2009 Releases:

Temporary Monsters
by: Ian Rogers
Chapbook, 40 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-07-5
$8.00 USD

Felix Renn is a private investigator in a supernatural world, an alternate reality where a dark dimension called The Black Lands co-exists alongside our own. Travelling to and from The Black Lands is dangerous - and illegal - but that doesn't stop some of the creatures that reside there from crossing over into our world from time to time. After a man goes berserk in a posh Toronto restaurant, Felix suddenly finds himself torn between both worlds as he is drawn into a deadly game of movies, murder, and monsters.

Autographed?

NoYes

Operation Dickhead
by: Mike Bryant, with illustations by: William Brian Maclean
Chapbook, 56 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-06-8
$8.00 USD

Mark Allread is angry. He is angry because he works in the tech support department of a major Internet provider. But not angry enough to do anything other than complain to his long-suffering girlfriend. That all changes when the President of the World passes a new law requiring anybody he dislikes to have their heads replaced with genitalia. Mark, in response, decides to build an army of the surgically altered in hopes of overthrowing the President and returning people's heads to their original, non-penisized state. They're here. They're Dickheads. Get used to it.

Autographed?

NoYes

Primeval Wood
by: Richard Gavin
Chapbook, 36 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-03-7
$8.00 USD

When Neil Keller noticed the pale set of eyes staring out at him from the shaded tangles of hawthorn, he experienced what he believed to be a wholly new form of elation, one that crackled and thrummed well beyond the accepted human spectrum. He soon realized that what blinked at him were not eyes at all, but tiny white blossoms; flowers that nonetheless seemed to glare out from some ecstatic mask. Neil exhaled a blend of laughter and a sigh. Nature would never allow a thicket to sprout the perfectly-formed fetish of some leering daemonic child.Yet that was what Neil was seeing, truly seeing.

Autographed?

NoYes

Fresh Blood
with stories by: Dave Alexander, Kelli Dunlap and Bob Freeman
Chapbook, 44 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-02-0
$8.00 USD

Growth Spurts: Twelve-year-old Kendall’s body is going through changes, and he’s not happy about it. But when a very long, mysterious hair sprouts in the middle of his chest, he discovers that there are much worse growing pains than puberty. He’s about to meet the monster within...
Left for Dead: When Susan's 8-year-old daughter is brutally attacked, she becomes consumed by her need for revenge but mere punishment is not enough. Susan learns that sometimes those being given the lessons are not those doing the learning.
Mourn Not the Sleepless Children: From the Highlands of Scotland comes a gothic tale of horror and redemption, where the "Wickedest Man in the World" must stand face to face against an unimaginable evil... an evil that hungers for human flesh and blood.

Narcotics // Flora
by: Dane A.W. Swan
Chapbook, 32 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-04-4
$6.00 USD

Narcotics // Flora, the first official poetry collection by Dane Swan, is centred around three series: A Dozen Roses, Sweet Melancholy Toronto West and a collection of works loosely based on transit. With a truly urban style that borrows from slam poetry, lyrical poetry and form poetry, Swan introduces the reader to his unique brand of "post-slam" poetry. The Toronto-based Bermudian writer is predominately known as a spoken-word artist. He has performed spoken word in over a dozen cities throughout North America. Performances of his poetry have also been featured on CDs and vinyls that have been distributed across Canada and the Atlantic.

Section K: The Demon Subway of North York
by: Timothy Carter
Chapbook, 16 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-05-1
OUT OF PRINT

There’s something weird going on in the Toronto subway system. Strange lights appearing in the Sheppard Avenue tunnels. People turning into living zombies with no personality. Rumours of a "ghost train." And when anything unexplained - possibly paranormal - turns up in any Canadian city, who ya gonna call? Howard Plank, of the RCMP’s Section K, that’s who. Too bad Howard is an alcoholic doofus who’s obsessed with the memory of his ex-wife. How will he battle against an evil phantom subway driver and his soul-sucking demon, when he’s so hammered he doesn’t even remember why his superiors sent him there? Find out in this hilarious new spin-off story from Timothy Carter, based on characters from his sci-fi comedy novel Section K!

2008 Releases:

Redemption Roadshow
by: Weston Ochse
Chapbook, 36 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-01-3
$8.00 USD

Dolan Gibb has driven the same section of Arizona desert highway for years, where crosses and shrines litter the side of the highway like confetti for the dead. He’s passed them thousands of times and never given them a second’s glance. To him, like everyone else, they are places of remembering, places to mourn. But when the Long Cool Woman and El Hombre Quemado (The Burned Man) suddenly appear with the Redemption Roadshow, Dolan’s entire world is spun on end as he learns that his whole life may have been a waste and that the shrines aren’t what they appear to be and, in fact, they never were.

REDEMPTION ROADSHOW has been nominated for a 2008 BRAM STOKER AWARD in the LONG-FORM FICTION CATEGORY!

On Tenterhooks
by: Liisa Ladouceur
Chapbook, 52 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-9-3
$8.00 USD

ON TENTERHOOKS is the first poetry collection from Liisa Ladouceur. Her work is a dance with death: girls drown in Texas floods, Mayan boys are massacred, body parts wash up on shore, and memories are ravaged by the cruel sands of time. Wandering treacherous territories, from America's Southern highways to the back alleys of Cairo, the poems are haunted by that which is found missing. Liisa weaves magic words plucked from prayers and pop music lyrics into restless free verse, sonnets and glosas that confront universal monstrosities and leave behind a few of their own -- a tentative balance of sanctuary and solicitude.

Everyone's Everyman
by: Dale Percy
Chapbook, 48 pages
ISBN: 978-1-926611-00-6
$7.00 USD

Eveyone gets The Blues... and when you get The Blues, you have to sing them out. However, not Everyone knows how to sing The Blues, but there is someone who can help. The Everyman.
EVERYONE'S EVERYMAN uses spiritual overtones and regal aspirations to transcend age and gender in stories of love lost, love that never was, friends who have gone, sweet memories, and memories we'd rather soon forget. Through these, poet Dale Percy bring Everyone a Word Jazz soundtrack to their late night lament. And he throws in a music lesson, for good measure. Misery loves company, my friend, so sit back, relax and don't be afraid to sing along.

Nothing to Lose
by: Steve Vernon
Chapbook, 36 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-8-6
$8.00 USD

So you think you know all about superheroes? Those guys in the capes and the lightly starched spandex speedoes. Leaping tall buildings and always getting the girl.
You don't know nothing.
Join Steve Vernon, Nova Scotia's hardest working horror writer, as he takes you into the world of Captain Nothing. It's a world without hope, a world that is as cold and dark as a landlord's heart, three days after the rent is due. It's a world that could give the Batman a case of the squirming night fears. NOTHING TO LOSE is a collection of stories that will show you the darker side of courage. It will show you the shadows in a hero's heart. Go on. I dare you to take a closer look.
You've got nothing to lose.

A revised and updated edition of Steve Vernon's untraditional and irreverent superhero collection Nothing to Lose.

Poems for Addiction, Sex and Sanity
by: Kate Leadbeater
Chapbook, 44 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-7-9
$7.00 USD

Kate Leadbeater's singular poetic voice has been dazzling and amusing audiences in the Toronto spoken-word scene since 2006. Sometimes quirky and funny, sometimes yearning and romantic, and always full of life, Kate writes the kind of poems that entertain you whether you're hearing them from a slam stage or reading them off a chapbook page.
From sex fantasies to childhood nostalgia, from Peter Mansbridge to a distant French lover, from a dialogue with the whole world to a conversation with a barfly - Kate covers an unusual blend of subjects. She does it in a style that's readable, often prosaic, yet also willing to have fun with language and imagery. Poems for Addiction, Sex and Sanity is a collection that manages to reflect a strong personal voice while staying aware of its audience.

---

2007 Releases:

Words Written Backwards
by: Gemma Files
Chapbook, 36 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-6-2
$8.00 USD

Deep winter, Algonquin Bay. Something underground is poisoning the land. Rez elders have called in Joe Tulugaak, Innu shaman for hire, to investigate. But just as he thinks he’s closing in on the problem, what looks like a half-frozen teenaged girl suddenly walks out of a gathering snowstorm, collapsing at Joe’s feet.
But Judy Kiss isn't really a teenager - or even (completely) human, anymore. What's hidden at the bottom of the abandoned mine isn't what either of them thinks it might be. And Joe himself has more in common with Judy than either of them could have ever guessed...

Sea Change
by: Adebe D.A.
Chapbook, 44 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-5-5
$7.00 USD

Sea Change is a collection of poems that forays into a reading of the fluid space between experience and memory, clarity and tumult, reality and myth. The poems also chronicle the writer’s relationship to questions of love and distance, at times answerable only by a leap of faith. Adebe D.A.'s debut collection delves into notions of freedom often submerged in chaos, and the transformative potential of not looking back.

The Distance Travelled 2: A Little Slice of Heaven
by: Brett Alexander Savory and Gord Zajac
Cover art by: Homero Gilani
Chapbook, 40 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-3-1
$6.00 USD

Why are there no shoes in the afterlife? What's the deal with mystical cats always trying to save the world? What's a growl-quack sound like? What does Jesus really look like? How did Pigboy survive his bath in the flame pit? What's all this crap about Hell having a basement? Did any of you even read the first novel? Why are there so many rabbits in heaven? Was it some sort of invasion? Did they stage a coup? And who the hell is this Gord Zajac chimp, anyway?
The answers to these and many other incredibly unimportant questions are answered within the pages of this hilarious yet poignant novella - the official sequel to Brett Alexander Savory's 2006 runaway smash hit bestseller The Distance Travelled, which was also hilarious yet poignant. But longer. And released by a different publisher. And by "runaway smash hit bestseller," we mean "not even selling out of its limited edition 400-copy print run."

Autographed?

NoYes

General Slocum's Gold
by: Nicholas Kaufmann
Chapbook, 40 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-4-8
$8.00 USD


Sackett is no ordinary thief. He was born with strange abilities, powers he uses to pull off dangerous and unusual heists. Fresh out of Rikers and eager to get back in the game, he's got his eye on a fortune in gold rumoured to be buried on a deserted island in New York's East River. It should be the easiest job he's ever pulled. But North Brother Island isn't as deserted as he thought. The dead are waiting beneath the waves, waiting for Sackett, waiting to protect their treasure.

GENERAL SLOCUM'S GOLD has been nominated for a 2007 BRAM STOKER AWARD in the LONG-FORM FICTION CATEGORY!

Section K
by Timothy Carter
Novella, 122 pages
ISBN 0-9739231-1-3
$10.00 USD

The world is ending. Aliens are invading, the sky is falling, and cults are being... cultish. What does Canada have that can stand against that? Howard Plank and Johnny Tall, agents of the RCMP branch dedicated to all things paranormal and weird: Section K.
Sounds good, except Howard is a drunken loser and Johnny is a womanizing jerk. And Section K is an underfunded joke. And they're all we got. The apocalypse is starting to look good...

Autographed?

No Yes

Guilt Pasta
by: Jeff Cottrill
Chapbook, 42 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9739231-2-4
$6.00 USD

Mix equal portions of Spiderman, Roger Ebert and Ernest Hemingway. Stir in a pinch of the Ugly Duckling and a dash of the girl who broke your heart. Now add a sadistic army brat who clobbers mice with hammers, a jailed sex killer who feels bad about neglecting a parakeet, and an obnoxious co-worker who won't shut up about his fantasies of turning Canada into a fascist regime. Blend well. Serve immediately.
Result: The third chapbook by Toronto's notorious spoken-word satirist, Jeff Cottrill. This new collection of short stories and monologues combines quirky characterizations, black humour and offbeat cultural references in a way you won't soon forget. Exploding nerds, bad cockney accents, a journey to the afterlife, lots of very good beer... Guilt Pasta has something for everyone. (Best recommended with lots of parmesan cheese.)

Autographed?

NoYes

Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery. Thank you! Please direct any Online Shoppe queries to burningeffigy@sympatico.ca.