In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

"In this powerful memoir, bestselling author Alison Pick (nominated for the Man Booker Prize) channels Karen Armstrong and Anne Lamott as she explains the shocking family secret that eventually led to her mid-life conversion to Judaism--exploring powerful, provocative questions about family, faith, and the burdens of inheritance"--

"A writer's search for inspiration, beauty, and solace leads her to birds in this intimate and exuberant meditation on creativity and life--a field guide to things small and significant. When it comes to birds, Kyo Maclear isn't seeking the exotic. Rather she discovers joy in the seasonal birds that find their way into view in city parks and harbors, along eaves and on wires. In a world that values big and fast, Maclear looks to the small, the steady,...

"Jamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of the al-Assads, he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of 12 years. In each instance, he was held without formal charge and without judicial process. My Road from Damascus not only tells the story of Saeed's severe years in Syria's most notorious...

"Beginning naked in the darkness, Brian Brett takes us on a journey through a summer's day that also tells the story of his affectionately named Trauma Farm - exploring the garden, orchards, fields, the mysteries of livestock and poultry, the social intricacies of rural communities - and eventually encounters a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical pasture." "Both a memoir and a natural history of the small mixed farm, this eighteen-year-long...

"One Native Life is a look back down the road Wagamese has travelled. It's about the things he's learned as a human being, a man and an Ojibway in his fifty-two years on the planet. Whether he's writing about making bannock, playing baseball, listening to the wind, meeting Johnny Cash or running away with the circus, these are stories told in a healing spirit. This is a book about roots: uncovering them, tending them, watching life spring up all around...

Author Iain Reid learns important life lessons from his ninety-two-year old grandmother.

"Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family? Unearthing is a captivating...

On the eve of her 70th birthday, Canadian writer Margaret Atwood set out on an international tour criss-crossing the British Isles and North America to celebrate the publication of her new dystopian novel, The Year of the Flood. Rather than mount a traditional tour to promote a book’s publication, Atwood conceived and executed something far more ambitious and revelatory—a theatrical version of her novel. Along the way she reinvented what a book...

"In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, carrying only two backpacks, caught a Greyhound bus in America and ran away to Canada. She ended up in Toronto, where she was welcomed by a community of queer punks of color offering promises of love and revolution, yet she remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate, riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South...