That first day is hard. The hands begin to cramp, drops of blood start oozing through your fingertips . . .

In 2003, Tori Holmes, a 21-year-old from Alberta, Canada, and Paul Gleeson, a 29-year-old financial advisor from Limerick, Ireland, met in Australia when Holmes answered an ad to drive the support vehicle for Gleeson's 5,000-kilometre cycling trek across that country. During their first adventure together, Gleeson fell hard: both off his bike and for the woman driving the car.

Once Australia was behind them, it became clear that crossing a continent together was simply not enough. Acting on self-assured determination and an ever-growing sense of adventure, Gleeson and Holmes embraced the dream of rowing a tiny boat across the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean in the 2005/06 Trans-Atlantic Race. Of course, neither of the young adventurers knew how to row, so they connected and trained with the only Irishmen ever to have completed the same race, Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh.

In November 2005, after months of training, Paul and Tori left the Canary Islands to row 4,800 kilometres across the Atlantic. In February 2006, they completed their epic journey after 86 days of huge seas, violent storms, terrifying capsizes, unbearable thirst, bizarre hallucinations and sleep deprivation. Along the way, however, during one of the darkest moments in the race, inspiration came in the form of an unseen, yet completely perceptible, presence. Old seafaring lore has several theories as to what this might have been, but both adventurers are keeping their minds open on it.

Part inspirational adventure story, part travelogue and part romance, Crossing the Swell is an honest and intimate portrayal of what it takes to truly engage in the many adventures that life has to offer.

Tori Holmes, originally from Alberta, Canada, went to Bangladesh after school to do volunteer work on various projects. In February 2006, after the events recounted in Crossing the Swell, she entered the record books as the youngest woman to row an ocean.

North of Jasper, in the Canadian Rockies, is a large, roadless and spectacular wilderness of alpine flower meadows, glaciated peaks, canyons, waterfalls and abundant wildlife. Compared to the millions each year who visit Banff and Jasper national parks immediately to the south, this northern area sees few visitors. Fewer still have ever attempted to travel through this wilderness in one continuous trip. The first to do so was Samuel Prescott Fay in 1914. To this day, his exact route has never been duplicated.

Fay and his party set out from Jasper on June 26, 1914, with five saddle horses and 16 pack horses. After a treacherous, slogging journey of 1,200 kilometres through wild, uncharted country they reached their destination on October 15, 1914, with the outfit completely intact.

During his expedition, Fay kept a detailed journal (currently held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC), which he provided to the US Biological Survey (now known as the US Fish & Wildlife Service) and to various Canadian government authorities. He also published several magazine articles about his discoveries. However, the journal in its entirety, with all his day-to-day observations, struggles and concerns, has never been published. Similarly, his maps, photographs and wildlife records have been preserved in various Canadian and US archives but never exhibited to a wider audience. Brought together for the first time in book form, they provide an early and dynamic record of an area that remains little known to this day.

Complete with a large selection of never-before published photos and maps, The Forgotten Explorer is destined to become a classic of North American exploration history.

Samuel Prescott Fay was born in Boston on May 27, 1884. Fay was an early member of the American Alpine Club and visited the Rockies to climb in the Lake Louise and Lake O'Hara areas starting in 1906, making numerous trips with outfitter Fred Brewster. Fay died on August 11, 1971, at his home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

As cities continue to grow at unprecedented rates, more and more people are looking for peaceful, weekend retreats in mountain or rural communities. More often than not, these retreats are found in and around resorts or places of natural beauty. As a result, what once were "small towns" are fast becoming "mini cities", complete with expensive housing, fast food, traffic snarls and environmental damage, all with little or no thought for the importance of local history, local people and local culture.

The Weekender Effect is a passionate plea for considered development in these bedroom communities and for the necessary preservation of local values, cultures and landscapes.

Robert William Sandford is an ecological historian, an expert on Western water resources and author of Water, Weather and the Mountain West (Rocky Mountain Books, 2007). He lives in Alberta.

While reading is a deeply personal activity, paradoxically, it is also fundamentally social and outward-looking. Daniel Coleman combines story with meditation to reveal this paradox and to illustrate why, more than ever, we need this special brand of 'quiet time' in our lives. This is the perfect companion for those who worry about living in a culture of distraction and who long to reconnect with something deeper.

This is a unique investigation which focuses on an aspect of prairie history that has been overlooked in Canadian literature - the labour of children. It details the findings of a study into the role that children's work played in the execution of homesteading operations during the pioneer era between 1871 and 1913. Analysing the labour of boys and girls, whether helping to build the family home, taking part in productive, subsistence or entrepreneurial tasks, or being responsible for various domestic duties, it enables the reader to understand how important children's work was to the success of the family farm. Furthermore, when economic, social, political difficulties, and environmental hazards of the time are also taken into account, the labour contribution of children becomes even more remarkable. Using a variety of archival materials, the author has conducted a study that gives readers a fuller understanding of how families survived, how the wheat economy was developed, and how burdens were carried on the shoulders of the smallest farm labourers.

In 2008, Anne fans everywhere celebrated the 100th birthday of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Though Anne has always been recognized as a Canadian classic, her story is loved the world over.

In 100 Years of Anne with an "e": The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables, Holly Blackford has brought together an international community of scholars who situate L. M. Montgomery's novel in its original historical and literary context, discuss its timeless themes, and explore its aesthetic and cultural legacy across time and place. Blackford's collection certainly proves Anne's international appeal, gathering contributors from Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, and the United States. Their essays explore diverse themes such as L.M. Montgomery's career and writing practices, her influence on Canadian fiction, shifting views and definitions of childhood, domesticity, identity and place, and Anne on film.

This new look at the beloved red-headed orphan will appeal to any reader who just can't get enough of Anne

Holly Blackford (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is an associate professor of English and scholar of women's, children's, adolescent, and American literature at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She has published extensively on novels of youth and development by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, J. M. Barrie, Margaret Atwood, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Harper Lee. Her first book, Out of this World: Why Literature Matters to Girls (Teachers College Press, 2004) is an ethnographic study of girls who find in literature a meaningful aesthetic experience.

The Walrond Ranch, a cattle and horse operation in the foothills of southern Alberta, was one of the four giants of the livestock grazing industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At its height, the Walrond ran over 10,000 cattle along with several hundred well-bred Clydesdale and Shire horses on nearly 300,000 acres of land.

Ultimately, however, the Walrond failed. The driving force behind the ranch, Dr. Duncan McNab McEachran, had high aspirations and communicated his optimism to Sir John Walrond and the rest of the British investors funding the venture. But reality quickly set in. Winter storms, drought, disease, and predators constantly depleted the Walrond's herds and the operation inexorably slipped toward bankruptcy. McEachran's poor management played just as large a role as the environmental challenges in the ranch's downfall; his stubborn reluctance to admit failure prolonged the inevitable, wasting more and more investor dollars in the meantime.

Somebody Else's Money is the first close environmental and economic study of one of the so-called "great" ranches on the northern Great Plains of North America. Author Warren Elofson examines the business side of large-scale, open range grazing and describes the myriad of natural and man-made obstacles that barred it from success. He argues that, financially, the Walrond was doomed from the beginning because its management approach and grazing practices were unsuited to both the natural and economic conditions of the frontier environment.

Warren Elofson is the head of the history department at the University of Calgary, where he has taught since 1986. He has written several books on British and western Canadian history, including Cowboys, Gentlemen and Cattle Thieves: Ranching on the Western Frontier (2000) and Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Land and Times of Charlie Russell (2004). Much of Dr. Elofson's expertise in western Canadian agriculture comes from many years of personal experience ranching and farming in Alberta.

Canada and the United States. Two nations, one border, same continent. Anti-American sentiment in Canada is well documented, but what have Americans had to say about their northern neighbour? Allan examines how the American media has portrayed Canada, from Confederation to Obama's election. By examining major events that have tested bilateral relations, Bomb Canada tracks the history of anti-Canadianism in the U.S. Informative, thought provoking and at times hilarious, this book reveals another layer of the complex relationship between Canada and the United States.

Chantal Allan is an award-winning journalist who has reported for CBC Radio and NPR (National Public Radio). Her articles have appeared in the Toronto Star, Los Angeles Daily News, and other publications. She received her M.A. in journalism from the University of Southern California and now lives in Los Angeles.

La biographie de Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle raconte la vie d'une jeune Canadienne d'humble origine qui tombe en amour avec le curé de son village, et qui en subit les terribles conséquences pour le reste de ses jours. L'histoire de cette femme s'étend sur plus d'un siècle (de 1858 à 1973), une période qui voit surgir plusieurs événements déterminants de l'histoire du Canada dont la Grande Dépression.

Claire Trépanier habite à Ottawa depuis 1973. Ses expériences professionnelles en enseignement et en développement international, l'ont amenée à côtoyer des individus de multiples pays et nourri son intérêt pour le vécu et les divers modes de vie des gens de la planète. Maintenant à la retraite, Trépanier écrit à plein temps. Ce premier livre reflète son admiration pour l'endurance, l'esprit dynamique et le courage indomptable des femmes.

Darkness has inspired fear since mankind first watched the sun go down. Bad things hide in the dark feral beasts with mouths full of razors waiting for a taste of flesh.

But now, the darkness is stirring with a life of its own. Crescent Station is the last bastion of civilization, floating in the cold, outer systems where colonized space gives way to the sparser settlements of the Frontier. Like the boom towns of distant Earth's Old American West, Crescent Station is a gateway to power, wealth, and opportunity for anyone who isn't afraid to get his or her hands dirty.

But deep within the station's bowels, in Crescent s darkest and most secret places, an ancient evil is awakening and hungry, and it threatens the very fabric of space and time. Will the residents of Crescent Station find a way to stop it before the terror drives them insane?

Or is it already too late?

For 500 years, Europe was ruled by the Celts, a powerful race who believed acts of nature were omens of the gods, where nobility was earned and where honor was valued above life. The most revered were the Druids: bards, healers, judges, and seers. A special few protected the secrets of ancient Earth magic.

Rhonwen, a passionate young healer, must forge a path through a land being ravaged by the war with Rome. Haunted by an oath of vengeance, she struggles against betrayal and gambles her life on an arcane healing magic from distant Gaul.

Mallec flees from his ferocious warrior tribe to become a scholar at the great center of druidic learning. His training fails him when he discovers an ancient rite for immortality. Once mastered, he must protect the knowledge from those who thirst for its power and are bent on his destruction.

Celt against Roman - two civilizations larger than the continent they share. One must yield forever. Can druid magic endure the onslaught of Roman legions? Can the wisdom of nature survive Rome's lust for conquest? Who are the barbarians in a world where power and ambition mean more than honor and sacrifice?

Barb Galler-Smith resides in Edmonton with John, her fabulously supportive husband, and three incredibly cute Yorkshire terriers. After a hiatus from everything but working for money and writing romance or pet care brochures, she returned to the quirky world of writing science fiction and fantasy. She's a member of Edmonton's Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Group. "The Cult of Pain", and co-founder, with writer-editor Ann Marston, of the emerging new writers group, "The Scruffies" (named for a group-written story's main character, not for their personal conditions). She's also busy editing with On Spec magazine.

Josh Langston began his writing career at Kennesaw Junior College in Marietta, Georgia. While writing for and eventually editing the college newspaper, he covered high school sporting events for a local weekly. He served as President of the Georgia College Press Association while attending Georgia State University where he earned a Journalism degree. Life and family intervened, and Josh wrote little until his children were in high school. He then joined the IMPs, an on-line writer's group, and took the first tentative steps toward a career writing speculative fiction.

My name's Bacon Sobelowski, and I'm trying to find my someone. Kenny Rogers sings a song that says there's someone for everyone, and in Bellevue where I live, Kenny Rogers' word is gold. It's just too bad my mother thinks girls turn boys into pigs, but that's probably just because my father had enough of her Eggos and walked out.

But maybe she's right. I'm not sure if Sarah is my someone because she got mad and smashed chili peppers into a cut on my head, and maybe my someone wouldn't do that. Karla could be it because she lets me stay at her condo, but she might be too old to be my someone. Then there's Mr. Kwon's daughter, but she's sort of my cousin and I'm not sure if sort-of cousins can be someones at the same time.

I think it might all come down to timing, and if that's true then I'm in trouble. I'm Bacon Sobelowski-who knows if I'll ever find my someone.

When the scalped remains of a Jane Doe are discovered within the rubble of a demolished house, Detective Jake Fry is assigned the task of hunting down Calgary's most disturbed murderer. Working against a rising body count and police department politics, Fry must relentlessly pursue a murderer with an agenda no one but he can comprehend.

During Calgary's first economic boom, people flocked from all corners of the country to the city rumoured to have streets paved in gold. Explore the dark side of this boom in A Magpie's Smile, a tautly chronological police thriller and cinematic portrait of the frenetic Calgary of the 1970s.

After a severe winter storm and extended power failure, thousands become trapped in their homes during one of the coldest weeks of the year. For one small group of people, thrown together by catastrophe, a state of anxiety and claustrophobia follows as they discover no precautions have been made for a disaster of this magnitude. When the darkness and cold stretch on, endurance turns to despair and plans for survival begin to emerge as Fred, a fifteen-year-old boy from England, is forced to take charge in unpredictable ways.

"Seal Intestine Raincoat" offers a cautionary tale for our times, with its bleak portrayal of socio-economic collapse resulting from an unsustainable way of life. It also unearths the powerful human instincts that convert helpless fear into the desire to adapt.

Rosie Chard grew up on the edge of the North Downs, a range of low hills south of London, UK. She received her first degree in Anthropology and Environmental Biology from Oxford Brookes University, and later qualified as a landscape architect at the University of Greenwich. Chard practiced in London and Copenhagen, Denmark, until she and her family emigrated to Canada in 2005. She now lives in Winnipeg, where she divides her time between writing and garden design. Seal Intestine Raincoat is her first novel.

Non-fiction authority Myrna Kostash merges the past and the present in The Frog Lake Reader, which offers a startlingly objective perspective on the tragic events surrounding the Frog Lake Massacre of 1885. By bringing together eyewitness accounts and journal excerpts, memoirs and contemporary fiction, and excerpts from interviews with historians, Kostash provides a panoramic perspective on a tragedy often overshadowed by Louis Riel's rebellion during the same year. The history is contentious and its interpretation unresolved, but The Frog Lake Reader, with its broad survey of vital historical accounts and points of view, offers the most comprehensive and informative narrative on the Frog Lake Massacre to date.

Myrna Kostash was born in Edmonton. The publication of her first book, All of Baba's Children , had a profound effect on her life because it placed her squarely in the context of her ethnic community and gave her intellectual work its main focus. She has also written Long Way From Home (Lorimer, 1980), No Kidding (McClelland and Stewart, 1987) and The Doomed Bridegroom. She continues to write for magazine and radio, and has had two stage plays produced. She has also published: Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe; The Next Canada: In Search of the Future Nation; Reading the River: A Traveller's Companion to the North Saskatchewan River. Her latest work, The Frog Lake Reader will be released by NeWest Press this fall.

Pierrette Requier's first book of poems, "details from the edge of the village", offers a single stunning narrative arc that is novelistic in its sweep. A bilingual component merges northern Alberta French seamlessly into the flow as she embraces two centuries through the telling

We're all familiar with the First World of capitalist nations, the Second World of communism and the Third World of poor and underdeveloped countries. In 1974, Shuswap Chief George Manuel published The Fourth World: an Indian Reality in recognition of the third of the world population of indigenous peoples who don't fit, and aren't recognized, within the model of the Three Worlds. To these, Sewell adds a Fifth World, for those, like her, whose heritage crosses between worlds.

A man steps out for a pack of smokes and winds up walking around the planet; a woman sun-tanning by a pool finds herself covered in chicken feet; a guerrilla army of cows infiltrates a big city; a man hires a bodyguard to protect him from his poodle. The first book of fiction since 1997 from the consummately underground Stuart Ross blends an unflagging penchant for experiment with the measured skill of a seasoned, highly disciplined craftsman. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog is anything but a collection of linked stories in a homogenous voice: instead, Ross offers us fables, letters, political tracts, gems of minimalist surrealism, and even a post-gothic novella. Throughout, he draws from the same deep, dark sense of humour that has earned him acclaim as Canada's foremost surrealist poet. Ross's strange, strangely compassionate stories engage the emotions as well as the intellect, giving the reader no choice but to participate. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog holds a mirror to the absurdities of 21st-century Earth; here is an absurdism so true that it becomes real.

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad's office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto's Yonge Street wearing signs like "Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books," selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, Poetry Editor at Mansfield Press, and Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine. He is the author of two collaborative novels, a previous collection of stories, and six full-length poetry books. He has also published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press). Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada. He lives in Southern Ontario.

A high school math teacher drifts from a moored boat to a downtown trance club, while negotiating her problematic relationship with an alcoholic older brother. A displaced Toronto book designer deliberates dreams, daydreams and delusions that result from a lone encounter with philosopher Mark Kingwell. A dissatisfied nomad traverses the globe, from Toronto to Persepolis, chasing fleeting intimacies of her own as she tries to conjure confessions for the dead.

In six stories Anik See meticulously deconstructs love, art, and identity, blurring the distinctions between momentary lust and long-term intimacy, and loss and fulfillment. Throughout these explorations of somewhat muddled lives, See demonstrates an uncanny ability to distill often unsettling truths, in prose that is intelligent, subtle and unerringly cool. Intricate yet precise, postcard and other stories offers the reader a sharp, lucid perspective on the blurry, bewildering business of being human.

Anik See is a Canadian writer and small press publisher. She is the author of two previous books, A Fork in the Road (Macmillan, 2000), and Saudade (Coach House, 2008). Her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Brick, Prairie Fire, the Fiddlehead, Geist, grain, The National Post, Toronto Life and, as a contributing editor, in Outpost Magazine. She has contributed to several anthologies, and has attended residencies in New York, Banff, and Minnesota. Her printing and design work won an honourable mention at the Alcuin Society's Book Design awards in 2005 and has been seen across Canada and at the Frankfurt and Leipzig book fairs. She divides her time between Canada and Amsterdam, where she makes, writes, and restores books, and lives with her partner, artist Walter van Broekhuizen, and their son, Laszlo.

Celebrated poet Joan Crate's fourth book weaves a sequence of poetic revisions and reveries, cleverly colliding suburban routine with subconscious fantasy. The specter of Snow White haunts the corridors of this collection, first as a retro-, then as a made-over fairy-tale reflection of the lives of contemporary women. The poems in Suburban Legends examine family relationships and gender roles with acerbic humour, frank sensuality, wistfulness, and, finally, acceptance, offering a mid-life view of childhood influences and expectations that is both stirring and wise. In Crate's characteristically intelligent verse, these legends consider what lies beyond youth and the trite promise of "happily ever after," taking readers to a land of complexity and nuance from which few cultural officiados report.