Helen Humphreys: 16 books

For readers of H is for Hawk and The Frozen Thames, The Ghost Orchard is award-winning author Helen Humphreys’ fascinating journey into the secret history of an iconic food. Delving deep into the storied past of the apple in North America, Humphreys explores the intricate link between agriculture,...

We tend to look at landscape in relation to what it can do for us. Does it move us with its beauty? Can we make a living from it? But what if we examined a landscape on its own terms, freed from our expectations and assumptions? This is what celebrated writer Helen Humphreys sets out to do...

In her third book of poetry The Perils of Geography, Helen Humphreys charts a world that opens under the prodding and promise of language. With the wit and eye for evocative detail which gained readers for both Gods and Other Mortals and Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios, Humphreys probes...

Winner of the 2000 Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2000 Pat Lowther Award and the 2001 Milton Acorn Memorial People’s Poetry Prize Physical and fiercely lyric, Helen Humphreys' Anthem is a litany of want. A song of poverty and of desire, of the reach forward...

Alcuin Citation in 1991 for excellence in book design in Canada. Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios is a work in the hazard of retrieval. What sticks in retrospect? Seldom what you would expect, not always the happiness. Otherwise you could train for life, you could actually learn from grandmothers,...

A “delicate and incandescent” novel of love, loss, escape, and the ways the natural world can save us amid the chaos of war (San Francisco Chronicle). World War II. Downed during his first mission, James Hunter is taken captive as a German POW. To bide his time, he studies a nest of redstarts...

“Elegant . . . illuminates the impact of war on ordinary people . . . an elegy and a celebration.”—Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle On the evening of November 14, 1940, Harriet Marsh stands on the roof of the historic Coventry cathedral and marvels at the frost glittering beneath...

Precisely etched meditations on public and private experience, charged landscapes and reconceived Greek myths.

In its long history, the river Thames has frozen solid forty times. These are the stories of that frozen river. So begins this breathtaking and original work, which contains forty vignettes based on events that actually took place each time the historic Thames froze solid. Spanning more than...

“A perspective on love and loss [that] will haunt you for days.”—Entertainment Weekly Alice's boyfriend abandons her dog, which joins a feral pack. Every evening, Alice and five others gather at the forest's edge, trying to call their dogs back. Most have similar tales of jealousy or...

Leaving London to grow food for the war effort, Gwen discovers a mysterious lost garden and the story of a love that becomes her own. This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and...

Global support for improving child welfare and upholding the rights of children is strong, but in practice often fails to recognise the emerging gap between traditional child welfare practices and the evolving nature of child vulnerability. This book takes an international perspective on child...

Helping young people towards maturity demands that they be mature themselves. Without such maturity it is difficult to relate fully to the challenging behaviour of some adolescents. A relationship that is genuine, non-judgemental, compassionate, empathic and unconditionally loving is necessary in...

No matter where you are, what you are doing, whether you are alone or with others, you are always in relationships. Whatever the relationship, it is always a couple- relationship, whether this, for example, is a parent with a child, a lover with a lover, a manager with an employee, a student with...