PLA. Manuel de l’élève : 8 ½’’ × 11’’, broché, couverture rigide, 368 pages couleurs. Manuel de l’enseignant : 8 ½’’ × 11’’, broché, couverture souple, 480 pages.

Naked in the Kitchen by Lynda Martens. As Naked in the Kitchen opens, Psychologist Charlie Campbell, and his wife Beth, are packing their son Michael, off to his first day in college. The parents are a study in contrasts. Charlie, sitting reading the paper, is so calm that he seems passively aggressive. Beth is just the opposite. She’s checking lists offering advice worrying out loud. Their son Michael is torn between the apparent lack of emotion from his father and the smothering of his mother. The tension is leavened with a good bit of genuine humor along with a certain amount of edginess. With Michael dropped off at school, the tensions between Charlie and Beth escalate. Somehow the bonus in intimacy that Beth had expected with Michael’s departure isn’t happening. Old trauma and deep seated pains that were only hinted at in the opening scenes erupt as some surprising new events come to the surface. Back into what’s become a standoff with the parents comes Michael with a new friend from school, Kevin. Although he’s a fellow freshman Kevin does add a sophomoric but thoughtfully comic note of humanity to the tense situation. JGS. ISBN: 978-1-897289-56-3, $14.95 pb. Drama/Canadian

Things That Go Bump, Volume 2 Plays for Young Audiences edited by Kit Brennan is an anthology of recent Canadian plays for elementary school audiences. It is a companion volume to fall 2009’s Things That Go Bump Volume 1: Plays for Young Adults. Through humour and great characters, these 6 plays explore large issues with an entertaining verve. SIG. ISBN: 978-1897109-41-0, $24.95. Pb. Drama.

Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies by Frances Swyripa. Storied Landscapes is a beautifully written, sweeping examination of the evolving identity of major ethno-religious immigrant groups in the Canadian West. Viewed through the lens of attachment to the soil and specific place, and through the eyes of both the immigrant generation and its descendants, the book compares the settlement experiences of Ukrainians, Mennonites, Icelanders, Doukhobors, Germans, Poles, Romanians, Jews, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. It reveals how each group’s sense of identity was shaped by a complex interplay of physical and emotional ties to land and place, and how that sense of belonging influenced, and was influenced by, relationships not only within the prairies and the Canadian nation state but also with the homeland and its extended diaspora. Through a close study of myths, symbols, commemorative traditions, and landmarks, Storied Landscapes boldly asserts the inseparability of ethnicity and religion both to defining the prairie region and to understanding the Canadian nation-building project. B&W photos throughout. UMP. Pb. ISBN: 978-0-88755-720-0, $26.95. Cloth, ISBN: 978-0-88755-191-8, $55.00. Library E-book ISBN: 978-0-88755-300-4, $70.00. Studies in Immigration and Culture Series, No. 5. Non-fiction.

Touch the Dragon: A Thai Journal by Karen Connelly, 2nd edition. New material including photos, maps, and an afterword by celebrated author Karen Connelly are included in this new format edition of her 1993 Governor General’s Award-winning classic. “Painfully bored” with school, 17-year-old Karen Connelly set off for rural Thailand to spend one year as an exchange student. This is her intensely honest account of living in a beautiful but sometimes infuriating culture. TUR. ISBN: 978-088801-376-7, $20.00. Non-fiction.

Catchment Area by Jena Schmitt. Like a geographic catchment area, this debut collection draws together influences from poetry, prose, biography, art, architecture and history into a perceptive study of the forces that shape our physical and emotional landscapes. In a voice that is subtle yet distinctly confident, Schmitt describes how at times these forces are quiet as “sleet that turns to rain/ that turns to snow,” and at times unyielding as a child who throws himself down in a tantrum. Catchment Area captures glimmers of that instance when, just as we are about to define the emergent terrain, just when variables such as an earring or glove could solve “any number of unknowns,” the earth shifts—whether due to memory, relationships, natural disasters or war—leaving an absence that cannot be mapped. These poems call on the reader’s own sense of this absence and how it impels us to search for meaning in a world of constant change, where each time we turn on the news we are witness to earthquakes and floods, or suburban homes turned into methamphetamine factories and bronze statues stolen from parks. And so we are brought to a place of possibility, a place to “revel in/ the parts that are/ missing: heart and mind/ like phantom limbs.” Schmitt reveals the watershed point at which each of us stands, where we can go this way or that, where the struggle for articulation and understanding forms our own personal topographies. SIG. ISBN 978-1897109-40-3. $14.95. Poetry.

Enfield & Wizenty Literary Fiction Contest. Building on the success of its initial contest last year, Enfield & Wizenty is once again offering a $5,000 advance for the most outstanding submission of literary fiction that we receive. We will be reading fiction submissions (novels and collections of short stories) from now until December 2010. Short story collections should have appeared extensively in Canadian literary magazines. For more information see www.greatplains publications.ca, or contact Maurice Mierau, Associate Editor at info@greatplains.mb.ca.

Baldur’s Song by David Arnason. Winnipeg’s boom-town days at the turn of the nineteenth century come to life through the eyes of Baldur, a boy from Gimli, the Icelandic immigrant settlement on the southernmost shore of Lake Winnipeg. Both city and boy grow from innocence to savvy creatures of business as they mature, fall in love, and survive the politics of a competitive, cut-throat society. TUR. 978-088801373-6, $19.00. Fiction.