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ebook cover of Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon, by Lisa De Nikolits
Inanna Publications | 31 August 2025

Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon is a dark, delightfully comedic noir thriller jam-packed with mob villains of old and starring a kick-ass, 50's styled-heroine.Greed drives the stakes higher and higher in this finely crafted modern day noir fiction starring Jessica Wren: a sassy, vintage loving fashionista who works as a janitor by night and dreams big by day. When she becomes a powerful mobster's mistress, Jessica finds herself thrust into a world that's as dangerous as it is glamorous. Don't mess with mob boss antagonist, gangster Enzo Esposito, whose love for the murder photographer, Weegee, finds its way into his business dealings.

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ebook cover of Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon, by Anita Jack-Davies
Inanna Publications | 29 June 2024

Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon is a dark, delightfully comedic noir thriller jam-packed with mob villains of old and starring a kick-ass, 50's styled-heroine.Greed drives the stakes higher and higher in this finely crafted modern day noir fiction starring Jessica Wren: a sassy, vintage loving fashionista who works as a janitor by night and dreams big by day. When she becomes a powerful mobster's mistress, Jessica finds herself thrust into a world that's as dangerous as it is glamorous. Don't mess with mob boss antagonist, gangster Enzo Esposito, whose love for the murder photographer, Weegee, finds its way into his business dealings.

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ebook cover of Privacy is a Foreign Word in Supino, by Maria Coletta Mclean
Inanna Publications | 29 June 2024

The village of Supino looks as sleepy as the opening shot of an old black and white Fellini film. At the newspaper office, Bianca stumbles into a job meant for someone else and a new advice column, Ask Minerva, is born. Soon everyone is engaged in trying to discover the mystery columnist's identity as well as the identity of her correspondents.Seven years have passed since Rosa's husband's disappearance and now he's been declared legally dead. And her secret lover (that all the villagers know about) wants to marry her. Bravo! Except Rosa is uncertain and when she's uncertain she tends to run away. That's why she's taken her son Carlito to Venice for a week. As Rosa's relationship unravels, Carlito does some unraveling of his own and inches closer to uncovering the mystery of his father's identity. Back in the village, Rosa's best friend Assunta is lonely. Perhaps that?s why Assunta falls so quickly and naively for Enzo, the smooth-talking bottle cap salesman.Every villager, from the hairdresser to the barman and each one in between, has an opinion on Bianca's column, Ask Minerva! The young hairdresser's assistant has trouble with her marriage to a man with a wandering eye, not to mention other body parts, and at the Kennedy Bar, the men gather to laugh over the columnist, Ask Minerva's advice until they begin to realize that it's their wives who are requesting the advice.

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ebook cover of The Meadowlands, by Kate Kelly
Inanna Publications | 29 June 2024

In a near future dominated by institutions, technology, and government control, children are raised in state homes and have no concept of family, with the exception of Terran and his younger sister, Brooke. Together with their friends, Taylor and Simon, they often steal from the local market to subsidize their diet.Running from the authorities after a raid goes wrong and looking for a place to hide, Terran is drawn to a vibrant green glow behind a crumbling city wall. It's an archway with a small opening that has fallen away, like a window into a different world-the world of the Beigfur. The Beigfur once shared the earth with humans, but now exist in a parallel universe where they have learned to live in harmony with nature.Centuries before, the Beigfur used the last of their technology to place a glamour between the worlds to protect themselves from the destructive ways of Man. Climbing through the archway, Terran, Brooke, Taylor, and Simon inadvertently tumble into The Meadowlands, where an unexpected, life-changing adventure begins.Speaking to the confusion of the modern era, The Meadowlands explores society's impact on nature and the environment, the importance of family, and the challenges of coming of age in a world of technology and isolation.

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ebook cover of Concrete Women, by Tara Atluri
Inanna Publications | 29 October 2025

People who live in South Asian cities re-shape politics and actualize constitutional rights, in parks, on playgrounds, and in city streets. Each chapter in this book discusses feminist, Transgender, and queer movements in urban India and Pakistan. The author has interviewed those who are part of a generation of unabashedly courageous, intersectional feminists who are living and working in South Asia and share their first-hand stories. These activists stage protests and artistic interventions in a time period of legal reforms regarding queer rights, public debates regarding sex, the rise of urbanization, and growing forms of Internet literacy and accessibility. Concrete Women is a rumination on the distances between life and death, between unremitting violence and the possibility of justice.

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ebook cover of A Watch of Nightingales, by Catherine Walker
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2025

When Emily leaves her restrictive home in Canada to study art in London, England, she longs to prove herself as an artist, trying to carve a path for herself towards financial security. But her dreams don't receive a warm welcome, as her disapproving English relatives believe that the only respectable path for a woman is marriage.Before Emily can prove the worth of her artistic career, she falls ill and finds herself trapped in a sanatorium, forming an unlikely friendship with Beth, a Florence Nightingale nurse assigned to her care. As a web of intrigue and poisonings tightens around them, Beth and Emily find themselves in a race against time to prevent an attempted murder.

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ebook cover of Echo Chamber, by Renee Norman, Carl Leggo
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2025

Echo Chamber is a follow-up on Renee Norman and Carl Leggo's Hearing Echoes, which was a collection of poetry that moved between two strong voices-a man and a woman-focusing on family relationships in all their intersections and differences.Echo Chamber releases following the death of co-author Carl Leggo and serves as a love letter to him from surviving author, Renee Norman, remembering his love and their previous work together.

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ebook cover of No Wrong Seasons, by Brenda Hartwell
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2025

Dieter lives in a small lakeside community in southern Quebec, where it is possible to hide, and at the same time, where nothing is hidden. A discovery in the forest results in a chance meeting with Hazel, a reclusive visual artist who becomes his mentor.When Dieter's childhood friend K is institutionalized by her parents following a suicide attempt, Dieter embarks on a mission to seek answers. As her situation worsens, Dieter confides his fears to his mentor. Hazel intuits echoes of her own traumatic past in K's story, and she is compelled to leave the comfort of her bitterness and seek redemption in action.

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ebook cover of This May Be The Year, by Carole Giangrande
Inanna Publications | 14 August 2025

These insightful poems invite the reader to reflect on the bond of animal and human life- both the shadows that trouble it and the hope that emerges in its presence. It begins with explorations of the natural world, moving into the equally natural place of human loss and present events that haunt us. Finally, the poems enter the fears and concerns of our moment- the destruction of nature, war, and violence- returning once again to life and hope as the unexplainable gifts that nature gives.

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ebook cover of Poetry Marching for Sindy, by Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
Inanna Publications | 30 July 2024

Dive into the powerful narrative of Poetry Marching for Sindy, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau's response to the disappearance of Sindy Ruperthouse, a woman from the Abitibiwinik First Nation who went missing in 2014. In this poignant seventh literary work, Bordeleau navigates the raw emotions of rage and sorrow as she bears witness to one family's search for their daughter in the ongoing national tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. Through her evocative longform poem, with profound sensitivity Bordeleau brings readers along on her quest for understanding and justice in th face of inexplicable violence and rampant injustice. Poetry Marching for Sindy is both a lament for a missing daughter and a celebration of women's voices and the resilience of communities in the face of tragedy. Join Bordeleau on a journey of grief, longing and hope as she honours Sindy's memory and amplifies the voices of those demanding justice and closure. Poetry Marching for Sindy is a testament to the enduring strength of the human spirit and the unwavering power of collective action.

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ebook cover of Power, by Sky Curtis
Inanna Publications | 30 July 2024

Wry, forthright Home and Garden reporter Robin MacFarland has somehow gotten herself-along with her best friend and investigative journalist colleague Cindy-assigned by their newspaper editor to examine the deep-rooted causes of homelessness in Toronto, Ontario. Their investigation quickly reveals the generational effects of a hydroelectric plant built in Quebec that displaced a large population of Indigenous people to Ontario with little to no support. When the Premier of Ontario dies at Robin's family cottage in Muskoka, Robin sets about proving that he was murdered against a tide of objection from the local police force. Robin needs to figure out exactly how his death was disguised to look like an accident, what the premier's part in a dirty web surrounding the creation of more electric power, who knocked him off, and finally, how all of this impact her family. Power is the fourth installment in the Robin MacFarland Mystery series.

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ebook cover of Sigrene´s Bargain with Odin, by Zoë Landale
Inanna Publications | 29 June 2024

Making a deal with Odin, the most powerful of the Norse gods, is a bad idea. Sigrene, who is considered one of the lowest of the low in Asgard, the Norse city of the gods, knows any dealings with Odin could get her killed, but after her friend is murdered, she is desperate to get justice for the girl. When Sigrene learns the killer will be coming for her next, she's pushed into action. What can she sacrifice to persuade the Norns, the three Fates, to teach her to spin magic to uncover the murderer's name? Between Odin, the Valkyrie warriors and the dragon who gnaws on the roots of the World Tree, Sigrene makes powerful enemies at every level of the Norse Nine Realms. And every choice she makes leads her into more perilous places. No one alive has ever returned from the deepest of the Hel Realms: how can Sigrene?This unique, epic poem explores little-known Norse mythology and pays special attention to form, sound, and imagery. Sigrene's Bargain with Odin contemplates the age-old quandary of where our loyalties lie, and how to act with integrity to find peace in a troubled world.

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ebook cover of Zulaikha, by Niloufar-Lily Soltani
Inanna Publications | 29 June 2024

In the winter of 2007, Zulaikha is travelling from Amsterdam to Tehran when she is approached by Kia, a family acquaintance she hasn's seen for many years, who is on the same flight. Kia's father has passed away and she is flying home to attend his funeral. In a shocking twist, Zulaikha suspects that Kia may have had information about her missing brother, Hessam, and their mutual friend, Abbass, who was murdered before Hessam's disappearance during the Iran and Iraq War.When the flight is suddenly cancelled, and Zulaikha is later taken into custody and questioned about her relationship with Kia by both the European and Iranian authorities, who ultimately confiscate her passport, a tense thriller unfolds revealing the impacts of war and the consequences for one young woman unknowingly caught in the crossfire of greed, power, and international politics.This sweeping novel explores many timely topics including issues related to gender, class, race, and interracial marriage. It also sheds light on the tumultuous history of Iran from a new perspective. The novel reveals a forty-year period of war and upheaval in the Middle East, and specifically, in Zulaikha's home territory of Khuzestan, which boasts the bulk of Iran's oil reserves, a place of intense tension between Iran and the U.S. still today.

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ebook cover of A Fall Afternoon in the Park, by Mehri Yalfani
Inanna Publications | 26 June 2023

With its twenty short stories, A Fall Afternoon in the Park invites the reader deep into the interior worlds of Iranian women living in both Iran and Canada. In "Rainy Day," a little girl longs for a doll with golden hair; in "Adopted Child," a successful business professional delays having a baby but then discovers a secret; an educated woman finds herself cleaning the home of a wealthy, illiterate woman to pay the bills in the story "Adam"; and, in the titular story, a family is divided (literally) when the mother loses her job and they must make difficult decisions about their future. In these varied, compelling snapshots of family, friendship, culture, tradition, discrimination, class issues, and struggle, Mehri Yalfani offers glimpses into the challenges and joys of immigrants' and refugees' lived experiences in the Canadian diaspora.

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ebook cover of The House of Izieu, by Jan Rehner
Inanna Publications | 7 September 2020

p>The House of Izeiuis a novel inspired by the life and experiences of Sabine Zlatin who, as a Jew using a fake identity, managed to find families to care for Jewish children who were in French refugee camps. She created a safe home for a number of other children called "The House of Izeiu" which is now a museum. Unfortunately, she was not able to save the 44 children in her care. After one wonderful year of freedom in that house they were discovered, and Klaus Barbie ordered their deportation to Auschwitz where they were killed. Sabine's husband was also caught with two teenage boys he was helping escape and was also eventually killed. Sabine, suffering from loss and the guilt of not having saved the children, manages to continue contributing to the underground efforts as well as efforts to reunite people after the war's end.

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ebook cover of A Harsh and Private Beauty, by Kate Kelly
Inanna Publications | 29 October 2019

A Harsh and Private Beauty, is about the life and loves of Ruby Grace, now in her 89th year, on a train journey with her granddaughter back to Chicago, the city of her birth. When the book opens, Ruby is living in a retirement care home, but as a young woman, she was a jazz and blues singer, once trained for a career in opera. The novel traces Ruby's grandparent's immigration from Ireland to New York City, her father, Daniel Kenny's life in 1920s Chicago-the era of gangsters, nightclubs, rum-running and Prohibition-and Ruby's subsequent life in Montreal and Toronto. Headstrong and talented, Ruby struggled with the conventions of the times, was trapped in a marriage that forced her to give up her singing career, and in love with another man who shares her passion for music. Now, on the train headed back to a city she cannot remember, to a daughter she hardly knows, Ruby tries to look honestly at herself and the choices she has made, choices that affected not only her children, but her grandchildren. Ruby has a stroke on route, leaving the disconnected story of her life and love in the hands of her granddaughter, Lisa, who must reveal a secret to her father, Ruby's son, that her grandmother guarded all her life.

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ebook cover of The Dowager Empress: Poems by Adele Wiseman, by
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2019

Adele Wiseman, lifelong writing friend of Margaret Laurence, is best know for her novels, The Sacrifice, winner of the Governor-General's Award in 1956, and Crackpot, Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Award in 1974. She also wrote essays, plays, and children's books. Her poetry, the work of the last ten years of her life, and mostly unpublished, ranges in form from haiku to sonnets to subversive feminist epic; in content from poems about poetry ("Instructions for Poems in Progress"), to love poems ("In Our Play), to nature poems ("Mysteries of Flight"), to family poems, and to political poems, including "The Dowager Empress Suite." This is Adele Wiseman writing in her most personal voice. The Dowager Empress: Selected Poems by Adele Wiseman rounds out our knowledge of a major Canadian writer.

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ebook cover of The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution, by Lisa De Nikolits
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2019

The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution is about a couple experiencing a mid-life crisis. The husband loses his job as editor of a financial magazine. Neither are happy with their aging bodies. He seems to have gotten by with charm and frozen emotions. The wife has no idea how angry she is with him for his detachment. It is her idea to sell the house and just travel. But he is not coping well with retirement, so he simply walks off a ferry in Australia and leaves her. He steals a cat (well, he steals an expensive SUV that happens to have a cat onboard) and he flees Sydney, ending up in Apollo Bay, a few hours south-west of Melbourne, where he falls in with a group of anarchists and punk rockers in a tattoo parlour, planning revolution. Meanwhile, the wife sits tight in Sydney with no idea of where her husband might be or what happened. She moves into the red-light Kings Cross area, befriending the owner of the hostel, a seventy-year-old ex-cop drag queen from Saint John, New Brunswick, and waits to hear from her husband. When she learns that her husband is fine, consumed by wrath, she invokes the angry spirit of an evil nurse, a key player in the terrible Chelmsworth sleep therapy in which many patients died (historical fact). While Lyndon gets in touch with his original career ambition to become an artist and wrestles with anarchism and capitalism, Margaux gets in touch with her rage and meets people who can help her deal with it. A serio-comedic thriller about a post-retirement couple who embark on an unintentionally life-changing around-the-world adventure, The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution is about the meaning of life, healing from old wounds, romantic love at all ages, and how with love and passion, we can make a difference, at any age.

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ebook cover of A Palace in Paradise, by Mehri Yalfani
Inanna Publications | 14 May 2019

A Palace in Paradise is a novel about the complex Iranian refugee and immigrant community in Toronto and the way in which one woman's death changes the lives of many others. The people in this community are connected by family ties, cultural ties, romance, and the fact that, as immigrants, they not only share a culture, but they also share a past of political violence. Several were at one time imprisoned in Evin, a notorious jail in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Some were unable to withstand the daily torture and constant physical pain they were subjected to in Evin, and thus began to cooperate with the jail's authorities and participate in the torturing, even execution, of other prisoners. Many are incapable of having a normal life even after being released from the prison, and having immigrated to Canada to start a new life. Parvaneh, a social worker, accepts her friend, Ferdous, even though she may be a traitor. She is pitted against Nadereh, a refugee who learns that Ferdous was a traitor and feels duped. Guilt is a major theme in this book as characters deal with remorse from having caused the death of another by accident, or by not acting sooner, or by betrayal to the authorities. Life in exile is not easy and some succumb to their dark past with fatal consequences, while others struggle to forgive and find solace.

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ebook cover of Rotten Peaches, by Lisa De Nikolits
Inanna Publications | 14 October 2018

Rotten Peaches is a gripping epic filled with disturbing and unforgettable insights into the human condition. Love, lust, race and greed. How far will you go? Two women. Two men. One happy ending. It takes place in Canada, the U.S. and South Africa. Nature or nurture. South Africa, racism and old prejudices - these are hardly old topics but what happens when biological half-siblings meet with insidious intentions? Can their moral corruption be blamed on genetics - were they born rotten to begin with? And what happens when they meet up with more of their ilk? What further havoc can be wreaked, with devastating familial consequences?

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ebook cover of Amah and the Silk-Winged Pigeons, by Jocelyn Cullity
Inanna Publications | 14 October 2017

Winner of the 2018 American Bookfest Best Book Award for Historical Fiction Shortlisted for the 2018 GOETHE Book Awards for Post-1750s Historic Fiction Shortlisted for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Finalist for the 2018 International Book Award for Historical FictionLucknow in 1856 is the most opulent city in India. If the English take it over, the royal family and centuries of rich, cosmopolitan culture will disappear. Amah, personal bodyguard to the King, wants to make sure this doesn't happen. Ex-Queen, Hazrat Mahal, has the money to fortify against the English. Both women are daughters of African slaves who have grown in wealth and power thanks to the reign of the Indian royal family in Lucknow. The English are a small number, compared to the native population in the city, but Lucknow has never known war. When the women decide to take on the English colonists who declare rule, what will be the ultimate price of the women's loyalty to the royal family and to the place they've grown to love?Amah and the Silk-Winged Pigeons draws on the lost histories of the women descended from African slaves who resisted English rule during the 1857 uprising in Lucknow, India. The book is about the event that triggered Queen Victoria's reign in India for almost a century, and illuminates new and important female, Muslim perspectives on what has been called the first war of Indian independence.

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ebook cover of No Fury Like That, by Lisa De Nikolits
Inanna Publications | 14 October 2017

No Fury Like That is a literary thriller about life and death-and the power of second chances. What is your moral compass? Julia Redner has to die in order to find her answer to this question-but is she really dead or is she being given the opportunity to rethink her life while solving an intricate puzzle of murders? And she does not miss the opportunity to exact righteous revenge! With an unforgettable cast of characters, a surprising plot with twists and turns, and a powerful, determined female protagonist, the novel takes you on a fast-paced, funny, adventurous ride, exploring themes of love, friendship, revenge and family-and the transformation of character in impossible circumstances. Ultimately, No Fury Like That is about metamorphosis, and how friendship is more important than success, love is more important than money, and family is more important than power.

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ebook cover of The Widow's Fire, by Paul Butler
Inanna Publications | 14 June 2017

The Widow's Fire explores the shadow side of Jane Austen's final novel Persuasion, disrupting its happy ending and throwing moral certainties off balance. We join the action close to the moment when Austen draws away for the last time and discretely gives an overview of the oncoming marriage between heroine Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. This, it transpires in The Widow's Fire, is merely the beginning of a journey. Soon dark undercurrents disturb the order and symmetry of Austen's world. The gothic flavor of the period, usually satirized by Austen, begins to assert itself. Characters far below the notice of Anne, a baronet's daughter, have agendas of their own. Before long, we enter into the realm of scandal and blackmail. Anne Elliot must come to recognize the subversive power of those who have been hitherto invisible to her - servants, maids and attendants - before she can defend her fiancé from an accusation too dreadful to be named. Captain Wentworth himself must learn the skills of living on land; the code of honour and secrecy which has protected him on deck no longer applies on the streets of Bath.

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ebook cover of Dawning of a New Garden, by Tara Nanayakkara
Inanna Publications | 14 September 2016

Confronted with the task of re-inventing her life, young widow Priya grieves by researching spiritualism for a new age magazine and spending time in the garden her late husband, Gabe, had tended. Human contact is limited to an elderly nursing home resident, Jeevan, who is from her father's native land of Sri Lanka. Soon Priya is drawn further into Jeevan's world, which includes a mysterious nephew, Suresh. Despite rigid religious views, Suresh takes advantage of Priya's vulnerability. Soon an isolated Priya finds herself facing the prospect of either single motherhood or a loveless marriage. While her Canadian and Sri Lankan friends Meg and Shobi conduct a tug of war over Priya's destiny, Suresh's jealous and coercive tactics prevent her from exploring a third possibility, her kindly neighbour Ryan, the only person whose presence gives Priya a genuine sense of solace. In this sequel to the author's earlier novel, Priya's World, Priya life is mired in uncertainty, but as spring begins to stir, the garden Gabe planted begins to speak to her of new life and fresh possibilities.

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ebook cover of The Effects of Isolation on the Brain, by Erika Rummel
Inanna Publications | 14 September 2016

There are many forms of isolation, and Ellie is becoming an expert on them: unloved and ignored as a child in Vienna, up against cultural barriers in Canada, holed up in a cabin in the north. What are the effects of isolation on the brain? Is it loneliness and boredom that makes Ellie take risks and say yes to Vera, her glamorous but deeply disturbed friend? Vera has been abused as a child and is now putting her trust in a charlatan healer. Together they entangle Ellie in a murderous game of fantasy and revenge. Marooned on the shores of a frozen lake, Ellie must make her way out of the Canadian bush and the wilderness of her own soul. It is a journey through hostile territory - neglect, deceit, confusion, betrayal - but Ellie is a fighter. All she needs to survive is a soulmate. Don't we all?

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ebook cover of The Largeness of Rescue, by Eva Tihanyi
Inanna Publications | 31 March 2016

The big theme-perhaps the only theme-is the narrative that unfolds between the bookends of our birth and our death.  Each of us is born into a time and place-our present-and must answer the questions only we can answer for ourselves:  Who are we? What will we do?  What choices will we make?  The Largeness of Rescue helps us travel along our own storyline by doing what the best art does so well: engages us with ourselves and with our world, and encourages us to slow down and consider our very humanness.

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ebook cover of The Girl Who Was Born That Way, by Gail Benick
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2015

The Girl Who Was Born That Way is the story of the Berk family, not exactly an ordinary Jewish family, trying to bury its Holocaust past while starting over in post-war USA. The novel centers on the dynamics between the family's four daughters, the two oldest girls who grew up in the Lodz Ghetto and he two youngest who came of age in an idyllic American suburb. The story is told from the perspective of the youngest child in the family, whose sisterly love and compassion drive the novel's action. Can her curiosity bring the family's dark Holocaust history into the open? Can she save her anorexic third sister whose short stature and physical anomalies are a source of family embarrassment and shame? The Girl Who Was Born That Way considers the life of immigrants living in the diaspora, the miracle of their survival and their helplessness when faced with the disabling condition of their third daughter.

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ebook cover of Understories, by Elizabeth Greene
Inanna Publications | 29 September 2015

Understories is an exploration of things visible mostly to the inner eye and memory, things below the surface. The book began as a riff on Mark Strand's brilliant title, "Planet of the Lost Things," and it is an exploration of loss, but also of recovery through memory and language. The first part, "A Perfect Afternoon" follows an unfulfilled romance through significant moments and years to elegy for what never was and for the loved one himself. The romance is juxtaposed with epiphanic moments of reflection, joy and dismay, perceptive growth points. The second section, "Functional Families," considers the theme of family, especially mothers, and moves through varying visions of family to a sort of resolution though the poet's mothering of her own son. The third section, "Going the Distance for Poetry," focuses on poetry and art, some of the connections that make the poetic quest possible, literary, artistic and natural (looking at mountains, listening to trees). The final section, "Lost Cities," looks at New York, Toronto, Florence, ancient Rome, Mayan Mexico through the lens of history and memory, alternating sorrow for loss with belief in the power of poetry to preserve. Once of the themes of Understories is "where does the story end?" and the book takes the long view, writing beyond the apparent ending.

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ebook cover of Between the Cracks She Fell, by Lisa De Nikolits
Inanna Publications | 29 August 2015

When Joss finds herself having to make mortgage payments without help from her depressed, stoner boyfriend who has just moved out, and the company she works for folds leaving her suddenly unemployed, she is forced to sell her house, on which she takes a financial loss, and decides to camp out in a vacant complex of school buildings to give herself time to decide what to do next. It turns out the building is used by a gang of teenagers for wild, drug-fueled parties and Joss soon finds herself both repelled by their charismatic evil leader, as well as sexually attracted to him. She knows he is dangerous even before she finds his girlfriend's dead and violently abused body in the school library. During this time, she meets and befriends two other people in difficulty: Emma, a narcissistic thief living with her dog in a stolen car and Ashley, a young homosexual who is heartbroken by the fact that he has been expelled from the Jehovah's Witness church because he is gay. When her former boyfriend reappears as a born again Christian, Joss is immersed in a journal she found that contains the thoughts of a Muslim teenager who becomes increasingly radicalized. Her struggle to understand her former boyfriend and this young man's spiritual quests prepare her to make some hard decisions about her future. Between the Cracks She Fell is about a woman who falls off the grid and the explosive consequences of betrayal, survival in troubled times, and the pervasiveness of religious domination.

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ebook cover of Dancing on a Pin, by Katerina Vaughan Fretwell
Inanna Publications | 14 June 2015

Dancing on a Pin is Katerina Fretwell's eighth poetry, and art, collection. Honest, stark, brave, and at times a humorous evoking of feelings and ideas, this collection of evocative poems is focused on the poet's husband's illness (cancer) and eventual death, her close sharing of this process, and the frustration of dealing with modern medical treatment, that is controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. But mostly, this is a series of poems that make meaning of two people on a journey.

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ebook cover of The Girl Who Was Born That Way, by Gail Benick
Inanna Publications | 14 June 2015

The Girl Who Was Born That Way is the story of the Berk family, not exactly an ordinary Jewish family, trying to bury its Holocaust past while starting over in post-war USA. The novel centers on the dynamics between the family's four daughters, the two oldest girls who grew up in the Lodz Ghetto and he two youngest who came of age in an idyllic American suburb. The story is told from the perspective of the youngest child in the family, whose sisterly love and compassion drive the novel's action. Can her curiosity bring the family's dark Holocaust history into the open? Can she save her anorexic third sister whose short stature and physical anomalies are a source of family embarrassment and shame? The Girl Who Was Born That Way considers the life of immigrants living in the diaspora, the miracle of their survival and their helplessness when faced with the disabling condition of their third daughter.

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ebook cover of Tumblehome, by Brenda Missen
Inanna Publications | 24 May 2022

On a warm August evening, Brenda Missen, a 37-year-old single, unattached writer, pitches her tent beside a lake in Canada's 7,600 square-kilometre [3,000 square-mile] Algonquin Provincial Park. She is on a four-night "reconnaissance mission," an hour's paddle from the parking lot, to find out if she has the capability-and nerve-to one day take a real canoe trip in the park interior by herself. Paddling and portaging from her campsite by day and surviving imaginary bear attacks by night, she decides she's ready. Then a ranger arrives to check her permit, and an inexplicable, powerful intuition tells her this is the person she's meant to marry. Going solo may not be necessary after all.But the fairy tale unravels. In the wake of a broken engagement to her One True Paddling Partner, Brenda ventures into the near wilderness on a series of solo canoe trips that blow all her perceptions of romance, relationships, God, and her own self (gently) out of the water. In our high-tech, urban age, when so many people are disconnected from the natural world, Tumblehome-part spiritual memoir, part travel adventure, and great part ode to the Earth-is a timely and important exploration of where our real roots lie.

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