The latest work in internationally acclaimed author Marie-Claire Blais’s masterful novel cycle, A Twilight Celebration examines the prophetic side of the writer and the burden that falls to him in a world whose fate is yet to be determined.Daniel, a middle-aged novelist and loving father alienated from one of his sons and unsure how to care for his daughter, is on his way to an international conference of writers. The gathering is to be held in the forest ...

The second volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning novel cycle — acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction — reissued in a handsome A List edition.Originally published in 2001, Thunder and Light is the second volume in Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning Soifs series, hailed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction. Powered by its characters’ gripping exploration of the world’s dark ...

In the latest installment in her award-winning series, Marie-Claire Blais reintroduces us to Petites Cendres, familiar from other books in the cycle, and lets us into the lives of two other unforgettable characters. She shows us, once again, how creativity and hope and suffering and exclusion intersect.There is the writer who is stranded in an airport of the South Island, he is held captive because of a delayed flight. And a teenage musician, a former child prodigy living on the st...

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award: Translation. Shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.Literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the latest installment in her ongoing portrait of life in contemporary North America.In this swirling fresco, we meet unforgettable characters, some familiar from previous works, some new. This time, Blais lets us into the consciousnes...

With this astounding fourth novel in her ongoing series of contemporary masterpieces (These Festive Nights, Thunder and Light, Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, and Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom), Marie-Claire Blais invites us again to enter a complex circle of unforgettable characters. But this time, the tone is different: Blais' writing has acquired a new, buoyant, electrifying rhythm -- a rhythm some critics have described as the heartbeat of t...

In Augustino and the Choir of Destruction literary legend and three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the third volume in the prize-winning series (These Festive Nights, Thunder and Light, Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, and Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom) acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction.Augustino and the Choir of Destruction is set on ...

Con man Max O’Brien takes a personal investigation into his own hands.Max O’Brien’s nightmare has begun again. Eleven years after the tragic disappearance of his brother, an ambassador in Central America, Max’s nephew, also a diplomat, is assassinated in New Delhi. Max is on the run from police, and this time the professional con man decides to find those responsible for the crime. Determined to track down the truth, he arrives in India just as the country is prepa...

Children travel across generations and across time: yesterday to the present. Childhoods determine the fantasms of existence. Wounds slow to heal: abandonment, adoption, feelings of rejection and uselessness, of blame, of uncontrolled initiation to sexuality, extreme loneliness when one retreats from society, obsessive searching for the absolute, desire to rebuild the world again by giving birth, confrontation of death.All these themes appear in the violent yet tender stories in th...

What anxiety grips Petites Cendres as he runs towards the sea in the sunshine on a warm tropical morning? Shouldn’t he be reassured by the thought that he now lives at the Acacia Gardens, a comfortable home where all find care, understanding, and healing? How can Fleur, the young musical prodigy, listen to the diabolical confessions of Wrath, the fugitive priest, without shuddering? And, can Daniel the writer finish his novel, the one he has been working on for twenty years, despite his se...

With all the attention to creationism in the news these days, Jean-Pierre Rogel decided it was time to show how Darwin's concept of natural selection can be seen in everyday situations — from a summer cottage near a lake — with examples taken from familiar species such as loons, salmon and bears. Moving through modern science, he shows how new discoveries have enabled us to understand life more deeply than in Darwin's time. He focuses in particular on the emerging field of evolutionary dev...

It’s not easy to have enemies everywhere … but con artist Max O’Brien is a man of the world. Read all three of Max's adventures in this special ebook collection.The Kashmir Trap — Book #1Professional con man Max O’Brien is on the run from police when he learns that his diplomat nephew has been assassinated in New Delhi. Eleven years earlier, Max’s brother mysteriously disappeared while serving as an ambassador. Determined to find answers th...

Every international development project looks good on paper until someone asks, “Who are you and why are you here?” In this case, it’s a man from northern Burkina Faso. His question reveals everything wrong with international development work today.Jacques Claessens questions the real effects of development programs and agencies, NGOs, and multinational corporations on the economy and welfare of the global south—from a Kafkaesque well-drilling project in Udathen to the Chernobyl-li...