Smart House Books
The Great Catsby
by Hilton
The copyright on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby expired on the first stroke of 2021 and the literary classic entered the public domain.
The Great Catsby by Hilton is an illustrated catification of the classic adapted by award-winning author Rod Carley and published by Smart House Books. In keeping with the novella’s tongue-in-cheek tone, Rod is also credited as translator. According to his bio, he minored in Tabby at York University.
Catsby is a playful parody poking fun at love foiled and ambitions foisted within the mad, uncertain world of cats in 1920s Mew York. Jay Catsby, the feral son of impoverished barn cats, has built his kibble fortune selling illegal catnip. When Nick Cattaway moves in next cat-door, Catsby's only a whisker away from winning back his beloved Daisy, the beautiful Persian he lost to the arrogant Tom Cat Burmese two lives earlier.
Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as an indictment of the reckless wealth of post-World War I America. The selfish and careless “fat cats” of The Great Catsby by Hilton similarly ring true.
Part of the charm of the novella is that Hilton, a seven-year-old rescue tabby adopted by Rod, “writes” it. He is the first-person voice of Nick Cattaway who serves as narrator. Reimagining the story through the eyes of a domestic housecat has allowed Hilton to breathe "mew" life into the story. Hilton also writes the Preface.
The Great Catsby by Hilton also features twenty full-page colour illustrations in addition to an assortment of black and white drawings by Quebec-based writer-illustrator Juliette Miron (who loves both cats and dogs).
The Great Catsby by Hilton adds some much-needed whimsy to the world. In these uncertain times, we could all use a few more cats and a little more catnip in our nine lives.
American Disease
By Jay Bajaj
Born and raised in India, Jay crossed the world to Western Canada with an unlikely dream: to become a bush pilot. The winters were brutal, the culture shock was real, and the wilderness was unlike anything he had known. But he earned his wings and spent years flying in some of Canada’s most remote regions, collecting the adventures, mishaps, and memorable characters that would later inspire many of the stories in American Disease.
Part autobiography and part fiction, the collection reflects Jay’s experience of living between two cultures. When he returned to India, he discovered he was no longer entirely at home there, yet never fully Canadian either—a feeling familiar to many immigrants who find themselves belonging to two worlds and, at times, neither.
When diabetes unexpectedly grounded him, Jay launched a second act. At forty-four, he reinvented himself as a filmmaker, building a successful career through Bajaj Films and Bajaj Films Productions Ltd. He has also served for many years as a programmer for the International Film Festival of India. Along the way he has been a chief pilot, airline operations manager, producer, entrepreneur, and storyteller.
Whether in the cockpit or behind the camera, Jay Bajaj has spent a lifetime crossing borders. American Disease captures that journey with humour, insight, and an adventurer’s eye for the unexpected.
A series of short stories about Jag Mohan, an Indian immigrant in Canada, who leaves a large and domineering family to become a bush pilot. These interconnected stories are both illuminating and touching, as Jag struggles to belong either to the culture he left behind or the new culture he's embracing.
Bullies Inc.
By Steve DiMarco
"I was surrounded by their hate, their brutalities against those different, those weaker. I bore witness to their daily PDA’s - Public Displays of Affliction. And what were the adults, our supposed guardians doing about the situation? Zero, zilch, absolutely nothing. I could no longer stand by and watch these Bully terrorisms continue unpunished!" Thus begins this wicked, dark comedy; our teen protagonist setting out to rectify these wrongs by recruiting others to take part in retribution against the culprits. This is the story of BULLIES INC. “Bullies Inc. is a gripping emotional thriller that, once read, sets you off on a quest to find others who've read it because an experience this bold can not be kept to yourself.” - Thom Ernst, Film Critic and Producer/Host, Saturday Night at the Movies
The Copper People
By Barbara March
A suspense horror memoir, The Copper People is a classic story of a woman in a strange land. A perfect novella that conjures up a secret buried for centuries in a tiny hilltop town in Italy. Rich, seductive and sensory! Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote: “The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.” These words became Barbara March's experience. ‘Stranieri’ is a word one hears often in Italy, simply because there are as many tourists as there are Italians. The word means stranger, and one does feel strange amongst these passionate, sometimes secretive people, always resistant to change in their customs, especially the food which is the best in the world. It is also a difficult place to leave once you have been accepted and become part of their lives. But the time came when Barbara and her husband, Alan Scarfe (writer, actor) had to leave. And since her Italian experience never left her, she sat in her study and wrote a novella. She had found the right format, and so she wrote ‘Copper People’ partly as a way to show her love for the people and the country and partly to use their food, customs and history in a story that takes place in a similar hilltop village that held a secret. Religion, both Catholic and Pagan, plays a very important part in the novella. And Barbara, herself, had participated in many of their ‘sagras’ and holy days while she was living there. The Copper People is a short novel about an older woman simply wanting to learn a new language, but who ends up having a completely different experience from what she had expected when she and her husband first arrived in the village that was built in the 6th century. It is a novel about food, love and friendship as much as it is about a secretive society.
The Revelation Of Jack The Ripper
By Alan Scarfe
How could a perfectly normal, upper-middle class father become the Whitechapel fiend? Why did the carnage begin? Why did it stop? Jack tells the tale himself in this provocative novel.
The events described in the book are one hundred percent accurate in regard to all the known facts of the case. A case that for over a century has been meticulously researched but during which surprisingly little attention has been paid to the intricate involvement of Forbes Winslow.
But what is the book about? Well, it's an examination of how a 'perfectly normal upper-middle-class family man' can become a serial killer and, beyond that, it explores why so many mass murders, exterminations and genocidal atrocities have occurred throughout the blood-soaked history of humankind.
"Amongst the finest books on historical crime ever published.I shall read it again and again."
-- Christopher Berry-Dee, editor, The New Criminologist
"One is continually nodding, 'Yes that's how it must have happened'"
--Christopher Michael Digrassi, Ripper Notes
"I confess to having been a murderer only twice in my lifetime. First when Dostoevsky allowed me into the mind of Raskolnikov. Second when Alan Scarfe allowed me into the mind of Jack the Ripper. A candidate for one of the best murder mysteries ever!"
- Warren Allen Smith, author of Who's Who in Hell
It was a very good idea to use Lyttleton Forbes Winslow as a Ripper suspect. The author catches the Victorian idiom beautifully and I think it is altogether as good a piece of Ripper fiction as I have ever read. It certainly deserves an airing with a wider audience than Ripperologists. In spite of its subject, the book even has a certain charm."
Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider and Jack the Ripper:Summing Up and Verdict
"An extraordinary novel. We can only agree with Colin Wilson. It receives our highest accolade . . recommended!"
Ripperologist Magazine
They Don't Run Red Trains Anymore
By Heidi Von Palleske
Set in the 1980's, They Don't Run Red Trains Anymore explores the nature of love, sexuality and the importance of art in our day to day life.
Alex Hoff is a young artist who witnesses a suicide at a subway station. That same day an exotic young woman comes to pose in her life drawing class at art college. An obsession takes over Alex's art and mind. Her teacher, Boris misconstrues her intentions and offers to give her extra tutoring. Alex soon finds out that the model, Premika, is his lover as well. The triangle becomes a competition, both in the art world and in the realm of each of their hearts.
Alex's obsession with Premika drives her to create. Too intimidated to carve in stone, she sets out to sculpt a life-sized terracotta replica of Premika, but in order to succeed, she needs to know this beautiful but enigmatic woman thoroughly. She slowly peels away Premika's carefully constructed, yet superficial, layers to get to the essential core of her being, only to expose a well-hidden, rooted sorrow.
They Don't Run Red Trains Anymore is a love story that breaks the rules and labels of society. This is a love that does not limit itself to age, race or gender. It is the love of the idealist. The love of beauty, the love of art and the love of desire. They Don't Run Red Trains Anymore is thought-provoking, philosophical and heartfelt. It is a cry in the dark in defence of art, love and obsession.
They Don't Run Red Trains Anymore is a winner of the HR PERCY AWARD for best novel manuscript in Eastern Canada.
Recipient of the Toronto Arts Council Award
Recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Award
Toronto Star Critics' Choice
The Demons Of 9/11
By Alan Scarfe
A few short weeks after the horror of 9/11, Michael Davenport, an English journalist employed by the occult magazine Enigma, returns to America for the first time since nearly losing his life in the seamy drug wars of Ciudad Juarez to investigate an obscure report. Since his boss had thrown that copy of Al Jazeera across his desk, Michael had become obsessed with a story about two salvage workers who had seen something decidedly unusual emerging from the rubble of Ground Zero twenty-six days after the towers fell. A mirage, most probably. A figment of over-tired imaginations. A wisp of smoke or some kind of silly American gag. Very unlikely to be of any serious political consequence, but there was just the slimmest possibility that it might be something, or someone, beyond our ordinary human world.
The Mask Of The Holy Spirit
By Alan Scarfe
The final book of The Carnivore Trilogy takes place in April 2005, the month Karol Wojtyła died and Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI. Michael and Lamy travel to Rome for the investiture and flush out Michael's mysterious doppelganger, Bartolomeo Vespucci.
The Vampires Of Juarez
By Alan Scarfe
The first book in Alan Scarfe's CARNIVORE TRILOGY, The Vampires of Juarez, is a political vampire thriller, part detective, part social commentary. It has been called a masterpiece halfway between Scarface and a 1980's B-movie.
"This book is a masterpiece. As an investigative criminologist, I have interviewed over thirty of the world's most heinous serial killers. I have sat with them as they relived and gloated over the torture and suffering they brought upon their victims. I have seen the results of their gruesome work firsthand, butchering, flaying alive, every way one can imagine destroying an innocent living human being, but nothing, I stress nothing, I have ever witnessed compares with the content of The Vampires of Juarez. To write such a magnificent, blood-chilling work as this one, one has to plunge into the bottomless abyss of pure evil. Alan Scarfe is 'The Abyss' for he terrifies the living daylights even out of me." - Christopher Berry-Dee, former Editor-in-Chief, The Criminologist and Director of the Criminology Research Institute, Portsmouth
"Fast-moving, eloquent, funny and at the same time profoundly violent and distressing . . irony saves it from insupportable sadness and instead creates a fresh and captivating story. Another terrific novel from Alan Scarfe." - Susanna Raule, Cut-up
"Scarfe's vampires are nothing like the classic literary and cinematic archetypes. They are neither romantic nor troubled spirits. They are pitiless, arrogant and vulgar, without immortality and unafraid of the sun." - Vito Tripi, Word Shelter
"The violence is not supernatural but a direct result of the brutality that occurs every day in Ciudad Juarez, yet Scarfe's novel is by no means exclusively a denunciation. The complex plot is easy to follow, the characters are instantly clear to the reader, and the narrative is fluent and laced with wisdom and humour." - Il Catafalco
"This book is simply stupendous, and I say it as a reader, not a reviewer... a beautifully told punch in the stomach... a masterpiece halfway between Scarface and a 1980's B-movie with a result that leaves you breathless... Don't waste time reading this review. Go straight out and buy it, and then you can thank me."- Valerio Bonante, Ca' delle Ombre
"Witty and hilarious throughout, thanks to the liveliness of its central character, yet so disturbing it makes your hair stand on end... an eloquent indictment of the corruption of power." - Giovanni Scalambra, Stradanove
"I sincerely hope this novel will reach a wide reading public... It is impossible to speak or write enough about Ciudad Juarez." - Simone Scataglini, Horror.it
"This review is a shout-out to everyone who appreciates books that jolt us... whether we want it or not... into some new understanding. Scarfe wants us to reflect on the horror and terror of places such as Ciudad Juarez, a field of nightmares, not a field of dreams. Precious little media attention is paid to what has been taking place there, and Scarfe asks us to consider the extent to which we are all culpable, not only for the tragic circumstances of Juarez but also for the endless saga of bloodletting that is the dark side of our legacy as a species. But he tells stories; he does not lecture." - Eric Ross Green, Awash with Blood, an Awake and Arise Call to all Goths
I Paint Gophers!
By Eve Crawford
In her conversational, wholly irreverent voice, Eve Crawford’s creative memoir, ”I Paint Gophers!” traces her chaotic years growing up in a family of four unruly girls, with a mother who would rather be teaching birth control in India (if only she could mutter the word penis) and a father, the lone male of the pack, who yearns for World War 2 when, as a lieutenant in the navy, people followed his orders. It follows her life as an actor as she balances her career as the Where’s Waldo of film with the daunting challenge of raising two boys as a single mom. Her hilarious stories both amuse and cut to the heart with an approach to life that is robust and full of love..
"Eve Crawford writes with grit and wit and most importantly, with love. Her stories span the emotional range of the multitude of roles played by women, this woman being Eve."
- Frances Itani, whose many books include Deafening, Requiem and That's My Baby.
"I laughed out loud A LOT. A LOT. I had to wipe tears from my eyes a couple of times. SO FULL OF LOVE and an approach to life that is robust and full of humour, especially as the funny stories are grounded in some pain and genuine life turbulence."
- Rosemary Dunsmore, actor/director, Dora, Earl Grey and ACTRA Award winner
"...for lo, these many decades, I've enjoyed the warmth, wit and wonder of her observations about the world. Up until now, you've had to be one of Eve's fortunate chosen ones to have heard her hilarious (and often touching) anecdotes. Now, however, thanks to Smart House Books, you can be well and truly Crawforded whenever you like, just by picking up a copy of her delicious memoir, I Paint Gophers! In these deftly written pages, you'll find gems of wisdom on what it means to be a daughter, a mother, a wife, an actor, or just a lady looking for love. I want you to know the joy of discovery yourself, so I won't give away any of my favourite chapters. Just let me say that you'll never think of vampires, horses, or the eponymous gophers in the same way again after you've laughed, cried and cheered your way through these pages."
- Richard Ouzounian, writer, director, theatre critic
