NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction Nominated for the Evergreen Award A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus. A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality. Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by white students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and was tokenized by her romantic partners. She heard racial slurs in bars, on the street, and during lectures. And she gathered labels she never asked for: Abuse survivor. Token. Bad feminist. But, by graduation, she found an unshakeable sense of self--and a support network of other women of colour. Using her award-winning reporting skills, Eternity connects her own experience to the systemic issues plaguing students today. It's a memoir of pain, but also resilience.

In the vein of the astonishing and eye-opening bestsellers I'll Be Gone in the Dark and The Line Becomes a River, this stunning work of investigative journalism follows a series of unsolved disappearances and murders of Indigenous women in rural British Columbia.

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR NON-FICTION Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, critically acclaimed novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a powerful new work of non-fiction. Tessa McWatt has been called Susie Wong, Pocahontas and "black bitch," and has been judged not black enough by people who assume she straightens her hair. Now, through a close examination of her own body--nose, lips, hair, skin, eyes, ass, bones and blood--which holds up a mirror to the way culture reads all bodies, she asks why we persist in thinking in terms of race today when racism is killing us. Her grandmother's family fled southern China for British Guiana after her great uncle was shot in his own dentist's chair during the First Sino-Japanese War. McWatt is made of this woman and more: those who arrived in British Guiana from India as indentured labour and those who were brought from Africa as cargo to work on the sugar plantations; colonists and those whom colonialism displaced. How do you tick a box on a census form or job application when your ancestry is Scottish, English, French, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, African and Chinese? How do you finally answer a question first posed to you in grade school: "What are you?" And where do you find a sense of belonging in a supposedly "post-racial" world where shadism, fear of blackness, identity politics and call-out culture vie with each other noisily, relentlessly and still lethally? Shame on Me is a personal and powerful exploration of history and identity, colour and desire from a writer who, having been plagued with confusion about her race all her life, has at last found kinship and solidarity in story.

In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.

With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City. Isa Epley, all of twenty-one years old, is already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York with her newly blond best friend looking for adventure. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them. By day, the girls sell clothes on a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave between Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a system that wants you to do neither.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?.or so they say. Unless you are old and out of shape while attempting to take up hiking. Ken takes you on humorous adventures in the NH White Mountains as he tackles the NH 48 4,000 footers. Young or old, experienced hiker or beginner, you will get lots of laughs learning the finer lessons of hiking. Profits from book sales will go to New Hampshire Search and Rescue.

Featured in The Globe and Mail's Winter books preview: 36 reads to get you through till spring On 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated: Spring 2020 Fiction Preview List On CBC Books' list of 47 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in spring 2020 The Coen Brothers meets Kurt Vonnegut. Francis Blackstone is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger with a heart of gold. He's fallen for the mayor's daughter and resolves to make his mark, and his fortune, to win her favour. And what better way than to rob a Manhattan Company bank? Enter Bob Temple, the volatile outlaw who takes Francis under his wing-- though not without a degree of suspicion-- and so begins the adventures of the Blackstone Temple Gang as they crisscross the west in search of treasure, redemption, and the possibility of requited love. After an encounter with a rival gang, Francis and Bob Temple are chased over the Sierras to California, where they enjoy unexpected fame as gentleman bandits. But their newfound celebrity brings hardships as well, and when their final job takes a startling turn, Francis is forced to discover what it means to make peace with a world that stands against him. At once a tribute to boyhood enthusiasm and the heroes of classical quests, Like Rum-Drunk Angels is an offbeat, slightly magical, entirely original retelling of Aladdin as an American western.

HOW DO YOU IMPROVE YOUR OWN LIFE? You find a way to deal with the challenges life throws your way... which is always easier said than done. A favorite quote of mine, by George Bernard Shaw, explains a lot of why I feel we struggle in life: "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." Which is why I wanted to write this book. To share how incorporating more FUN into our lives will ultimately allow us to deal with any challenging moments that come our way. Take a moment right now and think about someone you know who is consistently upbeat, optimistic, and appears to be troubled by nothing. On the surface, they look like they enjoy life and have a lot of FUN. Ever wished you could be more like them? Wished you could approach life the same way, letting things just roll off your back like water off a duck's back? YOU CAN! By reading Fundamism: Connecting to Life Through F.U.N. you're one step closer to feeling more joy and fulfilment in your life. You're one step closer to feeling good and looking like the person you recalled above. We all desire happiness and minimal stress but life doesn't always work out the way we want it to. Throughout this book, you'll learn how to improve self-esteem, deal with life challenges, overcome fear... ultimately, this book will help you to change your life. Using 10 FUNdamentals, you'll quickly learn how easy it is to add more fun to your life and those around you. What are you waiting for? It's time to jump on the F.U.N. train (all aboard!) and smile, laugh and have more fun... all you have to do is buy Fundamism: Connecting to Life Through F.U.N. to get started!

THE INSPIRATIONAL CLASSIC FROM THE MASTER STORYTELLER WHOSE BOOKS HAVE TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 40 MILLION READERS 'Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary' Cecilia Ahern _________ To his mind, Eddie has lived an uninspiring life. Now an old man, his job is to fix rides at a seaside amusement park. On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie's time on earth comes to an end. When a cart falls from the fairground, he rushes to save a little girl's life and tragically dies in the attempt. When Eddie awakens, he learns that the afterlife is not a destination, but a place where your existence is explained to you by five people - some of whom you knew, others who were ostensibly strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, five individuals revisit their connections to Eddie on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his 'meaningless' life and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: 'Why was I here?' __________ WHAT READERS SAY ABOUT THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN 'Breathtakingly beautiful. A story that will stay with you forever' 'A beautiful and flawlessly choreographed book . . . No other book may ever compare' 'One of my favourite books . . . Wonderful, inspirational, and heart-warming! To me, it is a MUST READ! 'The book is beyond words . . . Well written, engaging, poignant' 'This really is a wonderful book. You should read it'

From award-winning journalist Eternity Martis, a look at race and gender on campuses, and a personal tale of struggle and survival. The debut memoir from Eternity Martis, They Said This Would Be Fun captures the difficulty of navigating through white spaces as a student of colour. Eternity thought going away to university would help her discover who she really is. Hoping to escape her abusive boyfriend, her nerdy reputation, her doting Pakistani family, and her complicated feelings towards her absent Jamaican father, she heads out to the predominantly white college city of London, Ontario. At school, she discovers an entitled culture of racism and sexism: she encounters blackface at parties, hears racial slurs at the bar, and has teachers ask her permission to discuss race in classrooms where she's the only student of colour. Over the next four years, Eternity navigates her identity in her new surroundings while adjusting to student life: she bounces out the window of an inflatable castle after too much vodka, glares down drugstore cashiers who announce a price check for her pregnancy test for the whole store to hear, and dodges white girls who stroke her hair at parties. And as more and more classmates of colour feel driven out of the university, Eternity decides to stay. In doing so, she starts to uncover what she went away to find in the first place: who she is. They Said This Would Be Fun captures the work students of colour must do to fight for themselves in spaces where they are supposed to be safe to learn and grow.