WARNING: Cruise Missile Liberals contains few proper poems. That is, poems with proper manners, proper etiquette, or proper service to our national narratives. Poems that reassure the powerful.Poems that lie inert--with the smell of the museums. Poems that are, in a word, nice. Instead, Spencer Gordon's debut smoulders with explosive contradiction--with a charismatic voice that rewires what we could ask for in a collection. Blending gaudy lyrical excess with blemish-ridden found material, it presents the reader with guilty pleasurable collisions. It is of the wretched present: online, urban, urbane, and sweetly ironic. These are poems of play, rant, irreverence, and lip; of sparkling newness haunted by the opulent, hungry dead. Works brimming with cheek that, every so often, stiffen to a punch to the gut. Like an updated Civil Elegies for a digital generation, Cruise Missile Liberals is a blistering debut from an author leaving his own bite-mark on "Canadian Literature." Advance Praise Spencer Gordon's Cruise Missile Liberalsis, as its title suggests, a very funny, often despairing book. Jammed with on-point pop and breathtaking turns of phrase, this collection of poems is genuinely compelling: it is hard to stop reading, so sweetly twisted is Gordon's world. --Lynn Crosbie, Author of Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Life Is About Losing Everything, and Liar "Hot, hot, hot! Spencer Gordon's Cruise Missile Liberals is an exquisitely detailed and passionately directed collection which finds vibrant resolve at the intersection of nation and art. With considerable heart and thrilling precision, these poems gratefully adopt the argot (and trouble) of the times and they discover a much different Canada, sweet with chipmunks and as untameable as Sk8er Boi." --David McGimpsey, author of Asbestos Heights There is a generosity of spirit on offer here for we who are tired, placeless, saturated in social media, and wasted on the bright horror of a future that never arrives. This collection is deft, intelligent, and tender, if tenderness is something that can also crush you--an intimacy that panics shut. For we who are "Nature Woke," "alchemical kids with gold teeth," "wanting to live as I do, shockingly new," Gordon sings and memes against "Canada the Good" and presents us with an arresting portrait of our present moment. --Liz Howard, Griffin-Award winning author of Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent

Albert Camus meets Chamillionaire in these incendiary pop-culture-infused stories.

Contains three stories about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends.

In Theopompus the Historian, Gordon Shrimpton critically examines the direct evidence concerning the life and lost works of Theopompus of Chios, the fourth-century BC historian and orator, providing the first comprehensive study of the man and his work. In a translation of the fragments (the surviving citations of Theopompus' work) and of the testimonies (the references made to Theopompus' work by other writers), he makes available all that remains of Theopompus' writings.

Meet Donald Dump Truck! He’s bright orange, has an ego the size of a skyscraper and he’ll take any shortcut to get the job done. Come along with Donald on his exciting first adventure as he joins a band of hardworking trucks who are busy building a bridge. After cutting one too many corners, Donald finds himself stuck in a swamp and sinking fast! Time is running out as all the trucks race to the rescue. Can they save Donald?

Self-centered Gordon, a very large green engine, is annoyed when his view at the new train station is obstructed. Simultaneous.

A hilariously subversive YA debut that explores the meaning of friendship and loyalty, and also why you should avoid being trapped in a small space with an angry chicken. Perfect for fans of Andrew Smith’s Winger and Frank Portman’s King Dork. It all started with a harmless prank. But now high school junior Lawrence Barry is one step away from reform school unless he participates in a mentorship program. His mentee? Spencer Knudsen, a Norwegian exchange student with Spock-like intelligence but the social skills of the periodic table. Then disaster strikes. Homecoming Week. When someone dressed as the school Viking mascot starts destroying the fairytale-inspired floats, all suspicion falls on Lawrence. Add to the mix a demon Goth girl, a Renaissance LARPing group, an overzealous yearbook editor, and three vindictive chickens, and Lawrence soon realizes that his situation may be a little out of control. But Spencer seems to have some answers. In fact, Spencer may be the one friend Lawrence never knew he needed.