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"Cutting the devil's throat" -- hurling a round stone upwards so it plunges into the water with only a hollow gulp -- is a game that demands intense engagement with the physical environment. Andrew Steeves' ghazal suites, short lyrics, and longer narratives play with words in the same spirit, opening loopholes of vision in a confusing, even threatening, world.

Driven from the Fundy shore into Saint John by the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant expropriations, Alex McNab grows up a lonely, insecure failure. At thirty, to make a clean break, he takes a job at New Dawn, a Halifax rehabilitation workshop. At New Dawn, the distinction between the helper and the helped blurs. Jeff, seventeen and blind, knows all about cars, so Alex teaches him to drive. In turn, Alex has his fuzzy thinking firmly adjusted by a descendant of Jamaican Maroons plagued by encroaching Alzheimer's. Alex sees right away that Gloria Vincent has adopted a sloppy dress and ugly glasses to hide her intelligence and beauty, and they cautiously fall in love. Alex can't prevent New Dawn from going broke any more than he can shrug off the shadow of death that follows him. But he can control the force of life. By the end of the summer, his safe, depressing existence has become a full, exhilarating, and at times frightening adventure.

An angular unconformity is a border between two rock sequences, one lying at a distinct angle to the other, which represents a significant gap -- often millions of years -- in the geologic record. (Imagine a biography that has several decades simply unaccounted for.) It might also be described as a fissure through which deep time leaks into history and upsets its authority. Angular Unconformity shows us a life's work in cross-section, a restless and humane intelligence, ever searching, ever shifting, finding significance in our blink-of-an-eye existence against a backdrop of geological time unimaginable in its scale. A shrewd observer of teh sounds and the poetics of nature, Don McKay attunes his senses to bird song and music, to human presence and geological formations, to vernacular speech and inanimate silence. In his eloquent, yet exuberant encountes with the wilderness, he walks the fault line between the known and the unknown, testing the uncertain mechanism of language and its imperfect gestures toward meaning. This first comprehensive collection of Don McKay's poetry displays this pre-eminent Canadian poet's gift for thinking through metaphor, for channelling a profound philosophical discourse through poetic imagery. In poem after poem, his disciplined attention and contemplative mind break through the commonplace, illuminating an ecological understanding of the world as it is.

The beautiful little city of Fredericton has always welcomed walkers. Now, criss-crossed with abandoned railway lines transformed into groomed trails, it's a paradise for the self-propelled, whether on foot, on skis, on bicycles, or in wheelchairs. Trails of Fredericton, published in association with the Fredericton Trails Coalition, describes the 50-kilometre linear park system built on the former railway network. It also includes paths in five parks, the University of New Brunswick Woodlot and Game Refuge, and Kingswood, a privately owned recreational development.

A recreational canoeist in his native Texas, Rick Sparkman thought he knew all about the sport when he moved to Nova Scotia in 1981. Getting dumped from his canoe in one of the swift, cold rivers of his new home adjusted his thinking. Woodlands Canoeing is a guide to the pleasures of canoeing in the northern woodlands, where the channels are narrow, the water is swift and often shallow, and conditions can vary from day to day. Designed for novice canoeists or those accustomed to canoeing on more predictable rivers and lakes, the book mixes practical instruction in paddling, poling, lining, and portaging with historical insights and personal stories. Drawing upon his years of experience as a solo and tandem canoeist, Sparkman also includes chapters on canoe tripping and camping in comfort, canoeing with children, and, for the real enthusiasts, the delights of winter canoeing.

"Run, you little bitch, run. You could run as far as you want, you can' escape." His uncle's words ring in Homer Santokie's ears as his plane gains altitude and Trinidad falls away below. He has escaped. His destination: Toronto. Homer trades a basement in Ajax for a Dixie high rise, a factory job for a position as a Hamilton school librarian. Marrying Vashti and moving into her sister's house in Burlington, becoming a father, publishing his book -- these successes should win Homer peace and security. But he craves more. Hilarious and poignant, Homer in Flight draws a brilliant picture of a man evading one imaginary crisis after another. Homer veers from bravery to bravado, from jollity to gut-wrenching anxiety and confusion. Articulate and annoyed, he wrestles mightily with the benign reality of his new life.

Dance the Rocks Ashore, a milestone in Lesley Choyce's leaps-and-bounds career, attests to almost twenty years of continuous inventiveness and craftsmanship in the art of the short story. It's a powerful mix: 15 of the best stories from seven earlier books, plus four stories so new they've never been published until now. The title story, "Dance the Rocks Ashore," is a bittersweet account of an elderly couple's decline. "The Third or Fourth Happiest Man in Nova Scotia" features a peculiar hero reminiscent of Noah. In "The Wreck of the Sister Theresa," spring fever hits like "a handshake in hell." Fanciful or realistic, poetic or comical, literary or homespun, each story shines with Choyce's unique take on the world.

In The Silent Partner, Herb Curtis stakes out new fictional territory: Silver Rapids, a twenty-minute drive from Brennen Siding and twenty years after the famous Brennen Siding trilogy. One bitter winter day, motherless young Corry Quinn loses half of his tongue on a railway spike; he will never speak clearly again. Then his Toronto-bound father deposits him with his Uncle Kid, a greying hippie. Strange to say, these disasters improve Corry's life. Kindred spirits, he and Kid grow up together, sharing tragicomic adventures involving girls, fish, and the perhaps extinct eastern cougar. Finally, inspired by Sally Nutbeam -- now a strapping beauty -- Corry abandons the last shred of self-pity to become a man with a voice.

In "Season of Apples," Ann Copeland shows men and women of all ages wrestling with life's changes and surprising themselves with their own sudden growth. She endows her characters with passion and thoughtful courage, and she tells their unique stories with her special brand of good humour.

Pop culture and the balladry of bedlam collide in this wry debut that volunteers a transfusion of the unpredictable to readers yearning for more than a muralized Olive Garden world. In [Sharps], a visit to the last Dollar Store becomes a meditation on the global supply chain. Unicorns and sarcophagi turn up in the most unlikely of places. Pushers shark outside of a short-staffed methadone clinic. A fan of Bill Callahan almost falls into New York's underbelly. Canmore moviegoers scoff at Alec Baldwin, and the Queen resembles Rip Torn. Joyously ominous, blissfully melancholic, Stevie Howell's highly anticipated debut picks a street fight with language, half cut with its exuberant possibilities.

The Sun the Wind the Summer Field gathers together a half-century of poetry by one of Canada's most distinguished men of letters. Some poems are the works of a young, strong voice applying T.S. Eliot's poetics to the Canadian ethos, while others give voice to old age, undiminished in power and enriched by experience. A few poems appeared in earlier books, a few others have been recently published in The Fiddlehead, The Cormorant, The Antigonish Review, and Wild East, but most have never been published before.

Brennen Siding, a hamlet near the famous Miramichi River, is home to an unforgettable crew -- Dryfly and Palidin Ramsey and Dry's friend Shadrack Nash; Shirley Ramsey, Dry and Pal's homely, destitute mother; Nutbeam, the floppy-eared hermit she marries; the American sports visiting the Cabbage Island Salmon Club; and the "lads" who guide them. Dry, Shad, and Pal, young teenagers in The Americans Are Coming, make some headway into maturity in The Last Tasmanian. By the end of The Lone Angler, Palidin realizes what will happen to his beloved Atlantic salmon if he sells his secret of catching a fish on every cast, and all three boys have launched themselves into adulthood. Running through the trilogy are the magical river, the legendary salmon, and the feelings they evoke about the nature of humans and the place of humans in nature.

Short-listed for the 1980 Governor General's Award for poetry, High Marsh Road is a cycle of poems that reflects the moods of the great Tantramar marsh. Continuing a century-long artistic tradition begun by Charles G.D. Roberts, Douglas Lochhead has written a sequence of 122 poems marking his daily walks across this windblown terrain. Combining acute observations with personal reflections about the world beyond, High Marsh Road is an intimate account of one man's exploration of nature and the self.

In five boldly inventive poems, Claire Harris probes factual accounts of incest, violence, and the atrocities of war and disease with intellect, craft, and searing emotion. She challenges her sisters of all races to confront, not just their victimhood, but their contribution to these outrages and their responsibility to end them. Dipped in Shadow will shake readers to their foundations.

David Hoffer rides his Harley Davidson Heritage Softail south on the Laurentian Autoroute to a memorial for a friend who died of prostate cancer. His back is killing him, and he has his own nagging pain in the butt. To finance new equipment, he has sold land adjoining his music video studio to the Children of the Sun, but now he sees that their religion isn't nude sunbathing. His affair with Roberta, half his age, is complicated by his attachment to his previous lover. His dopehead-adolescent inner child is annoyed with him. So is his ex-wife. So is his business partner. So are some others who don't like his style. Set in the Laurentians near the time and place of the Solar Temple cult's fiery apocalypse, Badass on a Softail is a culture-jamming fugue on what happens when the Age of Aquarius stares into the mirror and the Age of Acquisition stares back.

For two years, Gertrude Harding lived an outlaw's life as a Militant Suffragette. Harding grew up in rural New Brunswick and spent a comfortable sojourn in Hawaii without a thought of voting. Then, in 1912, she arrived in London and saw the Militant Suffragettes in action. Harding began her Suffragette career by wrecking an orchid house at Kew Gardens. In 1913, she led Emmeline Pankhurst's bodyguard, a cadre armed with Indian clubs who defended Mrs. Pankhurst against the police. When government violence diminished, Harding turned to journalism, working in secret to publish The Suffragette. She even served as Christabel Pankhurst's private secretary in Christabel's Paris sanctuary. When the Suffragettes disbanded, Harding became a social worker, first in a munitions factory in England and later in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

Knowledge in the Hands is the work of a mature poet in full control of her métier -- sensuous, delicate, evocative of dance, yet densely compelling. Physical and spiritual worlds merge, separateness disappears, one thing becomes another, and everything is made new. Poems in Knowledge in the Hands have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Canadian Woman Studies and other journals, and "A White Gift" won the 1990 Alfred G. Bailey Award.

Fables from the Women's Quarters won the Commonwealth Prize for poetry in 1984. A tribute to the women who create the fabric of life, Fables from the Women's Quarters contains poems that have become classics, including "Where the Sky is a Pitiful Tent," based on the harrowing testimony of Guatemalan writer Rigoberta Manchu, and "Policeman Cleared in Jaywalking Case," inspired by a racist incident on an Edmonton street.

A calculus formula, a calculating boy, a girl who is intelligent but unwise -- these are the ingredients of the gripping story at the heart of Richard Cumyn's new collection. Human relations motivate "The Limit of Delta Y Over Delta X," especially the surface tension between men and women.But even looking at the darker side of humanity, Richard Cumyn finds plenty to laugh about. "The Sound He Made" dares readers to snicker at Bam's bold violence, and "Shel Do the Right Thang" is a funny fantasia on love and marriage.

"The Irrational Doorways of Mr. Gerard" brings to life a kaleidoscopic relationship: on one side is Arlene Monson, with her daughter Alice and her "found" daughter Andrea; on the other side are their protector, James Bridgeford, and the enigmatic Mr. Gerard.Bauer's post-modern imagination creates a unique reality, with details from matriarchal religion, modern fine crafts, and a deep understanding of the ways in which children first upset and then reorder the adult world. In the startling denouement, solved mysteries open new doorways to mark, not an end, but many beginnings.

Lenore Rutland's boyfriend of nearly eight years dumps her on Boxing Day and sneaks off to Florida. Why? she�d like to know. In hilarious yet touching letters that he never answers, Lenore makes excuses for him while recounting her adventures -- adventures she couldn't have had with him around. She babysits two lapdogs while their maman serves on a murder jury, and becomes friends with a vibrant collection of feminists, firemen, and amateur musical theatre stars. By the next Boxing Day, Lenore's world has grown rich and strange and her mended heart is stronger than ever.

"The rooftop was where my father was the most comfortable, where he could be tall and survey life among the quiet chimneys, the broken shingles, the weathered skin of protection between families and the sky." Between Families and the Sky is a two-part novel about love in all its mysterious forms. "The Hole in the Kitchen Floor" tells the story of James Kinnell's teenage years -- his grandfather's permanent visit, his mother's new romance after his father's death, and especially his kaleidoscopic feelings for his friend Mirele. In "The Memory Holes of Garland Rose," a young architect replays scenes from a childhood shaped by the death of her mother, her father's fixation on golf, and the sexual heat between her father and her teacher. As Alan Cumyn draws these searchers together, he creates extended families of complex, loving and eccentric people whose lives dovetail into a rich and satisfying resolution.

The people in Dressing for Hope have their roots in their cars. They occupy a world that most readers enter only as voyeurs: biker bars, seedy hotels, small-town lounges, and the backwoods refuges of disappointed city folk. Yet Lorna Jackson makes that world both familiar and engaging. Especially when distances between characters seem almost unbridgeable, Jackson allows moments of transcendence that make exquisite sense. Dressing for Hope gives Jackson's readers their first chance to feel the collective power of her stories. Flawlessly written, with distilled descriptions and incisive observations of human nature, each is utterly compelling. Together they offer a memorable literary experience.

Powerful yet serene, The Conception of Winter is about women, their friendships, loyalties and pain. But most of all it is about physical, mental and spiritual healing.

The Golden Thread introduces Claire Delaney, an ambitious, idealistic and highly rational young woman called to be a nun. In these eleven stories, readers hear the joy of praise, feel the itch of stockings and habit, taste the gall of obedience, and, finally, share the pain and delight when Claire renounces her vows and embraces the secular life.

Lumberman Larry Gorman was no respecter of borders -- nor of anything else, it seems. From the time he was a young lad growing up on Prince Edward Island until his death in Brewer, Maine, in 1917, Larry Gorman composed satirical songs about friend and foe, relative and stranger, without fear or favour. Larry Gorman: The Man Who Made the Songs was first published nearly thirty years ago. In this new edition of this celebrated book, Edward D. Ives tells the story of the songwriter as he followed his lumberman's trade from Prince Edward Island to the Miramichi and Maine. Meticulously researched and thoroughly documented, this biography features more than 70 of Gorman's folk lyrics, 26 with musical annotations.

One Indian Summer is a powerful and eloquent novel about a boy whose coming-of-age on the Miramichi River coincides with the death of his father and the end of the family farm.

A new book by M. Travis Lane is something to celebrate. In her latest collection, Temporary Shelter, she demonstrates that she is indeed one of Canada's finest and most rigorous poets. Writing from a decidedly feminist perspective, M. Travis Lane resists any easy attempt to order a universe of apparently conflicting patterns. Celebrating the open against the enclosed, the imagination against things tidily nailed down, the poems in this collection form separate illuminations. As Lane writes in the introduction to this important volume, an image is not an equation, but as Robert Frost suggests, a temporary shelter against the confusion of experiences.

The process of discovering home is ongoing. The past is raked as carefully as a sand garden, for memories not tended faithfully will slip away. Each moment is sifted, held and relived. In Resisting the Anomie, Kwame Dawes celebrates his roots and holds them fast. A Ghanaian-born Jamaican, educated in Canada and living in the US, Dawes writes tightly controlled poems, wild and free poems, boisterous reggae songs; poems of faith, love, anger and humour. All offer glimpses into the poet's true home.

During John Thompson's all-too-brief lifetime, he completed only two volumes of poetry, At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No Secrets and Stilt Jack, but seldom has such a slim oeuvre supported such a large reputation. In these remarkable poems, Thompson seeks out the darkest places of the heart and floods them with light. Confessionally raw, oblique and beautiful, Thompson's poetry -- and in particular, his experiments in Stilt Jack with adapting the ghazal. A poetic form with Persian and Arabian origins -- has influenced three generations of poets. This revised and updated edition of John Thompson: Collected Poems and Translations, edited and introduced by Peter Sanger, gathers together all of Thompson's mature work, including not only his two books, but also previously uncollected poetry and Thompson's haunting translations of several of his French Canadian contemporaries and the great French poet René Char.