2017 Foreword INDIES Finalist (Historical, Adult Fiction). 1940s Vancouver. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbour and racial tension is building in Vancouver. The RCMP are rounding up "suspicious" young men, and fishing boats and property are soon seized from Steveston fishers; internment camps in BC's interior are only months away.

Daniel Su …

Moving, entertaining, and witty, A Thousand Consolations is a literary romantic comedy for fans of David Nicholls’s Us and Emma Straub’s Modern Lovers.

Paula doesn’t put much faith in the candles she designs for her customers, which promise to cure everything from unrequited love to ingrown toenails; it’s just a business she started after he …

Long Ride Yellow is the debut novel from two-time Journey Prize Finalist Martin West. The novel explores the limits of sexual desire and willfully prods the veil at the edge of reality. Nonni is a dominatrix who likes to push the boundaries; she is also easily bored. Her disdain for all that is conventional and "vanilla" launches her on a journey o …

This historical novel reimagines the North-West resistance of 1885 through the Métis women of Batoche, and in particular the rebellious outsider, Josette Lavoie. When Riel arrives from Montana, he discovers that Josette is the granddaughter of Chief Big Bear, whom he needs as an ally, but Josette resists becoming his disciple when she learns that …

A powerful dystopian novel set during a new American civil war, about a polygamist cult leader and his followers.

In this eerily relevant, cautionary novel, a civil war is brewing in America. Below ground, a cult led by the deluded and narcissistic Father Ernst is ensconced in an underground bunker, waiting out the conflict. When the "Family" runs o …

The latest by Angie Abdou: young Eli invokes the spirit, and the mistakes, of his great-great-grandfather.

In Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou's fifth work of fiction, Eli and his parents have returned to their family home in Coalton, a small mountain town. The parents, Nicholas and Lucy, hope that by escaping their hectic city lives, they will res …

Vancouver is in an uproar over the death by gunshot of a Scottish nanny, Janet Stewart. An almost deliberately ham-handed police investigation has Constable Hook suspecting a cover-up. The powerful United Council of Scottish Societies is demanding an inquiry. The killing has become a political issue with an election not far away.

The city is buzzing …

An offbeat story collection about strange, imperfect people doing strange, imperfect things.

In poet Dina Del Bucchia's debut story collection, an older woman becomes obsessed with the state of her lawn, a pet architect jeopardizes her relationship with her wife over a wild bird, a cement mixer helps a woman fulfill her dreams, a former model become …

This award-winning novel by playwright Wadji Mouawad is a thriller and a road novel – written in the North African storytelling tradition in which events unfold from an animal point of view.

The novel opens with a brutal murder: the protagonist arrives home to find his wife lying in a pool of blood. Driven by grief and the need to find whoever d …

"In this new collection Gaston's range is so wide, his technique so masterful, his tenderness, humour and intelligence so finely measured that he stops my heart."

--Barbara Gowdy

A Mariner's Guide to Self Sabotage is populated by the lonely and alienated, holders of secrets, members (or would-be members) of shadowy organizations, screw-ups, joyrider …

Arsenault’s Rabelaisian fantasy is a gothic tale of the macabre and the bizarre, of black magicians and alchemists, and of the life and times of Zora Marjanna Lavanko, the daughter of a brutish tripe-dresser who dies for love. This surreal novel is set in the murky fictional domain of the Fredavian Forest, in the very real province of Karelia, th …

A Crossing of Hearts continues Michel Tremblay’s Desrosiers Diaspora series of novels, a family saga set in Montreal during World War I.

August 1915. Montreal is stifled by a heat wave while war rages in Europe. The three Desrosiers sisters – Tititte, Teena, and Maria – had been planning a whole week of vacation in the mountains, to do nothin …

Sonja Danychuk, a serious and introverted student with dirt-poor immigrant parents, takes pride in her intellectual and academic achievements—essential skills to help her survive and eventually leave small-town Davenport in Northern Ontario. When her father is cut down by a fatal heart attack, Sonja must find a way to pay for university, so she a …

The Clothesline Swing is a journey through the troublesome aftermath of the Arab Spring. A former Syrian refugee himself, Ramadan unveils an enthralling tale of courage that weaves through the mountains of Syria, the valleys of Lebanon, the encircling seas of Turkey, the heat of Egypt and finally, the hope of a new home in Canada.

Inspired by One …

In this atmospheric, post–Cormac McCarthy western novel, four disparate characters criss-cross the desert in pursuit of an impossible ideal. Along the way, these wily characters captivate and intrigue as they seek the American dream in a lawless town in the 1860s.

Reverend Aaron is found lying unconscious on the dusty trail to a family farm somewh …

Though But When We Look Closer is a collection of eighteen stories that approaches its subjects from a parade of landscapes, running through these tales is a singular motif--taking control. Characters find themselves in skins they wish to shed, with vices held close and with voices that must be heard. Whether it be seeking a life in a foreign land, …

Aaron Cordic and Samantha Riske are a couple of twenty-something hypochondriacs living in east-end Toronto. While Aaron works part-time at a bathroom supply store, donning surgical masks, plastic gloves, and a backpack full of sanitary products, Samantha hides herself away in their apartment, tip-toeing around naked and spying on the neighbours. Be …

It’s 1947 in Lahore, and the Sharma family is forced to flee their home during the violence of the Partition of India. As the train tracks measure the ever-growing distance between Varoon and his mother, who vanished during the panic to escape, the boy is thrust towards an uncertain future.

Forty years later, Varoon’s grown son, Anush, desperat …

A YA novel about Keira, a figure skater just entering high school who's intrigued about kissing both boys and girls.

In this compelling novel for young adults, Keira is a quirky but shy teen entering her first year of high school; she navigates her growing interest in kissing both girls and boys, while not alienating her BFF, boy-crazy Sita. As the …

A former undetected outlaw who ran with Bill Bagley’s notorious gang during the Depression, Lena Stillman is now an elite codebreaker in a position to know the nation’s strategic secrets. Good under pressure, good at keeping her mouth shut, Lena never had trouble keeping her double lives compartmentalized—at least not until Bill is sentenced …

With an Introduction by Erín Moure and an Afterword by George Bowering.

These days, Canada is a heavyweight of world fiction, boasting some of the gaudiest names in the literary firmament, its schools graduating great writers by the frontlist. It's easy to forget that it was not always so. Forty years ago, George Bowering saw a country still strug …

Cell: no service. Email: down. Internet: off. TV: nothing. Radio: static. Communication: minimal. Chaos: unstoppable. Press Any Key to Start. PR hack Tristan Schultz is buried deep in the endless code of Millennial life, slogging away for a major pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Hopelessly drowning in a world of texts, emails, Tweets and status u …

Cell: no service. Email: down. Internet: off. TV: nothing. Radio: static. Communication: minimal. Chaos: unstoppable. Press Any Key to Start. PR hack Tristan Schultz is buried deep in the endless code of Millennial life, slogging away for a major pharmaceutical company in Seattle. Hopelessly drowning in a world of texts, emails, Tweets and status u …

"Amber McMillan's writing balances an eye for the unusual and resiliently beautiful with a sympathy for the frailties common to all her islanders."
-Kevin Chong, author of Baroque-a-Nova, Neil Young Nation and Beauty Plus Pity

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The Woods: A Year on Protection Island is a personal memoir that probes the unique and sometimes unsettling tenor of life …

Naive and talented, Hana Knight is a young classical pianist who has been gifted with a musical upbringing, a magnificent Steinway piano, a place at Juilliard and a patron who arranges everything, from her Manhattan apartment to her first European tour.

In the midst of her meteoric career, Hana becomes increasingly aware of an unusual follower, a h …

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize finalist

Set in the early 1990s, Ashley Little's follow-up to her award-winning novel Anatomy of a Girl Gang introduces readers to unforgettable eleven-year-old Tucker Malone--the only child of a narcoleptic touring stripper--who believes his father is Sam Malone from Cheers. He and his mother move from motel to motel unti …

Award-winning author Meredith Quartermain’s second novel and seventh book, U Girl, is a coming-of-age story set in Vancouver in 1972, a city crossed between love-in hip and forest-corp square.

Frances Nelson escapes her small-town background to attend first-year university in the big city. "You’ve got to find the great love," her new friend Dag …

It’s hard to worry about the future when you’re laughing at the hilarious absurdity of daily life.

The days we live go by like slugs eating their way through leaves; everything changes, yet nothing changes, and the years soon accumulate. Who doesn’t read their daily horoscope, searching for guidance about what’s to come, how to live? What …

Arthur is a young gay man in Montreal at a crossroads. He gets lost in a blizzard of boys and endless possibilitiesâ??looking to fall in love and to experience devotionâ??but finds himself increasingly immersed in a world of hedonism and deception, especially as he deals with the messy remains of his relationship with Jeremy, his chimerical ex-bo …

When the electricity inexplicably goes out nationwide, the mundanities of life gradually shift to the rigours of survival. In this post-apocalyptic setting, an unnamed mechanic jumps into his beat-up car and drives east, journeying 4,736 kilometres to reach his dying father.

As the narrator’s journey becomes one of essentials – gasoline, fresh w …

Krissy Mathews has returned. Four years ago, the seventeen-year-old vanished. The young detective assigned to her case has hunted her relentlessly. Now she bursts through the door of the hospital, a lifeless child in her arms and a man she calls her husband by her side. The police pry Jasper Ryan from Krissy's grasp and charge him with her kidnappi …

Singularly obsessed with his all-consuming passion for Anna, the object of his adolescent desire, the photographer Christophe Langelier is beside himself. Ten years ago, he failed the test of eating a bicycle for her as proof of his love and devotion. Since then, he has created a photographic catalogue of his only model, complete with a glossary, a …

Prize-winning writer Jane Eaton Hamilton's novel explores the complexities of contemporary queer love.

On her fiftieth birthday, crazy-in-love Ajax visits her mercurial lover Logan, who trails their tarnished reputation like a lapsed halo. Logan has secrets, but so does Ajax, and during their weekend getaway to Ontario's cottage country, some of the …

Myrtle is not one of those communities with a town historian or a roster of famous residents. Myrtle does, however, have a poultry plant, and looming above the plant are the eagles, massive birds that roost in trees and feast on entrails left by workers, creatures synonymous with power, freedom and might. The story starts with a newspaper photo tak …

From birth, the child was locked away in a minuscule cell, at #804 of level 5969 of the Edifice. Around him ... only concrete, without a view of the outside world. And two people: the tyrannical father, slowly killing himself; and the mother, fearing eviction. Unmoving in his roost, the child's life will be disrupted by a transformation that will r …

It is the glorious second day of May, 1942. The sun is drawing the damp from earth still heavy with the end of a long Quebec winter, the budding branches of the trees along rue Fabre and in Parc Lafontaine of the Plateau Mont Royal ache to release their leaves into the warm, clear air heralding the approach of summer.

Seven women in this raucous Fra …

Meet The Gorgons The Legionnaires Chicken Treblinka The Statistics . . . Meet Dee, Gordyn, Em, and Jay, indecisive members of the greatest New Wave band to ever spring from River Bend City. Before they graduate from high school and flee a mill town that's seen better days, these ambitious friends (two sets of siblings) aim to make something from no …

A heartbroken derelict. An abruptly idealistic executive. A father trying to reconnect with his daughters. Three men inhabiting the same neighbourhood with completely divergent lives come together in a collision that will leave each of them changed forever. In his debut novel, Michael Knox evokes, in cinematic prose, a glimpse of the complexity of …

Finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Dwight Eliot was born on a baseball diamond in the small town of Seep during a dugout-clearing brawl between his hometown team, The Seep Selects, and a visiting team of barnstorming Cuban All-Stars.

Decades later, Dwight returns to town only to witness his childhood home being moved down the highway on the …

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again is Tremblay’s homage to his mother, who nurtured his imagination, his reclusive reading habits and his love for the theatre and the arts, yet who did not live to witness the performance of Les Belles Soeurs—the first successful play written in joual with which Tremblay legitimized the Quebecois vernacular in …

Jennifer Manuel skilfully depicts the lonely world of Bernadette, a woman who has spent the last forty years living alone on the periphery of a remote West Coast First Nations reserve, serving as a nurse for the community. This is a place where truth and myth are deeply intertwined and stories are "like organisms all their own, life upon life, the …

1983. Vancouver is on the precipice of transforming itself from a dirty little town to a blandly sophisticated big city. Convertibles cruise beneath runty palm trees, and the air is filled with the delicious tang of ocean breezes, cheeseburgers, and pot smoke.

In this fast and furious crime novel set in the midst of a long west coast summer, an East …

Winner, Philip K. Dick Award for Distinguished Science Fiction

This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers f …

It’s 1965. Twenty-two-year-old Linda Wise despairs of escaping her overprotective parents and her hometown, where far too many know she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Deliverance arrives in the form of marriage to the charismatic, twenty-six-year-old Ronald Brunson, a newly ordained Methodist minister who ignites her passion for social jus …