Why do we read? What do we cherish in a book? What is the nature of a masterpiece? What do Alice Munro, Albert Camus, and the great Polish experimentalist Witold Gombrowicz have in common? In the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Kundera, Douglas Glover's new essay collection fuses his long experience as an author with his love of philosophy and his passion for form. Call it a new kind of criticism or an operator's manual for readers and writers, The Erotics of Restraint extends Glover's long and deeply personal conversation with great books and their authors. With the same dazzling mix of emotion and idea that characterizes his fiction, he dissects narrative and shows us how and why it works, why we love it, and how that makes us human. Erudite and obsessively detailed, inventive, confessional, and cheeky, these essays offer a brilliant clarity, a respite in an age of doubt. They raise the bar.

A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR 2012
"Glover is a master of narrative structure."
--Wall Street Journal
In the tradition of E.M. Forster, John Gardner, and James Wood, Douglas Glover has produced a book on writing at once erudite, anecdotal, instructive, and amusing. "Attack of the Copula Spiders" represents the accumulated wisdom of a remarkable literary career: novelist, short story writer, essayist, teacher and mentor, Glover has for decades been asking the vital questions. How does the way we read influence the way we write? What do craft books fail to teach aspiring writers about theme, about plot and subplot, about constructing point of view? How can we maintain drama on the level of the sentence--and explain drama in the sentences of others? What is the relationship of form and art? How do you make words live?
Whether his subject is Alice Munro, Cervantes, or the creative writing classroom, Glover's take is frank and fresh, demonstrating again and again that graceful writers must first be strong readers. This collection is a call-to-arms for all lovers of English, and "Attack of the Copula Spiders" our best defense against the assaults of a post-literate age.
Douglas Glover is the award-winning author of five story collections, four novels, and two works of non-fiction. He is currently on the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program.
Praise for Douglas Glover
"A master of narrative structure." - Darin Strauss, author of "Half a Life," "Wall Street Journal"
"So sharp, so evocative, that the reader sees well beyond the tissue of words into ... the author's poetic grace." - "The New Yorker"
"Glover invents his own assembly of critical approaches and theories that is eclectic, personal, scholarly, and smart ... a direction for future literary criticism to take." - "The Denver Quarterly"
"A ribald, raunchy wit with a talent for searing self-investigation." - " The Globe and Mail"
"Knotty, intelligent, often raucously funny." - "Maclean's"
"Passionately intricate." - "The Chicago Tribune"
"Darkly humorous, simultaneously restless and relentless." - "Kirkus Reviews"

The beguiling "Woman Gored by Bison Lives" is from Douglas Glover's 1991 Governor General Award-nominated story collection, A Guide to Animal Behaviour. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also part of the six@sixty collection.

The Stockton Saga continues. Deputy U.S. Marshal Cole Stockton must escort a fugitive who fled to Canada to avoid a murder warrant back to Judge Wilkerson's court in Denver. With prisoner in tow, he discovers that his lady friend, horse rancher Laura Sumner, is overdue to deliver remounts to Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory.

Stockton comes upon devastation. Three of Laura's men are dead, the remaining wranglers wounded and horseless, and Laura is missing. When the lawman searches for Laura and the perpetrators he must also keep reign on his prisoner. In the wilds of Wyoming, he realizes that utilizing the character and skills of the person under warrant are his only hope in the rancher's rescue.

From dealing with ambushers who outnumber him twelve to one, to facing a hired killer dispatched to execute him, to organizing and leading the rescue of Laura's trusted ranch hand from an evil Ranchero in Mexico, Cole Stockton embodies justice as he proves himself a man to reckon with.

A novel of the Old West, packed with the drama and suspense of wild horse hunts, interpersonal relationships, and outlaws handled with determination and six-gun justice.

Flint Stockton served gallantly at San Jacinto and afterward moved northward intent on gathering stray cattle and horses to start a ranch. He meets Johanna McKenna on a westward wagon train; they marry and strike out on their own to build a family along the Comanche Trace, the ancient Comanche war trails.

Their first son, Cole, seems born to the gun. It is a wild, untamed, lawless land in an era where every mother's son carries a gun and knows how to use it. Some are better than others and with the reputation come stories about those who bear the title gunfighter. Cole's travels put him in contact with ruthless, savage men who are used to having their own way and taking what they want from hapless victims. He is forced to defend himself, and does so with fire in his soul. Out of necessity, he becomes a lonely man, drifting from town to town, untrusting except to himself.

From child on the Texas frontier to adulthood as a man behind the gun, Cole Stockton searches for his destiny, struggles with his direction in life, and emerges as a gunfighter whose moral code makes him a man of justice.

"A Shiny Christmas Star"-U.S. Marshal Cole Stockton and his best friend Laura Sumner both have fitful dreams about blankets of snow and starving "little" people. When they lead a quest to find the origin of the nightmare, four people come together in this heartwarming story about the true meaning of Christmas. "Star of Peace"-Cole has a dilemma: he can't find a suitable Christmas gift for Laura. In the meantime, a traveling medicine show advertises "the fastest and most accurate gunman in the world"-and Cole is glad to show him up. Laura has a hard time keeping track of her baked holiday goodies, and Cole discovers the peace of Christmas. "The Greatest Gift"-Just days before Christmas, Cole is en route to Laura's ranch. Laura has visions of frozen wastelands and senses that Cole is in extreme danger. When Cole is attacked by a large cougar, both man and beast fall into an icy river, hurtling toward the falls. Cole is hurt, lost, and alone in the frozen wilds of Colorado with seemingly no means of survival. Author Steven Douglas Glover delivers three classic stories about the faith, peace, and love that are Christmas.

Winner, Governor General's Award for FictionShortlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Commonwealth Writers' PrizeA 16th-century belle turned Robinson Crusoe, a female Don Quixote with an Inuit Sancho Panza -- this is the heroine of the novel that won the 2003 Governor General's Award. Elle is a lusty, subversive riff on the discovery of the New World, the moment of first contact. Based on what might be a true story, the novel chronicles the ordeals and adventures of a young French woman marooned on the desolate Isle of Demons during Jacques Cartier's ill-fated third and last attempt to colonize Canada. In this new readers' guide edition, Douglas Glover's carnal whirlwind of myth and story, of beauty and hilarity brings the past violently and unexpectedly into the present. His well-known scatological realism, exuberant violence, and dark, unsettling humour give his unique version of history a thoroughly modern chill.

"The Globe and Mail" Top 100

"Quill & Quire" Book of the Year

Amazon.ca Editors' Pick, Top 100

"Now" magazine, Top 10 Books

"Chatelaine," Favourite Books of 2013

Hailed over and over as the best book of 2013.

""This was, hands down, the best book I read in 2013." -- Steven W. Beattie, "The National Post

The return of Douglas Glover, one of Canada's most lauded and brilliant authors.

""Douglas Glover, the mad genius of Can Lit." -- Caroline Adderson, " The Globe and Mail

"Savage Love" shatters then transforms every conventional notion we've ever held about that cultural-emotional institution we call love.

""The most stylish, adventurous fiction this country has ever seen."" -- Quill & Quire

Absurd, comic, dream-like and deeply affecting, Glover's stories are of our time yet timeless, spectacular fables that stand in any era, any civilization.

""Eclectic and obsessive, abrasive and majestic."" -- Los Angeles Review of Books

"Savage Love" exposes the humanity lurking behind our masks, the perversities that underlie our actions. This is Douglas Glover country, and we are all willing visitors.

An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013A Globe and Mail Top 100 for 2013A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2013Longlisted, Frank O'Connor International Short Story AwardSavage Love marks the long-awaited literary return of one of Canada's most lauded and stylistically brilliant authors. Slyly holding forth with subversive wit, Glover skewers every conventional notion we've ever held about that cultural&emotional institution of love we are instructed to hold dear. Peopled with forensic archaeologists, members of ancient tribes, horoscope writers, dental hygienists, butchers -- Glover's stories are of our time yet timeless; spectacular fables that stand in any era, any civilization. Whether we be sexually ambiguous librarians or desperadoes of the most despicable kind, Glover exposes the humanity lurking behind our masks, and the perversities that underlie our actions. Absurd, comic, dream-like, deeply affecting (on the molecular level): these stories revel in inventiveness yet preserve a strict adherence to the real. Glover directs his focus to moments when things seem too incredible to be supported, pointing us to truths that exhibit human nature in contexts we all recognize. Savage Love marks the return of a master, with laugh-out-loud stories of the best kind, often completely unexpected, rife with moments of tragedy or horror. This is Douglas Glover country, and we are all willing visitors.

Hot on the heels of Douglas Glover's Governor General's Award for fiction for his riotous novel, "Elle," Goose Lane has brought back into print Glover's hilarious novel, "The South Will Rise at Noon," originally published in 1988.

At the centre of this story of a modern-day knight errant is Tully Stamper, a bankrupt, a liar, a tippler of corn juice and a deadbeat husband who has abandoned his wife and child no fraudulent psychiatric grounds. He is also one of the world's last innocents. The setting for Tully's adventure is Gomez Gap, Florida, a sliver of the Old South turned into a Hollywood backdrop for the movie recreation of a famous Civil War battle. From the time Tully stumbles out of the swamp and into bed with his sleeping ex-wife and her flamboyant film-director husband Oscar Osterwader to the moment when the enraged citizens of Gomez Gap carry him back to the swamp and leave him chained to a pine tree to die, we are Tully's co-conspirators, his partners in crime, sharing his pain, his optimism and his wayward wit.

A disarmingly intimate and energetic portrait at once hilarious and cautionary, crazy and bittersweet, "The South Will Rise at Noon" shows off Douglas Glover's true comic form.

Douglas Glover's acclaimed novel "The Life and Times of Captain N." is now available in a GLE Library edition. Originally published by McClelland & Stewart, the novel was acclaimed by the most respected critics in Canada and the US, and compelled "The Toronto Star"'s Philip Marchand to call Glover "one of the most important Canadian writers of his generation."

Set on the Niagara frontier in the final days of the American Revolution, "The Life and Times of Captain N." sees the revolutionary new world order from the standpoint of the losers. Hendrick Nellis, a Tory guerrilla, has also been a redeemer of whites abducted by Indians. His son Oskar finds himself sometimes allied with the Indians, sometimes at war with them. Hendrick kidnaps Oskar for King George's army, and Oskar, haunted by dreams and by books, is the teller of the tale. The book he intends to write is sketched out in his letters to George Washington and in the signs tattooed on his skin as mementos of his personal Indian wars.

"The Life and Times of Captain N." trespasses into the no-man's-land where the delirium of combat drives races, genders, languages, and ideas into a primeval frenzy. Master of the psyche's primitive depths, Douglas Glover draws the reader into a violent and erotic emotional whirlpool. Some of the incidents in "The Life and Times of Captain N." are based on the lives of the real Hendrick Nellis and his family, and, says Glover, "I have no doubt their descendents and relatives on both sides of the border will find much to complain of."

Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for FictionA Guide to Animal Behaviour is a stunning collection of stories by an author who is fast becoming one of the great, innovative story writers of his generation. Following on the heels of his widely acclaimed comic novel, The South Will Rise at Noon, Douglas Glover's new collection smashes all the fictional moulds.Urbane, stylish, and off-beat, the stories in this collection touch the lives of an astonishing array of characters whose common experience is of a world that is wayward yet full of marvels: a born-again Christian from Kentucky who loses his memory and ends up finding true love in glitzy Bel Air; two women who fall in love only to be parted when one dies of cancer; a man who goes to live in a cardboard box when his wife leaves him for the manager of a Toys R Us store; an eighteenth-century Canadian pioneer who believes he is being persecuted by witches.This is sophisticated fiction at its best. A maximalist writer of ideas, he packs his sentences with energy, exuberant imagery and amazing turns of thoughts.

And now we are 60. To mark this momentous occasion, the editors at Goose Lane have selected six tiny perfect stories for your reading pleasure. Authored by some of Canada's finest writers, they come from the sweep of Goose Lane's publishing history. Each story will be individually bound and gathered with the others in a nifty sleeve as a collection. Or they may be purchased individually in eBook singles. Here's what you can expect to find in this sexagenarian sextet:

ALDEN NOWLAN's "A Boy's Life of Napoleon," a brilliant piece of short fiction adapted from Nowlan's first novel, "The Wanton Troopers," written in 1960, but published posthumously in 1988.

The beguiling "Woman Gored by Bison Lives" from DOUGLAS GLOVER's 1991 GG-nominated story collection, "A Guide to Animal Behaviour."

Giller Prize-winner LYNN COADY's unforgettable Christmas story "The Three Marys," adapted from her award-winning debut novel, "Strange Heaven," published in 1993.

Commonwealth Prize winner SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN's glittering story "Simran" from her 1996 debut collection, "English Lessons and Other Stories."

KATHRYN KUITENBROUWER's haunting "What Had Become of Us," from her 2003 debut book of short fiction, "Way Up."

The extraordinary "Knife Party" from a new collection of stories by MARK ANTHONY JARMAN, forthcoming in the spring of 2015.

Douglas Glover's raucous first novel was a finalist for the "Books in Canada" First Novel Award and sold out its first and only print run in just one month. Now mystery fans and readers of literary fiction alike can once again enjoy this witty post-modern detective tale by the author of "Elle."

The eponymous central character in "Precious" is a boozy, burned-out reporter with an embarrassing nickname and a penchant for getting into trouble. After three failed marriages and a humiliating stint in a Greek jail, he will do anything for the quiet life. A job as woman's page editor for the Ockenden "Star-Leader" seems like just the ticket -- that is, until town gossip Rose Oxley winds up dead with a pair of scissors lodged in her chest.

Suddenly Precious finds himself embroiled in a hilariously over-the-top murder mystery, brimming with delicious satire about the newspaper business and culminating in a characteristically outrageous Gloverian showdown with firearms, snowmobiles, and booze. Inviting comparisons with the novels of Jasper Fforde and Ross MacDonald, "Precious" deftly combines an ingenious literary parody with the plot of a richly satisfying mystery.

Douglas Glover's collection of stories mezmerizes like no other. A sheer tour-de-force, the collection features eleven new stories that demonstrate that Glover is capable of writing like no other writer. Like a good Beatles album, the collection includes Glover's best new stories, linked only by the quality of the writing. The stories are wide ranging examples of fine, often comic, writing.

"The Left Ladies Club" is about a man who leaves teaching to become a writer, giving himself licence to live the bohemian life. In Glover's merciless portrayal, the Ragged Point literary scene consists of the sorriest bunch of excuse-mongering losers you'll ever encounter.

In "La Corriveau" (;ref: the Siren of Quebec who murdered her husband and was later hanged in an iron cage above a crossroads);, an Anglo woman awakens to find a dead man (;presumably a francophone); in her bed. In a hilarious turn-of-events, the female narrator, who cannot at first even remember the man's name nor how they happened to share the same bed, conceives of ways to hide the body in plain sight, while narrating the political implications of her circumstances interplayed with details from popular culture and Quebec history. In "Lunar Sensitivities," a mathematician and a scientist compete for the attention of a beautiful woman; in "Abrupt Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous," dinosaurs compete for love and life. In both stories, love does everything but triumph. Ranging over time from pre-history to the present, from the American South to the Canadian North, Douglas Glover maps the heart in all its passion, valour, ineptitude, and vulnerability. Occasionally scabrous, horrifically funny, intermittently appalling, and wildly erotic, the stories in this collection bring to life a world in time, irony and desire prevail.