The Watermelon Books List

Detailing a point of view that is both contentious and genial—somewhere between the outlooks of Archie Bunker and Dale Peck—the wide-ranging poems in this honest collection ponder questions concerning art, history, and psychology while reveling in the sensory experiences of everyday life. Whether exploring the modus operandi of other writers or …

Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to kill. Tomorrow, a life will hang in the balance. Watermelon Row, a suspenseful, intricately plotted novel, tracks a day in the life of three men on the brink of violence and ruin.
It tails Ed Harrison, a tough old man in his seventies, Scott Venn, a yuppie lawyer/sports agent, and Peter James, an unemployed l …

These unsentimental, passionate stories of modern rural life were nominated for the 1986 Governor General’s Award. Retired farmers cruise and booze around the countryside; a farm wife contemplates an affair with the hired hand; a cropduster opens the No Place Bar and Grill.“... a diamond hard realism and authenticity.”—Books in Canada

Elaine McCluskey’s debut collection contains ten comical and aggressively human slices of suburban life. From grocery aisles to strip-mall parking lots to school hallways and waiting rooms, these stories pulse with the bizarre and sometimes annoying trappings of in-between places and the people we encounter there.

In the title story a mother of tw …

On the Toronto Public Library's 10 best books of 2008 list for Children up to 5 years of age
On Resource Link's "Best of 2008" List Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2009

First published in 1986 and a staple ever since for parents of preschool children and teachers of primary grades, One Watermelon Seed is presented in a new edition with …