New Star Books: 17 books

It's the mid 1890s in Kamloops, British Columbia. Two men argue over a bottle of whisky and in the struggle Frank Spencer, an American outlaw-turned-farmhand, kills Pete Foster, a French-Canadian and fellow farmhand. Enter Caprice: a vision and a brain. Almost six feet tall, with flaming red hair...

***Includes a new chapter not found in print version*** Wages is a laugh–til–you–cry account of one man's remarkable working life, or attempt at a lack thereof. This eccentric, irreverent, and witty chronicle is vintage John Armstrong. Armstrong has worked as a paperboy, a caddy,...

The winter of 1932–33 saw the small interior town of Princeton, BC divided. Charges of outside agitators and charges by mounted provincial police into picket lines of workers, Ku Klux Klan threats and a beating and cross–burning, the kidnapping of legendary labour organizer Slim Evans who was...

Cowboys and Indians, sometimes one and the same, occupy the rugged landscape of the late nineteenth-century British Columbia interior in George Bowering's Shoot! Meet the McLean Gang — brothers Allan, Charlie, and Archie — and their sidekick Alex Hare. Halfbreeds who grew up bitter outcasts, rejected...

"A fusion, a collage, a bold endeavor of a literary work, a 'new' novel if you like." — Anakana Schofield, author of Martin John and Malarky "From the opening 'cast list' that includes such characters as 'Grandad' played by 'My mother's father', to a narrator who admits, 'Actually,...

First published in 1980 to high acclaim, Burning Water won a Governor General's Award for fiction that year. A rollicking chronicle of Captain Vancouver's search for the Northwest Passage, the book has over its career been mentioned in recommended lists of postmodern fiction, BC historical fiction,...

Few politicians have enraged opponents, frustrated colleagues and polarized Canadians like Svend Robinson — but few embraced the causes he did. Over his twenty–five years as a New Democrat MP, Robinson was imprisoned for blocking loggers from clear–cutting in Clayoquot Sound, assaulted by police...

"A beautiful testimony to a life bravely lived on the edges of contemporary values." —Aaron Peck Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots is the story of a man who had no obituary and no funeral and who would have left no trace if it weren't for the woman he'd called Toots, who took...

John Armstrong uses his wry wit and vivid prose to evoke a life immeasurably enriched by one best friend after another. He tells boyhood tales of romping along the railroad tracks with Spooky the mutt, touching accounts of Sluggo the Rottweiler befriending sex workers, howl-inducing memories of laying...

Ron Liversedge could hardly wait for the call from the International Brigades. A veteran of the Great War, Canada's Great Depression, and scores of battles for social justice, he wanted to get to Spain to fight against Franco's attack on the young Spanish republic. It was the spring of 1937; Liversedge...

Set during the time of first contact, The Woman in the Trees takes place around what is now Vernon, BC. The novel moves effortlessly from myth to dream time to narrative real time. Spanning the historical period from 1780 to 1860, The Woman in the Trees addresses a time of massive upheaval for the...

Steve Weiner's harrowing portrayal of post–Thatcher England follows a man of no known origin and unstable personality and his efforts to re–enter society after a long and unexplained absence. The reader sees events through Jack's mostly uncomprehending eyes as he negotiates the margins of a London...

In Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers, Marc Edge dives deep into the history and finances of North American newspapers and media conglomerates, and comes up with a surprising conclusion: the newspaper business is far more healthy and profitable than believed. They've been roiled...

Anarchy Explained to My Father (first published by Lux Éditeur in 2014 as L'anarchie expliquée à mon père) is a provocative and accessible discussion of the revolutionary mode of thought that rejects all forms of domination and seeks, in the words of Louise Michel, "order through harmony."...