Our Halifax location, also known as Bookmark II, is situated on the corner of Spring Garden Rd and South Park St in beautiful downtown Halifax. We’re directly across from the Public Gardens, and within walking distance to a number of fantastic stores, restaurants and cafes.
Make sure to stop in and say hello to Mike and the rest of our staff, and if you’re from out of town, send us a note or your special orders online!
Hope to see you soon!
April 14, 2012, marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The “unsinkable subject,” the story of the giant ship that sank on its maiden voyage, has become one of our most potent modern parables and enduring metaphors. The image of the ship’ s plunging stern is an icon, and expressions like “rearranging the deck chairs” and “hitting the iceberg” need no explanation.
Yet on a cold, clear April night the disaster happened to real people— stokers, millionaires, society ladies, parsons, parlourmaids— people who displayed a full range of all-too-human reactions as the events of the night unfolded. With new research, R.M.S. Titanic weaves the dramatic story of that fateful crossing with compelling portraits of the people on board— those who survived, and those who tragically lost their lives— allowing us to place ourselves on that sloping deck and ask, “What would we do?”
Time: Sunday, April 22 @ 2:30p
Location: Spring Garden Memorial Public Library
Admission: Free
It’s never too late to find the life you’ve always wanted. Bobbi French is just an ordinary person seeking an extraordinary life. For her, that means taking the boldest leap of faith in her life: moving to France to fulfill a lifelong dream. All she has to do is give up her successful medical career in Canada, sell her house, pare down her possessions to only what would fit in a carry-on suitcase, and buy a one-way ticket to Semur-en-Auxois. She also has to ignore the common opinion that she’s lost her mind, walking away from it all for a fantasy. Finding Me in France is a chronicle of the delights and deprecations of making a dream come true. Landing in a small village in Burgundy with only her expectations of adventure to guide her, she details the unaccountable stumbling blocks and the unforeseen joys of her often awkward, frequently perplexing, always entertaining journey of discovery. Illustrated with inspiring photographs, a funny and perceptive account of her experience of a lifetime.
Time: Saturday, April 28th @ 7p
Location: Uncommon Grounds, 1030 South Park St., Halifax, NS
Admission: Free
About the Author:
Linden MacIntyre is a co-host of the fifth estate and the winner of nine Gemini Awards for broadcast journalism. His bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award and his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2006, and won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize. His second novel, The Bishop’s Man, was a #1 national bestseller, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year, and has been published in the U.K. and the U.S. and has been translated into eight languages.
About Why Men Lie:
This latest novel from Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Linden MacIntyre, Why Men Lie, offers a moving and emotionally complex conclusion to the Cape Breton trilogy. Two years after the events of The Bishop’s Man, we’re introduced to Effie MacAskill Gillis, sister of the troubled priest Duncan. It’s 1997, and Effie is an independent, middle-aged woman working as a tenured professor of Celtic Studies, but her complicated and often disappointing love life has left her all but ready to give up on the opposite sex. Then suddenly, a chance encounter with a man on a Toronto subway platform gives Effie renewed hope. J.C. Campbell is an old friend she hasn’t seen for more than 20 years – an attractive, single man who appears to possess the stability and good sense she longs for. Effie met her last husband, Sextus, in her hometown of Cape Breton when the two were still children. As they grew older together, and started a family, she soon learned that when it came to other women, Sextus couldn’t be trusted. After one too many betrayals, Effie leaves him behind, and so when she and J.C. seem to hit it off, his relaxed, open demeanour is a welcome change. But after a happy start to their relationship, cracks begin to show, and J.C. proves himself to be just as unpredictable as the others: one evening Effie spots him in a seedy part of town, but he denies ever having left his house; when she notices a scratch below his eye, he lies about its cause, blaming it on the cat. Then J.C., a journalist, becomes unhealthily engrossed in a story involving a convict on death row, and he and Effie begin to drift apart. Although he still checks in sporadically and insists there’s nothing going on, she soon learns he has a deeply personal reason for his covert trips to that seedy downtown street. In fact, it turns out there’s a lot about his past that Effie doesn’t know, and a lot he’s still learning himself. While J.C. is busy chasing his own past, Effie is rarely able to escape her own. Family ties and hometown connections to Cape Breton mean her two ex-husbands – Sextus happens to be the cousin of her first husband, John – are constantly coming and going in a turbulent mess of comfort and commotion, while her grown daughter, Cassie, brings some unexpected news of her own. After all of her experience in relationships with men, Effie thought she knew all she needed to about what to expect, and how to maintain her self-sufficiency. Why do men lie?, she wants to know. But whether it’s for love, for protection, or for more selfish reasons, Effie soon learns that no amount of experience can prepare you for what might resurface from the past, and for the damage that might cause, emotionally or otherwise.
Time: Monday, April 16th @ 7p
Location: Saint Mary’s University, Atrium 101
Admission: Free
The big-hearted story of a ten-year-old boy, a notebook and the meaning of the universe.
Even though he’s only ten years old, Arthur Williams knows lots of things for sure. He knows all about trilobites, and bridge, and that he doesn’t want to be Victoria Brown’s boyfriend, and that tapping maple trees causes them excruciating pain. He knows his real dad is probably flying a hot-air balloon across the
Pacific, or paving a city with moss. And he knows that Simon, the guy who pretends to be his dad, does absolutely nothing interesting. But when Arthur finds a weather-worn notebook in the woods behind his house, all he has are questions. Why was its author, Phil, so sad, and why does it end on page 43? Suddenly, there are other questions too: Why do people abandon people? Why do they abandon themselves?
Arthur embarks on a top-secret investigation to find out who Phil is—or was. But getting straight answers from grown-ups is impossible, and before long, the only thing he knows for sure is that everything he thought he knew about life is probably wrong and that what he has to do is ten times bigger than what he can do.
Told through a trio of voices: the wildly imaginative and perpetually awkward Arthur, Phil’s manic journal and the forest that watches them both, Ben Stephenson’s debut novel is a heartbreaking story of love, death and the unspeakable pain of being small.
A Matter of Life and Death Or Something marks the exciting debut of an inventive and gifted storyteller.
Time: Saturday, April 7th @ 7:30p
Location: Khyber Arts Society, 1588 Barrington St.
Admission: Free
About Amy Jones:
Originally from Halifax, Amy Jones is a graduate of the Optional Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at UBC. Her short fiction has appeared or in several Canadian publications, including The New Quarterly, Grain, Prairie Fire, Event, The Antigonish Review, maisonneuve and 08: Best Canadian Stories. In 2006, she was the winner of the CBC Literary Award for Short Story in English. Her first short fiction collection, What Boys Like, is the winner of the 2008-2009 Metcalf-Rooke Award and is published by Biblioasis. Amy currently lives in Toronto.
About Rebecca Rosenblum:
Rebecca Rosenblum is a writer and editor living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She grew up in a small town near Hamilton, Ontario. She holds an Honours English degree from McGill, a publishing certificate from Ryerson, and a masters of English and creative writing from University of Toronto. She works in publishing during the day, writes short stories evenings and weekends, and…that’s pretty much it. She spends her remaining time on the bus or asleep or both.
Rebecca’s short fiction has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the Danuta Gleed Award, longlisted for the Relit Award, and she was herself a juror for the Journey Prize 21. Her work has been seen in Exile Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly, Journey Prize Stories 19, Maisonnueve, Coming Attractions, and Best Canadian Stories.
Her first collection of stories, Once, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and was one of Quill and Quire’s 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. The Maclean’s blog called Rebecca “Canlit Rookie of the Year” in 2008. Her second collection, *The Big Dream*, is forthcoming from Biblioasis in September 2011.
Time: Tuesday, March 27th @ 7p
Location: SMU Atrium, Room 101, 923 Robie St.
Admission: Free
