Jazz With Ella

While on a study tour of the Soviet Union during the austere Brezhnev years, Jennifer, a Canadian student, is swept off her feet by a handsome Soviet man, Volodya. He is a discontented jazz pianist whose idol is singer Ella Fitzgerald—for him the symbol of everything mysterious and musical that can happen only in the west. Jennifer visits his haunts—and his bedroom—in Leningrad, and learns that he is under surveillance for consorting with foreigners. Jennifer refuses Volodya's desperate pleas to help him defect, and she leaves for the last leg of her trip, a Volga River cruise. But the romance is not over. Despite interference from her fussy professor, Chopyk, and a fierce tour guide, Natasha, Jennifer decides to risk it all.   "A richly layered, complex story of love and opportunism." –Betty Keller, author, A Thoroughly Wicked Woman and Better the Devil You Know. See Teaser - click here Order Now - click here

Elemental - An Anthology

Elemental – An Anthology is a collection of stories and poems by the Gibson's Landing Writers, published in 2013. Jan Degrass Theresa Huntly Gayle Neilson Stephen Sell Joan Storey -Wilcox Sheila Weaver Order Now - click here

The Co-op Revolution

By Jan DeGrass Published by Caitlin Press (March 2019) Foreword by Rick Scott, musician (Pied Pumkin, Pied Pear) “The Co-op Revolution is the story of a small tribe of people working to make their dreams and beliefs a practical reality. Times have changed, dreams have evolved, but it’s increasingly important to remember an era gone by that sourced so much of what we take for granted in our lives today. Get comfy, crack open a jar of your favourite preserves and enjoy this taste of history.” – Rick Scott Vancouver Sun review (March 2, 2019) “Much has changed in the way we think about food, and Jan DeGrass, author of this charming memoir, helped create that change.... Most of the founders were, like DeGrass, young enough to be considered founding members of Vancouver’s counterculture as well as of the co-op enterprises celebrated in this fond remembrance of their early days.”  - Tom Sandborn About The Co-op Revolution: Although I had been involved with pretty much every co-op in Vancouver during the 1970s, there was one in particular that had generated the most passion in me. I had been a founding member of CRS Workers’ Co-op, an organization that operated a cannery (Tunnel Canary), a food wholesaler (Brokerage Collective, later called Horizon Distributors), a beekeeping operation (Queenright) and a bakery (Uprising Breads). The work was difficult, yet it was a job I loved. My parents, my former teachers and my landlord could not understand my zeal for what seemed to be boring food wholesaling and retail sales employment. I couldn’t understand why they were satisfied with their lives. Education, entertainment and stimulating conversation were always on hand with my lively co-workers. We were performing socially useful work. We were not misguided hippies—we were on the right path. It was the rest of the world that was screwed up. The Co-op Revolution, Caitlin Press, March 2019. (caitlin- press.com) Foreword by Rick Scott, musician. 195 pages, many black and white photos, $24.95 + $5 Shipping Order Now - click here See Reviews - click here.

Winter of Siege

Published by MW Books. In 1941 Anna Borisovna Leonova is eighteen and living in Leningrad, a major city in Stalin’s Soviet Union, while she dreams of studying botany at the institute. But Anna’s dreams are shattered when her scientist mother, Svetlana, disappears on a field trip into Finland, Russia’s enemy, and she is accused of treason.  When Germany attacks the Soviet Union, Anna is hastily evacuated by her father, but she vows to return to the besieged city to find her mother, no matter what horrors await her. She is helped on her journey by cheeky Grigor and handsome Volodya, a truck driver. Citizens of Leningrad are dying of starvation during the harsh winter of 1941/1942 until Lake Ladoga, at the city’s back door, freezes over, allowing its brave truck drivers to transport provisions along the ice road—the Road of Life. Anna arrives in a city that offers no heat, no light, no food and little water. Thousands are dropping dead in the icy streets. But help comes from unexpected places, and she copes with the suffering while she continues the seemingly futile search for her mother. Luckily, she has a plan…

Latest Book -

Temptations and

Travels

Part imagination, part memory, Temptations and Travels is a collection of stories that wander freely between fiction and lived experience. Here are tales of travels, trials and temptations. Some tales grow from remembered journeys; others from moments half-forgotten but reshaped and embellished by the storyteller. A medieval monk is sorely tempted by a visit from a mysterious woodland woman. The author travels across the stark, volatile landscapes of Iceland, where volcanoes and rushing rivers invite wonder and introspection. A mother and daughter guard secrets from one another—each believing silence is an act of love. Elsewhere, life’s lessons are learned in unlikely forms: from a curious emu, from chance meetings with passengers on a train or from a handsome stranger in a remote British Columbia gold-rush town. Together they form a rich mosaic of travel, reflection, and the small temptations that test human nature.