She is able to consider that life is full of terrible beautiful aching mystery and that sometimes a coincidence is more than coincidence, it may have to do with something greater, with the alignment of universal forces - with the making of a wave.

Lisa Hurst-Archer was born in Windsor, Ontario. Her mother's family came to Prince Edward Island from the British Isles and the island of Guernsey. Her father's people came to Waterloo County via Pennsylvania as part of a migration of Mennonites. Lisa loves to travel and share stories along the way but always likes to come home to the wide open skies of Alberta. She regards the Rocky Mountains and the rolling prairie as her good medicine.

Click here to purchase How To Make A Wave at Fitzhenry.ca.

Valley of Day-Glo

By Nick DiChario

Broadway Danny Rose is on the move!

In this brightly satiric, postapocalyptic novel of the far future, a young Indian brave named Broadway Danny Rose embarks upon a quest across the desolate planet Earth to find the mysterious Valley of Day-Glo, where plants and animals and large bodies of water are rumoured to still exist, and where, according to legend, "death becomes life."

Valley of Day-Glo is a brilliant blend of Douglas Adams' farcical humour and Kurt Vonnegut's droll absurdity. Hugo Award-nominee Nick DiChario delivers a witty and poignant story that deals with the power of myth, the search for truth, and the meaning of life and death.

Reviews:
"DiChario's well-imagined postapocalyptic world containing only the strangest remnants of our society is a bizarre and funny facade that belies the fascinating depths of thought the novel makes readers plumb while enjoying a charming coming-of-age story."
-- Booklist

"Using Iroquois myth and tradition as a touchstone, DiChario skillfully roasts our materialistic and gluttonous society. Danny's journey from his homeland to the mythic Valley leads him to civil war, love and loss, hermitage and pyramid schemes. Science fiction is often called the genre of ideas, and Valley of Day-Glo is no exception."
-- McNally Robinson

Nick DiChario's short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Year's Best Science Fiction, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, among others. He has been nominated for a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, and a World Fantasy Award. Nick is an independant bookseller (owner of The Write Book and Gift Shop, in Honeoye Falls, New York) and the fiction editor of HazMat Literary Review, a magazine dedicated to publishing politically aware poetry and prose.

To visit Nick’s web site go to www.nickdichario.com.

This book is one of the Robert J. Sawyer imprint of books. Visit the web site set up for his imprint at www.robertjsawyerbooks.com.

Click here to purchase the hardcover edition or for the paperback edition of Valley of Day-Glo at Fitzhenry.ca.

Identity Theft: And Other Stories

By Robert J. Sawyer

Trade Paper
0889954127
$15.95 CAD

This new collection by the man Anne McCaffrey calls "an absolutely marvelous writer" includes Hugo Award nominee Shed Skin, Nebula Award nominee Identity Theft, and Aurora Award winner Ineluctable.

In these pages, you'll discover the dark secret of the only priest on Mars, revisit H.G. Wells's Morlocks, and learn what really happens when aliens beam us the Encyclopedia Galactica.

"Sawyer has a way of taking familiar ideas, looking at them from new angles and in greater depth than almost anybody before him, and tying them together to create extraordinarily fresh and thought-provoking stories."
-- Analog

"Sawyer writes my favourite kind of science fiction: interesting characters, fast-paced plotting, science threaded elegantly into the prose - he does it all with grace and style. I am constantly amazed by the depth of Sawyer's characters - their humanity, their failings and their instincts."
-- Rodger Turner on SF Site

Robert J. Sawyer - called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days" by The Denver Rocky Mountain News - won the 2003 Best Novel Hugo Award-the top international honor in science-fiction writing.

This book is one of the Robert J. Sawyer imprint of books. Visit the web site set up for his imprint at www.robertjsawyerbooks.com.

Click here to purchase the hardcover edition or for the paperback edition of Identity Theft at Fitzhenry.ca.
 

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An Aboriginal Carol

By David Bouchard
Illustrated by Moses Beaver

0889954062
8.5 x 11, 32 pages,
Trade Cloth with CD
Ages 4 to 8
Children's Fiction
Native American
Holidays & Celebrations
Christmas & Advent

$24.95 CAD

Also available in French and in Inuktituk and accompanied by a CD.

Un Cantique Autochtone

0889954137

$24.95 CAD

CD by Susan Aglukark included with the book!

Before the angels stars grew dim
And wondering hunters heard their hymn
One mystic flute - one hundred drums
One message clear, "A King has come!"
Not one had ever seen the like
By light of day or moon of night
Before the angels stars grew dim
And wondering hunters heard this hymn…

An Aboriginal Carol is the ultimate Aboriginal collaboration:

• Poetry by Metis poet David Bouchard,
• Paintings by First Nations artist Moses Beaver, and
• The music of Inuit performer Susan Aglukark.

Best-selling Canadian author David Bouchard reworks Canada’s oldest and most well-known carol, The Huron Carol. The art of Moses Beaver, from the fly-in reserve of Summer Beaver, Ontario (Nikinamik), resonates and awakens an awareness that is at once exciting and empowering, a way for all people to understand the birth of Christ from an Aboriginal worldview. The pride of the north, Susan Aglukark, interprets, for the first time, the revered carol.

Written in English and in Inuktituk, the language of Canada’s Inuit people, the book is accompanied by a CD, which includes a reading in both languages and a performance by Susan. An Aboriginal Carol is certain to become a classic.

One of Canada's bestselling and award winning authors, David Bouchard is of Metis descent. The author of over two dozen best-selling books, his If You’re Not from the Prairie is on Maclean's list of the top 20 Canadian children's books. David Bouchard was a teacher and a principal for many years before turning to writing. For more information, visit www.davidbouchard.com.

Moses (Amik) Beaver is from the isolated fly-in community of Nibinamik, (Summer Beaver) 500 kilometers north of Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario. While Moses work reflects the black lines of traditional Woodlands art, he embraces his own unique style of embedded images of spirits, human faces and animal forms, transcending physical boundaries to the outer dimensions of the spiritual realm. The images tell stories, represent ancient teachings of his people and remind those who gaze on the work, we are all connected to each other and the natural world. For more information, visit www.mosesbeaver.com.

Singer/songwriter Susan Aglukark is one of Canada's most unique artist's and a leading voice in Canadian music. She blends the Inuktituk and English languages with contemporary pop music arrangements to tell the stories of her people, the Unuit of Arctic Canada. She is rapidly becoming known as an uplifting motivational speaker, able to reach both youth and adult audiences alike. For more information, visit www.susanaglukark.com.

Click here to purchase An Aboriginal Carol at Fitzhenry.ca.

Or click here for the French version Un Cantique Autochtone.

Fireside Al

By Alan Maitland
Illustrated by: Alan Daniel

0889953821
8.5 x 11.5,
64 pages,
Trade Cloth Includes Audio CD
Juvenile Fiction
Picture Book
Anthology
Holidays And Celebrations
Christmas

$34.95 CAD

For five decades, Alan Maitland was celebrated for his resonant mellow CBC radio voice - and perhaps, most famously, for the stories he read over the airwaves in his alter ego of Fireside Al. For 19 years, Fireside Al read his favourite stories to a devoted radio audience and even though Alan Maitland died in 1999, his voice has been captured for posterity in a highly valued set of sound recordings of these magnificent performances.

Now ten of Maitland's favourite Christmas stories are being given new life in this Christmas gift book for the whole family. Fireside Al's Treasury of Christmas Stories includes:

• The familiar words of O. Henry's celebrated short story, "The Gift of the Magi"
• Along with Francis P. Church's famous Christmas editorial: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"
• "The Santa Claus Trap" by Margaret Atwood
• Stephen Leacock's gentle seasonal wit in "The Errors of Santa Claus"
• Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "Christmas at Sea" and
• Robert Service's "The Trapper's Christmas Eve"

Each with a very different take on the theme of seasonal love and joy. And there are more delectable treats in store from Fireside Al's Christmas cupboard.

The treasury gains special lustre from the magnificently detailed and richly coloured paintings of Alan Daniel, Canada's best-loved illustrator of children's books. Above all the package is completed by a bound-in CD of Alan Maitland's reading of the ten stories included in the book.

Alan Maitland was a veteran CBC announcer and award-winning broadcaster. Popularly known as Fireside Al and Front Porch Al, he delighted listeners across the country with his inimitable storytelling. He was co-host of As It Happens, from 1974 until 1993, sharing the studio with Barbara Frum, Elizabeth Gray, Dennis Trudeau, and Michael Enright. In 1980, he and then co-host Barbara Frum shared an ACTRA Award for Best Public Affairs Broadcasters.

Before he retired to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, in 1993, Maitland spent forty-six years at the CBC contributing to a variety of programs including The Gordie Tapp Show, Action Set, Read to Me, and his own music series Maitland Manor. He continued to read stories on the air for the CBC in his incarnations as Fireside Al and Front Porch Al until his death in 1999 of heart failure. He was 78 years old.

Alan Daniel’s art is notable for its fine draftsmanship, humour and versatility of style. He is the illustrator of numerous children’s picture books and has been nominated, with his partner Lea Daniel, for both Mr. Christie and Governor General Awards. Alan’s previous books for Red Deer Press include Eh! To Zed and Roundup At the Palace. Alan works from his home studio in Kitchener Ontario.

Click here to purchase Fireside Al at Fitzhenry.ca.

Egghead

Will Reid is a gawky kid who wears fake turtlenecks, is obsessed by his ant farm project, and is lousy at gym. In other words, he's the perfect target for Shane, the Grade 9 bully. Katie has been Will's friend in elementary school, but defending him in the high school environment comes at an unforeseen cost - she dreads the rumours that link them in a boyfriend/girlfriend way she's never considered. Devan has been part of Shane's bullyboy team until now, when he comes to realize that it's not so smart to mindlessly back up each nasty attack of Shane's. Together the three young teens are struggling to find their way out of one of the classic dilemmas of life: how not to be a bystander to bullying, how to stand up for your friends, and how to deal with consuming rage.

Young readers will find lots to think about as they turn the pages of this crisp and compelling story by newcomer Caroline Pignat. Each character takes a turn at telling the story - through the spare blank verse of Will, wrapped up in the world of his single-parent father and his own eccentric preoccupations; through the clear-eyed accounts of Katie, wrestling with her own private demons; and in the sensitive narrative of the slowly awakening Devan, who comes to notice Katie as a spunky, attractive individual whom he'd like to know better but fears thinks he's a goof.

Click here to see a photo of the book signing at Leishman’s.

Caroline Pignat graduated from the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Religious Studies. After working with children and youth for over fifteen years in roles such as teacher, seminar facilitator, mentor and coach, she began her writing career. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry for children regularly appear in Highlights for Children, Guideposts for Kids, Living Faith for Kids, and Clubhouse Magazine.

Caroline’s humour columns for adults are published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, The Vancouver Sun, and The Ottawa Citizen. She currently lives in Kanata, Ontario with her husband, Tony, and their children, Liam and Marion.

Click here to purchase Egghead at Fitzhenry.ca.

Dooley Takes the Fall

By Norah McClintock

0889954038
5.25 x 7.5,
256 pages,
Trade Paper
Ages 14+
Juvenile Fiction
Mysteries and Detective Stories

$14.95 CAD

A boy maybe twelve years old, on a bike, stopped next to Dooley, looked at the kid sprawled on the pavement and said, "Is he dead?"

"Yeah, I think so," Dooley said. In fact, he was sure of it because there was no air going into or coming out of the lungs of the kid on the pavement. Also, the kid's open eyes were staring at nothing, and his head was twisted, as if he had turned to look at something just before he made contact with the hard surface of the path.

Right away, Dooley knows he's in trouble. For one thing he's got a record. For another, the dead kid isn't exactly a stranger - and he's no friend.

So slowly the net begins to close around 17-year-old Dooley, a troubled lone wolf who has a couple of strikes against him already. Not many are on Dooley's side; in fact at times he even wonders whether his uncle - a retired cop - thinks he's guilty again. There's a big question of trust in their uneasy relationship, and his uncle is the only one standing between Dooley and big time disaster.

The dead kid's sister Beth is someone Dooley would like to have think better of him as well - but she also suspects he's involved in the crime. And all around him are other teenagers at school and in the world he's drawn into who would like to pin him with responsibility for a growing number of murders that swirl through the city.

Norah McClintock, five-time winner of the Arthur Ellis juvenile crime award, has now moved into a different realm with a richly detailed novel aimed at older teens. Gritty, hard-edged, Dooley Takes the Fall is the first in a trilogy of mysteries about a troubled teenager struggling to free himself from the tentacles of his past and the implications of the present conspiracies that surround him.

Norah McClintock was born and raised in Montreal but now calls Toronto home. Armed with a degree in history from McGill University, she has worked in the non-profit sector as an editor and writer for many years. But without doubt, Norah's passion is crime writing. A member of the Crime Writers of Canada, Norah has been the recipient of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Fiction a phenomenal 5 times.

Click here to purchase Dooley Takes the Fall at Fitzhenry.ca.
 

The Commons

By Matt Hughes

For years now, 40,000 readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been reveling in the adventures of Matt Hughes's Guth Bandar, the hero of this novel. Hughes is one of the top voices in modern SF, and this book has a huge audience waiting for it.

For 100,000 years, Old Earth's Institute for Historical Inquiry has mapped the collective unconscious of the human race. They have encountered all the archetypal figures - the Wise Man and the Fool, the Destroyer and the Redeemer - the "usual suspects" that populate the myths and legends at the back of the human mind.

And now young Guth Bandar suspects the collective unconscious has become aware of itself. Worse, it has an agenda. And worst of all, it can force Bandar to go deep into the darkest forests of the mind, where the only escape from madness is death.

"A fascinating premise. There is interest for the reader here on several levels: in following Guth Bandar's adventures, in the various archetypical personality types he encounters, in his reflections on the more philosophical questions of the nature of consciousness. In The Commons, Hughes has created a universe with particularly fertile prospects for speculative activity."
-- Tangent

"Irresistibly good reading."
-- Booklist on Black Brillion

"Hughes’s boldness is admirable."
-- The New York Review of Science Fiction

Reviews for The Commons:
"Intriguing world with mind-expanding ideas; cool science-fantasy setting; deals heavily with archetypes yet avoids cliché."
-- SF Signal

Matthew Hughes’s work has appeared frequently in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous Year's Best anthologies. His previous novels include Fool's Errant and Black Brillion. He lives in British Columbia.

Visit Matthew's web site at www.archonate.com.

This book is one of the Robert J. Sawyer imprint of books. Visit the web site set up for his imprint at www.robertjsawyerbooks.com.

Click here to purchase the hardcover edition or for the paperback edition of The Commons at Fitzhenry.ca.

Dun Lady's Jess

By Doranna Durgin

0889953988
6 x 9,
295 pages,
Trade Paper Fiction
Fantasy
General

$22.95 CAD

Compton Crook Award winner

When hikers Dayna and Eric find a young woman naked, terrified, and speechless, they're sure she's the victim of foul play. But the truth is much more shocking: she isn't human at all. She's Dun Lady's Jess, a horse transformed into this new shape by the spell that brought her and her rider, to whom she is utterly devoted, into this world.

Posessed now of human intelligence but still a horse deep inside, Jess desperately searches this world for her master and rider, using her fiery equine spirit to take on human idiosyncracies--and human threats.

Dun Lady’s Jess is a blend of adventure, magic, and romance that spans our world and its richly imagined fantasy counterpart. Horse become human, Jess is spirited and intelligent, seeing our world through a unique perspective. Pursued by evil, she must find a way to not only save her rider and both worlds, but also keep who she has become.

"Horses, heroics, and magic -- a great combination! I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dun Lady’s Jess, a spirited and daring novel. I couldn’t put it down."
-- Kristen Britain, author of Green Rider and First Rider’s Call.

"Dun Lady’s Jess is everything a great fantasy ought to be: exciting, moving, and utterly original. Doranna Durgin has spun a marvelous tale, set it in a world that feels as real as our own, and populated that world with characters who will stay with you long after you read the final page. An excellent book, which I highly recommend."
-- David B. Coe, author of Winds of the Forelands and The LonTobyn Chronicle.

Doranna Durgin writes eclectically and across genres, with backlist in fantasy, media tie-in (including Star Trek and Angel), anthologies, mystery, women’s action-adventure / romance, and paranormal romance. She also runs BlueHoundVisions.com, her web design business.

In her spare time she trains her dogs for agility, rally, and obedience trials, or heads for the backyard barn where the Lipizzan lives. You can find a complete bibliography at www.doranna.net, along with gorgeous high desert sunsets and scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and contact info.

Click here to purchase Dun Lady's Jess at Fitzhenry.ca.