'This study of the ROM's Paul Kane collection has been complemented by Kane images from other collections - including those of the Stark Museum of Art, Library and Archives Canada, and the Art Gallery of Ontario - and by artifacts from the Manitoba Museum, where such images and artifacts relate of the ROM paintings' -- (Foreword).

Determined to document the lives and customs of the Native people of the Northwest before contact with white settlers changed them forever, the Canadian artists Paul Kane set out in 1845 to cross the continent 'with no companions but my portfolio and a box of paints, my gun and a stock of ammunition.' Travelling by canoe and snowshoe, on foot and on horseback via the Hudson's Bay Company fur brigade routes, he made his way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast and back again. When he returned to Toronto in the fall of 1848, he brought back some five hundred field sketches and a remarkable collection of artifacts, which he used as raw material for one hundred oil paintings depicting scenes of Native life. While the carefully executed oil paintings are deliberately romaticized images of the West that conform to nineteenth-century standards of taste, the original field sketches, which are not widely known, are fresher, more objective and authentic, more direct and undeliberated. A fascinating complement to the sketches is a small diary that Kane kept while on his journey. Brief and plainspoken, its entries were jotted down with idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation. In 1859, Kane published a journal based on these notes, which became a bestseller in Europe and North America. In Paul Kane's Great Nor-West, Diana Eaton and Sheila Urbanek recreate Kane's heroic journey and bring to life the people and places he encountered. Their narrative supplies the historical context to illuminate his travels, while frequently drawing on Kane's own words from his diary and published journal. The voice of the artist himself is heard in descriptions of one of the last great buffalo hunts, of a desperate winter crossing over the Rockies, of the impassioned 'crying of war' of a Cree chief, and of many other unique experiences. Illustrated with a wide selection of the field sketches as well as his better known oil paintings, Paul Kane's Great Nor-West reintroduces this remarkable artist to a modern audience. It not only celebrates his extraordinary journey but also creates a unique and immensely varied panorama of the nineteenth century 'Great Nor-West.'

Art Kane was one of the most profoundly influential photographers of the 20th century. A bold visionary, his work explored a number of genres - fashion, editorial, celebrity portraiture, travel and nudes with an unrelenting and innovative eye. Like his contemporaries, Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) and Helmut Newton (1924-2004), Kane developed a style that didn't shy away from strong colour, eroticism and surreal humour.

Clive Barker's iconic masterpiece The Hellbound Heart, the novella adapted into the film Hellraiser, unleashed a new mythology of horror, brilliantly conceived and born of the darkest imagination. Now, enter this visionary world -- the merciless realm of the demonic Cenobites -- in this collection of stories inspired by The Hellbound Heart. Featured here is the graphic work "Wordsworth," from bestselling author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean, who unlock an explicit way to violate innocence -- one torturous puzzle at a time.... New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong logs on to a disturbing website for gamers, where the challenge is agonizing, and the solution beyond painful. When his father disappears, an Oxford student returns to his family's mansion, where a strange mechanism in the cellar holds a curious power, in a haunting illustrated work by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola.

Twenty curses, old and new, from bestselling fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Christina Henry, M.R. Carey and Charlie Jane Anders. ALL THE BETTER TO READ YOU WITH It's a prick of blood, the bite of an apple, the evil eye, a wedding ring or a pair of red shoes. Curses come in all shapes and sizes, and they can happen to anyone, not just those of us with unpopular stepparents... Here you'll find unique twists on curses, from fairy tale classics to brand-new hexes of the modern world - expect new monsters and mythologies as well as twists on well-loved fables. Stories to shock and stories of warning, stories of monsters and stories of magic. TWENTY TIMELESS FOLKTALES, NEW AND OLD NEIL GAIMAN JANE YOLEN KAREN JOY FOWLER M.R. CAREY CHRISTINA HENRY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN TIM LEBBON MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH CHARLIE JANE ANDERS JEN WILLIAMS CATRIONA WARD JAMES BROGDEN MAURA McHUGH ANGELA SLATTER LILLITH SAINTCROW CHRISTOPHER FOWLER ALISON LITTLEWOOD MARGO LANAGAN

For more than forty years, George McLean has lived in a stone farmhouse on 100 acres of land in Grey County, Ontario. On his daily walks, he looks for a moment that will inspire him -- the first step in a process that can take up to a year to yield a single painting. McLean's densely layered depictions of the natural world emerge directly from his intense interest in wildlife. In this sumptuous book, Virginia Eichhorn, Adam Duncan Harris, and Tom Smart examine the development of McLean's art and trace his varied influences, from early 20th-century wildlife artists Carl Rungius and Bruno Liljefors to Andrew Wyeth. Connecting with past traditions while resonating with contemporary audiences, McLean's work, along with that of many realists before him, reflects a shared sense of what it means to be North American. Illustrated with more than 60 colour reproductions, the publication of George McLean: The Living Landscape coincides with the opening of an accompanying international touring exhibition of McLean's work at the Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound.