Service Alert
July 1 - Canada Day
CELA will be closed on Tuesday, July 1st for Canada Day. Our office will reopen and our Contact Centre services will resume on Wednesday, July 2nd. Enjoy your holiday!
CELA will be closed on Tuesday, July 1st for Canada Day. Our office will reopen and our Contact Centre services will resume on Wednesday, July 2nd. Enjoy your holiday!
Showing 1 - 12 of 12 items
By Cherie Dimaline. 2023
From the bestselling author of Empire of Wild, a wickedly subversive, deliciously imaginative, deeply feminist novel of contemporary witches on…
the rise—a book that only the supremely gifted storyteller Cherie Dimaline could write.Lucky St. James, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother, Stella, are about to be evicted from their apartment. Bad to worse in a heartbeat. Then one night, doing laundry in the building's dank basement, Lucky feels an irresistible something calling to her. Crawling through a hidden hole in the wall, she finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a story-book hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M. Which alerts Salem-born Meena Good, finder of a matching spoon, to Lucky's existence. One of the most powerful witches in North America, Meena has been called to bring together seven special witches and seven special spoons—infused with magic and scattered to the four directions more than a century ago—to form a magic circle that will restore women to their rightful power. Under the wing of the international headhunting firm VenCo, devoted to placing exceptional women in roles where they can influence business, politics and the arts, Meena has spent years searching out witches hiding in plain sight wherever women gather: suburban book clubs, Mommy & Me groups, temp agencies. Lucky and her spoon are number six. With only one more spoon to find, a very powerful adversary has Meena's coven in his sights—Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself. As the clock ticks toward a now-or-never deadline, Meena sends Lucky and her grandmother on a dangerous, sometimes hilarious, road trip through the United States in search of the seventh spoon. The trail leads them at last to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where Lucky's final showdown with Jay Christos will determine whether the coven will be completed, ushering in a new beginning, or whether witches will be forced to remain forever underground.By Jessica Johns. 2023
A haunting debut novel where dreams, family and spirits collide Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver…
apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometres away in the far reaches of Treaty 8. Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her older sister and Kokum before their untimely deaths. As Mackenzie's life spirals into a living nightmare—crows are following her around and she's getting texts from her dead sister on the other side—it becomes clear that these dreams have terrifying, real-life consequences. Desperate for help, Mackenzie returns to her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties in her small Alberta hometown. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her. Haunting, fierce, an ode to female relations and the strength found in kinship, Bad Cree is a gripping, arresting debut by an unforgettable voice.By Michelle Porter. 2023
National BestsellerFive generations of Métis women argue, dance, struggle, laugh, love, and tell the stories that will sing their family,…
and perhaps the land itself, into healing in this brilliantly original debut novel.Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means.Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother.Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife.Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without.And Mamé, in the Afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her; she must find a way to loose herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.By Michelle Porter. 2023
National BestsellerFive generations of Métis women argue, dance, struggle, laugh, love, and tell the stories that will sing their family,…
and perhaps the land itself, into healing in this brilliantly original debut novel.Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means.Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother.Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife.Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without.And Mamé, in the Afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her; she must find a way to loose herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.By Amanda Peters. 2023
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains unsolved for…
nearly fifty years July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.By Alicia Elliott. 2023
A Most Anticipated Book Pick by Toronto Star, CBC, The Walrus, Good Morning America, Bustle, CrimeReads, Electric Literature, Debutiful, Ms.…
Magazine, The Nerd Daily, and PasteA mind-bending, gripping novel about Native life, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequencesOn the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve is nothing but supportive; and they’ve recently moved into a new home in a wealthy neighborhood in Toronto. But Alice could not feel like more of an imposter. She isn’t connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from their white, watchful neighbors. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making. She has gotten everything she always dreamed of, after all. But then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can’t explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbors’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it’s too late.Told in Alice’s raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching look at inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable—and surreal—climax.By Amanda Peters. 2023
A four-year-old girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that remains unsolved for nearly…
fifty years July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister's disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come. In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is frustratingly overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family's secret for decades. A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across timeBy katherena vermette. 2023
*INSTANT TORONTO STAR BESTSELLER*"The Circle is a polyphonic masterpiece." —Erika T. Wurth, author of White HorseFrom the award-winning and #1…
bestselling author of The Break and The Strangers comes a poignant and unwavering epic told from a constellation of Métis voices that consider the fallout when the person who connects them all goes missing The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle—everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected—and let them share. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure. Others went in angry and left a different kind of angry. Learned how the blame belonged on the system, the history, the colonizer, the big things that were harder to change than one bad person. The day that Cedar Sage Stranger has been both dreading and longing for has finally come: her sister Phoenix is getting out of prison. The effect of Phoenix’s release cascades through the community. M, the young girl whom she assaulted, is triggered by the news. Her mother, Paulina, is worried and her cousin is angry—all feel the threat of Phoenix’s release. When Phoenix is seen lingering outside the school to catch a glimpse of her son, Sparrow, the police get a call to file a report—but the next thing they know, she has disappeared. Amid accusations and plots for revenge, past grievances become a poor guide in a moment of danger, and the clumsy armature of law enforcement is no match for the community. Cedar and her and Phoenix’s mother, Elsie, continue down different paths of healing, while everyone in their lives form a circle around the chaos, the calm within the storm, and the beauty in the darkness. Fierce, heartbreaking, and profound, Vermette’s The Circle is the third and final companion novel to her bestsellers The Break and The Strangers. Told from various perspectives, with an unforgettable voice for each chapter, the novel is masterfully structured as a Restorative Justice Circle where all gather—both the victimized and the accused—to take account of a crime that has altered the course of their lives. It considers what it means to be abandoned by the very systems that claim to offer support, how it feels to gain a sense of belonging, and the unanticipated cost of protecting those you love most.By G. A. Grisenthwaite. 2023
Curious, uncanny tales blending Indigenous oral storytelling and meticulous style, from an electric voice in Canadian fictionThese are stories that…
are a little bit larger than life, or maybe they really happened. Tales that could be told 'round the campfire, each one-upping the next. Tales about a car that drives herself, ever loyal to her owner. Tales about an impossible moose hunt. Tales about the Real Santa(TM) mashed up with the book of Genesis, alongside SPAM stew and bedroom sets from IKEA.G.A. Grisenthwaite's writing is electric and inimitable, blending meticulous literary style with oral storytelling and coming away with a voice that is entirely his own. Tales for Late Night Bonfires is truly one of a kind, and not to be missed.By Alicia Elliott. 2023
A Most Anticipated Book Pick by Toronto Star, CBC, The Walrus, Good Morning America, Bustle, CrimeReads, Electric Literature, Debutiful, Ms.…
Magazine, The Nerd Daily, and PasteA mind-bending, gripping novel about Native life, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequencesOn the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be: She&’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve is nothing but supportive; and they&’ve recently moved into a new home in a wealthy neighborhood in Toronto. But Alice could not feel like more of an imposter. She isn&’t connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from their white, watchful neighbors. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making. She has gotten everything she always dreamed of, after all. But then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can&’t explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbors&’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn&’s survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it&’s too late.Told in Alice&’s raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching look at inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable—and surreal—climax.By Jessica Johns. 2023
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA haunting debut novel where dreams, family and spirits collide Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver…
apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometres away in the far reaches of Treaty 8. Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her older sister and Kokum before their untimely deaths. As Mackenzie’s life spirals into a living nightmare—crows are following her around and she’s getting texts from her dead sister on the other side—it becomes clear that these dreams have terrifying, real-life consequences. Desperate for help, Mackenzie returns to her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties in her small Alberta hometown. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her. Haunting, fierce, an ode to female relations and the strength found in kinship, Bad Cree is a gripping, arresting debut by an unforgettable voice.By katherena vermette. 2023
&“The Circle is a polyphonic masterpiece.&” —Erika T. Wurth, author of White HorseFrom the award-winning and #1 bestselling author of The…
Break and The Strangers comes a poignant and unwavering epic told from a constellation of Métis voices that consider the fallout when the person who connects them all goes missing The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle—everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected—and let them share. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure. Others went in angry and left a different kind of angry. Learned how the blame belonged on the system, the history, the colonizer, the big things that were harder to change than one bad person. The day that Cedar Sage Stranger has been both dreading and longing for has finally come: her sister Phoenix is getting out of prison. The effect of Phoenix&’s release cascades through the community. M, the young girl whom she assaulted, is triggered by the news. Her mother, Paulina, is worried and her cousin is angry—all feel the threat of Phoenix&’s release. When Phoenix is seen lingering outside the school to catch a glimpse of her son, Sparrow, the police get a call to file a report—but the next thing they know, she has disappeared. Amid accusations and plots for revenge, past grievances become a poor guide in a moment of danger, and the clumsy armature of law enforcement is no match for the community. Cedar and her and Phoenix&’s mother, Elsie, continue down different paths of healing, while everyone in their lives form a circle around the chaos, the calm within the storm, and the beauty in the darkness. Fierce, heartbreaking, and profound, Vermette&’s The Circle is the third and final companion novel to her bestsellers The Break and The Strangers. Told from various perspectives, with an unforgettable voice for each chapter, the novel is masterfully structured as a Restorative Justice Circle where all gather—both the victimized and the accused—to take account of a crime that has altered the course of their lives. It considers what it means to be abandoned by the very systems that claim to offer support, how it feels to gain a sense of belonging, and the unanticipated cost of protecting those you love most.