Nothing ever happens on the Otter Lake reservation. But when 16-year-old Tiffany discovers her father is renting out her room, she's deeply upset. Sure, their guest is polite and keeps to himself, but he's also a little creepy. Little do Tiffany, her father, or even her astute Granny Ruth suspect the truth. The mysterious Pierre L'Errant is actually a vampire, returning to his tribal home after centuries spent in Europe. But Tiffany has other things on her mind: her new boyfriend is acting weird, disputes with her father are escalating, and her estranged mother is starting a new life with somebody else. Fed up and heartsick, Tiffany threatens drastic measures and flees into the bush. There, in the midnight woods, a chilling encounter with L'Errant changes everything ... for both of them. A mesmerizing blend of Gothic thriller and modern coming-of-age novel, The Night Wanderer is unlike any other vampire story.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER - One of Kobo CA's Top Horror Ebooks and Top Horror Audiobook of 2024

A tragic plane crash that leaves two women stranded and fighting for their lives kicks off this sweeping and hilarious novel from award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor that blends thriller, murder mystery, and horror with humour and spectacle.

Elmore Trent is a professor of Indigenous studies who finds himself entangled in an affair that's ruining his marriage; Paul North plays in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League), struggling to keep up with the game that's passing him by; Detective Ruby Birch is chasing a string of gruesome murders, with clues that conspicuously lead her to both Elmore and Paul. And then there's Fabiola Halan, former journalist-turned-author and famed survivor of a plane crash that sparked a nationwide tour promoting her book.

What starts off as a series of subtle connections between isolated characters quickly takes a menacing turn, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone--or something--is hunting them all.

Taking tropes from the murder mystery, police procedural, thriller, and horror genres, Drew Hayden Taylor weaves a pulse-pounding and propulsive narrative with an intricate cast of characters, while never losing the ability to make you laugh.

Cottagers and Indians explores the politics and issues surrounding a real-life event still occurring in the Kawartha Lakes region of Central Ontario. An Indigenous man, Arthur Copper, has taken it upon himself to repopulate the nearby lakes with wild rice, known amongst the Anishnawbe as Manoomin, much to the disapproval of the local non-Indigenous cottagers, Maureen Poole in particular. She feels the plant interferes with boating, fishing, swimming, and is generally an eyesore that brings down the property values of her cottage and those of her neighbours. Drew Hayden Taylor's thirty-second play is a powerful dramatization of contemporary confrontations taking place between environmentalism and consumerism, Indigenous and non-Indigenous sensibilities.

Dead White Writer on the Floor uses two literary conventions--theatre of the absurd and mystery novels--to create one of the funniest and thought-provoking plays ever about identity politics. In Act One, six savages; noble, innocent, ignorant, fearless, wise and gay, respectively; find themselves in a locked room with the body of a white writer, which they stash in a closet. None of them can figure out how he died or which of them might have killed him. They realize as they point fingers at each other, however, that they are all profoundly unhappy with their lives as they've been constructed over the past four hundred years: Old Lodge Skins wants to know what it feels like to be a young man; Billy Jack wonders what spreading healing rather than pain would feel like; Injun Joe is desperate for an education; Kills Many Enemies is exhausted by his deadly seriousness and yearns for a sense of humour; Pocahontas seeks to feel respected as a woman rather than lusted after as a child sex object; and Tonto wants to come out of the canyon and be the one wearing the mask for a change. Gradually, they figure out that the latest iteration of Gutenberg's invention buzzing like a beehive on the dead writer's desk is actually a dream-catcher, which they can use to rewrite their lives in the image of their own inner beings.

Imagine their surprise when they reappear in the same locked room in Act Two as Mike, Jim, Bill, John, Sally and Fred--attending an A.A. meeting and bickering among themselves about reserve politics, unmanageable family relationships and whether Bingo has a place in their new air-conditioned casino--and realize the white writer must still be very much alive in their community; his body in the closet is still warm!

A forgotten Haudenosaunee social song beams into the cosmos like a homing beacon for interstellar visitors. A computer learns to feel sadness and grief from the history of atrocities committed against First Nations. A young Native man discovers the secret to time travel in ancient petroglyphs. Drawing inspiration from science fiction legends like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Drew Hayden Taylor frames classic science-fiction tropes in an Aboriginal perspective.

The nine stories in this collection span all traditional topics of science fiction--from peaceful aliens to hostile invaders; from space travel to time travel; from government conspiracies to connections across generations. Yet Taylor's First Nations perspective draws fresh parallels, likening the cultural implications of alien contact to those of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, or highlighting the impossibility of remaining a good Native in such an unnatural situation as a space mission.

Infused with Native stories and variously mysterious, magical and humorous, Take Us to Your Chief is the perfect mesh of nostalgically 1950s-esque science fiction with modern First Nations discourse.

First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, activists, educators and writers, youth and elders come together to envision Indigenous futures in Canada and around the world.

Discussing everything from language renewal to sci-fi, this collection is a powerful and important expression of imagination rooted in social critique, cultural experience, traditional knowledge, activism and the multifaceted experiences of Indigenous people on Turtle Island.

In Me Tomorrow...

• Darrel J. McLeod, Cree author from Treaty-8 territory in Northern Alberta, blends the four elements of the Indigenous cosmovision with the four directions of the medicine wheel to create a prayer for the power, strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples.
• Autumn Peltier, Anishinaabe water-rights activist, tells the origin story of her present and future career in advocacy--and how the nine months she spent in her mother's womb formed her first water teaching. When the water breaks, like snow melting in the spring, new life comes.
• Lee Maracle, acclaimed Stó lō Nation author and educator, reflects on cultural revival--imagining a future a century from now in which Indigenous people are more united than ever before.

Other essayists include Cyndy and Makwa Baskin, Norma Dunning, Shalan Joudry, Shelley Knott-Fife, Tracie Léost, Stephanie Peltier, Romeo Saganash, Drew Hayden Taylor and Raymond Yakeleya.

For readers who want to imagine the future, and to cultivate a better one, Me Tomorrow is a journey through the visions generously offered by a diverse group of Indigenous thinkers.

A very liberal contemporary couple--Angel, an urban Native science fiction writer, and Colleen, a non-practising Jewish intellectual who teaches Native literature--hosts a dinner party. The guests at this little sitcom soirée are couples that represent what by now have become the clichéd extremes of both societies: Angel's former radical Native activist buddies and Colleen's environmentally concerned vegetarian / veterinarian friends. The menu is, of course, the hosts' respectful attempt at shorthand for the irreconcilable cultural differences about to come to a head during the evening: moose roast and vegetarian lasagna.

Like all of Drew Hayden Taylor's work, alterNatives manages to say things about Whites and Indians that one is not supposed to talk about--it digs up the carefully buried, raw and pulsing nerve-endings of the unspeakable and exposes them to the hot bright lights of the stage. That he does so with a humour that the politically correct among his audiences continue to miss entirely beneath the sound and fury of their own self-righteous indignation is a measure of his immense talent as a dramatist. In the end, the play is not about cultural differences at all, but instead constitutes a full frontal attack on the personal qualities the sitcom holds most dear and pushes hardest at its audiences: Taylor actually has the temerity to suggest that neither attitude nor sincerity are enough to address basic human issues, no matter which side of the cultural fence the characters are on. And that's hard for the pushers of what is considered a globally enlightened culture to take.

Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth is the emotional story of a woman's struggle to acknowledge her birth family. Grace, a Native girl adopted by a White family, is asked by her birth sister to return to the Reserve for their mother's funeral. Afraid of opening old wounds, Grace must find a place where the culture of her past can feed the truth of her present.

Hoping to snag their perfect home in a red-hot housing market, an African Canadian man, a Chinese Canadian man, and a Jewish/Indigenous lesbian couple show up to an open house run by a white settler real estate agent. Each potential buyer feels most deserving of the prize. When a police incident outside traps them together in the house, debate erupts over which of their cultures has faced the most discrimination and exclusion. Passions run high and opinions clash. With wry humour, Open House deftly navigates current conversations about oppression, colonization, and middle-class aspirations.

In this collection of two plays about the process of children becoming adults, Drew Hayden Taylor works his delightfully comic and bitter-sweet magic on the denials, misunderstandings and preconceptions which persist between Native and Colonial culture in North America.

In The Boy in the Treehouse, Simon, the son of an Ojibway mother and a British father, climbs into his half-finished tree house on the vision-quest his books say is necessary for him to reclaim his mother's culture. It's a Native thing, he informs his incredulous father (who tells him he'd never heard of such a thing from his wife): Only boys do it. It's part of becoming a man. Of course, what with the threats of the police, the temptation of the barbeque next door, and the distractions of a persistent neighbourhood girl, Simon probably wouldn't recognize a vision if he fell over it.

Girl Who Loved Her Horses is the Native name for the strange and quiet Danielle from the non-status community across the tracks, imbued with the mysterious power to draw the horse every human being on the planet wanted but could never have. She is and remains an enigma to the people of the reservation, but the power of her spirit remains strong. Years later, a huge image of her horse reappears, covering an entire side of a building in a blighted urban landscape of beggars and broken dreams. The eyes of her stallion, which once gleamed exhilaration and freedom, now glare with defiance and anger. Danielle has clearly been forced to grow up.

With these two plays, Taylor rediscovers an issue long forgotten in our post-historical age: the nature of, and the necessity for, these rites of passage in all cultures.

While panhandling outside a coffee shop, Johnny, a Cree woman who lives on the streets, is shocked to recognize a face from her childhood, which was spent in a First Nations residential school. Desperate to hear the man acknowledge the terrible abuse he inflicted on her and other children at the school, Johnny follows Anglican bishop George King to his office to confront him. Inside King's office, Johnny's memories are fluid, shifting, and her voice cracks with raw emotion. Is the bishop actually guilty of what she claims, or has her ability to recollect been altered by poverty, abuse, and starvation experienced on the streets? Can her memories be trusted? Who is responsible for what? At its core, God and the Indian, by celebrated Aboriginal playwright Drew Hayden Taylor, explores the complex process of healing through dialogue. Loosely based on Death and the Maiden by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman, the play identifies the ambiguities that frame past traumatic events. Against the backdrop of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has facilitated the recent outpouring of stories from First Nations residential school survivors across the country, the play explores what is possible when the abused meets the abuser and is given a free forum for expression.

Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

A mesmerizing blend of vampire thriller and coming-of-age story--now available as a graphic novel. Newcomers to the Otter Lake native reserve don't go unnoticed for long. So it's no surprise that 16-year-old Tiffany's curiosity is piqued when her father rents out her room to a complete stranger. But little do Tiffany, her father, or even her insightful Granny Ruth suspect the truth about their guest. The mysterious Pierre L'Errant has a dreadful secret. After centuries roaming Europe as a brooding vampire, he has returned home to reclaim his Native roots before facing the rising sun and certain death. Meanwhile, Tiffany is deeply troubled--she doubts her boyfriend is being faithful, has escalating disputes with her father, and her estranged mother is starting a new life with somebody else. Fed up and heartsick, Tiffany threatens drastic measures and flees into the bush. There, in the midnight woods, a chilling encounter with L'Errant changes everything as Pierre introduces Tiffany to her proud Native heritage. For Pierre, though, destiny is fixed at sunrise. In this stunning graphic version of the award-winning novel first developed as a play in 1992, artist Mike Wyatt brings a brilliant story to visual life.

Jason Pierce, a 31 year old Canadian half-Native man, is packing up his urban apartment to leave it all behind for his romanticized vision of a return to life on the reserve where he grew up. As he's leaving, he is paid an unexpected visit by a 34 year old American man, Harry Deiter, who awkwardly introduces himself as Jason's half-brother. What Harry wants from Jason is bizarre: to be compatibility-tested for a possible kidney donation to their dying non-Native father, a man Jason has no memory of ever meeting and who, after a brief and secret affair, abandoned Jason's mother when he was two months old.

Both Jason and Harry are about to have their most fundamental and sustaining beliefs shaken to the core by their respective relationships to the biological father they inadvertently share. Harry, the naïve historical positivist, buoyed up by a lifetime of relative privilege as a member of the dominant imperial culture, encounters in Jason the anger and bitter resistance of the exploited and abandoned colonial, in terms of both Jason's Native and his Canadian heritage and identity.

Embroiled in the irreconcilable absurdity of their dilemma, Harry is forced to acknowledge that the father he has loved and respected all his life has concealed from his American family his capacity for an absent, heartless cruelty. Jason, on the other hand, must wrestle with the possibility that the man who so thoughtlessly exploited and abandoned his Canadian Native mother and their son may in fact have the capacity to be a loving and present husband and father.

This play raises powerful questions that transcend issues of culture, morality and history--they cut to the ethical quick of what it means to be human in a chaotic world stripped of the comfortable security of identity politics.

An uproariously funny and sharply inquisitive new play from one of Canada's leading Indigenous playwrights, Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion explores the possibility of reconciliation between Peoples and urgently questions past and contemporary forms of Canadian colonialism. Taylor's twenty-seventh play, Sir John A's characters include Canada's infamous first Prime Minister, red-nosed and pompous, full of patriarchal contempt for those strange and perplexing Indians, and his contemporary accusers: two Ojibway men and a soul-searching white woman.

Bobby Rabbit, Sir John A's irked, Anishinaabe main character, in a fit of anger and revenge, convinces his friend Hugh to accompany him on a sojourn of justice to dig up Sir John A. Macdonald's bones and hold them for ransom. Decades before, a medicine pouch belonging to Bobby's grandfather was taken away by the staff of the residential school where he was detained. The precious object was sent to a British Museum exhibition room for conservation - and now Bobby wants it repatriated. Along the way the pair pick up Anya, a young, bright, and opinionated woman fleeing a bad breakup, with conflicting ideas about Sir John A's place in Canadian history. Not to be left out of the argument, Canada's first Prime Minister, broadcasting live from nineteenth-century Ottawa, shows up with opinions of his own.

Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion is a powerful satire, a creative debate about the past violences of colonial racism and the as yet untested potentiality of restoring harmony between Peoples in Canada. A contemporary classic by Taylor!

There are a few questions that professional artists get asked regularly: Where do you get your ideas? How did you get started? And be honest--are you really in it for the money?

Following the highly successful Me Funny and Me Sexy anthologies, Me Artsy answers these eternal questions and more. With essays from fourteen First Nations artists from a variety of disciplines, the collection provides insight into the paths that led each artist to pursue and develop his or her craft. The essays explore many common themes around the role of art in First Nations communities, including the importance of art for creating social change, the role of art in representing Native culture and the fusion of traditional and contemporary techniques. On a more personal level, the essays describe the significance of art in the lives of the contributors, along with their sometimes unlikely journeys to success, stories which are often touched with humour and humility.

Chef David Wolfman describes gruelling years of prep work in the kitchens of the exclusive National Club; filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk discusses leaping into his first feature film without knowing how to finance it; fashion designer Kim Picard describes making a dress inspired by coffee beans; and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor tells the story of putting a bullet through his first play and burying it in his yard. Other contributors include actor/playwright Monique Mojica, painter Marianne Nicolson, painter Maxine Noel, blues pianist Murray Porter, scholar Karyn Recollet, dancer/choreographer Santee Smith, director/actor Rose Stella, drummer Steve Teekens, writer Richard Van Camp and manga artist Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas.

Winner of the 2020 PMC Indigenous Literature Award

When Ralph Thomas comes across graffiti of a horse in an alleyway in the early hours of the morning, he is stopped in his tracks. He recognizes this horse. A half-asleep Indigenous homeless man sees Ralph's reaction to the horse and calls out to him. Over the course of a morning's worth of hot coffee on a bitterly cold day, Ralph and the homeless man talk and Ralph remembers a troubling moment from his childhood when an odd little girl, Danielle, drew the most beautiful and intriguing horse on his mother's Everything Wall, winning the competition set up for children on the Otter Lake Reserve.

Ralph has lived with many questions that arose from his eleventh winter. What did the horse mean -- to him, his sister, his best friend, and, most importantly, the girl who drew it? These questions have never left him.

Chasing Painted Horses has a magical, fablelike quality that will enchant readers, and haunt them, for years to come.

A consortium of German developers shows up on the fictional Otter Lake Reserve with a seemingly irresistible offer to improve the local economy: the creation of Ojibway World, a Native theme park designed to attract European tourists, causing hilarious personal and political divisions within the local community.

The Berlin Blues concludes Drew Hayden Taylor's Blues quartet, showcasing contemporary stereotypes of First Nations people, including a fair number that originate from Indigenous communities themselves, to the often outraged delight of his international audiences.

Yet Europeans and other ethnic groups are not exempt from Taylor's incisive but good-humoured caricatures. Central to the motivation of these German developers are the hugely successful and best-selling adventure novels of the German author Karl May, whose work Adolf Hitler recommended as good wholesome reading for all ages. Written in the early twentieth century, they popularized Rousseau's image of Indigenous peoples as Noble Savages among European, and especially German youth, and have led to the creation of Karl May theme parks all over central Europe, where adult tourists can shed their inhibitions and play Cowboys and Indians with a seriousness as ridiculous as it is abandoned. This is identity politics stripped of its politically correct hyper-seriousness and dramatized to its absurd and ultimately hilarious conclusion.

The Berlin Blues premiered in Los Angeles at Native Voices in February 2007, touring to New York (at the Museum of the American Indian), and then to the museum in Washington D.C. the following May, followed by a reading tour in Germany. In Canada it was produced at Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay in January 2008, and then by Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon.

Cerulean Blue is a comedic play about a struggling blues band invited to participate in a benefit concert for a First Nation community in conflict with governmental authorities. Upon arriving, the band discovers the entire lineup of musical acts has cancelled and they're left trapped behind barricades. Complicating the matter, there is conflict within the band and the sudden appearance of an old girlfriend makes the event even more perilous.

This play is an homage to fast-moving farces while also addressing Aboriginal issues. Cerulean Blue deals with relationships, perceptions, politics, and what to do when you discover you've been dating your first cousin. Add a few spoonfuls of original blues music, and you've got a fun-filled evening.

The play was written for a large ensemble cast, which makes it ideal for musical theatre departments in high schools and colleges - every student can play a part. An original musical score by Andrew Clemens will be available for download from Talonbooks.com.

Cast of ten women and ten men.

A heartwarming comedy about two middle-aged First Nations seniors, Evie and Cecil, on their very first trip out of the country. Evie and Cecil reminisce and bicker as they review a lifetime together.

CECIL
So, what exactly are we going to do now that we're here in Mexico?

EVIE
I'm so glad you asked. Supposedly there are some ancient Mayan ruins somewhere in the interior, not far from here. I thought that might be interesting.

CECIL
If you want to look at an ancient, broken-down, Indian ruin, we can go visit your cousin.

Evie and Cecil are celebrating their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. As a gift, their grown children send them on a second honeymoon - to a fabulous resort on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. The only problem is that neither have ever been out of the country, let alone off their Cree reservation. Each reacts to their new experiences differently, and something ominous seems to be bothering Cecil. Despite the sun, sand, and sea sparkling right outside the resort window, all Cecil seems to want to do is sit alone in his hotel room, idly flipping through TV channels, the curtains pulled tight. What is he worried about? Maybe there is more behind this trip than he has been told. The past, present, and future all pay the couple a visit as they acclimatize to the pleasures of Mexico - and spicy food. Mixed up in all the fun is their hotel housekeeper, Manuela. As they form a bond with this courteous young local, they help her navigate some of the troublesome situations in which she finds herself.

Cast of 1 man and 2 women.