National Network for Equitable Library Service

As the former editor of Canadian Notes & Queries, the world's preeminent magazine of Canadian literary and cultural criticism, Alex Good has established himself as an expert on the Canadian novel. In this book, which weaves together two decades of writing on the subject, Good presents the first look at how the form has developed since the early 1900s.

It begins with the founding of Halifax; the development of Nova Scotia and how it devolved into the Maritime provinces (ca.1785); the failure of Maritime Union, evolution of responsible government and the Canadian Confederation.

John O'Brien first learned about Oak Island in 1958 at the age of twelve, listening intently as his pharmacist father and a Saint Mary's University professor debated, for an entire winter, the merits of existing theories of Oak Island and the mysterious lost treasures of the world.

Shortly after completing his sixth novel, Ray Robertson suffered a depression of suicidal intensity. Central to his recovery was the decision to try and answer two of the biggest questions we can ask. What makes humans happy? And what makes a life worth living? His answers aren't what you might expect from a mental illness memoir, but they're exactly what you'd expect from Ray Robertson. With the vitality of Nick Hornby and a brashness all his own, Robertson runs his hands over life, death, intoxication and art. Unashamedly working-class and unabashedly literary, Why Not?

Everybody knows a brown-noser when they see one. But how about a greeter? A workbrickle? A jack? Can they tell downsizing from grey bearding or bright sizing? With 'The Idler's Glossary' (2008), Mark Kingwell and Joshua Glenn offered a spirited defense of leisure. As confirmed idlers themselves, they assured us their Glossary could provide 'everything you need to know about how to conduct a life.' Today, however, as we recover from the worst global recession since 1929, the work-world is a very different place.

Meet the 'fast zombie' citizen of the current world. He is a rapid, brainless carrier of preference-driven consumption. His Facebook-style 'likes' replace complex notions of personhood. Legacy college admissions and status-seekers gobble up his idea of public education, and positional market reductions hollow out his sense of shared goods. Meanwhile, the political debates of his 24-hour-a-day newscycle are picked clean by pundits, tortured by tweets. Forget the TV shows and doomsday scenarios; when it comes to democracy, the zombie apocalypse may already be here.

He had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escape (by John Sturges, starring Steve McQueen); the actor, though uncredited, is Michael Paryla. He was part Jewish. Shortly after filming he died.

When Deni B'chard learned of the last living bonobos the matriarchal great apes who are, alongside chimpanzees, our closest relatives he began exploring ways to reverse their alarming decline. Upon arriving in war-ravaged Congo, B'chard connected with the Bonobo Conservation Institute (BCI), a small organization that has done more to save bonobos than any of its larger counterparts.

John Metcalf's Shut Up He Explained defies expectations and strict definition. Part memoir, part travelogue, part criticism -- wholly Metcalf -- it is thoughtful, engaged, contentious and often very funny. It offers a full does of Metcalfian wisdom and wit, and provides ample evidence that neither age nor indifference nor attack have withered him: he remains as sharp, critical, constructive and insightful as ever. Indeed, this may just be his most important and engaged book. Certainly it will be among his most controversial.

Clark Blaise is a North American treasure, one of a handful of the truly important short story writers in the last 50 years. His Selected Essays brings together for the first time another aspect of his tremendous and courageous oeuvre, belle lettres, essays and occasional pieces which range over autobiography, his French-Canadan heritage, the craft of fiction, American fiction, Australian fiction, and the work of such individual writers and Jack Kerouac, V.S. Naipaul, Salmon Rushdie, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, and Bernard Malamud, his friend and mentor.