Talonbooks: 174 books

Everything changes on what begins as a typical day in the life of the aptly named Mr. Mann, a forty-eight-year-old, buttoned-down, middle management type in a pinstriped grey suit, who feels himself losing touch with his job, his wife, his children, and the rest of his urban life. He wins tickets...

In this riotously funny new comedy from Morris Panych, we meet Alma, a seasoned career shoplifter who prefers the five-finger discount over some lousy seniors’ day deal. But it’s not just an empty wallet that leads Alma to a life of petty crime – it’s also her strong convictions about social...

Sexy, provocative, and challenging, Espresso is a rich, dark, bitter hit of comedy and sensuality. A single actress alternately narrates and enacts her own and her family’s history along with an uninvited narrator/actor, Amante (“lover” in Italian). We are never sure whether Rosa has created Amante or he has created her. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

This beloved classic has fascinated and enchanted generations. Not since 1938 has there been a more readable or stageable prose translation. Its fast-paced plot and rich tapestry of gallant soldiers, starving poets, musketeers, marquises, and bluestockings delight, but at its heart is Cyrano: masterful...

In the fall of 1918, a world ravaged by war was suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague. As fear of the dreaded “Spanish” flu fills the town of Unity with paranoia, drastic measures are taken. But when the disease descends upon the town despite their precautions, the citizens begin to turn on each other, looking for a scapegoat.

Seventeen-year-old Jimmy faces the archetypal Canadian dilemma: stay home in Canada, with all its obvious flaws, or go south (young man) to the Land of Opportunity. Should he stay with his mother at the Bordertown Café or haul off with his trucker father? Family history is the border’s story writ large. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Two friends pass the time together playing a made-up game in which they name people, places, or things and debate whether they are successful or not; in other words, whether they are winners or losers. Each friend seeks to defeat the other, and because one of these men grew up economically privileged...

Lowell is no average teenager-and his grandfather, Hardy, is no conventional role model. Hardy may once have owned the abandoned orchard at the heart of town where they spend time trespassing and discussing ethics as if it were nothing more than a game. When inspector Milton shows up to investigate a murder, Lowell’s truths are put to the ultimate test.

How much do we value clean water? Enough to stop our industrialized way of life from degrading it? The documentary play The Watershed follows an artist and her family in the struggle to chart a sustainable course between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship. Largely constructed...

It’s June 1981. Farmers face a debt crisis with interest rates as high as 20 percent. More than three hundred men are arrested after police sweeps of Toronto bathhouses, yet Pride Toronto launches its first gay-pride parade. Everything’s changing, including fifteen-year-old Esther, who escapes...

Henry W. Tate (d. 1914), a Tsimshian informant to ethnographer Franz Boas, first wrote these stories in English before giving Boas Tsimshian equivalents between 1903 and 1913. Boas published them in the much-consulted ethnology classic, Tsimshian Mythology (1916). In Ralph Maud’s selection of the...

A man returns after thirty years to sit with a relative on her deathbed. Kemp’s problem is: she’s not dying fast enough. Through Kemp’s own errors and inattentiveness, the visit that he thinks will take a day or two stretches into a year. A play of mistaken identity, twisted circumstance, and surprising turns, this is one Vigil worth keeping.

This is the emotional story of a woman’s struggle to acknowledge her origins. Grace, a Native girl adopted by a White family, is asked by her birth sister to return to the Reserve for their mother’s funeral. Afraid of opening old wounds, Grace must find a place where the culture of her past can feed the truth of her present.

Canada’s most famous Aboriginal playwright, Tomson Highway, sets his latest theatrical achievement, The (Post) Mistress, in a not-so-distant past, when sending letters through the mail was still vital to communicating with friends and loved ones, and the small-town post office was often the only...