An Islander Strikes Back
Publisher: Acorn Press$25.95New from P.E.I.’s most beloved comedian!
In his new book “An Islander Strikes Back,” humourist Patrick Ledwell admits his little province is way behind the mainland. But it means Islanders like Ledwell can see where they’re going– about 10 years before they manage to get there.
Ancient Land, New Land Skmaqn – Port-la-Joye – Fort Amherst National Historic Site of Canada
Publisher: Acorn Press$24.95The Mi’kmaq have inhabited Epekwitk (Prince Edward Island) for millennia. At this site, known in Mi’kmaq as Skmaqn, or “waiting place,” the Mi’kmaq met the French in the 18th century to renew their friendship and military alliance at a time when the French and British empires were fighting for supremacy in North America.
As Europeans settled on what had become to be known as Isle Saint Jean, the major European players were France and Great Britain, each of whom started constructing forts and sending soldiers, warships and settlers. A key strategy of the French was to establish a close alliance with the Mi’kmaq, one that was maintained by missionaries. Thus Skmaqn became the French fort Port-la-Joye. The French saw it as the most strategic location as its harbour was large, sheltered, and easy to defend because of the narrow entrance through which any enemy ships would have to pass.
One of the first permanent French settlements on the island, Port-la-Joye was the seat of colonial government and a port of entry. This site was surrendered to Great Britain in 1758 and renamed Fort Amherst, the British organized the deportation of more than 3,000 Acadians.
And All the Stars Shall Fall
Publisher: Acorn Press$12.95After years of struggle by Blanchfleur to maintain its independence, the idyllic walled city of Aahimsa, a community of girls and women dedicated to making a life of peace free of the brutality and aggression of outsiders, and its prospering Manuhome, are suddenly victims of a brutal surprise attack by the forces of The World Federation of City States. Mabon and Nora are in hiding outside the city where they witness all the horrors of the assault. Adam, their adoptive son, is no longer with them, having been placed under the protection of Doctor Ueland at the Manuhome. Adam, known to the federation as The Last Wild Boy has been hunted down since his unauthorized birth in Aahimsa. Blanchfleur the mayor of Aahimsa along with her daughter and granddaughter Tish, flee for their lives along with hundreds of the Manuhome workers. A few of them are thrown together and, although some are strangers and long-time enemies, they are forced by circumstance to attempt to find a way to escape extinction in the outside world against powerful and relentless common enemies, traitors and especially the federation’s murderous and heartless robotic army. They must deal with great dangers and unexpected revelations. Can they manage to work together and adjust their thinking enough to survive and find happiness against such seemingly insurmountable odds?
And My Name Is Stories from the Quilt
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95In this, Margie Carmichael’s first collection of short stories, ordinary women have extraordinary skills, gifts and strengths; they are women who live next door or in the distance, shadowed by fear or absence of recognition. Age, race, and culture connect in the timeless fabric of the quilt, with craft, patience, and faith connecting the women through the threads of their diversity.Anna tells of life after residential school; Irini reflects on her life in war-torn Afghanistan. In Tansie, two adults survive childhood abandonment. Freelance cosmetician to the dead Flora Hill offers insight into the lighter side of love, marriage, and death.Featuring illustrations by Dale McNevin, the book is a collaboration that began with an original painting and companion poem first published in the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health 2000 Calendar.
Are We Friends Now? An Anthology By and About 2SLGBTQ+ Youth
Editor: Tom RyanPublisher: Acorn Press$17.95Are We Friends Now is a dynamic and exhilarating collection of writing from LGBTQ+ youth and allies from around PEI. The product of a collaboration between PEERS Alliance and the PEI Writers’ Guild, the multi-genre selections in Are We Friends Now are the result of several months of workshopping and brainstorming at the Queer Youth Writing Club, and also include pieces from adult volunteers. Are We Friends Now will appeal to readers of all ages, and makes a great addition to classroom and library collections.
Ashes of My Dreams
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and cut off from her family, free-spirited and independent Gracie is determined to keep her baby and to raise him on her own.
Protecting Elijah Blue from the nuns eager to adopt him out to a “better” home is only Gracie’s first battle…
It takes a whole community of colourful neighbours and friends—and the dream-wisdom of spirits that protect her—for Gracie to navigate the cruel and impoverishing systems that judge and harass her as a single mom on PEI.
She gets through with pride, grit, and humour—but nothing can protect her from her growing son’s desire to know his father’s identity.
Ashtanga Yoga The Definitive Guide to Therapeutic & Traditional Yoga
Publisher: Acorn Press$25.95This ground–breaking guide to Ashtanga yoga, by two of the world’s leading teachers, Manju Jois and Greg Tebb, is the only book on yoga you’ll ever need.
At First, Lonely
Publisher: Acorn Press$17.95Best-known as a musician and a spoken-word performer, poet Tanya Davis has now taken to the page with At First, Lonely. In this collection, she reflects on life’s many passages: falling in love and out, the search for personal truth, the search for home. Davis’s style is one-of-a-kind: a blend of contemporary phrasing with profound personal expression. But her message is universal; over two million people have watched How to Be Alone, a film adaptation of her poem created by independent filmmaker Andrea Dorfman. Tanya Davis’ poetry challenges the intellect and touches deep places in the heart.
Beach Reading
Publisher: Acorn Press$22.95Lorne Elliott’s new novel, Beach Reading, takes us back to the early 1970s on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island, where a hilarious and colourful cast of Lorne Elliott characters are engaged in uproarious political, financial, musical, amorous, and ecological shenanigans. Our young hero, Christian, is an eloquently wry and precocious university drop-out, who has never savoured the wonders of women or alcohol. A budding naturalist raised in central Canada, he arrives on PEI for a summer job in the newly-established Barrisway National Park, and sets up camp on the beach. There, he becomes enmeshed in the struggles of the boisterous MacAkrin siblings to remain in their park-enclosed home, rivalries and lustful longings at park headquarters, and the skullduggeries of an Island political campaign. Lorne Elliott gloriously conjures the mischief and zaniness, the lovable rascals and lamentable rogues, of Island life behind the tourist posters. He deftly evokes the kindness and camaraderie of Islanders, and the Island’s high-spirited revelry. Beach Reading transforms the Land of Anne and Avonlea into the land of Wallace MacAkrin, the Barley Boys, and Barrisway. “Come play on our Island,” as the tourist slogan says, and you’ll be laughing with bittersweet delight for days.
Beautiful Veins
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95A Canadian poet’s last wordsA sense of ego-urgency has seemingly sucked hard on any high octane left in my system, and what used to take me a decade and more to accomplish as a writer has suddenly fruited within a 12-month time frame.- Joe Sherman, December 2005The result is Beautiful Veins, Joe Sherman’s final book of poems. Joseph Sherman, author of seven books of poetry, editor, and supporter of the arts, died on January 9, 2006, in Charlottetown. He was 60.Beautiful Veins begins with the picture of a child, of “one life with all the promise of its beautiful veins.” Some of the poems catch details of domestic life and its indwelling spirit and glancing irony; they explore the cache of memory. Others evoke history and landscape, opening them up to careful consideration. Always there is a love of language and its quirks, oddities, split-levels, riches. Out of the intricate and elliptical syntax, moments of joy are discovered, named against the threat of time and illness.
Betrayer
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Inspired by the last murder in Prince Edward Island for which capital punishment was exacted- and the theory that a third man was involved in the crime- The Betrayer conjures the fictional life of this “third man” in an intimate psychological profile of a man who, quite literally, gets away with murder. With a deft hand, Hennessey takes us down the darker streets of mid-20th-century Charlottetown, capturing the city’s gritty west end with the brushstrokes of someone who has lived it. He also takes us down into the darkest recesses of the human spirit, into the mind and soul of a murderer.
Beyond Silence
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Beyond Silence: Voices of Child Sexual Abuse is a collection of stories, poems, and images by twelve Island women. In these deeply personal accounts, the women tell about the abuse they suffered as children, the profound effect it has had on their lives, and the reasons why people need to join the fight to stop it. A prevention chapter, written by the group as a whole, focuses on five key areas that need to be addressed in order to end child sexual abuse. These include abusers taking responsibility for their actions and parents taking action to protect their children.Beyond Silence takes a fresh approach to the ongoing work of child sexual abuse prevention by focusing on the knowledge and wisdom of adult survivors. This book has the potential to dramatically change the ways communities respond to child sexual abuse. The stories are raw and real, honest and terrifying. The women dig into the darkness of the past so that others may see the light. They refuse to be silenced and they’re determined to make a difference.
Blue Waiting
Publisher: Acorn Press$19.95Blue Waiting is a collection of poems in conversation with small beauties formed through the geography of living. This geography takes shape in the edges of islands, mountains, families, and most of all the terrain of the inner life. The inner life is imbued with the details of ordinary life, where the contours of presence is unraveled in attention to what is in before us as humans.
This collection is one of two poets, whose work intersects not only thematically, but particularly in how Wiebe and Snowber continue to find the holy in the ordinary, and wonder in the sensate world. One poem has fed the other, and as each was written separately we invite you to see them as a place for dialogue. Dialoguing with self, other, and the soil beneath the words, which gives breath and life to language itself.
As both poets and educators Snowber and Wiebe find the immersion in present life as the catalyst for the deepest lessons, and the writing of poetry becomes a place of unfolding to what it means to be human and sustain nourishment on the planet. We invite you as a reader to travel along your own wondrous journey and be in dialogue with us.
- -13%Special price
Bodies and Sole A Shores Mystery
Publisher: Acorn PressOriginal price was: $22.95.$19.95Current price is: $19.95.The Shores is celebrating a killer 200th anniversary. A skull tossed up on the beach sparks a heritage murder investigation.
Meanwhile, serial widow Vera Gloom moves into the village with her three ex- husbands. Are they one big happy family? Amateur sleuth, Hy McAllister has her doubts, and things get even more interesting when Vera starts working on husband number four. Hy has to convince Mountie Jane Jamieson that these people are more than just a little dysfunctional—before it’s too late.
Born ! A Foal, Five Kittens and Confederation
Artist: Brenda JonesPublisher: Acorn Press$12.95Award-winning children’s author Deirdre Kessler has set her latest story in the late summer of 1864. Nine-year-old twins Gabriel and Grace help their parents run the Great George Street Livery Stables in Charlottetown. They are part of all the excitement as a circus comes to town and as politicians arrive by steamship from the Maritimes and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. The twins have drawing lessons with their friend, fourteen-year-old artist Robert Harris, who plays in the band that entertains the delegates at a grand banquet and ball at Province House. But the twins are most excited about their favourite horse, who is about to give birth to her first foal. Travel back in time to the streets of Charlottetown for an insider’s peek at the meetings that led to Confederation, beautifully illustrated by award-winning illustrator, Brenda Jones.
Bounce and Beans and Burn
Publisher: Acorn Press$7.95After breakfast Sam is so excited that he’s bouncing off the walls. His mother tells him to go out to the garden to play. At lunch he’s so full of beans that all he can get up to is mischief. His grandmother tells him to go out to the garden to play. After supper he has so much energy to burn that he can’t sit still. His father tells him to go out to the garden to play. Little do they know that when Sam does, he turns into a ferocious Samurai, goes on an adventure with Jack and the Beanstalk, and meets a fire-breathing dragon. Bounce & Beans & Burn follows Sam through an ordinary day of extraordinary adventure.
Bridging Islands
Editor: Godfrey BaldacchinoPublisher: Acorn Press$29.95An island is a piece of land surrounded by water. But: what happens when bridges, causeways, tunnels- “fixed links”- irrevocably connect islands to mainlands? Is insularity, and its way of life, threatened? Or is it saved by virtue of a stronger integration with the world at large?Bridging Islands is a critical, interdisciplinary scoreboard of the pros and cons of bridging islands to mainlands. Internationally recognized scholars review the assorted socio-cultural, economic and political impacts of fixed links on small island communities. Included are chapters on Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Bridge (celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2007), Cape Breton’s Canso Causeway, islands in Quebec and Newfoundland, the Florida Keys, Ireland, France, Scotland, Sweden, and Singapore.
Broken Crayons
Artist: Marla LesagePublisher: Acorn Press$14.95When Ms. Gillis, a preservice teacher on Prince Edward Island, decides to complete her International Teaching Practicum in Kenya, sponsored by Farmers Helping Farmers, she is very excited. She can’t wait to start her adventure in the warm African sun, leaving behind cold February days in Canada and (as she comes to learn) a well-stocked Island classroom. She is eager to share her newly-acquired teaching skills with the children in Kenya. She arrives laden with gifts and school supplies from friends on PEI. As she distributes a gift of crayons to her students, she soon realizes that she is the one who has the most to learn. Broken Crayons is a delightful story written for school age children. It is based on a true story that never grows old and one which carries a message for all, no matter your age.
Bubba Begonia and the Bully
Artist: Dale McNevinPublisher: Acorn Press$8.95It was the first day of school and Bubba Begonia felt great. Then -SPLAT! Bubba meets his new classmate Stinky Biggs. He also meetsa stalking crow, a pair of puppets who speak Wabatawbee, a skunknamed Chiclet, a Flying Bag of Doom, and a dog with gas. He accidentallyrobs a bank, he’s called a ‘hero’ and is given a reward. Hehas the worst birthday party ever, sees his favourite teacher drippingwith egg, buys a wedding cake that tastes like ‘looove’, saves abully’s butt and nearly ends up in the slammer. This can’t be good,can it?
