Ray Smith

The Lord Nelson Tavern: a Halifax watering hole in the early 1960s. The group of young university students who hang out there-a ramshackle coterie of aspiring artists, economists, poets, and philosophers-come together to gossip and ponder the big questions of art and life, all the while pining after the vain and untouchable Francesca. Though these friends soon drift apart, their early rivalries, jealousies and conquests will continue to reverberate....

Century begins with the nightmare visions of a young woman named Jane Seymour, catching the reader up in a chronicle on the Seymour family that moves from Austria, America and Africa, through Edinburgh and Venice, and then back through the Paris of the Belle Epoque and forward to 1923 Germany. One of the most far-reaching novels ever published in Canada.

First published in 1969, Ray Smith's Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada remains as refreshing, innovative and important today as it has in every previous incarnation. Sophisticated, playful, crafted, sly, self-referential and extremely funny, it marks the beginning of a long and important, if unfortunately underappreciated, career by one of Canada's best humorists and innovative story-tellers.

Set in the small German city of Waltherrott, this novel is a madcap excursion from the 1980s back to 1848, the year of revolutions, then back to the time of the Black Death in the late 1340s. A startling comedy, A Night at the Opera is a tour de force in the unexpected, the bizarre, and the serendipitous.

Hugh has lived in River Cottage for six months, and that means his pigs have a date with butcher Ray Smith. It also means it is time for a party. Hugh also learns a remarkable technique for catching razor clams down by the seashore.

Hugh installs beehives at The River Cottage HQ, the only problem is his fear of being stung. He also takes on his biggest event yet, a wedding party, and the newlyweds want their entire menu to only include wild, or home-grown, cuisine.