Enter for a Chance to Win Free Books!
49th Shelf members can enter to win a copy of any of the books listed here (please sign up here if you haven’t already). At the end of the giveaway period, we do a random draw, and the publishers ship copies directly to the winners. Good luck!
Blood Belies
In this arresting debut collection Ellen Chang-Richardson writes of race, of injury and of belonging in stunning poems that fade in and out of the page. History swirls through this collection like a summer storm, as she brings her father’s, and her own, stories to light, writing against the background of the institutional racism of Canada, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the head tax and more. From Taiwan in the early 1990s to Oakville in the late 1990s, Toronto in the 2010s, Cambodia in the mid-1970s and Ottawa in the 2020s, Blood Belies takes the reader through time, asking them what it means to look the way we do? To carry scars? To persevere? To hope?
- Giveaway period ends
- May 04, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 80
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Coco and the Caterpillars
A boy loves his garden, and everything in it, especially all the tiny insects. But … his pet chicken Coco loves them too!
When a boy finds a clutch of butterfly eggs in his garden, he can’t stop thinking about the beautiful butterflies they will become. He keeps the eggs a secret from Coco, who finds all the insects in the garden yummy! The boy watches as the eggs hatch, and brightly striped caterpillars appear, growing bigger and juicier every day. But one day, when his back is turned, Coco gobbles up the caterpillars and falls ill. The boy is torn between worry for Coco and sorrow that the caterpillars have been eaten. But then he makes a wonderful discovery—his dream of butterflies in the garden just might come true after all.
Artist Geraldo Valério brings us a charming story inspired by his childhood passion for the butterflies in his family’s garden.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 04, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 79
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Teeth
Poems
This is a book about grief, death and longing. It’s about the gristle that lodges itself deep into one’s gums, between incisors and canines.
Teeth details not only the symptoms of colonization, but also the foundational and constitutive asymmetries that allow for it to proliferate and reproduce itself. Dallas Hunt grapples with the material realities and imaginaries Indigenous communities face, as well as the pockets of livability that they inhabit just to survive. Still this collection seeks joy in the everyday, in the flourishing of Indigenous Peoples in the elsewhere, in worlds to come.
Nestling into the place between love and ruin, Teeth traces the collisions of love undone and being undone by love, where “the hope is to find an ocean nested in shoulders—to reside there when the tidal waves come. and then love names the ruin.”
- Giveaway period ends
- May 04, 2024
- Copies available
- 2
- Members entered
- 81
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Knife on Snow
What portents must you divine when a knife falls from the sky into your snow covered yard? With Knife on Snow, Alice Major employs history, myth, and science to understand a world ablaze.
From the bitumen hills of Fort McMurray to the barren reaches of Iceland, Knife on Snow depicts an earth bathed in dragon’s breath, where like the Norse gods bound to their fate, we stand transfixed by the consequences of our actions, both driver /and passenger— part-cause / part-witness of earth’s unwinding.
As you would expect in Alice Major’s expert hands this unwinding yields to an evolution, a discovery, an acceptance of struggles' end and the possibility of a tomorrow unknown.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 04, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 81
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Firekeeper
A Novel
Nyla has an affinity to fire. A neglected teen in a small northern town—trying to escape a mother battling her own terrors—she is kicked out and struggles through life on the streets. Desperate for love, Nyla accidentally sets fire to her ex’s building and is then incarcerated for arson. Through community-led diversion, Nyla finds herself on a reserve as their firekeeper. But when climate change–induced wildfires threaten her new home, she knows intimately how to fight back.
The fourth book from acclaimed writer Katłıà brings a Northern Indigenous perspective to the destructive effects of ongoing colonialism. Displaying Katłıà’s enthralling storytelling style, Firekeeper is a coming-of-age tale that addresses intergenerational trauma by reclaiming culture, belonging and identity.
Join Nyla on her healing journey through the fire to sacred waters.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 04, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 71
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Smoke
Smoke is award-winning children’s author Nicola Winstanley’s first work for adults and it showcases her ability to create the unforgettable characters she’s known for. This deftly written linked short story collection moves between New Zealand and Canada following the lives of a fascinating collection of characters and considering the impact of intergenerational trauma on them from multiple points of view. Questions of responsibility and fate, and a search for understanding thread through these searing, often heartbreaking stories. Yet even though these are stories of loss, Smoke is ultimately a book about grace, one which calls not only for a rejection of guilt, but also for approaching the world with deep compassion.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 31, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 38
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These Songs I Know By Heart
Married and divorced in her 20s, looking for friendship in her 30s, and contemplating pregnancy at 40, our narrator wonders if she’s going through life out of order. But Alice, The Turtle, The Kid, and other beloveds show her that motherhood is more than giving birth, art is never finished, and love is not linear.
Through a three-day canoe trip, chance encounters, fierce female friendship, step-parenting, IVF, pandemic isolation, and quiet moments between humans, These Songs I Know By Heart weaves vignettes of everyday mythology into an absorbing and honest meditation on the connections in our lives. With razor-sharp reflection, humour, and most of all love, we are reminded that there’s no formula to life and that instead, we must celebrate what makes the small moments of our lives extraordinary.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 31, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 34
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A Simple Carpenter
Part biblical fable, part magic realism, and part thriller. A ship's carpenter becomes stranded on a small Mediterranean island. He has completely lost his memory but in exchange has acquired the ability to speak, write, and understand all languages. After his rescue, he spends time in a Lebanese coastal village recuperating with a group of nuns who, observing him perform what appear to be small miracles, take him to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Later, in Beirut, he's hired as a translator for the UN peacekeeping force, and is recruited as a messenger for Black September. Feeling disillusioned with both of these occupations, he treks on foot across the Galilean hills to the Sea of Galilee, encountering a series of strange communities evoking biblical times. He eventually settles with a Palestinian family and unwittingly becomes entangled in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 31, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 33
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All That's Left
Darby Swank’s entire life changed when her Aunt Bea was brutally murdered one summer in their rural Saskatchewan community.
Following her gripping debut Friendly Fire, Lisa Guenther skillfully picks up Darby’s story a few weeks after the dramatic finale. Building her life anew, Darby makes new and lasting friendships and connections with recently found family members, including her charismatic cousin Brynny, a young woman leading an exciting and inclusive church in rural Alberta. Darby begins to make a name for herself on the Canadian music scene. Landing a sought after gig with an established Toronto band, Darby is thrust into the life of a working musician on the road. Still haunted by the violence hidden in her past, Darby must find a way to live at least partially in the public eye, as her music career takes off, and her Aunt Bea’s art and story become more and more well known.
Guenther’s second novel is a pressing account of a life wrecked by trauma, and rebuilt brick by brick with joy, love, and friendship. Guenther asks important questions of privacy, safety, and the vulnerability of artists in the public eye, while meditating on the importance of art and community.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 31, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 31
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Disembark
Stories
Award–winning author Jen Currin presents remarkable and sometimes magical new stories of queer friendship and love, against the backdrop of city life.
The stories in Disembark feature queer characters navigating new worlds, new circumstances, and new methods of relating to the people around them. With resonant imagery and clear, lyrical prose, Jen Currin weaves vibrant narratives showcasing queer relationships—be they platonic, romantic, or somewhere in between. A banshee shacks up with a lesbian couple in a rocky relationship, a lonely teen is gifted a knife by their mother’s boyfriend, a queer woman finds herself heartbroken when her best friend fails her at a crucial moment, and a young alcoholic hashes things out with their mother in the afterlife. In modes both realist and fantastic, the profound and eloquent stories in Disembark provide a glimpse into the unexpected, offering insight into the ways we relate in this world and in worlds beyond.
- Giveaway period ends
- May 31, 2024
- Copies available
- 3
- Members entered
- 29
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