In heart-wrenching detail, Louise Halfe recalls the damage done by the residential schools to her parents, her family, and herself in her new poetry collection.

Starting out in life as a young wife and mother, you never imagine the ways your hopes and dreams might be completely shattered. For Jessica and her husband Jason, a series of unrelenting heartbreaks struck, beginning with their baby's diagnosis with a life-changing disability. Just a few short years later, thirty-three-year old Jason lay in a hospital bed, battling a Glioblastoma brain tumor. And within the span of six years of marriage, Jessica became a widow left alone to care for their four young children, including one with special needs. But the story doesn't end there. In the midst of storm after storm, Jessica stubbornly clung to God, and she found him to be faithful. Enter Ryan Ronne, a young widower and father of three. Ryan had also lost his spouse to brain cancer-in fact, around the same time Jessica's husband, Jason, had succumbed to the disease. Just as the idea of sunlight burning at midnight sounds impossible, so it seemed unlikely anything beautiful could arise from their devastation. But a new love story emerged, along with a combined family that now numbers eight children. As featured on the Today Show, theirs is an inspiring and encouraging story of faith. Here, Jessica Ronne tells her riveting story of finding hope amid havoc, and of the surprising ways that pain often commingles with joy.

“I build this story like my lair. One willow, / a rib at a time” — “The Crooked Good” Since 1990, Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe’s work has stood out as essential testimony to Indigenous experiences within the ongoing history of colonialism and the resilience of Indigenous storytellers. Sôhkêyihta includes searing poems, written across the expanse of Halfe’s career, aimed at helping readers move forward from the darkness into a place of healing. Halfe’s own afterword is an evocative meditation on the Cree word sôhkêyihta: Have courage. Be brave. Be strong. She writes of coming into her practice as a poet and the stories, people, and experiences that gave her courage and allowed her to construct her “lair.” She also reflects on her relationship with nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, and the ways in which it informs her relationships and poetics. The introduction by David Gaertner situates Halfe’s writing within the history of whiteness and colonialism that works to silence and repress Indigenous voices. Gaertner pays particular attention to the ways in which Halfe addresses, incorporates, and pushes back against silence, and suggests that her work is an act of bearing witness – what Kwagiulth scholar Sarah Hunt identifies as making Indigenous lives visible.

In Burning the Midnight Oil, word-wrangler extraordinaire Phil Cousineau has gathered an eclectic and electric collection of soulful poems and prose from great thinkers throughout the ages. Whether beguiling readers with glorious poetry or consoling them with prayers from fellow restless souls, Cousineau can relieve any insomniac's unease. From St. John of the Cross to Annie Dillard, Beethoven to The Song of Songs, this refreshingly insightful anthology soothes and inspires all who struggle through the dark of the night. These "night thoughts" vividly illustrate Alfred North Whitehead's liberating description of "what we do without solitude" and also evoke Henry David Thoreau's reverie, "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." The night writers in Cousineau's vesperal collection range from saints, poets, and shamans to astronomers and naturalists, and tells of ancient tales and shining passages from the most brilliant (albeit insomniac) writers of today. These poetic ponderances sing of the falling darkness, revel in dream-time, convey the ache of melancholy, conspire against sleeplessness, vanquish loneliness, contemplate the night sky, rhapsodize on love, and languorously greet the first rays of dawn. Notable night owls include Rabandranath Tagore, Mary Oliver, Manley Hopkins, Jorge Borges and William Blake.

Among her healing arts are Native symbolism and history, the memories of her childhood on the reserve, and her own dark brand of humour. Like Tomson HIghway and Thomas King, Halfe is actively involved in reclaiming the long overlooked Native comedic tradition. Her poems about the erosion of old ways, the terrors of residential school and hth pain inflicted by alcoholism abound with satiric portraits and shared jokes, yet pierce the heart with their truthfulness. Her angriest poems, infused with dark humour, are written in a Cree-inflected English she calls her "grassroots tongue." It is with this voice that she comes to terms with the legacy of Catholicism in the moving poems "ten hail mary's" and "dear poop."

Kira Dawson has the power to burn vampires to a crisp. The problem is, she doesn't know it yet. The even bigger problem is, she's dating one. When Kira Dawson moves to South Carolina, she meets Luke, a blond goofball who quickly becomes her best friend, and Tristan, a mysterious bad boy who sends shivers down her spine. Kira knows they're keeping secrets, but when she discovers Tristan's lust for blood and her own dormant mystical powers, Kira is forced to fight for her life and make the heartbreaking decision between the familiar comfort of friendship and the fiery passion of love. From bestselling author Kaitlyn Davis comes a paranormal romance perfect for fans of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Ignite is the first book in the Midnight Fire series and it is approximately 65,000 words. Keywords: Teen & Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, Romance, Paranormal, Vampires, Angels, Love, Action & Adventure, Magic, Fantasy, Free, Freebie, Free Book RAVE REVIEWS! "Best book I have ever read besides The Fault In Our Stars." -- Hope Cooper (Amazon Review) "This book was awesome! I love the idea!...The story is fun, exciting and full of drama!" -- Jen Stewart of Jen's Bookshelf "I was riveted throughout and was eager to see what would happen - there was drama, danger, action and romance that was wonderfully detailed and described." -- S. Condous "SC" of Obsession With Books "YES ITS DIFFERENT AND I THROUGHLY ENJOYED IT!! I'm a vampire lover, and enjoy any tale that is certainly unlike any other and that grabs and piques my interest. Ignite certainly did this." -- K.M. Whittaker "It's a unique and riveting tale that leaves you begging for more! (On that note - I am quite literally breathless in anticipation for Simmer to come out!)" -- Maria Maldo (Amazon Review) "I walked into a sign while reading this book - I could not tear myself away until I finished it!" -- Uncle Jimmy (Amazon Review) "It's been a while since I have read a really good YA vampire book. They have become so cliche that I often avoid them. Imagine my surprise when I picked up Ignite and fell in love with it by page 17." -- Kristin of Better Read Than Dead

For fans of The Maze Runner and The Fifth Wave, this debut YA novel from Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh pits four underprivileged teens against an evil billionaire in the race of a lifetime. No one knows where the brilliant-colored spheres came from. One day they were just there, hidden all over the earth like huge gemstones. Burn a pair and they make you a little better: an inch taller, skilled at math, better-looking. The rarer the sphere, the greater the improvement—and the more expensive the sphere. Sully is a sphere dealer at a flea market. It doesn’t pay much—Alex Holliday’s stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers—but it helps him and his mom make the rent. When Sully meets Hunter, a girl with a natural talent for finding spheres, the two start searching together. One day they find a Gold—a color no one has ever seen. There’s no question the Gold is priceless, but what does it actually do? None of them is aware of it yet, but the fate of the world rests on this little golden orb. Because all the world fights over the spheres, but no one knows where they come from, what their powers are, or why they’re here. PRAISE: “Burning Midnight is for (1) adrenaline junkies and gamers, (2) obsessive collectors, and (3) people who can’t get enough of crazy endings. I’m all of these things, and I loved it.” —Margaret Stohl, New York Times bestselling author of Black Widow: Forever Red and coauthor of the internationally bestselling Beautiful Creatures series

A gender-fluid trickster character leaps from Cree stories to inhabit this racous and rebellious new work by poet Louise Bernice Halfe. There are no pronouns in Cree for gender; aw'sis (which means illuminated child) reveals herself through shape-shifting, adopting different genders, exploring the English language with merriment, and sharing his journey of mishaps with humor, mystery, and spirituality. Opening with a joyful and intimate Introduction from Elder Maria Campbell, aw'sis - kinky and dishevelled is a force of Indigenous resurgence, resistance, and soul-healing laughter. If you've read Halfe's previous books, prepared to be surprised by this one. Raging in the dark, uncovering the painful facts wrought on her and her people's lives by colonialism, racism, religion, and residential schools, she has walked us through raw realities with unabashed courage and intense, precise lyricism. But for her fifth book, another choice presented itself. Would she carve her way with determined ferocity into the still-powerful destructive forces of colonialism, despite Canada's official, hollow promises to make things better? After a soul-searching Truth and Reconciliation process, the drinking water still hasn't improved, and Louise began to wonder whether inspiration had deserted her. Then aw'sis showed up--a trickster, teacher, healer, wheeler-dealer, shapeshifter, woman, man, nuisance, inspiration. A Holy Fool with their fly open, speaking Cree, aw'sis came to Louise out of the ancient stories of her people, her Elders, from community input (through tears and laughter), from her own full heart and her three-dimensional dreams. Following aw'sis's lead, Louise has flipped her blanket over, revealing a joking, mischievous, unapologetic alter ego--right on time.

The struggle of Native American peoples after the arrival of the Europeans is well documented, even in poetry. Yet Blue Marrow introduces a unique voice and perspective to this tension, one that is poignant and simultaneously reminiscent of all that is already familiar. In this haunting collection, Halfe brings to light the hypocrisy shaped by the conflict of Christianity and tradition-unique, informative, artistic and memorable, a combination worthy of note. (KLIATT).

After decades of internecine warfare, the tribes of the Tiste Edur have at last united under the Warlock King of the Hiroth. There is peace--but it has been exacted at a terrible price: a pact made with a hidden power whose motives are at best suspect, at worst, deadly. To the south, the expansionist kingdom of Lether, eager to fulfill its long-prophesized renaissance as an Empire reborn, has enslved all its less-civilized neighbors with rapacious hunger. All, that is, save one--the Tiste Edur. And it must be only a matter of time before they too fall--either beneath the suffocating weight of gold, or by slaughter at the edge of a sword. Or so destiny has decreed. Yet as the two sides gather for a pivotal treaty neither truly wants, ancient forces are awakening. For the impending struggle between these two peoples is but a pale reflection of a far more profound, primal battle--a confrontation with the still-raw wound of an old betrayal and the craving for revenge at its seething heart. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.