Some folks have a talent for finding trouble, no matter how good they try to be, especially Randy Craig. Maybe she shouldn’t date a cop. Maybe she should have turned down the job at the Folkways Collection library—a job that became a nightmare when a rich benefactor’s belligerent heir turned up dead. Randy tried to be good—honest!—but now she’s a prime suspect with a motive and no alibi in sight.

When an ‘80s New Waver starts liking Country Music, is it a sign of maturity? More than just selling all his Depeche Mode and Flock of Seagulls records, stay-at-home dad Bill Angus has some serious house-cleaning to do. With his wife, Julie, bringing home the bacon and their son, Sean, flexing wings of independence, Bill tries to rescue his stay-at-home dad neighbours from their foibles.

Making awareness into language is the act that binds the elements of Sally Ito’s newest collection of poetry, Alert to Glory. Whether the focus is on parenting, biblical texts, or on creativity itself, Ito discerns the moment in which the word might become wondrous—moments when the mind-bell is struck dumb, and the hollow fills with shuddering sound, agog with itself.

Paardeberg, South Africa is far from the Canadian prairies. In 1899, best friends from the small town of Portage la Prairie, Will and Mason, sign up with the Winnipeg Rifles’ “A” Company to fight in the Second Boer War. Here they meet Robert, the silent anthropologist from Alberta with a mystery he isn’t revealing; Claire, an Australian nurse, chafing under her parents’ glass ceiling; and Campbell Scott, a rebellious veteran with an African wife and a hot air balloon requisitioned by the army for spying.

Winnipeg artist and designer, Robert J. Sweeney, captures Winnipeg’s urban landscape in this remarkable ­collection of sketches, Portraits of Winnipeg: The River City in Pen and Ink. Each portrait brings to life in brilliant colour, the many faces of Manitoba’s “River City.”

Legends for a "New" Iceland

A land of volcanoes, geothermal pools, and barren wilderness, Iceland is full of mists and mystery. For a thousand years, its inhabitants passed down oral histories that included fantastical fables as a way to understand their strange land. For settlers escaping starvation in the wake of volcanic eruptions and economic hardship, Manitoba's Interlake area held further mystery.

Is he talking about botany or…hmmm…ahhh…well now. The very act of reading Steven Ross Smith’s fifth volume of his Fluttertongue series draws shock, secret smiles and out-loud exclamations from the most stoic, stuffedshirt readers of poetry.

In the spring of 1966 Ken Leishman stepped onto the tarmac of the Winnipeg Airport and into the pages of Canadian history. By then, the mastermind behind the country’s largest gold heist had already gained Dillingeresque notoriety as a gentlemanly bank robber. Toronto headlines had spread the news about the brazen and polite ‘Flying Bandit’. This time, he almost got away. Almost.