Title search results
Showing 1 - 16 of 16 items
Let darkness bury the dead: a Murdoch mystery / (Detective Murdoch mystery. #8.)
By Maureen Jennings. 2017
November 1917. The Great War is grinding on. Initially, Canadians are mostly eager to fight for the Empire, but the…
carnage is horrendous and with enforced conscription, the enthusiasm for war is dimming. William Murdoch is a widower, a senior detective who, thanks to the new temperance laws, spends his time tracking down bootleggers and tipplers. His wife, Amy, died giving birth to their second child, a girl who lived only a few hours more. Murdoch, racked by grief, withdrew from his four-year-old son Jack, which he deeply regrets. Now, Jack is twenty-one and has returned from France after being wounded. It is soon apparent that he is deeply troubled and bound by shared secrets to another soldier, Percy McKinnon. The night after Jack and McKinnon arrive home, a young man is found beaten to death in the impoverished area of Toronto known as the Ward. Soon after, Murdoch has to deal with a tragic suicide, also a young man. Two more attacks follow in quick succession. The only common denominator is that all of the men were exempted from conscription. Increasingly worried that Jack knows more than he is letting on, Murdoch must solve these crimes before more innocents lose their lives. Sequel to "A journeyman to grief". 2017.Immigrant city: stories
By David Bezmozgis. 2019
In the title story, a father and his young daughter stumble into a bizarre version of his immigrant childhood. A…
mysterious tech conference brings a writer to Montreal where he discovers new designs on the past in "How it Used to Be." A grandfather's Yiddish letters expose a love affair and a wartime secret in "Little Rooster." In "Roman's Song," Roman's desire to help a new immigrant brings him into contact with a sordid underworld. At his father's request, Victor returns to Riga, the city of his birth, and has his loyalties tested by the man he might have been in "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave." And, in the noir-inspired "The Russian Riviera," Kostya leaves Russia to pursue a boxing career only to find himself working as a doorman in a garish nightclub in the Toronto suburbs.Frying Plantain: stories /
By Zalika Reid-Benta. 2019
Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle -- of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a…
"true" Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too "faas" or too "quiet" or too "bold" or too "soft." Set in "Little Jamaica," Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood, Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories. We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig's head in her great aunt's freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother's house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents. A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.Eye (Essential Prose Ser. #149)
By 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.Shut up you're pretty: stories
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.Late breaking
By K. D. Miller. 2018
A collection of linked short stories inspired by the paintings of Alex Colville. Each character appears in at least two…
of the stories, in a greater or lesser role. The most common link is a ghost who directly or indirectly "haunts" the book throughout. There is more than a hint of the uncanny in some of the stories, and a strong whiff of the gothic. At its lightest, this book is dark, reflecting the edgy, distrubing quality found in much of Alex Colville's work. The common theme is the vulnerability of the elder heart. Many of the characters are aged sixty and up. Inwardly, however, they are ageless--yearning for each other sexually and emotionally, falling in and out of love, forming new ties or rediscovering old ones. Not all characters are human - a dog, a horse, and an octopus play small but pivotal roles. Death is a constant, taking both peaceful and violent forms. Its presence renders the characters' lives and relationships all the more poignant for being ephemeral. 2018.This wicked tongue: stories /
By Elise Levine. 2019
A collection filled with complicated people longing for independence from the scripts of the past. From a sniping road-tripping couple…
in the desert to a cantankerous divinity-school candidate on the prairies to a frustrated cop in a cave in the south of France, This Wicked Tongue showcases the gritty and the sublime. 2019.Use your imagination! /
By Kris Bertin. 2019
A woman becomes obsessed with a story about her family from 1890--when a naked, mute girl stumbled onto their property--and…
whether or not it really happened. A self-help guru and his chief strategist take their most affluent and unstable clients on a harrowing nature hike that destroys their company. A young convict in a prison creative writing class chronicles the rise and fall of his cellblock's resident peacemaker. A rural neighbourhood becomes obsessed by the coming of a strange and powerful new homeowner who is in the middle of reinventing herself. The stories of Use Your Imagination! are about stories, about the way we define and give shape to ourselves through all kinds of narratives, true or not. In six long stories, Kris Bertin examines the complex labyrinth of lies, delusions, compromise, and fabrication that makes up our personal history and mythology. 2019.Moccasin Square Gardens: Short Stories
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.Never Forget (A Victor Lessard Thriller #book 1)
By Martin Michaud. 2020
Tormented, rebellious police detective Victor Lessard races to track down a ruthless killer in Montreal. “Martin Michaud is a master…
at twisty storytelling and compelling atmosphere.” — Catherine McKenzie “Never Forget is a crackerjack read.” — Quill & Quire “A raucous crime thriller.” — Publishers Weekly When a homeless man jumps to his death in Old Montreal, the police discover two wallets in his possession: one belonging to a retired psychiatrist who was murdered in a bizarre ritual, the other to a powerful corporate lawyer who has vanished. As Montreal police detective Victor Lessard and his partner, Jacinthe Taillon, work to solve the separate mysteries, a dark conspiracy begins to emerge. While the pressure builds and the bodies accumulate, disturbing secrets come to light about a pivotal moment in political history. But will Lessard and Taillon crack the case in time to stop the killer from striking again?Here the Dark
By David Bergen. 2020
NOMINATED FOR THE 2020 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES NEW & NOTEWORTHY BOOK “David Bergen’s command is breathtaking…
… His work belongs to the world, and to all time. He is one of our living greats.”—Matthew Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost off the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where a teenage boy’s infatuation reveals his naiveté and an aging rancher finds himself smitten, the short stories in Here the Dark explore the spaces between doubt and belief, evil and good, obscurity and light. Following men and boys bewildered by their circumstances and swayed by desire, surprised by love and by their capacity for both tenderness and violence, and featuring a novella about a young woman who rejects the laws of her cloistered Mennonite community, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner David Bergen’s latest deftly renders complex moral ambiguities and asks what it means to be lost—and how we might be found.The Wrong Hands and Other Stories: Not Safe After Dark / The Price of Love
By Peter Robinson. 2020
Over two dozen of the very best mystery short stories from crime-fiction's maestro, Peter Robinson. Set in places as far-flung…
as Inspector Alan Banks's turf in Yorkshire, Robinson's own neighbourhood in Toronto, and in Los Angeles and Florida, these stories also reach back in time: to 1873 to an utopian milltown in northern England, Thomas Hardy country in 1939, and a small Yorkshire town during the Second World War. Complete with the award-winning stories "Innocence" (Crime Writers of Canada Best Short Story Award), "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" (Mystery Readers International's Macavity Award), "Murder in Utopia" (Robinson's fifth Arthur Ellis Award) and "Missing in Action" (Edgar Award), this collection is full of spellbinding plots, suspense that grips and won't let go, utterly unpredictable twists, psychological truths both sweet and scary, and characters you'd like to meet (and some you'd hope never to encounter).Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Short Stories
By Norma Dunning. 2021
People Like Frank: And other stories from the edge of normal
By Jenn Ashton. 2021
Finalist, Indigenous Voices Awards 2021 On the edge of normal, the everyday can be an adventure and the ordinary a…
triumph. In the tradition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Room and If I Fall, If I Die, this uplifting collection explores the world through the eyes of protagonists whose perspectives are informed by their unique circumstances. Some are struggling with physical challenges while others seek to overcome psychological barriers. Far from being defined by their limitations, these characters revel in achievements others take for granted and find wonder in unexpected places. By celebrating the private triumphs of people who are all too often dismissed, Ashton reminds us all of our own humanity.The Vinyl Cafe Celebrates
By Stuart McLean. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From Canada's much-missed, nationally bestselling storyteller, a must-have collection featuring ten never-before-published stories and ten classic favourites, perfect…
for old fans and Vinyl Cafe newcomers alike.From the unforgettable Christmas classic “Dave Cooks the Turkey” to the tender tribute to ice-cream-loving, potato-sitting Arthur the dog in “Morte d’Arthur”; from the joys and challenges of marriage in “The Canoe Trip” to the celebration of childhood adventure in “The Waterslide.” From the beginning of life (the hilarious “Labour Pains”) to the end (the touching “Love Never Ends”) and all the moments—big and small—in between, these stories remind us that there are occasions to celebrate every day.For more than two decades, Stuart McLean entered the hearts and homes of Canadians via The Vinyl Cafe radio show, his many tours across the country, and multiple nationally bestselling books. His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.This collection is both timely and timeless, a rich celebration of Stuart McLean's inimitable voice, and of the importance of love, community, kindness, and the healing power of laughter.The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society: Stories
By Christine Estima. 2023