National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the stories of Confidence, there are ecstasy-taking PhD students, financial traders desperate for husbands, owners of failing sex stores, violent and unremovable tenants, aggressive raccoons, seedy massage parlors, experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day, and wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. There is one magic cinema and everyone has a secret of some kind.

The fourth title in Biblioasis's Renditions Series, Century begins with the nightmare visions of a young woman named Jane Seymour, catching the reader up in a chronicle of the Seymour family that moves from Austria, America and Africa, through Edinburgh and Venice, and then back through the Paris of the Belle Epoque and forward to 1923 Germany. Terrifying, powerful, slashing and satiric, yet at the same time musical and wonder-filled, Century remains the most important work of Ray Smith's ouevre, and one of the most impressive, and far-reaching novels ever published in Canada.

What has to die before you force yourself to change? That's the question facing the always quirky and often-queer characters of Canary. From the communal showers of a hot yoga studio to seedy pubs on Vancouver's East Side, from Catholic merchandise salesmen to hitchhiking teenage lesbians, the people and places of Nancy Jo Cullen's debut are asphyxiating slowly on ordinary life. Yet in this joint-smoking urban underground, we also glimpse the families, communities, friends and strangers from whom unexpected kindness comes as a breath of fresh air.

In this sparkling collection of stories drawn from the surreal edge of life, playful irony vies with more poignant evocations of solitude, mortality, and the dawn of sexual awareness - all bodied forth in a language that is precise, elegant, and immediate.

What are boys and men thinking? That's what the wry, observant, heartbroken and hilarious girls and women in these stories want to know. What are they thinking when they warn women against adventure, gulp ale in moonlit truck wrecks, steal their fingers down their nurses' thighs, tell their little girls fairy tales? What are insane boys the most exquisite, and where have the musical geniuses flown without our love? What is Jerome Hepditch doing in a loincloth, and how will his wives acquire escape vehicles?

At Dream Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher, people are struggling to do more than their jobs. They struggle to fall in love. They struggle to stay that way. They struggle to be good parents, and to be good children. They struggle to have friends, to eat lunch, to be happy, and to answer the phone. And all that struggle can be pretty interesting especially when it happens on company time. In The Big Dream, acclaimed short story writer Rebecca Rosenblum documents a new generation discovering itself in the workplace, and gives us an In Our Time for the present age.

Now in its 47th year, 'Best Canadian Stories' has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many of the writers, throughout their respective careers, who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon.

In a linked collection that presents the secret small tragedies of an Anglican congregation struggling to survive, All Saints delves into the life of Simon, the Reverend, and the lives of his parishioners: Miss Alice Vipond, a refined and elderly schoolteacher, incarcerated for a horrendous crime; a woman driven to extreme anxiety by an affair she cannot end; a receptionist, and her act of improbable generosity; a writer making peace with her divorce.

These fourteen stories by acclaimed poet Patricia Young explore the small victories and lurching disappointments, losses and betrayals of the everyday with a language and style that is tautly poetic and beautifully unsentimental. A woman who cannot leave her house loses almost everything, her only companion a garrulous radio talk show host; a house fire sets in motion the end of a marriage as a couple re-examine the meaning of truth and commitment; a teenage girl cannot extract herself from a doomed relationship with a heroin addict.

Written in France toward the end of his career, these stories are Anton Chekhov's only attempt at the linked collection. 'A Man in a Shell' is a grotesque Gogolian comedy; 'Gooseberries,' a narrator's impassioned response; and 'About Love,' a poignant story of failed relationships. Translated by the impeccable David Helwig and fabulously illustrated by Seth, About Love is essential for any Chekhov enthusiast.