The Hidden Brook Press
North Shore Series
of
Canadian Literature

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HBP is proud to present
the Second set of 5 books in the
 North Shore Series!




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613-475-2368
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See more about other books in the series and a note to future authors.
We hope you will take a look at this URL.
http://www.hiddenbrookpress.com/b-NShore.html







Second set of five books  - Click on the title to see larger cover and info about authors.

— Janet Richards – Belleville– "Glass Skin" - 
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-897475-01-0

— RD Roy – Trenton– "Three Cities"  -
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-96-4

— Wayne Schlepp – Cobourg– "The Darker Edges of the Sky"  -
     – Prose  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-99-5

— Ben Sheedy – Kingston– "The Centre In Which They Breed"  -
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-98-8

— Patricia Stone – Peterborough– "All Things Considered"  -
     – Prose  – ISBN – 978-1-897475-04-1




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— Janet Richards – Belleville– "Glass Skin" - 
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-897475-01-0
     – $15.95

 
This collection is a reflection of life following a move from Toronto to Quinte area. The reader will find glimpses of home, children and a new world from a unique perspective. Even though poetry is a very personal medium these poems hold a great appeal for a universal audience. It may be something familiar that a reader connects with; it may be a sense of appreciation for the way in which a poem unfolds.

These poems are a reflection of soul, of home and family.  They are a documentation of the everyday. Readers of this collection, whether well versed or novice when it comes to poetry, will find many levels of enjoyment.

Blurbs for Glass Skin - Janet Richards

This collection provides a carefully crafted balance between life experience and literature.
Janet Richards gives us the pulse of days and seasons, the give and take of intimacy, and the bond of mother and child. These poems recognize and celebrate the subtle, organic signals of our daily lives.

R.D. Roy, Panegyric Press



"Dragonfly nymphs stir in ever-warming water …"
Janet's observations glean, as though perched on top a tripod draped in a velvet cloak.

Jennifer Londry


Janet's poetry is quietly mesmerizing. You are lured in by her descriptions of the every day, and stay for the often bittersweet tang at the end. At once universal and extremely personal, they swirl
around in your mind long after the first reading is over.

Jennifer May,
Belleville Branch, Ontario Poetry Society


Janet Richards' book is a journey of imagery connected to the Bay of Quinte region; it also opens the reader's eyes to all of life's daily adventures. The sound of the poet's voice is often in a language that surprises. Glass Skin  $B(! (B a great addition to the Quinte literary landscape. Enjoy.

Mary Thomas
Journalist, Broadcaster, Author


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— RD Roy – Trenton– "Three Cities"  -
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-96-4
     –$14.95

    
Poetry about three cities Montreal, Kingston and Havana.  An intellectually stimulating book that will not leave you flat.  These poems will make you think.  They have been called respectfully reflective.
3 blurbs

"I am all the things I've made... and broken." R.D. Roy's poems adore the female, and are not afraid of the feminine, either in the women they so respectfully reflect, or in the poet himself. An emphasis on the importance of friendships and camaraderie threads through these poems - an honouring of the unity of comradeship in assaulting barriers of class and position - barriers which Roy unflinchingly names and challenges. These are poems of protest, of honour, and of a raw presence to life and love in all their wonder and pain. Roy is a poet who is not afraid to strip himself emotionally and stand naked in the midst of his words.
- Sue Reynolds, author of award winning novel Strandia, and editor of In Her Voice-Writings by Women Inside.


R.D. Roy rewards us with this intimate weaving of the street level and rooftops of "Three Cities". He soars at first "like a godless moon glowing over the dirty midnight alleys" of Montreal, and returns to earth, "a mouth that is laughter's champion", on the working streets of Kingston. It is in the finale, however, perched on the rooftops of Havana with "The clenched fist of humanity, the open palm of friendship" that ‘this mariner in a past life" finds a place to settle his restlessness, come to terms with a "life lived through lidless eyes."
- James Dewar, poet: The Garden in the Machine and editor of poetry anthologies/chapbooks


On  page or in performance, RD Roy makes you pay attention. His intellectually chosen words and phrases are relevant, emotional, challenging. If this was a 60's coffee house, you would hear a pin drop. He is that good.
- Roger Dorey,  author of   You're an Easy Kill Standing Still (Golden Hammerhead Publishing)


A Review of the book Three Cities by R. D. Roy.


If you are searching for an easy read, an enjoyable time, a collection of make-me-feel-good poems, this is not the book for you. If you opened the book anticipating reading each poem once and then turning the page, you're in for a surprise.

You will find yourself saying, "I didn't like that poem." or "I got lost in that one." or just "WOW!" Upon each poem completion you will deliberately go back - almost reluctantly sometimes - and reread it. It's rather exciting.

The cover was intriguing, with its dark lines connecting three blue blobs diverting my eyes from the title Three Cities. Did the connection - the flow - run from top to bottom or the reverse? I had to find out.

Flipping to the back cover the photo shows the author caught off guard. Or was he? The twinkling impish look seemed self-evident, but upon closer inspection, the eyes betray a deep seriousness. I would soon learn about introspection in My Two Islands, and family pride in A Singular Seamstress, and My Father's Hands.

In Beyond My Reach one is left wondering if it was a real event. I found myself mentally yelling, "Do something! Break the window!" Scary stuff.

These poems are powerful in their explorations: the symbolism in The Gate; the iridescent quality of the working man in A Love Borne Hatred; the sensitivity in A Quality Not Seen; the essence of Cuba in I See God From Ricardo's Rooftop.

The poem, Zahra Kazemi, assumes the reader is familiar about whom the poem is dedicated. Perhaps a brief prologue would eliminate this distraction.
 
When I finished the book, I looked back at the cover again. I concluded the orientation went from bottom to top, with the three cities - lifetimes if you will - growing from youth and its passionate narrow outlook, through a second 'city' with many intense influences coming in, to the third mature consolidated realistic outlook.

Yes, dear reader, enter if you dare, and get ready for a wild exciting mental ride.

J. Graham Ducker

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— Wayne Schlepp – Cobourg– "The Darker Edges of the Sky"  -
     – Prose  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-99-5
     – $15.95
     
The deeper subjects of these fifty-eight spare poems—minute observations over some sixteen years of a single stretch of swamp and bush, and of the self that does the observing—include the alien/ kindred lives and deaths of birds, animals and trees; the miraculous gift of light; the relationship between ourselves and the world we observe (what difference does it make that, in us, the natural realm both is and is known?); and our troubled sense of time carrying us and our world ineluctably towards the known end of death and decay, and perhaps too the unknown we always sense beyond the surface of  things. These poems are to be read carefully, turned over in the mind, and savoured with a slow and complex delight.

Patrick T. R. Gray. Professor of Religious Studies (York, retired), scholar, cleric, poet, and winemaker.

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 — Ben Sheedy – Kingston– "The Centre In Which They Breed"  -
     – Poetry  – ISBN – 978-1-894553-98-8
     – $14.95

    
Even though this is Ben’s first book of poetry it is filled with insights on life and death. Sheedy tells us something new about the fragilities and fears of life. Ponder his words and don’t be afraid to learn something about your inner self. This book is an unwavering, no-holds-barred look into the human condition.



Ben Sheedy's poems are powerful and eloquent reminders of our connections to each other and the cosmos. "...I see my death and cry at its beauty-the relevance of super novas". He brings us closer to the edge of what we can handle and sometimes takes us where we would otherwise never go. "...You run to your naked corner - I contort religiously in the other room". This gentle man is my friend, and he's a hell of a poet!

-R.D. Roy, author of "A Pre-emptive Kindness" and " Three Cities" (Hidden Brook Press), and "The Colours Found in Bruises" (Panegyric Press).


Much as we are drawn to the site of a major collision and its exposition of human frailty and vulnerability, so will the reader find Ben Sheedy's writing disturbing and compelling. Ben's poetry is an unwavering, no-holds-barred look into the human condition.

-Bonita Summers, author of "Woman with the Flying Mind" Editor of "The Wisdom of Old Souls"





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— Patricia Stone – Peterborough– "All Things Considered"  -
     – Prose  – ISBN – 978-1-897475-04-1
     – $19.95

    
A Synopsis


In the opening chapter, "Making Strange," a ten-year old girl, Margaret Lovell, is waiting in a hospital bed to have an appendectomy.  For some time, Margaret has been fantasizing that Marilyn Monroe is her true mother.  She thinks about her family, wonders about the people in her life, and remembers something her Gr. 5 teacher has recently told the class:  "When reporters asked Einstein, 'What is the most important question any person can ask?', he replied, 'Is the universe a friendly place?' "
   
The second chapter or story, "Girl Guides", is set in the mid-60s when ideas about non-conformity and rebellion began to spread.  Margaret feels hostility towards a domineering neighbour who is the leader of the Girl Guides, and half-deliberately, half-subconsciously arranges to have a confrontation with the woman.   Margaret's rebellion has led her to choose an unsavory boyfriend who she breaks up with at the chapter's conclusion.
   
"The Beating Heart" is about Margaret's first love.  It is the late 60s, a time when sexual mores were changing rapidly and the birth control pill was available to girls and women.  Margaret meets Gary Karas and has sex for the first time.  The relationship is tormented and Gary has a sadistic, self-destructive streak; nevertheless, Margaret perseveres with him and begins taking the birth control pill, which her mother discovers. 

Margaret accepts the fact that her relationship with Gary Karas is leading nowhere. "The Riding Instructor" is set during the summer between her last year of high school and the September when she will leave for university.  The difficult relationship with Gary Karas has ended, and while she is taking riding lessons with a somewhat unbalanced riding instructor, Margaret reflects on her impending new life of freedom from her parents and her hometown.

"Insights" is set during the early 70s when Margaret is attending university.  She has become engaged, reluctantly, to a 3rd year student, whose proposal took her by surprise.  She is a troubled person at this stage of her life, and has begun to experiment with a variety of drugs.  In this story, she is having a bad acid trip with her gay friend, Dean.  While Margaret is becoming increasingly miserable with how her life is going, she remains unaware that a serial killer is stalking her--until one of the other students living in her house is murdered.

When she is 26 Margaret is spending the summer traveling on her own throughout England and Scotland.  In "Putting In Time", she is staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Brighton and feeling lonely and a little frightened.  She recalls how much easier and freer she had felt visiting England with her grandparents when she was 17.  She sets out to try to meet some people. 

In "The Thin Edge," Margaret is living in Vancouver and dating someone she has met while doing graduate work at UBC.  When she discovers she is pregnant, she decides to have an abortion. 
In "Waiting for Jamieson," Margaret's boyfriend, Jamieson, has arranged to fly from Vancouver to France and meet her in Nice, but he fails to show up.  Out of desperation, she calls a younger woman she has met on the train and is invited to spend a week with the woman's family in a small French village.
In the next chapter, "The Feral Woman," Margaret, is now nearing 40 and teaching English at a community college.  She finds herself obsessed with one of her international students, a 25-yr. old Arab Moslem from Egypt.  She studies all things Arabian and daydreams incessantly.  One weekend, her grandmother comes to visit and interrupts Margaret's all-consuming reverie about Farak.
The novel/collection's central themes are interwoven in the final piece "Construction Sites":  Margaret, now in her late 50s, recalls her girlhood love of horses by taking horseback riding lessons again; her grandmother Eunice dies; and Margaret attempts to resolve a lifelong apprehension of her mother.   In the final scene, she becomes virtually trapped in the middle of an enormous forest, having taken her car what initially looked like a dirt road but which turns out to be a steep, deeply rutted, narrow snowmobile path.  When Margaret manages to rescue herself from this predicament, she discovers renewed faith in herself.


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Dear Authors:

If you live in the North Shore Series area – generally speaking between Port Hope and Kingston, south of #7 – then you might want to take a look at the submission info at – http://www.hiddenbrookpress.com/b-NShore.html.

We look forward to hearing from you.

All the best.

Richard M. Grove,
Publisher