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By Alix Ohlin. 2019
"Evocative...traces [its] characters over long arcs of time and place with equal amounts grace and wit. Most revelatory is the…
way that each [sister] fights to find her own life as an artist outside the expectations of others and the demands of a male-dominated world."--Vogue A masterful achievement: a joint coming-of-age story and an achingly poignant portrait of the strange, painful, ultimately life-sustaining bonds between sisters. Lark and Robin are half-sisters whose similarities end at being named for birds. While Lark is shy and studious, Robin is wild and artistic. Raised in Montreal by their disinterested single mother, they form a fierce team in childhood regardless of their differences. As they grow up, Lark excels at school and Robin becomes an extraordinary pianist. At seventeen, Lark flees to America to attend college, where she finds her calling in documentary films, and her sister soon joins her. Later, in New York City, they find themselves tested: Lark struggles with self-doubt, and Robin chafes against the demands of Juilliard. Under pressure, their bond grows strained and ultimately is broken, and their paths abruptly diverge. Years later, Lark's life is in tatters and Robin's is wilder than ever. As Lark tries to take charge of her destiny, she discovers that despite the difficulties of their relationship, there is only one person she can truly rely on: her sister. In this gripping, unforgettable novel about art, ambition, sisterhood, motherhood, and self-knowledge, Alix Ohlin traces the rich and complicated lives of two indelible women. Dazzlingly insightful and beautifully crafted, Dual Citizens captures the unique language of sisters and makes visible the imperceptible strings that bind us to the ones we love for good.By Megan Coles. 2019
February in Newfoundland is the longest month of the year. Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown…
St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess from around the bay, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and discover that resilience proves most enduring in the dead of this winter’s tale.By turns biting, funny, poetic, and heartbreaking, Megan Gail Coles’ debut novel rips into the inner lives of a wicked cast of characters, building towards a climax that will shred perceptions and force a reckoning. This is blistering Newfoundland Gothic for the twenty-first century, a wholly original, bracing, and timely portrait of a place in the throes of enormous change, where two women confront the traumas of their past in an attempt to overcome the present and to pick up a future.By Michael Crummey. 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEFrom bestselling, award-winning author Michael Crummey comes a sweeping, heart-wrenching, deeply immersive novel about…
a brother and sister alone in a small world.A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them.As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.This novel is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves. Bestseller.By Margaret Atwood. 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEMargaret Atwood's dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid's Tale, has become a modern…
classic—and now she brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion in this riveting sequel. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes. "The literary event of the year." —The Guardian "The international literary event of the season." —Globe and Mail "It’s terrifying and exhilarating." —Judges of the Booker Prize 2019By Marianne Micros. 2018
Myth, folklore, and magic permeate the stories in Marianne Micros' collection Eye. Set in ancient and modern Greece, and in…
contemporary Europe and North America, these tales tell of evil-eye curses, women healers, ghosts, a changeling, and people struggling to retain or gain power in a world of changing beliefs. Here you will find stories of a nymph transformed into a heifer, a young soldier who returns home to discover that his brother is a changeling, an ancient temple uncovered during the construction of a church, a betrayed woman lost in a labyrinth, a wise woman confronting changes to her position when modern technology comes to her village. Some stories show that people still seek refuge in myth and folk beliefs; the ways of the past are not gone. The paving of a village does not destroy the power of the evil eye or the ability to repel it. A temple in honour of the old gods comes again to the surface. An unfinished musical composition for piano magically completes itself whenever it is played. Magic is not dead but rises again in unexpected ways.By Téa Mutonji. 2019
In this story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness…
inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed. 2019.By Todd Babiak. 2019
Summer 1989. Fourteen-year-old Adam Lisinski is a star in his small town of Monument, Colorado. He's poised to be a…
starter on his high school football team, even though he's only a sophomore. He has a part-time job at Eugene's Gas Stop where he works with his best friend, Simon Kinoro. Adam would see his girlfriend, Phoebe Brandt, more if he could, but he makes due with time alone at Monument Lake after her ballet lessons. His mother, Helen, euthanizes sick animals all day at the veterinary clinic. She loves him dearly, but Adam knows she worries. And then Beatrice Cyr arrives in Monument, and Adam is distracted from everything that matters to him. He's mesmerized the second she steps out of his neighbour Marv Walker's truck, and desperate to be around her even if he's confused about what she wants or where she comes from. Soon, Beatrice finds ways to be alone with him--in the change room at Modern You, the clothing store on Second Street, at the movie theatre, in Marv's truck--and Adam's hopelessly caught between wanting to be with her and lying to everyone he loves. And when Beatrice convinces Helen to quit her job and undertake an ambitious real estate venture, Adam's forced to make an impossible choice.By Lori Lansens. 2019
Taking place over 48 hours in the year 2023, this is the story of Rory Ann Miller, on the run…
with her best friend because they are accused of bombing their posh Californian high school during an American Virtue Ball. There's a bounty on their heads, and a social media storm of trolls flying around them, not to mention a posse of law enforcement, attack helicopters and drones trying to track them down. Rory's mom, a social activist and lawyer, has been arrested and implicated in her daughter's "crimes" whereas her dad (who betrayed his wife and daughter in a nasty divorce) is cooperating with the authorities. The story exists in a universe of gated communities, born-again Christians, Probationary Citizens (once known as "Dreamers"), re-criminalized abortion and birth control, teenage virginity oaths and something called the Red Market, which is either a Conservative bogey-man created to further polarize the "base" or a criminal network making money from selling unwanted babies to whomever wants them and fetal tissue to cosmetics and drug companies. Rory is cynical and scared, furious and scathing, betrayed and looking for something or someone to trust. What she has to say about the dads and bosses and politicians lining up to keep women in their place, and about the ways women collaborate in their own undermining, is fierce, and funny, and sad, and true. 2019.By Leïla Slimani. 2019
She wants only one thing: to be wanted. Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist…
in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored--and consumed by an insatiable need for sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. 2019.By Becky Blake. 2019
Hailing from Toronto, where she has an assault charge waiting, Niki is outside of Canada for the first time. The…
pickpockets, squatters and graffiti artists she meets challenge her to reassess her ideas about luck and art. With the help of a passionate Catalan separatist who dreams of building a new country from the ground up, Niki realizes that starting her life over from scratch could be an opportunity - if she can just find a way to clear her name." 2019.By Amy Jones. 2019
Ava Hart is the most reluctant cast member of a reality TV show based on her big city family's (mostly…
staged) efforts to run a B&B in small-town Nova Scotia. Every family has its problems, but Ava has grown up seeing her family's every up and down broadcast on national television, after the show becomes an unexpected success for reasons that will take a heavy toll on the Harts. Mags Kovach is the charismatic lead singer of a struggling Halifax rock band hoping to be the Next Big Thing. For years she's managed to contain her demons and navigate the uglier aspects of being a woman in the music world, but after a devastating loss, she turns her anger on the only person she can: herself. As their private tragedies continue to set social media and tabloid headlines on fire, their every move subjected to an endless stream of public commentary, it will be their unexpected friendship that will save them. They will push back against the roles they've been forced to play, and take back control of something they thought they'd lost forever--the right to their own stories. 2019.By Joanne Ramos. 2019
Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages--and…
all of it for free. In fact, you're paid big money to stay here--more than you've ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds; your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a Host at Golden Oaks, or the Farm as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery. 2019.By Cary Fagan. 2019
Set in Toronto, this short novel is a portrait of two pivotal times in the life of Miriam Moscowitz. The…
first section describes her experiences as a bright young university student in the 1950s and recounts the discrimination she faced as a woman; the second section revisits Miriam's life half a century later, exploring the changes in her community and within herself. 2019.By Ann Patchett. 2019
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!From the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of…
Wonder, comes Ann Patchett’s most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are.At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.By David Szalay. 2019
From the acclaimed, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of All That Man Is, a stunning, virtuosic novel about twelve people, mostly…
strangers, and the surprising ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths while in transit around the world.A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that has also impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn.In this wondrous, profoundly moving novel, Szalay's diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all. Along the way, they experience the full range of human emotions from loneliness to love and, knowingly or otherwise, change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.Written with magic and economy and beautifully exploring the delicate, crisscrossed nature of relationships today, Turbulence is a dazzling portrait of the interconnectedness of the modern world.By Nazanine Hozar. 2019
National BestsellerThis extraordinary, gripping debut is a rags-to-riches-to-revolution tale about an orphan girl's coming of age in Iran."Aria is a…
feminist odyssey, about a girl in a time of intolerance as the revolution in Iran is breaking out . . . a poised and dramatic historical novel with contemporary relevance." --John Irving"Here comes a sweeping saga about the Iranian revolution as it explodes--told from the ground level and the centre of chaos. A Doctor Zhivago of Iran." --Margaret Atwood (on Twitter)It is the early 1950s in a restless Iran, a country powerful with oil wealth but unsettled by class and religious divides and by a larger world hungry for its resources. One night, a humble driver in the Iranian army is walking home through a neighbourhood in Tehran when he hears a small, pitiful cry. Curious, he searches for the source, and to his horror comes upon a newborn baby girl abandoned by the side of the road and encircled by ravenous dogs. He snatches up the child, and forever alters his own destiny and that of the little girl, whom he names Aria.Nazanine Hozar's stunning debut takes us inside the Iranian revolution--but seen like never before, through the eyes of an orphan girl. Through Aria, we meet three very different women who are fated to mother the lost child: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, wife of the kind-hearted soldier; wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who welcomes Aria into her home, adopting her as an heir; and finally, the mysterious, impoverished Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden. The novel's heart-pounding conclusion takes us through the brutal revolution that installs the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader, even as Aria falls in love and becomes a young mother herself.By Greer Hendricks. 2019
When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all she'll have…
to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave. But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what she's thinking...and what she's hiding. Bestseller. 2019.By Richard Van Camp. 2019
The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories…
are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves (“The Camel Clutch”), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or “Sky People,” love, lust and prayers for peace. While this is Van Camp’s most hilarious short story collection, it’s also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity. The stories in Moccasin Square Gardens show that medicine power always comes with a price. To counteract this darkness, Van Camp weaves a funny and loving portrayal of the Tli?cho? Dene and other communities of the North, drawing from oral history techniques to perfectly capture the character and texture of everyday small-town life. “Moccasin Square Gardens” is the nickname of a dance hall in the town of Fort Smith that serves as a meeting place for a small but diverse community. In the same way, the collection functions as a meeting place for an assortment of characters, from shamans and time-travelling goddess warriors to pop-culture-obsessed pencil pushers, to con artists, archivists and men who just need to grow up, all seeking some form of connection.By Ann Napolitano. 2020
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • A “dazzling” novel that “will break…
your heart and put it back together again” (J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions) about a young boy who must learn to go on after surviving tragedy “A reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better . . . Don’t miss this one.”—Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live? One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.Praise for Dear Edward“Dear Edward made me think, nod in recognition, care about its characters, and cry, and you can’t ask more of a novel than that.”—Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room“Weaving past and present into a profoundly beautiful, page-turning story of mystery, loss, and wonder, Dear Edward is a meditation on survival, but more important, it is about carving a life worth living. It is about love and hope and caring for others, and all the transitory moments that bind us together.”—Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley and The Good ThiefBy Andrea Gunraj. 2019
The anticipated sophomore novel from the celebrated author of The Sudden Disappearance of Seetha, which Quill & Quire called "an…
exciting, memorable debut." Partially inspired by the real-life experiences of a former resident of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, The Lost Sister bravely explores the topics of child abuse, neglect, and abduction against a complex interplay of gender, race, and class dynamics. Alisha and Diana are young sisters living at Jane and Finch, a Toronto suburb full of immigrants trying to build new lives in North America. Diana, the eldest, is the light of the little family, the one Alisha longs to emulate more than anyone else. But when Diana doesn't come home one night and her body is discovered in the woods, Alisha becomes haunted. She thinks she knows who did it, but can't tell anyone about it. Unable to handle the loss of their daughter and unaware of Alisha's secret guilt, the family unravels. It's only through an unusual friendship with Paula, an older woman who volunteers at her school, that Alisha finds reprieve. Once an orphan in the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children and estranged from her own sister, Paula helps Alisha understand that the chance for redemption and peace only comes with facing difficult truths.