Fiction that reconsiders, challenges, reshapes, and/or upholds national narratives of history has long been an integral aspect of Canadian literature. Works by writers of historical fiction (from early practitioners such as John Richardson to contemporary figures such as Alice Munro and George Elliott Clarke) propose new views and understandings of Canadian history and individual relationships to it. Critical evaluation of these works sheds light on the complexity of these depictions.

The contributors in "National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada" critically examine texts with subject matter ranging from George Vancouver's west coast explorations to the eradication of the Beothuk in Newfoundland. Reflecting diverse methodologies and theoretical approaches, the essays seek to explicate depictions of "the historical" in individual texts and to explore larger questions relating to historical fiction as a genre with complex and divergent political motivations and goals. Although the topics of the essays vary widely, as a whole the collection raises (and answers) questions about the significance of the roles historical fiction has played within Canadian culture for nearly two centuries.

A manuscript is discovered inside a hollowed out home economics textbook: it is the story of a young man from a small town who comes to the big city at the height of the Cold War. His accidental discovery of a gay subculture culminates in a feverish, dreamlike initiation that pushes him irrevocably toward crisis.

"Contra/Diction" is an anthology of gay men's fiction to re-establish the queer in queer. The book is a gay men's fiction anthology that represents the plurality of gay identity; an attempt to show that not all gay men "drive to Ikea, go to the gym, and buy new ties for their management-level positions before taking in the latest stage hit," as suggested in such well-known men's anthologies as the Men on Men series. Instead, the stories found in "Contra/Diction" are not easily digestible; their writers ask difficult questions of themselves and the world around them in a way which makes them truly "queer." The nightmare and paradise of sexuality, love, and community are viewed from different perspectives, along with issues of race, economics, violence, politics, and homophobia. The 32 stories, by writers living in the US and Canada, include dark fantasies about hustlers and one-night stands, and cautionary tales about murderers and dreamers. As might be expected, AIDS is a spectre that haunts many of these stories, represented in themes of anger, beauty, and bereavement. In addition, there are statements from the contributors, in which they write about their motivations and concerns as queer male writers at the cusp of the millennium. "Contra/Diction" wishes to speak loudly from the margins, articulating a specific storytelling "queerness" that is politicized, sexualized, and without mercy. Shortlisted for the American Library Assoc. Award for Gay Literature

What do literary dystopias reflect about the times? In "Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase, "contributors address this amorphous but pervasive genre, using diverse critical methodologies to examine how North America is conveyed or portrayed in a perceived age of crisis, accelerated uncertainty, and political volatility.

Drawing from contemporary novels such as Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," and the work of Margaret Atwood and William Gibson (to name a few), this book examines dystopian literature produced by North American authors between the signing of NAFTA (1994) and the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (2011). As the texts illustrate, awareness of and deep concern about perceived vulnerabilities--ends of water, oil, food, capitalism, empires, stable climates, ways of life, non-human species, and entire human civilizations--have become central to public discourseover the same period.

By asking questions such as "What are the distinctive qualities of post-NAFTA North American dystopian literature?" and "What does this literature reflect about the tensions and contradictions of the inchoate continental community of North America?" "Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase "serves to resituate dystopian writing within a particular geo-social setting and introduce a productive means to understand both North American dystopian writing and its relevant engagements with a restricted, mapped reality.