I have been researching and writing about the history of psychedelics for two decades. I am a professor of History and Canada Research Chair in the History of Health and Social Justice at the University of Saskatchewan. I became utterly inspired by the many different psychedelic projects that fascinated researchers across disciplines, regions, and world views. These psychoactive substances have been fodder for deep studies of consciousness, dying, mysticism, rituals, birthing practices, drug policy, Indigenous rites, mental illness, nursing, how to measure and give meaning to experience… the list goes on. To study psychedelics is to surrender yourself to endless curiosity about why things are the way they seem to be. The books on this list are just the tip of the iceberg in a diverse conversation that is erupting on this topic.
Kay Parley is a remarkable woman. Her book takes readers through her amazing life and the diverse experiences she encountered in an effort to make sense of her family history of psychiatric illness, her own institutionalization, and later her role as a psychiatric nurse and psychedelic guide. Against contemporary medical advice, Parley took LSD in Saskatchewan with Frances Huxley (Aldous’ nephew), and in this book, she explains how it gave her insights into her own excursions into madness and how to be a gentle guiding force for others who experienced disorientation, whether through illness or through mind-altering drugs.
"A revelatory account of the importance that psychiatric treatment and research from the 1950s has for mental health today." Jean Freeman, author of Fists upon a Star Before she became a psychiatric nurse at "The Mental" in the 1950s, Kay Parley was a patient there, as were the father she barely remembered and the grandfather she'd never met. Part memoir, part history, and beautifully written, Inside The Mental offers an episodic journey into the stigma, horror, and redemption that she found within the institution's walls. Now in her nineties, Parley looks back at the emerging use of group therapy, the…
My novel Venice Beach—like the five books I recommend here—has been classified as a “coming-of-age” novel, a classification that I have no quarrels with as long as it’s understood that coming-of-age is not regarded simply as a synonym for “adolescence” or “being a teenager.” The coming-of-age years—generally defined as between ages 12 and 18—are so much more than a period of life wedged between childhood and adulthood. Coming of age is a process, not a block of time; it is a hot emotional forge in which we experience so many “firsts” and are hammered, usually painfully, into the shapes that will last a lifetime.
You’re fifteen years old, living unhappily with your feckless parents and unstable older sister in a small town in Montana. And then your family implodes: your parents are arrested for bank robbery and your sister flees to parts unknown. As troubling as the premise is, Canada becomes even darker and more ominous as young Dell Parsons travels alone to Saskatchewan to live with erstwhile family friends, but in fact enters a whole new world of intrigue and violence. Dell is a stoic character, and you desperately want to see his life take a turn for the better. What you get instead is a case study in resiliency and survival. Ford’s prose is powerful; every word counts, every sentence pulls you deeper into the story.
First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later.
In 1956, Dell Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Dell and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva - from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family - was shy, artistic and alienated from their father's small-town world of money scrapes and living…
In my teenage years, it was sci-fi (and later fantasy) comedies that made me fall in love with reading. There was just something about exploring worlds where anything could happen mixed with the joy of laughter that kept drawing me back in. Naturally, in the many...many...years that followed, I've read countless novels from a wide variety of genres, but sci-fi comedy will always hold a special place in my heart.
Tired of spaceships and A.I.? Then how about a humorous take on sci-fi horror? If Twin Peaks were a comedy…and also a book…it would’ve been Anomaly Flats. Weird, disturbing events abound in this quaint Midwestern town where an ancient evil lurks behind the canned goods at the local Walmart, and–since they weren’t trying to kill me personally–many of them were hilarious. Or at least the way the characters reacted to them were hilarious. And in the end, isn’t that close enough?
Sci-fi gets wickedly fun in Anomaly Flats, the deliciously dark comedy from the author of Apocalypticon!
What readers are saying:
"Clayton Smith's work is imaginative, unique, and ridiculously entertaining. I didn't think anything could top Apocalypticon, but I was SO wrong."
"Its ongoing charm is hypnotic."
"Shove over, Christopher Moore…Weird Fun has a new author king!"
Somewhere just off the interstate, in the heart of the American Midwest, there’s a quaint, quirky town where the stars in the sky circle a hypnotic void….where magnetic fields play havoc with time and perception…where metallic rain and plasma rivers and tentacles in the…
I've read mysteries of all types since I was young. Unfortunately for my publishers, I like to write in several different genres too. Everyone loves a mystery, a puzzle, sussing out the hidden. If you think you don’t like mysteries, then I think you just haven’t found your genre yet. Reading a mystery is like treasure hunting, we all want to find the gold. I love clever dialogue, characters you want to meet in real life, and accompany them while solving a mystery. All the books I have recommended have an overarching mystery element. I write like that too, also, one element links all my books regardless of genre. Happy treasure hunting!
In this cozy mystery Mable and Violet are fast friends and have odd adventures. I think everyone needs a partner in crime, so to speak. This is a series; each book has a different theme, which I like. This story is set in a theatre, a one-act play competition in small town Saskatchewan, Canada. From my experience in little theatre odd things do happen. Like in my writing, this story has humour, intrigue, and enduring friendship. The added bonus, a theatre critic who has it coming. I like figuring out who had the biggest axe to grind and what motives each character is hiding.
Murder is a hard act to follow. All the drama does not take place on the stage at the Glenhaven Drama Festival. A collection of amateur actors with big egos land in Mabel Havelock’s hometown. And Mabel’s acting debut is not the only thing on her mind. Mysterious accidents and sabotage are plaguing the festival.
Mabel and her best friend Violet Ficher are determined to ferret out the culprit. The problem is why? Who has anything to gain? And why did Sherman have to die?
I grew up in the 60s and 70s, when people were often uncomfortable with anyone who had a disability. My sister had Down syndrome and this drew a lot of negative attention. I struggled with being overprotective of her and often angry at those who treated her differently. When I grew up I became an advocate, not only for my sister, but for others who struggled with being accepted because of physical or developmental disabilities. Early on I worked in a pretty awful institution. What I learned there inspired my novel, Free as a Bird. Like my sister, I moved on to do other things, including archaeology, journalism, and teaching for 27 years.
Twelve-year-old Emmaline and her mother are desperate for help with their farm and agree to take on Angus who has just been released from a hospital for patients with mental illness. At first they have the same fears and prejudice as people in town, but they come to learn that Angus is gentle and extremely knowledgeable. Thanks to him they have the best crop they’ve ever had. The most heroic point in the story is when one of the locals, Harry Record, leaves Angus far from town during a snowstorm with the expectation he will die. But as Angus struggles for safety he finds Harry’s little boy who was accidentally stranded in the storm and near death and gets him to the hospital in time to save his life.
Quote: "That man is from the mental, stay away from him."
This book was lovely to read because it was written…
It is 1965, and 12-year-old Emaline, living on a wheat farm, must deal with a family that is falling apart. When her dog, Prince, chases a hare into the path of the tractor, she chases after him, and her father accidentally runs over her leg, leaving her with a long convalescence and a permanent disability. Even worse, from Emaline's point of view, is that in his grief and guilt, her father shoots Prince and leaves Emaline and her mother on their own.
Despite the neighbors' disapproval, Emaline's mother hires Angus, a patient from the local mental hospital, to work their…
I love big books with strong thematic cores, sprawling casts, and curious timelines (from books that take place over four seconds to several decades) that explore what it means to be human on the most primal, unfiltered, and unflinching level. These books feature characters who are trying to reconcile the expectations they had for their lives, with their complicated realties. And yet, they simmer with warmth and hope, all of them reminders that there’s nobility in the struggle, and that there’s still plenty of room for joy, even when things don’t go as planned. Especially if they don’t. Ballsy, wise, and funny, these books speak to my existential comedic heart.
On the eve of the biggest performance tour of their career, members of the famous Prairie Chicken Dance Troupe find themselves food-poisoned and unfit to fly forcing a group of unlikely, inexperienced, and grossly unprepared alternates to take their place.
Chaos ensues at every stop across Europe. The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is an intricately choreographed exploration of identity, self-acceptance, and what it means to step up especially when it means stepping out of your social, physical, and spiritual comfort zones.
The perfect read if you’ve ever danced like nobody’s watching and somebody was in fact watching. Comedic, insightful, and wildly entertaining.
The hilarious story of an unlikely group of Indigenous dancers who find themselves thrown together on a performance tour of Europe
The Tour is all prepared. The Prairie Chicken dance troupe is all set for a fifteen-day trek through Europe, performing at festivals and cultural events. But then the performers all come down with the flu. And John Greyeyes, a retired cowboy who hasn't danced in fifteen years, finds himself abruptly thrust into the position of leading a hastily-assembled group of replacement dancers.
A group of expert dancers they are not. There's a…
I am a journalist, the author of 10 works of popular history, and, latterly, a playwright. For nearly 25 years, I have earned a living on the strength of my own writing. I have written one full-length play that was produced at an outdoor summer theatre in July 2023, and I have written three short plays for the Port Hope, Ontario Arts Festival. I now live in Peterborough, Ontario, about 90 miles northeast of Toronto, but have had a lifelong interest in the history of western North America by dint of having grown up in southeastern Saskatchewan and having worked as a journalist in Alberta in the early 1980s.
There are many reasons to love this book, and the subtitle says it all. This book is A History, A Story, And A Memory Of The Last Plains Frontier.
That last frontier was an arid, desolate corner of southwestern Saskatchewan where his American parents tried homesteading between 1914 and 1920 when Stegner was a child. The family returned to the U.S., but Stegner re-visited this land of his youth in the early 1950s and wrote one of the best accounts of the last frontier in the North American West.
'Enchanting, heartrending and eminently enviable' Vladimir Nabokov
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner's boyhood was spent on the beautiful and remote frontier of the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where his family homesteaded fro 1914 to 1920. In a recollection of his years there, Stegner applies childhood remembrances and adult reflection to the history of the region to create this wise and enduring portrait of pioneer community existing in the verge of a modern world.
'Stegner has summarized the frontier story and interpreted it as only one who was part of it could' The New York Times Book Review
When Merry Bell returns to her hometown of Livingsky, Saskatchewan, she faces three challenges: how to launch her new PI business, where to find cheap-but-decent living quarters, and finetuning her new identity as a transgender woman. Merry is an engaging, three-dimensional character, and, as a trans woman, she’s in a special spotlight in this new mystery series.
Canadian author Anthony Bidulka broke new ground for diversity in 2003 when he published the first (Amuse Bouche) of his eight-book mystery series with its gay private investigator, Russell Quant. And he’s broken new ground again this year with Merry Bell.
The book ends with a teaser, which likely means there will be more Merry Bell adventures to come.
Going home is not always the best answer. Forced to leave behind her big city dreams, Merry Bell returns to Livingsky Saskatchewan to start over. Living with plenty of secrets, but no money, friends, or place to live during a prairie winter-all while trying to start her own PI business-proves to be more challenging than she imagined. With a first case that quickly turns more dangerous than it first appeared, Merry must deal with a dodgy client, the murder of the surgeon who performed her gender affirming surgery, and more than one mysterious stranger.
I am a Canadian who enjoys travelling and reading historical fiction from around the world. Having had the privilege of living in a variety of areas in Canada from coast to coast since childhood, I can recall listening to the stories of past generations and exploring the locations where some of these events took place. With a passion for Canada’s beauty and the history of its people, I like to research, explore, and incorporate these passions into my own stories.
Since discovering details of my personal genealogy, and learning that I am Metis, I have become more interested in learning about the history of the Metis people of Canada. During my research, I came upon this book which I found to be an enjoyable mix of fiction and history based around the battle between the Metis people of the prairies and the Canadian government. I particularly enjoyed how the author showed the strengths and weaknesses of real historical figures, Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, through the eyes of strong female characters.
Many French Canadians are the descendants of the King's Daughters (Filles du Roi) of this era. Many also are the descendants of mixed French and Algonquian marriages. Wikipedia…The Métis (/meɪˈtiː(s)/; French: [metis]) are Indigenous peoples in the three Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta), as well as parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States.
Fiction. Native American Studies. Louis Riel arrives at Batoche in 1884 to help the Métis fight for their lands and discovers that the rebellious outsider Josette Lavoie is a granddaughter of the famous chief Big Bear, whom he needs as an ally. But Josette learns of Riel's hidden agenda — to establish a separate state with his new church at its head — and refuses to help him. Only when the great Gabriel Dumont promises her that he will not let Riel fail does she agree to join the cause. In this raw wilderness on the brink of change, the…
I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
I was not born in Canada and I only arrived here in my early twenties without being aware of the colonial past or present of my new home. This study has helped me understand that portion of Canadian history and its present repercussions. Equally important, it has highlighted how Indigenous persons have and continue to be dehumanized, excluded and ‘othered’ across the country.
No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life. But what about a sixty-seven-year-old man who dies in a hospital in police custody with a large, visible, purple boot print on his chest? Or a barely conscious, alcoholic older man, dropped off by police in a dark alley on a cold Vancouver night?…
