National Network for Equitable Library Service

Canadian journalist and political insider Dalton Camp left behind a powerful legacy, including books, essays, and newspaper columns on Canadian politics and public policy. To both celebrate his career and continue his passionate efforts to encourage and support the practice of journalism, St. Thomas University has held the annual Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism since 2002. In cooperation with CBC Radio's Ideas, the series has become an annual highlight for listeners across the country.

Douglas Glover’s acclaimed novel The Life and Times of Captain N. is now available in a GLE Library edition. Originally published by McClelland & Stewart, the novel was acclaimed by the most respected critics in Canada and the US, and compelled The Toronto Star’s Philip Marchand to call Glover “one of the most important Canadian writers of his generation.” Set on the Niagara frontier in the final days of the American Revolution, The Life and Times of Captain N. sees the revolutionary new world order from the standpoint of the losers.

In her vibrant first novel Sisters of Grass, Theresa Kishkan weaves a tapestry of the senses through the touchstones of a young woman's life. Anna is preparing an exhibit of textiles reflecting life in central British Columbia a century ago. In a forgotten corner of a museum, she discovers a dusty cardboard box containing the century-old personal effects of a Nicola valley woman. Fascinated by the artifacts, she reconstructs the story of their owner, Margaret Stuart. Margaret, the daughter of a Native mother and a Scottish-American father, she tries to fit into both worlds.

Greetings from the off-kilter world of Chris Gudgeon. In his first-ever book of fiction, the bestselling author of The Naked Truth: The Untold History of Sex in Canada offers postcard glimpses into the quirky private lives of unusually twisted characters. A prim English bride honeymooning near the so-called Vodka Sea learns the hard way why it’s better not to drink the water in foreign parts. A chess-playing doctor loses his wife to a charismatic psychologist during a sensuous group sex session masquerading as therapy.

A wanderer arrives by chance on Inishbream, a rocky dot in the sea just off the west coast of Ireland. A lover of boats and a strong worker, she soon marries the young owner of her stone cottage. For a time, she does her woman’s work, fishes with her husband, and walks along the shore, imagining Saint Brendan and the invisible world so real to the islanders. Through the winter, she repays Inishbream storytellers with tales of coastal British Columbia, not so very different, after all, from their own.

An invasion? For teenagers Dryfly Ramsey and Shadrack Nash, poor and ignorant in the world’s terms but rich in the lore of the magical Miramichi, the annual influx of American anglers, with their money, fishing gear, and thirst for salmon seems like one, and it sets the stage for action. A cast of quirky, unforgettable characters — Nutbeam, a large-nosed, floppy-eared hermit; Shirley, Brennan Siding’s toothless postmistress and Ramsey family matriarch; and Buck, who appears once a year to sire another child — conspire to capture the imagination in Herb Curtis’s now classic novel.

Winner, Governor General's Award for FictionShortlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Commonwealth Writers' PrizeA 16th-century belle turned Robinson Crusoe, a female Don Quixote with an Inuit Sancho Panza — this is the heroine of the novel that won the 2003 Governor General's Award. Elle is a lusty, subversive riff on the discovery of the New World, the moment of first contact.

Alden Nowlan's "A Boy's Life of Napoleon" is a brilliant piece of short fiction adapted from Nowlan's first novel, The Wanton Troopers, written in 1960 but published posthumously in 1988. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also available pas part of the six@sixty collection.

Lesley Choyce writes rings around most Canadian authors. Even so, the most recent of his five books of stories came out in 1988, and most are out of print. It's time for a new collection and here it is — Dance the Rocks Ashore or, as one might say, choice Choyce.

A remarkable debut collection, Kelly Cooper's Eyehill provides a multi-hued portrait of a small prairie town. Too small to support a high school or a drugstore, Eyehill is populated by men and women, who have worked for generations to wrest a living from the dry, rolling hills. Like people anywhere else, they hunger for love, understanding, a decent living, and safety and comfort in their homes.