Showing results by publisher "ECW Press" in All Categories

Written with cinematic flair, this historical novel brings in key figures such as Shakespeare and Descartes as it recreates the drama and intrigue of 17th-century England and the Continent. Elizabeth’s children included Rupert of the Rhine and Sophia of Hanover, from whom the Hanoverian line descended to the present Queen Elizabeth II.

Almost immediately upon Julie Bird’s return to the small port town where she was raised, everyday life is turned upside down. Julie’s Gulf War vet father, Marty, has been on the losing side of a battle with PTSD for too long. A day of boating takes a dramatic turn when a majestic blue whale beaches itself and dies. A blond stranger sets up camp oceanside: she’s an agitator, musician-impersonator, and armchair philosopher named Jennie Lee Lewis - and Julie discovers she’s connected to her father. As the blue whale decays on the beach, more wildlife turns up dead - apparently by suicide - echoing Marty’s deepest desire.

Joel Plaskett has earned an awful lot of honorifics in his career so far, counting folk hero, indie darling, and national treasure among them. And that’s just since the Halifax musician started making records of his own in 1999. For a decade before that, he was one-quarter of Thrush Hermit, a band of scrappy Superchunk disciples who became hard-rock revivalists and one of the last survivors of the ’90s pop “explosion” of major-label interest in Halifax.

The symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together.

As a personal and professional crossroads, writer, editor, and obsessive walker, Dan Rubinstein travelled throughout the US, UK, and Canada to walk with people who saw the act not only as a form of transportation and recreation, but also as a path to a better world. There are no magic-bullet solutions to modern epidemics like obesity, anxiety, alienation, and climate change. But what if there is a simple way to take a step in the right direction? Combining fascinating reportage, eye-opening research, and Rubinstein’s own discoveries, Born to Walk explores how far this ancient habit can take us.

On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother’s belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery - two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother’s chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng - troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver’s Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away.

Jeremy has bought into the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line, and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he’s risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack. Waitress Charlene is desperately unhappy and looking for a way out of her marriage to her high-school sweetheart. A drunken encounter sends Charlene and her boss careening. The Ice Shack stops being an oasis of sanity and, as Jeremy struggles to keep his business afloat, he’ll stop at nothing to maintain his successful, good guy self-image.

Kateiko Rin lives a quiet life with her parents and her people in the coastal rainforest. Everything changes when her estranged uncle washes up on their shores, harried and half-dead, trailed by two blue-eyed children no one knew existed. To protect her family, Kateiko secrets away her young cousins. Caring for them includes hiding their ties to the Rúonbattai, a warlike cult trying to claim the land for themselves along with as many lives as they can.

A robbery, a car theft, a kidnapping - all lead to a temporary hideout in small-town British Columbia. The money, underwater in the trunk of a car, becomes the desired objective for some unexpected crooks.

Here Goes Nothing, Eamon McGrath’s brave second offering and follow-up to 2017’s widely acclaimed Berlin-Warszawa Express, once again explores the world of touring musicians - but this time McGrath expands his scope and perspective from the inner dialogue of a traveling songwriter into the wider range of a multi-member touring band. Told in two interwoven narratives that blur the lines between past and present, Here Goes Nothing explores the complex relationships that are both created and destroyed by the perpetual-motion engine that is the touring van.

Thirteen-year-old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends, and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. Naturally, she spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which just happens to border her backyard. And that backyard just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past. Soon, October befriends the five dead kids. Together they form The Dead Kid Detective Agency, committed to solving Sticksville’s most mysterious mysteries.

As a new Initiate with the Alchemists' Council, Jaden is trained to maintain the elemental balance of the world while fending off interference by the malevolent Rebel Branch. Bees are disappearing from the pages of the ancient manuscripts in Council dimension and from the outside world, threatening its very existence. Jaden navigates alchemy's complexities, but the more she learns, the more she begins to question Council practices.

A dark and comic novel, Congratulations on Everything tracks the struggles, frailties, and cruelly pyrrhic victories of the middle-aged owner of a bar-restaurant and a 30ish lunch-shift waitress. Jeremy has bought in to the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line, and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he's risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack.

Say the word Israel today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers' dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era.

When Michael Dawouk is disowned by his Muslim family for being gay, he turns his back on the religion and culture he grew up with. He is forced out onto the street, only to be taken in by a former high school teacher who offers him room and board in exchange for sex. Michael is soon left with nothing to believe in, until he meets Wyatt, a successful Texan businessman who takes him under his wing. But what Michael can’t see is that his mentor is just as lost as he is.

Shay Rynne grew up in the Corporation Flats—public housing—on Fenian Street, Dublin. He has always toyed with the idea of joining the Garda Síochána, the Irish police. But in the early 1970s, young fellows from the tenements of Dublin have not been welcome. When his friend Rosaleen is killed and the case goes unsolved, Shay decides to put on the uniform of a Dublin garda and sets out to find the killer. Shay knows Detective McCreevy is waiting for the chance to get revenge. But the violent death of a prominent politician gives Shay the opportunity to prove himself.

Sent away for the summer, the Ivyweather sisters were promised a family vacation by their wealthy, indifferent parents. Two at-odds opposites—Constance an anxious society sweetheart and Ivory an adventure-struck rebel—the sisters aren’t sure what to make of the dangerously decayed town of Quixx and its creeping fog that never seems to lift. When Ivory disappears after a spat with her sister, Constance tracks her to the mountain, where the Ivyweathers learn the town’s hushed talk of monsters is more than just a rumor.