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By Anne Michaels. 2023
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERA breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling author of Fugitive Pieces and…
The Winter Vault.1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation. Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—and perhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with seeking: "We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”By Sheila Heti. 2024
Sheila Heti collected 500,000 words from a decade's worth of journals, put the sentences in a spreadsheet, and sorted them…
alphabetically. She cut and cut and was left with 60,000 words of brilliance and mayhem, joy and sorrow. These are her alphabetical diaries.By Dimitri Nasrallah. 2023
By Darren Greer. 2014
In the small town of North River, every day that goes by bleeds into the next. Poverty begets hopelessness, hopelessness…
breeds violence, violence causes despair. The only way to change fate, a minister tells his son, is to leave. The minister’s son, Jake MacNeil, chooses to ignore his father’s advice. Only when he realizes what has become of his life — working a grueling dead-end job, living with a drunk, friends with a murderer — does he decide to make something of himself. But nothing comes without a cost: in choosing freedom, Jake abandons his own son, Nathan, to the care of the boy’s abusive mother. Years later, a reformed Jake comes back for Nathan, to finally set things right. But in North River, everything comes around again; and when a dangerous figure from the past becomes hell-bent on dragging the new Jake “back down where he belongs”, three generations of MacNeil men must come together to pay the full price of hope. Gritty, unrelenting, yet peppered with Darren Greer’s trademark poignance, Just Beneath My Skin is the work of an author at the height of his game.By Carol Windley. 2006
From the acclaimed author of Visible Light comes a collection of seven outstanding stories, each set against the rural landscape…
of Vancouver Island and the cities of the Pacific Northwest. In these stories the memories and dreams of characters are examined, revealing them to be both cages and keys to the cages. The life lessons learned by the characters are often as complicated and painful as they are illuminating. In the title story, two sisters fall in love with their math tutor on one of the Gulf Islands, inhabited equally by the ghosts of the misfits and Hollywood stars who came to live there, and the children of an alternative school, run by the girls’ criminally optimistic father. In “Sand and Frost,” a young girl drops out of UBC, returns home, and discovers that her domineering grandmother is the sole survivor of a shocking act of family violence. In “What Saffi Knows,” a child, unable to explain to her self-involved parents, struggles with the knowledge of the whereabouts of another missing child. In these remarkable seven stories, Carol Windley creates a sense of place and of people that breathe the cool wet air of a spring morning on Gabriola Island.By Shashi Bhat. 2013
When Mira Acharya’s father dies, the challenges facing her Indo-Canadian family become that much more daunting. Ravi, her autistic older…
brother, requires special care but longs to be just like other children. Their mother must work full time to keep a roof over their heads and still make time to be a parent to an over-achiever and a developmentally challenged child. As much as Mira loves her mother and brother, she resents the situations in which living with them places her. It is only when Mira is older that she realizes a truth she has been missing all along: though her family’s experience may be unusual, what holds them together – has always held them together – is universal. Shashi Bhat’s debut novel, The Family Took Shape, is a touching, hilarious, and endearingly honest story about one unique family’s search for happiness in Canadian suburbia.By Peter Unwin. 2013
In Life Without Death, the latest short story collection from Peter Unwin, ordinary men and women search for meaning in…
lives subject to change, chance, coincidence, and catastrophe. A man recalls a lifetime of love and loss while copying contacts out of his old little black book. A woman is left her dying father's secret stash of pornography, and is entrusted with the unenviable task of disposing of it. A new father unexpectedly discovers a way of connecting to his autistic son. For one day, guests to a wedding set aside their various past misdeeds in order to celebrate a young couple's union. A teenager newly introduced to a life of petty crime suddenly finds himself in way over his head. A man's former acquaintance resurfaces decades later as the subject of a haunting art film. Unwin's characters live full, complex lives within each story. Though they may not find the simple answers they seek, if such answers even exist, they-and readers-gain something farmore valuable on their journeys: perspective.By Susan Doherty Hannaford. 2015
Word Guild Award for Best Young Adult fiction 2016 Grace Irwin Award 2016 Literary Classics silver medal for Y/A fiction…
2016 Shortlisted for the Frank Hegyi Award-Ottawa Independent Writers Literary Classics silver medal for High school fiction 2017 Set in 1936 Montreal, A Secret Music is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a sensitive fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who grows up in the shadow of his mother’s mental illness. Forced to keep this shameful secret, he attempts to raise himself and his ten year old brother. He counteracts the deep ache and creeping mistrust caused by his mother’s emotional absence by escaping into the intense realm of Chopin and Schubert, the only language he understands. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with enormous responsibilities. At a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a climactic decision that puts his future on hold in order to salvage his family life. In A Secret Music, Susan Doherty Hannaford re-creates the Depression-Era world of Montreal and demonstrates how music can redeem a life.By Mary Rose Donnelly. 2011
Retired schoolteacher Flossy O’Reilly has spent almost all of her eight decades in the seaside community of Great Village, Nova…
Scotia. It is now a quiet Maritime village: where relationships between friends and family move at the pace of the tides; where there is no rush because, sooner or later, everyone finds out what they need to know with a trip to the general store. When Ruth, the teenaged granddaughter of an old friend, arrives from Ontario for a three-week stay, time suddenly catches up with Great Village. As Flossy watches the sometimes tactless young woman grow into her own, she begins to question whether maintaining the calm surface of her life was worth keeping secrets from and about those closest to her — or if everyone could benefit from a little more candour. With grace, patience, and wisdom, Mary Rose Donnelly paints a rich portrait of life in small-town Nova Scotia, and of relationships as charming as they are complex.By Aaron Bushkowsky. 2014
Alex is a playwright suffering from writer’s block and harsh reviews. His best friend, Roy, is a theatre director with…
lung cancer and six months left to live. In pursuit of fresh air and great wine, they go on a road trip to the Okanagan Valley, where Roy rediscovers his passion for theatre. But when he decides to stage a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a winery, disaster ensues: the woman cast in the lead is the winery owner’s wife and has no talent; wildfires encroach upon the surrounding forest; and Roy slips closer to death, one cigarette at a time. Curtains for Roy is a hilarious peek into the world of theatre, where the greatest drama is offstage and the best performances take place behind the curtain.By Dimitri Nasrallah. 2022
This ePUB was produced through the Literary Image Description group’s “eBooks for Everyone” project and is the One eRead Canada…
selection for 2024. "A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration. It’s 1986, and after four months of unemployment Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal from Beirut to escape a never-ending civil war. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec has confidence in a new arrival like her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center where she gets a job as a hotline operator. All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s quite good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives--marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets. Much to her surprise, Muna finds that she is actually becoming successful at selling diet plans. Even though she’s pretending to be someone else, her natural empathy can’t help but shine when listening to the confidential tribulations of people who, elsewhere in life, wouldn’t sit with her for lunch or offer her a job. Following international acclaim for Niko (2011) and The Bleeds (2018), Dimitri Nasrallah has written a vivid love letter to the 1980s, bringing this era of Montreal into the current moment through his deeply endearing portrait of Muna Heddad’s struggle."By Daniel Mason. 2023
New York Times Book Review Editors&’ Choice • A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New…
England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—&“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic&” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. &“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell&’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason&’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that&’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.&”—San Francisco ChronicleFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST&’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, BookreporterWhen two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we&’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we&’re gone?By Leigh McMullan Abramson. 2023
CBS New York Book Club with Mary Calvi and Belletrist Book Club Pick &“Raw, complex, and utterly unforgettable.&” —Fiona Davis,…
New York Times bestselling author The only child of a famous American novelist discovers a shocking family secret that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career in this standout debut, perfect for fans of Pineapple Street and The Plot.Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city&’s intellectual It couple. Ward&’s glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with love. Now an adult, all Isabelle wants is to be a successful writer like her father but after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown. Her anxiety only skyrockets when she uncovers some shocking truths about her parents and begins wondering if everything she knew about her family was all based on an elaborate lie. This &“literary page-turner&” (KJ Dell&’Antonia, New York Times bestselling author) is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about a woman determined to steal back the spotlight from a man who has cheated his way to the top. The characters seem eerily familiar but is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who is the author?By Ottessa Moshfegh. 2020
"[An] intricate and unsettling new novel . . . Death in Her Hands is not a murder mystery, nor is…
it really a story about self-deception or the perils of escapism. Rather, it's a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art."-Kevin Power, The New YorkerFrom one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds an ominous note on a walk in the woods.While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one.Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past; we must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one.A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, and the stakes have never been higher.By Antonio Muñoz Molina. 2012
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year: A &“hypnotic&” novel of the Spanish Civil War and one man&’s quest…
to escape it (Colm Tóibín, The New York Review of Books). October 1936. Spanish architect Ignacio Abel arrives at Penn Station, the final stop on his journey from war-torn Madrid, where he has left behind his wife and children, abandoning them to uncertainty. Crossing the fragile borders of Europe, Ignacio reflects on months of fratricidal conflict in his embattled country, his transformation from a bricklayer&’s son to a respected bourgeois husband and professional, and the all-consuming love affair with an American woman that forever altered his life. Winner of the 2012 Prix Méditerranée Étranger and hailed as a masterpiece, In the Night of Time is a sweeping, grand novel and an indelible portrait of a shattered society, written by one of Spain&’s most important contemporary novelists. &“Labyrinthine and spellbinding . . . One of the most eloquent monuments to the Spanish Civil War ever to be raised in fiction.&” —The Washington Post, &“The Top 50 Fiction Books for 2014&” &“An astonishingly vivid narrative that unfolds with hypnotic intensity by means of the constant interweaving of time and memory . . . Tolstoyan in its scale, emotional intensity and intellectual honesty.&” —The Economist &“Epic . . . Intoxicating prose.&” —Entertainment Weekly &“A War and Peace for the Spanish Civil War.&” —Publishers WeeklyBy Cathleen Schine. 1994
A bookseller is obsessed with a mysterious love note in the New York Times–bestselling author&’s &“sophisticated and witty valentine of…
a novel&” (People). Intelligent, sexy, and fortyish, Helen MacFarquhar is a woman in control of her life and everyone in it—until an anonymous love letter falls into her hands one summer morning. Helen has been leading a blissful existence as the proprietor of a small bookstore in a quaint New England seaside town. She beguiles her customers into buying the titles she recommends, and flirts shamelessly with nearly every one of the town&’s eccentric residents. But Helen&’s self-confidence falters when the love letter arrives in her mail. &“How do you fall in love?&” the letter asks, and the question becomes Helen&’s obsession, in this &“smart, moving, and funny&” (Detroit Free Press) story by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport and They May Not Mean To, But They Do.By Charmaine Craig. 2018
&“Craig wields powerful and vivid prose to illuminate a country and a family trapped not only by war and revolution,…
but also by desire and loss.&” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, husband and wife, and their daughter Louisa. After attending school in Calcutta, Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese occupation, beginning a journey that will lead them to change the country&’s history. Years later, Benny and Khin&’s eldest child, Louisa, has a danger-filled, tempestuous childhood and reaches prominence as Burma&’s first beauty queen soon before the country falls to dictatorship. As Louisa navigates her newfound fame, she is forced to reckon with her family&’s past, the West&’s ongoing covert dealings in her country, and her own loyalty to the cause of the Karen people. Based on the story of the author&’s mother and grandparents, Miss Burma is a captivating portrait of how modern Burma came to be and of the ordinary people swept up in the struggle for self-determination and freedom. &“At once beautiful and heartbreaking . . . An incredible family saga.&” —Refinery29 &“Miss Burma charts both a political history and a deeply personal one—and of those incendiary moments when private and public motivations overlap.&” —Los Angeles TimesBy Sarah Langan. 2021
Celeste Ng and Liane Moriarty&’s enthralling dissection of suburbia meets Shirley Jackson&’s creeping dread in this &“wickedly funny, unnerving puzzle…
box of a novel&” (Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will) about the downward spiral of a Long Island community after a tragedy exposes its residents&’ depths of deception.Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world. But menace skulks among this exclusive enclave. When the Wilde family arrive, they trigger their neighbors&’ worst fears. Dad Arlo&’s a gruff has-been rock star with track marks. Mom Gertie&’s got a thick Brooklyn accent, with high heels and tube tops to match. Their weird kids cuss like sailors. They don&’t fit with the way Maple Street sees itself. Maple Street&’s Queen Bee, Rhea Schroeder—a lonely professor repressing a dark past—initially welcomed Gertie, but relations plummeted during one summer evening, when the new best friends shared too much, too soon. By the time the story opens, the Wildes are outcasts. As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and Rhea&’s daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes. Suddenly, it is one mom&’s word against the other&’s in a court of public opinion that can end only in blood. Riveting and ruthless, Good Neighbors is &“a chilling, compulsively readable novel that looks toward the future in order to help us understand how we live now&” (Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here).By Anne Bartlett. 2006
&“In the tradition of Anita Brookner and Barbara Pym, Anne Bartlett has written a sly, stirring look at women&’s lives&”…
(Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion). Sandra, a rigid academic, is struggling to navigate the world after losing her husband to cancer. Martha, a self-taught textile artist with her own secret store of grief, spends her days knitting elaborate projects charged with personal meaning. After a chance meeting sparks a friendship between these two very different women, they begin to collaborate—leading to surprising events that will help heal them both, in a novel of &“subtle beauty&” (The Washington Post). &“A moving story about true love and haunting grief.&” —Adriana Trigiani &“A wonderful tale . . . deeply satisfying.&” —Connie May Fowler &“An experience as sensual and mystical as plunging your hands into skeins of wool and color . . . A joyful narrative of creating and connecting.&” —Sena Jeter NaslundBy John Rosengren. 2020
A Novel of Redemption from Addiction and a Broken Family“A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently…
and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.” –Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over ArtistCarter Kirchner struggles to stay sane and sober as a counselor at Six West, an adolescent drug treatment center run by Sister Mary Xavier, a hard-drinking nun with an MBA. The young Kirchner is caught between Sister Mary’s plan to rescue the center by reforming a hard-case kid and the dysfunctional staff’s clumsy plan to intervene on their boss’s drinking. Meanwhile, Carter’s mother?who never forgave him for giving up a promising hockey career to treat his own addiction?lands in the hospital with an advanced case of cirrhosis. Before Carter can help the young addict commissioned to his care or safely navigate the staff’s dysfunctional intervention effort, he must rescue himself from his family’s broken past.A Clean Heart is a novel by John Rosengren, a writer and recent nominee for a Pulitzer Prize who knows the territory of addiction. He went through treatment at age 17 and has been clean and sober since 1981. He also worked in adolescent treatment centers when he was younger. John Rosengren’s articles have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, and Utne Reader.If you are a fan of the 2018 films Ben is Back or David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy or have read addiction memoirs such as If You Love Me or We All Fall Down, you will love reading John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart.