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SPRING
2015
CORMORANT BOOKS
A Message from the Publisher
•••
Heraclitus is quoted by Plato as having said “All is in flux and nothing stays still.” From the moment
Gutenberg got the bright idea to break type up into single letters to be used repeatedly, publishing has
been a business in a state of constant change. Thirty years from the day I walked into what was then the
Canadian Book Information Centre, the marketing arm of the Association of Canadian Publishers, and
entered publishing, we have been undergoing revolutionary, if not cataclysmic, transformation.
Some things, however, have remained a constant in this chaos we still call a cultural industry: there are
writers and there are readers. It is a fundamental part of human nature that we want to hear and tell stories.
The great questions for Canadians are these: What stories do we want to read? Who should be telling
them? Our publishing industry is dominated by foreign-owned companies, all of whom do an admiral job
of publishing Canadian authors, but whose primary goal is to sell the books originated by their off-shore
owners. The reason UK and US authors are hugely popular here is not because our authors are less good. In
fact they’re not; they’re as good or better. Better, perhaps, because they’re ours. It’s because Canada began its
life as a colonial outpost of Great Britain; we were a place from which raw materials were extracted, only to
be manufactured in England to be sold back to us at significant profit. It’s because after 1945, the cultural
components of the Marshall Plan began a US hegemony, a world where American cultural product reigns
supreme. Unlike the citizens of any other country in the world, Canadians are educated to read Britishand American-authored books. They’re what we study in school. We’re the dupes purchasing the over-stock
product dumped into our market for pure profit.
There are four changes I would like to see. I’d like to walk into any bookstore in this country and see an
expansion of Canadian-authored and -published books displayed proudly on the shelves. I’d like to see sales
of these books that make it possible for our authors and publishers to make a living wage. I’d like to live in
a country where names like Hugh MacLennan, Gwethalyn Graham, Alice Munro — and too many more
to list — are as familiar as J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and William Golding are right now. (Would it be
too pushy, too un-Canadian, to include Lee Maracle, Marie Hélène Poitras, and Olive Senior?) But, more
to the point of this catalogue, I’d like to see before I die books published by the great independent literary
presses of Canada — Cormorant, and its young readers imprint, DCB, chief among them — in the hands
of readers on buses and subways and streetcars. I’ve caught glimpses of this from time to time, but I’d like
those occasions to be more frequent than the odd Sasquatch sighting.
Imagine a country where our grade ten students read Earth and High Heaven, The Komagata Maru Incident,
and Obasan in place of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like an adolescent moving into adulthood, we’d begin to
know ourselves. Now that would be a change, a revolutionary transformation.
Marc Côté
Publisher, Cormorant Books
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing
program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing
activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of
Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
New Fiction - Novel
•••
These Good Hands
Carol Bruneau
Set in the early autumn of 1943, These Good Hands interweaves the
biography of French sculptor Camille Claudel and the story of the nurse
who cares for her during the final days of her thirty-year incarceration in
France’s Montdevergues Asylum.
NOT FINAL COVER
9 781770 864276
ISBN 978-1-77086-427-6
$22.95 • 200 pp
TP w/ flaps • 5.5" x 8.5"
Release: April 2015
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
“Bruneau is a gifted storyteller, and the
sense of place and time is remarkable …
This novel is so rich in detail and emotion
that a first reading merely opens the reader
to an appreciation of its gifts. Its density
submerges the reader in a complete world
of character, plot and setting.”
The Globe and Mail on Glass Voices
2
Biographers have suggested that Claudel survived her long internment
by writing letters, few of which left the asylum because of her strict
sequestration; in Bruneau’s novel, these letters are reimagined in a series,
penned to her younger self, the sculptor, popularly known as Rodin’s
tragic mistress. They trace the trajectory of her career in Belle Époque
Paris and her descent into the stigmatizing illness that destroyed it.
The nurse’s story is revealed in her journal, which describes her labours
and the ethical dilemma she eventually confronts. Through her letters,
Camille relives the limits of her perseverance; through Camille's journal,
Nurse confronts limits of hers own these limits include the faith these
women have in themselves, in the then-current advances in psychiatric
medicine, and in a God whose existence is challenged by the war raging
outside the enclosed world of the asylum.
In her dying days, Camille teaches the nurse lessons in compassion and,
ultimately, in what it means to endure.
CAROL BRUNEAU's previous novels have been universally acclaimed.
They include: Glass Voices, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year; Purple
for Sky, which won the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and
the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction; and Berth. Her books have
been translated into German and published in the US. Born in Halifax,
Carol is a graduate of Dalhousie University (B.A. and M.A.) and the
University of Western Ontario (M.A. in journalism). She has been
writer-in-residence at Dalhousie (2009) and Acadia (2001). Currently,
she is an instructor at NSCAD University in Haliax.
Also by this Author
Glass Voices • ISBN 978-1-897151-12-9 • $22.95
www.cormorantbooks.com
New Fiction - Novel
•••
Music for love or war
Martyn Burke
“According to what we’ve been told, the source of all knowledge
is somewhere just south of Sunset Boulevard. The problem is that
Danny has lost the address.”
So begins Martyn Burke’s tragi-comic novel of love and war. Danny,
a Canadian sharp-shooter, and Hank, in the US Army, have been stationed in Kandahar, but they are in Los Angeles desperate to find the
Hollywood psychic who will reveal the whereabouts of the women they
love. Danny is searching for Ariana, the girl he fell in love with in Toronto in the last years of the 20th century; Hank is searching for Annie
Boudreau, known in the tabloids as “Annie of the Boo Two” — twins
who were briefly in the gravitational pull of Hugh Hefner.
NOT FINAL COVER
9 781770 864283
ISBN 978-1-77086-428-3
$22.95 • 320 pp
TP w/ flaps • 5.5" x 8.5"
Release: March 2015
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
FIC 032000 Fiction/War &
Military
“Martyn Burke offers a master class in
timing and subtlety ... pulling us into the
character’s dilemmas, making us care,
keeping us turning the pages ... The Truth
About the Night remains with you long after the last line is read.”
The Globe and Mail on The Truth about
the Night
www.cormorantbooks.com
From Grenadier Pond in west end Toronto, to Afghanistan, to the
Malibu colony in LA, the novel follows these moments in the lives of
Danny and Hank, revealed by a masterful storyteller and commentator
on American culture. When in the mountains of Kandahar, Danny and
Hank torture the members of al Qaeda and the Taliban with the music
and a larger-than-life-size cardboard reproduction of Liberace in satin
short shorts, high-kicking as if on Broadway.
Music for Love or War entertains and informs as few other Canadian
novels can.
Martyn Burke’s previous novels include Laughing War, The
Commissar’s Report, Ivory Joe, Tiara, The Shelling of Beverly Hills, and
The Truth About the Night. He is also a documentary film maker, whose
Under Fire: Journalists in Combat won a Peabody Award in 2013. He has
written extensively for film and television, most notably as writer of
HBO’S timely and biting political satire, The Second Civil War; and
writer/director of the hugely successful cable movie Pirates of Silicon
Valley, which was nominated for five Emmys including Best Screenplay
and Best Picture, the Producers Guild Award for Best Film, Directors
Guild Award for Best Directing and the Writers Guild Award for Best
Screenplay. Recently, a series based on his novel The Commissar’s Report,
was sold to HBO. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he now lives half the
year in Toronto and the other half in Santa Monica. As a journalist, he
has seen action in the mountains of Afghanistan and, as an observer
of the absurdities of American culture, he has ventured into the clubs
of Hollywood.
3
New Fiction - Novel
•••
Molly O
Mark Foss
When the patriarch of a family auction business in rural eastern Ontario
dies suddenly, he leaves behind more than a house, a lot of property,
and sons named after the Cartwrights in the ever-popular television
program, Bonanza.
LJ (Little Joe) becomes a film professor in Montreal, Hoss a polarity
therapist in Toronto, and their baby sister, Candy, disappears. Thirty
years later, LJ has come to believe that she is an actress in silent,
experimental erotic films. He makes a film to convince his family and
friends, and starts a blog to entice Candy back to the Wasteland, the
name he and his siblings gave to their childhood home. It was here, on
their father’s auction stage in the backyard, that Candy first learned to
entrance men and subvert their gazes.
Their father’s death puts a crimp in LJ’s plans. Dazed and confused,
Hoss temporarily abandons his spiritual path, regressing into the childhood pleasures of pot and progressive rock. Yet he still insists on moving
ahead with their father’s funeral and sale of the property. With help
from an opera-loving teenager, LJ fights off a land-grabbing guru, the
ever-present threat of quicksand, and assorted pioneer ghosts to save the
Wasteland for Candy’s certain arrival.
9 781770 864306
ISBN 978-1-77086-430-6
$20 • 224 pp
TP w/ flaps • 5.125" x 7.625"
Release: March 2015
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
4
Molly O is a not-so-comic novel that explores the inherent tragedy
vested in the lives of quiet desperation that so many people live.
Born in Ottawa, and currently living in Montreal, Mark Foss
attended Carleton University, where he earned degrees in journalism
and film studies. His previous works include the novel Spoilers and
the short story collection Kissing the Damned. His radio drama Higher
Ground has been broadcast on CBC Radio.
www.cormorantbooks.com
New Fiction - Short Stories
•••
The Pain Tree
Olive Senior
From the author of Dancing Lessons, Finalist for the 2012 Amazon.ca
First Novel Award and Finalist for the 2012 Commonwealth Writers
Prize, comes an unforgettable collection of short stories.
Olive Senior’s new collection of stories, The Pain Tree, is wide-ranging
in scope, time period, theme, locale, and voice. There is — along with
her characteristic “gossipy voice” — reverence, wit and wisdom, satire,
humour, and even farce. The stories range over a most a hundred years,
from around the time of the second world war to the present. Like
her earlier stories, Jamaica is the setting but the range of characters
presented are universally recognisable as people in crisis or on the cusp
of transformation.
9 781770 864344
ISBN 978-1-77086-434-4
$22.95 • 320 pp
TP w/ flaps • 5.5" x 8.5"
Release: April 2015
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
FIC 029000 Fiction/Short
Stories
“An original contribution to the flourishing
school of West Indian writers who create
rooms we’ve never seen before, voices
we’ve never heard.”
The New York Times Book Review on
Summer Lightning and Other Stories,
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’
Prize
www.cormorantbooks.com
While most of the stories operate within a realist mode, Senior also
exploits traditional motifs. Collected here are revenge stories (“The
Goodness of my Heart”), a bargain with the Devil (“Boxed-in”), a
Cinderella story (“The Country Cousin”), a magical realist interpretation
of African spiritual beliefs (“Flying”) and a narrator’s belated acceptance
of the healing power of traditional beliefs (“The Pain Tree”). “Coal”
and “Tap” are realist stories set in the war years and depression that
followed as folks try to find a new place in the world. Senior’s trademark
children awakening to self-awareness and to the hypocrisy of adults are
here too, from the heartbreaking “Moonlight” and “Silent” to the girls in
“Lollipop” and “A Father Like That” who learn to confront loneliness
and vulnerability with attitude.
OLIVE SENIOR is the prize-winning author of a dozen books of
fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Her debut novel, Dancing Lessons,
(2011) was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her short story collection Summer
Lightning (1986) won the inaugural Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for
Best Book, and her poetry collection Over the Roofs of the World (2005)
was a finalist for the 2005 Governor General’s Literary Award for
poetry. Born in Jamaica, she has travelled widely and now spends most
of her time in Jamaica and Toronto.
Also by this Author
Dancing Lessons • ISBN 978-1-77086-047-6 • $22
5
New Fiction - Mystery
•••
Safe as Houses
Susan Glickman
From the author of The Tale-Teller, selected for Vaughan Reads 2013
and a Resource Links Year’s Best of 2013
Liz Ryerson believes that Hillcrest Village, her Toronto neighbourhood,
is quaint and quiet, but stumbling over a corpse while walking her dog
dissolves that illusion for good. When she realizes that she actually knew
the dead man, a real estate broker who appraised the building she coowns with her philandering ex-husband, she becomes obsessed with
solving the crime. The more instability is revealed in her life, the more
she needs to find out who killed James Scott — and why.
Retired Classics professor Maxime Bertrand is delighted to play Watson
to her Holmes. For Liz, the investigation is a way of asserting control in
a world she no longer recognizes. It is also a means of proving to herself
and her children she is not in retreat from life but can grow and change.
For Maxime, it’s a way of becoming re-engaged in life after his wife’s
death. Neither of them anticipates the possibility of real danger, despite
police warning them to stop meddling in criminal matters.
9 781770 864368
ISBN 978-1-77086-436-8
$20 • 256 pp
TP • 5.125" x 7.625"
Release: April 2015
FIC 022000 Fiction/Mystery
& Detective/General
“Glickman’s protagonist is smart and
likable, and Safe as Houses has enough
twists and turns to keep her readers in
suspense from the opening scene to the
end. This is a book to savour.”
Gail Bowen (Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries)
In Safe as Houses, novelist Susan Glickman explores her own Toronto
neighbourhood, imagining how a confrontation with murder might
peel away its veneer of security and civility. She also shows, through her
warm, witty, and wise depiction of everyday life, what is worth saving.
SUSAN GLICKMAN is a novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. Her
previous fiction includes The Violin Lover (2006), which won the Martin
and Beatrice Fischer Prize in Fiction of the Canadian Jewish Book
Awards. Her poetry has been published in literary journals across
Canada and collected in six books, including The Smooth Yarrow (2012),
Running in Prospect Cemetery: New & Selected Poems (2004), and Henry
Moore’s Sheep (1990). A graduate of Tufts University, she holds a Master’s
degree from Oxford and a PhD from the University of Toronto.
Her book of crticism, The Picturesque & the Sublime: A Poetics of the
Canadian Landscape (1998), won the Raymond Klibansky Prize and
the Gabrielle Roy Prize. She lives in Toronto, where she teaches creative
writing at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto and works
as a freelance editor.
Also by this Author
The Tale-Teller • ISBN 978-1-77086-205-0 • $21.95
6
www.cormorantbooks.com
New Edition Fiction - Novel
•••
EARTH AND HIGH HEAVEN
Gwethalyn Graham
Winner of the 1944 Governor General's Literary
Award for Fiction
A New York Times Bestseller
When Erika Drake, of the Westmount Drakes, met and fell in love with
Marc Reiser, a Jew from northern Ontario, their respective worlds were
turned upside down. Set against the backdrop of the first three years of
the Second World War, Earth and High Heaven captured the hearts
and minds of its generation and helped to shape the more diverse and
inclusive culture we have today.
NOT FINAL COVER
ISBN 978-1-896951-61-4
9 781896 951614
ISBN 978-1-896951-61-4
$19.95 • 326 pp
TP • 5.5" x 8.5"
Release: Jan 2015
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
“Deserves to be read and discussed with
other classic Canadian novels.”
Canadian Jewish News
“A great read.”
The Globe and Mail
www.cormorantbooks.com
Published in 1944, this classic novel was very timely; it spoke of the
prejudices of its time, when Gentiles and Jews did not mix in society.
Earth and High Heaven was the most successful novel of its time,
winning many awards and prizes, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book
Award in 1945 (an award founded to reward books that exposed
racism or explored the richness of human diversity). It was translated
into eighteen languages and the film rights were purchased by Samuel
Goldwyn for a remarkable $100,000. Earth and High Heaven was the
first Canadian novel to top the New York Times bestseller list for the
better part of a year.
GWETHALYN GRAHAM was born January 18, 1913 in Toronto.
Her father was a lawyer, her mother entertained numerous international
figures of importance in their home, and both encouraged their four
children to think for themselves — theirs was a family which set
the rules rather than followed them. At the age of 25, in 1938, she
won her first Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction for her
novel Swiss Sonata. After Earth and High Heaven, Graham wrote for
Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and for film and television, and completed a
collection of letters with Solange Chaput Roland titled Dear Enemies
(1963). Graham died in 1965.
Also by this Author
Swiss Sonata • ISBN 978-1-896951-62-1 • $19.95
7
New Poetry
•••
Crossover
M. Travis Lane
M. Travis Lane’s poetry has always been diverse: variously serious,
silly, melancholy, cheerful, meditative, witty, philosophical, enigmatic,
colloquial, intimate, simple, complex. Asked “What kind of poetry do
you write? What do you write about?”, she has replied, accurately, “all
kinds” and “anything” — calling her collections “eclectic miscellanies”
and refusing to be nailed down by the critics’ need for tidiness. She
shifts easily from lyric to monologue to epigram to song to riddle,
drawing inspiration equally from the natural world and the
world of art and imagination. Though her concerns are often feminist,
environmental, civic, and political, her poems transcend such labels.
And no matter what form an individual poem takes, there is something
in the voice that makes it instantly recognizable as hers: a distinctive
musical cadence, a groundedness in nature (nature not just appreciated
but intimately observed, known, named), an immediacy of thought and
emotion, a compassionate humanity, a questioning spirit. Crossover,
Lane’s fifteenth collection, is a continuation of one poet’s exploration of
the world and of her inner world, shared with us in the conviction that
the spaces we inhabit overlap and connect.
NOT FINAL COVER
9 781770 864405
ISBN 978-1-77086-440-5
$18 • 80 pp
TP • 5.5 x 8.5
Release: March 2015
FIC 011000 Poetry/
Canadian
M. Travis Lane’s poetry has always been eclectic in subject, theme,
tone, and style, but she writes, almost always, as if she were addressing
the reader, not muttering to herself. Inquisitive, musical, humane, her
voice is instantly recognizeable once heard.
Also by this Author
Ash Steps • ISBN 978-1-77086-096-4 • $18
“In a tone that is very much reminiscent
of Elizabeth Bishop, Lane transforms the
seemingly lacklustre into something quite
extraordinary.”
Arc Poetry on M. Travis Lane’s previous
poetry collection, Ash Steps
8
www.cormorantbooks.com
New Poetry
•••
Catullus’s Soldiers
Daniel Goodwin
Catullus’s Soldiers, Daniel Goodwin’s first poetry collection, takes aim
at traditional dichotomies: love and war, the personal and the public,
high culture and pop culture, the ancient and modern worlds. In
accessible but finely crafted poems that are both understated and
energetic, the poet moves easily back and forth between seeming
antitheses, his field of vision shifting from Roman surgeon Galen
reflecting on skills earned in treating the wounds of gladiators, to a
contemporary husband and father reluctantly destroying a backyard
wasp nest to protect his children. Throughout the collection run three
major currents: the poet’s love for his family; his ambivalent reactions
to the wider world of politics and war; and his private, persistent,
sometimes furtive relationship with the Muse as he wrestles with the
limitations and triumphs of art in its ambiguous role of mediating
between epic and domestic spheres. Conscious of the need to return
poetry to its rightful place in our culture and collective consciousness,
Goodwin has dispatched Catullus’s Soldiers to appeal to both confirmed
poetry lovers and readers who might not usually pick up a book of verse.
NOT FINAL COVER
9 781770 864412
ISBN 978-1-77086-441-2
$18 • 64 pp
TP • 5.5 x 8.5
Release: March 2015
FIC 011000 Poetry/
Canadian
www.cormorantbooks.com
Born in Montreal, Daniel Goodwin grew up in a bookish and
artistic Montreal household. After a misspent youth writing poetry,
he ran away to the East Coast in his mid-twenties to join an oil company.
He has since lived in four provinces and worked as a teacher, journalist,
corporate communicator, and government relations executive, but
through it all he continued to write, and his poems and essays have
appeared in several Canadian journals and newspapers, including the
Literary Review of Canada, Contemporary Verse II, The Antigonish Review,
The Globe and Mail, and Calgary Herald. Goodwin’s first novel, Sons
and Fathers — about that special relationship, but also about politics,
journalism, poetry, and spin — will be published in fall 2014 by Linda
Leith Publishing. Goodwin currently lives in Calgary with his wife and
three children.
9
New Non-Fiction
•••
Post-Communist Stories
About Cities, Politics, Desires
Stan Persky
In the midst of the sweep of history, it’s easy to anticipate that the
events of twenty-five years ago might soon be lost to memory. We
might forget why any of it mattered. In such conditions, it’s the
responsibility of those of us who, among other things, write for the
record, to use the occasion of a significant anniversary to ensure
there are accounts of what happened, what we saw, and what we
think it meant. (from Post-Communist Stories)
Twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall was pulled down by Berliners fed
up with the division of their city, Stan Persky returns to Eastern Europe.
In essays informative and insightful, he illuminates what some consider
the final act of the Second World War: the end of the occupation by the
Soviets of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic
nations.
“What makes Reading the 21st Century so appealing ...
isn’t this structural coherence, but Persky’s facility with the
essay-review form.” Quill & Quire
9 781770 864467
ISBN 978-1-77086-446-7
$24.95 • 258 pp
TP • 6 x 9
Release: October 2014
LCO010000
Literary Collections/Essays
POL 001000 Political Science
/History & Theory
10
“Persky’s style is warmly erudite, never overbearing,
avuncular in the best sense."
Andre Alexis, The Globe and Mail
“The Short Version: An ABC Book … should both solidify
and celebrate his reputation as one of Canada's premier
intellectuals.” M.A.C. Farrant, The Globe and Mail
STAN PERSKY is the author of more than thirty books, including
Reading the 21st Century, Then We Take Berlin, and Buddy’s. Born in
Chicago, a member of the Merchant Marines, later educated in San
Francisco and Vancouver, Persky now teaches philosophy at Capilano
University in North Vancouver, BC. In 1969, Stan founded New
Star Books, which has published important fiction, non-fiction, and
poetry for forty years. He was active and influential in the gay rights
movement. He divides his time between Vancouver and Berlin.
www.cormorantbooks.com
Previously Announced
•••
Let's Keep Doing This
A Sounding in Honour of Stan Persky
edited by Thomas Marquand
& Brian Fawcett
The contributors to this festschrift in honour of Stan Persky include
Thomas Marquard, Alberto Manguel, Nadya Al-Wakeel, Myrna Kostash,
Scott Watson, George Stanley, Slavenka Draculic, Hedwig Wingler-Tax,
John Dixon, John Giorno, Pierre Coupey, John Ralston Saul, Don Akenson, Norbert Ruebsaat, David Farwell, Robin Blaser, Tom Sandborn,
Brian Fawcett, Gerald Stanley, Daniel Gawthrop, Sharon Thesen, and
George Bowering. Their essays, poems, artwork, and commentaries address concerns familiar to Stan Persky, whose life as a public intellectual
has led him to write poetry, award-winning works of creative non-fiction, and to be at the forefront of many of contemporary society’s most
significant battles: death and mortality, the plight of our First Nations
peoples, gay liberation, desire, the alternative media, the philosophy of
language, Plato, history, ideas and the act of thinking, and, above all else,
friendship.
9 781770 863613
ISBN 978-1-77086-361-3
$24.95 • 220 pp
TP • 5.125 x 7.625
Release: Feb 2015
LIT004080
Literary Criticism/Canadian
www.cormorantbooks.com
STAN PERSKY is the author of more than thirty books, including
Reading the 21st Century, Then We Take Berlin, and Buddy’s. Born in
Chicago, a member of the Merchant Marines, later educated in San
Francisco and Vancouver, Persky now teaches philosophy at Capilano
University in North Vancouver, BC. In 1969, Stan founded New
Star Books, which has published important fiction, non-fiction, and
poetry for forty years. He was active and influential in the gay rights
movement. He divides his time between Vancouver and Berlin.
11
Previously Announced
•••
From Tolerance to
Tyranny
A Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth
Century Spain
Erna Paris
One thousand years ago, a civilization existed in Spain that was famed
throughout Europe. To the horror of the Christian rulers to the north,
Jews, Christians, and Moors lived together in harmony — and in doing
so they created one of the most extraordinary societies the West has ever
known.
In the span a few hundred years, however, Spain would transform itself
from a pluralistic, multicultural society to the least tolerant nation in
Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition had
established a reign of terror, and the Jews were expelled from the land
they had inhabited for 1,500 years. Eventually the Moors, or Arabs,
were banned as well.
9 781770 863972
ISBN 978-1-77086-397-2
$24.95 • 336 pp
TP • 6 x 9
Release: January 2015
HIS045000 History/Europe/
Spain & Portugal
HIS022000 History/Jewish
“Incandescent … Paris uses a historian’s
pen and journalist’s eye to find nuance
and texture … She brilliantly revives an old
story and lets it speak to our time.”
The Globe and Mail
12
The tragic configuration of events that turned a culture of tolerance into
an autocratic police state was effectively repeated centuries later in Nazi
Germany, in Occupied France, and in the present-day Middle East.
From Tolerance to Tyranny is a gripping tale of a long-ago era whose
familiar echoes continue to resound today. Paris tackles the subject of
majority-minority relations in mixed societies, focusing on the humanity of the players even as she exposes the pitfalls of their ideals.
ERNA PARIS is the author of seven acclaimed works of literary non-fiction and the winner of twelve national and international writing awards for
her books, feature writing, and radio documentaries. Her works have been
published in fourteen countries and translated into eight languages. Long
Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History was chosen as one of The Hundred Most
Important Books Ever Written in Canada by the Literary Review
of Canada. Her most recent work, The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice was first on The Globe
and Mail’s Best Book of the Year list and shortlisted for the Shaughnessy
Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
www.cormorantbooks.com
Previously Announced
•••
The Breaking Words
Gilaine Mitchell
9 781770 862999
ISBN 978-1-77086-299-9 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.125 x 7.625 • 288 pp
Release: Feb 2015 • FIC019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC044000 Fiction
/Contemporary Women
From the author of the best-selling novel Film Society
Natha is a wife and mother in her mid-thirties living in the town of Stirling, Ontario. She makes her
living as a prostitute, a lifestyle that is not only tolerated but encouraged by her semi-employed
husband. A series of chance encounters leads her back to her very first client, the town’s elderly
bookstore owner. Now dying of cancer, the man offers to pay her thousands of dollars to, among other
things, “tell him about love.”
A Secret Music
Susan Doherty Hannaford
9 781770 863675
ISBN 978-1-77086-367-5 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 288 pp
Release: Feb 2015 • FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
Set in 1936 Montreal, A Secret Music is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a sensitive fifteen-year-old piano
prodigy who grows up in the shadow of his mother’s mental illness. Forced to keep this shameful secret,
he attempts to raise himself and his ten-year-old brother.
Lawrence counteracts the deep ache and creeping mistrust caused by his mother’s emotional absence
by escaping into the intense realm of Chopin and Schubert, the only language he truly understands.
www.cormorantbooks.com
13
Previously Announced
•••
Griffintown
Marie-Hélène Poitras
translated by Sheila Fischman
9 781770 863880
ISBN 978-1-77086-388-0 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.125 x 7.625 • 200 pp
Release: March 2015 • FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
Loaded with grit, heart, murder, and desire, Griffintown harnesses the style of a Spaghetti Western to
tell the exhilarating story of the coachmen of Old Montreal, the city’s urban cowboys.
NOT FINAL COVER
“A ride in the Far West that is not to be forgotten.” La Presse
“A novel that is akin to the great westerns of Cormac McCarthy.”
The News
River Music
Mary Soderstrom
9 781770 864153
ISBN 978-1-77086-415-3 • $24 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 400 pp
Release: March 2015 • FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
Set against a backdrop of war, economic changes, and social upheavals, River Music explores the
sacrifices that women make to fulfill their destiny, the wildcards of sex and passion, and
the complicated relationships between mothers and their children.
“A beautifully written, moving piece of literature … Anchored by a
tensely constructed plot, it is both a richly rewarding read and a novel
that should be sought out by lovers of well-crafted fiction.”
The Sun Times for The Violets of Usambara
14
www.cormorantbooks.com
2014 Releases
•••
The Illustrated Journals
of susanna moodie
illustrated by Charles Pachter
poetry by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s poetry, based on Susanna Moodie’s classic of
Canadian pioneer life, Roughing it in the Bush, covers Moodie’s arrival
in Canada in 1832 and ends with a prophetic commentary by a dead
Susanna Moodie on twentieth-century Canada.
Charles Pachter began illustrating the poems in 1968, when Atwood
sent him a first manuscript. Of his first reading, he has written: “It was a
fateful moment. I was so stunned by its beauty and power that I realized
that every early Atwood folio I had done up until now (there were five)
must be a rehearsal for this.”
ISBN 978-1-77086-221-0
$44.95 • 100 pp
HC • 10 x 12
Release: December 2014
ART 015040 Art/Canadian
POE 011000 Poetry/
Canadian
“The best blend of poetry and visual art
that I have seen is in the books done by
the Toronto artist Charles Pachter.”
Michael Ondaatje
www.cormorantbooks.com
MARGARET ATWOOD has published 17 books of poetry. Her first
poetry book, The Circle Game, was typeset and illustrated by Charles
Pachter (Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1964) prior to publication and
won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1966. She has
collaborated with Charles Pachter on several projects, all of which have
been published in limited editions. Her work has been published in
more than 22 languages in more than 30 countries, and includes 7
collections of short stories, 13 novels, 12 works of non-fiction, and
8 children’s books. She is the recipient of the Governor General’s
Literary Award for Fiction (The Handmaid’s Tale, 1986), the Scotiabank
Giller Prize (Alias Grace, 1996), and the Man Booker Prize (The Blind
Assassin, 2000), among many other awards and prizes. She is a
Companion of the Order of Canada and lives in Toronto.
CHARLES PACHTER is one of Canada’s leading contemporary
artists. He is an award-winning painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer,
historian, and lecturer. His canvases hang in public and private
collections around the world, and in the McMichael Collection in
Kleinburg, Ontario, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. He is the author of
two children’s books, M is for Moose: A Charles Pachter Alphabet
(winner of the IODE Book Award, nominated for the Ruth and
Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Illustrated Book Award and the Canadian
Booksellers Association’s Libris Award) and Canada Counts: A Charles
Pachter Counting Book. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He
lives in Toronto.
15
2014 Releases
•••
Celia’s Song
Lee Maracle
9 781770 864160
ISBN 978-1-77086-416-0 • $24 • TP w/ flaps • 5.5 x 8.5 • 280 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 059000 Fiction/Native American & Aboriginal
“In gentle yet powerful prose, Maracle underscores the horrifying impact of
the Residential School System, the ongoing problem of suicide, and the loss
of tradition that continue to plague First Nations communities.”
Quill & Quire
The Man and the Woman
Helen McLean
9 781770 864207
ISBN 978-1-77086-420-7 • $22 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 200 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
In 1946, a Canadian girl arrives in war-scarred London to study art at the Slade School. At the same
time, Bonnard — the elderly French artist whose work first ignited her passion for painting — looks
back on his career. Their separate but parallel journeys lead to revelations about art and sacrifice.
Old Masters
James King
9 781770 864221
ISBN 978-1-77086-422-1 • $21 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 200 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
From the author of the 2011 Toronto Book Award finalist Etienne's Alphabet
English novelist Guy Boyd’s publisher forces him, against his inclination, to write a biography of the
late Gabriel Brown, an eminent dealer in Old Masters. When Guy unexpectedly uncovers a series of
awful truths about his subject, the discovery shatters the assumptions upon which he has constructed
his own life.
16
www.cormorantbooks.com
2014 Releases
•••
City of Fallen Angels
A Mike Ward Mystery
Howard Engel
9 781770 863798
ISBN 978-1-77086-379-8 • $20 • TP • 5.5 x 8.5 • 226 pp
FIC022060 Fiction/Mystery & Detective/Historical
“This is a terrific novel from one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. It has
all Engel’s trademark wit, with his superb command of the noir genre in a
style uniquely his own.” The Globe and Mail
The Tiny Wife
Andrew Kaufman
9 781770 864047
ISBN 978-1-77086-404-7 • $20 • TP w/ flaps • 5 x 7.25 • 110 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
From the author of the 2014 Libris Award-longlisted Born Weird
“Clever. Brilliant. Funny. Moving.” Cecilia Ahern (P.S. I Love You)
“It blew me away!” Marie Phillips (Gods Behaving Badly)
Curtains for Roy
Aaron Bushkowsky
9 781897 151747
ISBN 978-1-897151-74-7 • $21 • TP w/ flaps • 5.5 x 8.5 • 272 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 016000 Fiction/Humourous
“If Douglas Coupland had his name on the spine, Curtains for Roy would
be admired and discussed worldwide as a brilliant comedy of manners, an
exceedingly funny and searing portrayal of modern angst, a generational
follow-up to Generation X, perfect grist for a movie. It’s that good.”
BC Bookworld
www.cormorantbooks.com
17
2014 Releases
•••
Salt in the Wounds
Mark Blagrave
ISBN 978-1-77086-385-9 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 288 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 029000 Fiction/Short Stories
9 781770 863859
From the author of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlisted Silver Salts
A thematically linked short story collection that reminds us of the dynamic, elementary, and precipitous
relationship that people share with salt, and with each other.
Just Beneath My Skin
Darren Greer
ISBN 978-1-77086-255-5 • $21 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 200 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary
9 781770 862555
“[The novel] acutely captures small-town inertia and desperation ... [its] intimacy,
honesty, and humanity make it impossible to resist.” Quill & Quire
The Geography of Pluto
Christopher DiRaddo
ISBN 978-1-77086-364-4 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 280 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 011000 Fiction/Gay
9 781770 863644
“The book’s crystalline prose makes for an incredibly smooth read ... lucidity
of the remembered scene is so profound that it flings [the protagonist] out into yet
another recollection as vivid as the first.” Montreal Review of Books
The Fledglings
David Homel
ISBN 978-1-77086-382-8 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 200 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 013000 Fiction/Historical
9 781770 863828
“Bluma and Bella are rich, riveting characters, and they are all the more alive, for
the reader as much as for themselves, when they are together.”
Montreal Review of Books
18
www.cormorantbooks.com
Selected Backlist
•••
The Heart Specialist
Claire Holden Rothman
ISBN 978-1-897151-21-1 • $21 • TP w/ flaps • 5.5 x 8.5 • 330 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
9 781897 151211
Longlisted for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize
“Told with precision, grace, and passion ... compelling from the first page to the last.”
Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes)
My Life Among the Apes
Cary Fagan
ISBN 978-1-77086-087-2 • $22 • TP w/ flaps • 5.25 x 8 • 192 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 029000 Fiction/Short Stories
Longlisted for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize
“The volume’s ten stories are, without exception, splendid yarns, told with the
practised ease of a natural storyteller.” National Post
The Western Light
Susan Swan
SBN 978-1-77086-400-9 • $20 • TP • 5.5 x 8.5 • 360 pp
FIC0 19000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 014000 Fiction/Historical
9 781770 864009
Finalist for the 2013 OLA Evergreen Award
“A gallivanting read bound to become a classic.” Toronto Star
Matadora
Elizabeth Ruth
ISBN 978-1-77086-208-1 • $21.95 • TP w/ flaps • 5.5 x 8.5 • 330 pp
FIC 019000 Fiction/Literary, FIC 013000 Fiction/Historical
A Canada Reads 2014 Top 40 Selection
“Readers ... will find themselves absolutely unable to look away. This searing,
sensual novel is an adventure not to be missed.” The Globe and Mail
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19
Sales Representation & Ordering Information
•••
ATLANTIC CANADA, OTTAWA & E ONTARIO,
TORONTO (GIFT)
ACADEMIC SALES (Eastern Canada)
Neil McRae
P: 514-217-2350
Toll-free P: 1-855-444-0770 x4
F: 1-800-596-8496
[email protected]
Laurie Martella
P: 416-461-7973
Toll-free P: 1-855-444-0770 x2
F: 416-461-0365
[email protected]
QUEBEC
TORONTO, NORTHERN & SW ONTARIO
Karen Stacey
P: 514-704-3626
F: 1-800-596-8496
[email protected]
Roberta Samec
P: 416-461-7973
Toll-free P: 1-855-444-0770 x1
F: 1-800-596-8496
[email protected]
MANITOBA, SASKATCHEWAN
BC, ALBERTA, NWT
Rorie Bruce
P: 204-488-9481
F: 204-487-3993
[email protected]
Aydin Virani
P: 604-417-3660
F: 604-371-3660
[email protected]
BC (Lower mainland, Interior and Sunshine
Coast), BOOKSTORES & GIFT
Kamini Stroyan
P: 604-771-5436
F: 604-371-3660
[email protected]
Ordering
University of Toronto Press
5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON, M3H 5T8
P: 416-667-7791 • Toll Free: 800-565-9523
F: 416-667-7832 • Toll Free: 800-221-9985
[email protected]
Canadian Telebook Agency Number S1150391