First published in 1916, James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is his first novel. A Künstlerroman, or “artist’s novel” it describes the life of Steven Dedalus from childbirth, through his schooling and finally to his full blossoming as an artist. Loosely based on the author’s life and ritten in a mix of third person and indirect speech, the novel served as a basis for Joyce’s more experimental novels “Ulysses” (1922) and Finnegan’s Wake (1939).
How would you feel if your two-year-old child was diagnosed as autistic and mentally retarded? That he would go into his room and never come out, and would be institutionalized by age seventeen? This was the grim life sentence handed down to Lori and Jim Cairns regarding their son, JR. This diagnosis was made in 1996 – when little was known about autism, governments offered few helpful resources, and hope for recovery was disregarded as a myth, an urban legend. Today many people still dismiss...
In «A Pair of Silk Stockings», Mrs. Sommers, a once wealthy woman who has fallen on hard times comes into possession of a small fortune of $15. Planning to spend the money on clothing for her children, she becomes sidetracked at a shop counter, entranced by the smoothness of a pair of silk stockings. She goes on to spend the money on the stockings as well as new boots and gloves for herself. In succumbing to “mechanical impulses that direct her action”, Mrs. Sommers resembles Edna Pontellier,...
In the 1840s Charles Dickens wrote 5 short stories with strong social and moral messages. The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home, is the third of these stories. Following the home life of John Peerybingle, the story introduces the many people in John's family and life along with a cricket that acts as the guardian angel of the family. Like its predecessors, this story also contains heavy social and moral implications. However it differs from A Christmas Carol and The Chimes, in...
'Utterly uplifting, pure escapism – a perfect summer read' Trisha Ashley A place to make your dreams come true…Clara King is left in sole charge of a fabulous new cliff top hotel for the summer. The owner has barely left the country when Clara realises that someone is hell bent on putting the Bluebell Cliff Hotel out of business. It becomes a race against time to hunt down the sneaky saboteur before they succeed in bringing the hotel to its knees. With her dream job under threat and...
Just when Vancouver commercial photographer Tom McCall thought he’d got his life back on track, a complete stranger shows up dead on the roof deck of his floating home. No one seems to know who he is, he has no ID, and there’s not a mark on him. If that isn’t bad enough, a prospective new client seems to have had one Botox injection too many, his ex-wife wants to take his daughter off to Australia for a year; and someone’s leaving mutilated dolls on his front step. And, of course, he’s in lust...
Short-listed for the 2001 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel In the fourth Inspector Bliss mystery, Bliss teams up with Daphne Lovelace to trace the father of a Canadian woman whose husband is dying of cancer. While Ruth Jackson may believe that she was sired by a Beatle, Bliss and Daphne have other ideas. In Vancouver, Ruth’s world falls apart when her dying husband suddenly disappears and she is arrested on suspicion of murder. His substantial life insurance policy and the blood-stained...
Photographer Tom McCall’s only regret about accepting an assignment from the beautiful Anna Waverley to photograph her boat for a potential buyer is that he has double-booked himself and needs to hand the assignment over to his partner, Bobbi. Little does he know how much of a regret it will become. En route to the assignment, Bobbi is brutally beaten and left for dead. As his partner lies in a coma, Tom searches for an explanation for the attack. Learning that Anna Waverley doesn’t actually...
Melanie Gordonstone, a cherubic six-year-old, was Daddy’s favourite in every way. So Margaret, her jealous 12-year-old sister, drowned her in a backyard pool. Inexperience led young Detective Bliss to attribute the girl’s death to accident, but Melanie’s mother drives herself mad believing her husband to be the killer. Margaret taunts her deranged mother for 10 years before putting her out of her misery, hanging her from a chandelier in a faked suicide. Now, frightened for his own safety,...
Lucky Strike is a light-hearted laugh-out-loud mystery with a cast of characters who epitomize life Down East. Eric Spratt, a conservative accountant from Toronto, is forced to flee to the remote Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia and there, become Charles Trenchant, reclusive writer. He knows that anonymity and discretion are the only weapons he has to protect himself from the retribution of the Mafia dons whom he helped to send to jail. Surely, fifty years of a quiet, unassuming existence would...
Being promotions director of a large shopping mall isn’t the most stress-free job on the planet, but Jenny Turnbull enjoys it and is darn good at it. But her job becomes quite a bit more gruesomely stressful when an unseen gunman goes on a spree in a bloody food court massacre during her special Hallowe’en promotion. And the situation gets totally out of hand when it turns out that the surviving victim, whose life is hanging by a thread in hospital, is the deadbeat son of a powerful, vindictive...
In the midst of a dream venture you're unable to know its limits. When a rock star becomes the scientist in research the idea of creating him music becomes easier. The guarantee that it came from knowledge was not the guarantee. The increase in working and other more physical motivations would create a future suitable for such a venture. As the wheels fall off there is no end in mind. Instead the start of the actual beginning for more of a need for the knowledge to be used. This would...