Books

Hold Still

What Will Be Has Always Been

Toronto's story: from pre-European contact to the contemporary city.

The Danger Tree

Emulating the circuitous tales told by his mother's relatives, the Goodyears of Newfoundland, David Macfalane weaves the major events of the island's twentieth century--the ravages of tuberculosis; the great seal-hunt disaster; the bitter Confederation debate, and above all, the First World War--into his own tale of the ill-starred fortunes of his family. He brings to life a multi-generational cast of characters who are as colourful as only Newfoundlanders can be. With humour, insight, and genuine love for those heroes and charlatans, pirates and dreamers, he explores the meaning of family and the consequences of forgotten history.

Summer Gone

The admired, bestselling author of The Danger Tree joins Knopf Canada with his masterful first work of fiction: a haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered that is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.

Summer Gone is about that moment when everything stops. Like skilled canoeists, we briefly hold a perfect balance - poised between innocence and experience, life and death, discovery and loss, the promise of spring and the sadness of autumn - and we believe, foolishly, that those perfect days will last forever.

Set among the islands and lakes of "cottage country", this major first novel from one of Canada's premier writers explores the stories of three generations of lost summers. But Summer Gone is primarily the story of a divorced father and a young son separated by the silence of estrangement, and how during one extraordinary night on an ill-fated canoe trip the silence is broken. Yet, as the novel unfolds, tragedy looms over father and son in ways they could never have imagined, and leads to the book's gripping and startling conclusion.

Summer Gone is an exquisite novel, beautifully written and powerfully told.

Toronto: A City Becoming

In this collection of provocative essays, the subject is Toronto. But not Toronto the static, Toronto the understandable, Toronto the known-commodity. As its title suggests, Toronto: A City Becoming argues that Canada's biggest city is undergoing a major transformation. Whether for good or ill, Toronto is changing before the eyes of its citizens. And it's possible to interpret this change any number of ways. From city to big city? From post-industrial to creative? From nominally multicultural to truly diverse? From functioning metropolis to dysfunctional megalopolis? From placid (if dull) urban centre to exciting (if dangerous) city? From bad to worse? Or from good to better?

The book includes twenty-two essays that will inspire real debate on the key issues facing the city. Contributors such as the acclaimed academic and author, Richard Florida, Toronto's former mayor, David Crombie, urban geographer, Meric Gertler, art critic, Sarah Milroy, political economist, James Milway, architect, John van Nostrand, and bestselling author and journalist Linda McQuaig take a wide variety of compelling and provocative perspectives on Toronto as it enters the 21st century. The book also features visual essays by some of Toronto's pre-eminent photographers, including Michael Awad's unique cityscapes, Scott Johnston's resonating portraits of Regent Park, and David Kaufman's exquisite architectural studies of buildings, storefronts, and landmarks.

Rarely, if ever, has it been possible to witness with such clarity the passage of one kind of urban entity to another. Toronto: A City Becoming reveals the transformation of city at an exciting moment in its history.

Read "Secret City", an excerpt from the introduction, in the Articles section >

At the Ojibway

What I Meant To Say

In What I Meant to Say, writer and broadcaster Ian Brown has gathered 25 beautifully crafted and thoroughly readable essays by some of Canada's most interesting male voices - pieces of writing that explore, reveal and explain the terrain of manhood, both new and old.