Russell Smith

A Globe and Mail Fall Book of 2025

An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness.

Between writing a weekly column for The Hype Report and managing her mood stabilizers, Gloria navigates a series of quasi-relationships while commiserating with her best friend about dating apps and dick pics, married men and questionable boundaries. But when she makes a glib pass at Daryn, a stranger on a subway platform crowded with young anti-immigration protesters, and finds him waiting for her outside her health club a couple of days later, a surprising curiosity leads her not to consider a restraining order, but to talk to him.

Claiming she wants to interview him for an article on the incel movement, Gloria meets Daryn for coffee and soon invites him back to her apartment—where his earnestness and painfully restrained desire inspire her to dominate him sexually. As their physical relationship intensifies, so does their emotional connection, and Gloria can’t shake the sense that she’s headed in a dangerous direction.

An electric examination of sex and love, self-loathing, and twenty-first century loneliness, Self Care is a devastating novel about women and men, what they want and what they say they want, and the violent tension between the two.

Self Care

Nominated for the 2015 Giller Prize. In Russell Smith?s darkly brilliant new collection of short stories Confidence, the reader will be introduced to ecstasy-taking PhD students; financial traders desperate for husbands; owners of failing sex stores; violent and unremovable tenants; aggressive raccoons; seedy massage parlours; experimental filmmakers who record every second of their day; wives who blog insults directed at their husbands. There are cheating husbands. There are private clubs, crowded restaurants, psychiatric wards. Every character has a secret of some kind.

Stories

Confidence

In the tradition of erotic confession (with a catch), Smith’s pornographic novel explores female desire. The unnamed narrator – gorgeous, sophisticated, bored, underemployed – embarks on a series of intense urban encounters in an unnamed city. Her desire is limitless: passionate, playful, intense, humorous. Diana is a literary experiment to arouse and to paint a sexual portrait of a city.

A Diary in the Second Person

Diana

Men’s Style is a personal and knowledgeable compendium of tasteful advice for the thinking man on how to dress and shop for clothes in a world of conflicting fashion imperatives. This sophisticated and witty book by the popular Globe and Mail columnist combines nuggets of history and the sociology of masculine attire with a practical and supremely useful guide to achieving an elegant and affordable wardrobe for work and play. In chapters and amusing sidebars on shoes, suits, shirts and ties, formal and casual wear, underwear and swimsuits, cufflinks and watches, coats, hats, and scarves, Russell Smith steers a confident course between the hazards of blandness and vulgarity to articulate a philosophy of dress that can take you anywhere. He tells you what the rules are for looking the part at the office, a formal function, or the hippest party, and when you can toss those rules aside. Men’s Style is supplemented throughout with fifty black-and-white illustrations and diagrams by illustrator Edwin Fotheringham.

The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress

Men's Style

Tom was pretty low on the hospital's totem pole, but he had what all the doctors wanted: Beth, his curvaceous, over-sexed wife. This didn't bother Tom. He knew from experience there was more than enough to go around. Then Dr. Beresford arrived to start some rather interesting experiments with male volunteers, some of whom needed a little help to produce. It was only logical he'd hire Beth to give it to them. Then things started to get out of hand... Or was it in hand? Beth was so excited she was never quite sure.

Sex on Doctor's Orders

Bronislaw Malinowski

Crime and Custom in Savage Society represents Bronislaw Malinowski's major discussion of the relationship between law and society. Throughout his career he constructed a coherent science of anthropology, one modeled on the highest standards of practice and theory. Methodology steps forward as a core element of the refashioned anthropology, one that stipulates the manner in which anthropological data should be acquired. Malinowski's choice of law was not inevitable, but neither was it unmotivated. Anyone interested in understanding the social structure and organization of societies cannot avoid dealing with the concept of "law," even if it is to deny its presence. Law and anthropology have shown a natural affinity for one another, sharing a beneficial history of using the methods and viewpoints of one to inform and advance the other. The best lesson Malinowski provides us with comes in the last paragraphs of Crime and Custom in Savage Society: "The true problem is not to study how human life submits to rules; the real problem is how the rules become adapted to life." On that question, he has left us richly inspired to continue the quest.

Crime and Custom in Savage Society

Guys don't wear wolf pelts anymore, but not much else has changed in the world of men's clothes: the right suit, or tie, or shirt, or shoes still projects mystery, erotic potential, and power. And to negotiate these hurdles with style and confidence, Men's Style is indispensable---a valuable source of practical advice for how to dress in a world of conflicting fashion imperatives, and a witty guide to the history, trends, codes, and conventions of men's attire. In chapters and amusing sidebars on shoes, suits, shirts and ties, formal and casual wear, underwear and swimsuits, cufflinks and watches, coats, hats, and scarves, Russell Smith steers a confident course between the twin hazards of blandness and vulgarity to articulate a philosophy of dress that can take you anywhere. Here you'll find the rules for looking the part at the office, a formal function, or the hippest party---and learn when you can toss those rules aside. And you'll find level answers to all of your questions. What color suit should a man buy first? Should socks match the belt, pants, or shoes? What tuxedos are always in, and which aren't ever? And what's required of ambiguous social situations like "dress casual" and "black-tie optional"? The answers are here, in a book that's full of trivia, history, and guidance---finally, the perfect guide for brothers, fathers, sons, and selves.

In the year 15540 the earth is quite different. The few humans that survived “Pollution man’s” poisoning of the earth have evolved into specialized creatures but now only living off what nature offers. But through all the changes the earth and its creatures have seen, does divine intervention still exist? As Singer starts her extraordinary journey she shows us that indeed that was the one thing that never changed.

Singer’s Amazing Journey: Part I the Woach Spar

A fast-paced comic extravaganza from the pen of the author of the runaway bestseller How Insensitive. Set in the cynical and celebrity-obsessed world of mainstream media, and alternatively in the stultifying conservatism of suburban sprawl, a failed musician and intellectual nerd has become a freelance magazine writer and unwillingly been cast into the role of fashion arbiter. Reluctantly, and only for the money, James Rainer Willing agrees to interview the reclusive nationalist Canadian poet Ludwig Boben for the prestigious American magazine Glitter. Willing's insanely busy and competitive life provides glimpses into the world of fashion photography, small-press poetry readings, expensive and fashionable restaurants (he is a restaurant critic), `lifestyle' magazines, and a return to the suddenly-quiet life or non-life of ghostly New Munich, Ontario, where Willing revisits his one-time peers, the People Who Stayed Behind.

Noise

Now in its 48th year, Best Canadian Stories has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many writers who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon. Caroline Adderson, Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, Tamas Dobozy, Mavis Gallant, Douglas Glover, Norman Levine, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Kathleen Winter, and many others have appeared in its pages over the decades, making Best Canadian Stories the go-to source for what’s new in Canadian fiction writing for close to five decades. Selected by guest editor Russell Smith, the 2018 edition draws together both newer and established writers to shape an engaging and luminous mosaic of writing in this country today—a continuation of not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. Best Canadian Stories 2018 features work by: Shashi Bhat, Tom Thor Buchanan, Lynn Coady, Deirdre Simon Dore, Alicia Elliott, Bill Gaston, Liz Harmer, Brad Hartle, David Huebert, Reg Johanson, Amy Jones, Michael LaPointe, Stephen Marche, Lisa Moore, Kathy Page, and Alex Pugsley.

Best Canadian Stories 2018

Adrift in Toronto's gossipy, grant-driven cultural scene, a coterie of overeducated, underemployed young people stab at vaguely artistic projects and scramble after the opportunities that seem tantalizingly within reach -- if you know the right people. Searching for work, sex and big-city life is Ted Owen, who quickly finds himself swept into the complicated lives of the young and the jaded, people who thrive in a strange world of hip fashion and surreal night-clubs.

How Insensitive

Metaphysical discussion of the teachings of Gurdjieff with emphasis on numerological and mathematical aspects. Topics include: the Enneagram, Law of Three, Law of Seven, Ratio of the Cosmic Rumple, Three inner octaves, 69 vibrations with define Life, octaves in the universe, dna, much more. Illustrated with diagrams. Cosmic Secrets is the seminal work of Russell A. Smith which brings the ubiquitous underlying objective structure of the macro- and micro-cosm into focus for the seeker of truth. Using only fundamental maths, he has presented in one volume both the knowledge and the tools required to rearrange one's inner world according to a proper law-conformable paradigm. From the opening lines of the Author's Note: "As we journey into the vast, intricate terrain of the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance, it will serve us well: to know where we are; remember where we have been; and understand where we are going. Since in our endeavors we shall not only venture horizontally-along the same scale, but vertically-traversing many scales...following guideposts...added to help the intuitive traveler find his way..." His exposition illuminates the answer to a question that has been on the mind of Man since the dawn of reason: WHY ARE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE?

Gurdjieff: Cosmic Secrets

Insight Study Guides are written by experts and cover a range of popular literature, plays and films. Designed to provide insight and an overview about each text for students and teachers, these guides endeavor to develop knowledge and understanding rather than just provide answers and summaries.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

This book, first published in 1965, describes the British penal system as it existed in the 1960s. It describes how the system defined, accounted for, and disposed of offenders. As an early work in criminology, it focuses on differences between, and changes in, the views held by legislators, lawyers, philosophers, and the man in the street on the topic of crime and punishment. Walker is interested in the extent to which their views reflect the facts established and the theories propounded by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists. The confusion between criminologists and penal reformers was initially encouraged by criminologists themselves, many of whom were penal reformers. Strictly speaking, penal reform, according to Walker, was a spare-time occupation for criminologists, just as canvassing for votes is an ancillary task for political scientists. The difference is that the criminologist's spare-time occupation is more likely to take a ""moral"" form, and when it does so it is more likely to interfere with what should be purely criminological thoughts. The machinery of justice involves the interaction of human beings in their roles of victim, offender, policeman, judge, supervisor, or custodian, and there must be a place for human sympathy in the understanding, and still more in the treatment, of individual offenders. This book is concerned with the efficiency of the system as a means to these ends. One of the main reasons why penal institutions have continued to develop more slowly than other social services is that they are a constant battlefield between emotions and prejudices. This is a great empirical study; against which the policy-maker and criminologist can measure progress or regression in British criminals and punishments.

Russell Smith

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