Sheila Armstrong's grandson Leo, usually a quiet, well-behaved boy, was found holding a knife. Harriet Kennedy cannot cope with her son's continuing pain; Sheila, who reared Leo, cannot bear the lasting guilt. In a powerful and moving tale of suffering and forgiveness, the two women confront the complex range of emotions that motherhood entails.

    This is what I had been told back then, and what I had tried very hard to believe in since." Beside a lake in the northern Ontario wilderness, fifteen-year-old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely life with his father, his only neighbours a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire and an expert in snow. All Zack has for company is the harsh and moody landscape, which holds both beauty and terror in its depths and whispers with the promise of dark, secret spaces and undiscovered worlds. Summer and life change with the arrival of the mysterious Eva Spiller, who is determined to find the spot where her parents disappeared in a floatplane after flying off from the lake. While trying to navigate between summer and winter, the living and the dead, the past and the present, Zack and Eva grow closer. The people of Sitting Down Lake will have to rely on each other to come to terms with the past and realize that death is never final: something always remains. In his fifth novel, award-winning author Tristan Hughes has created a vivid and poetic coming-of-age story about loss, absence and redemption.

    Through the eyes of the young Earl Przepasniak ("a name unwieldy as a tumour"), it narrates the outrageous and tender story of Mavis, poet and mother, and Robert, the American dad. Earl's life revolves around the deeply wounding split of his parents and his attempts, through a less-than-idyllic childhood and the inexorable onslaught of manhood, to overcome the irresistible force of his father. But it is only when his parents meet their respective fates that Earl can feel not only loyal and guilty, but also free...

    The events of the next few days will lead both of them to reassess the shape of their lives.

    They are there for one last time, one last weekend, and one last party – but in the course of this weekend, their connections will be affirmed, and their frailties and secrets revealed – to the reader at least, if not to each other. The Hope Fault is a novel about extended family: about steps and exes and fairy godmothers; about parents and partners who are missing, and the people who replace them.

    Offered by her noble family to the Church at the age of eight, she lived for years in forced silence. But through the study of books and herbs, through music and the kinship of her church sisters, Hildegard found her way from a life of submission to a calling that celebrated the divine mother and the glories all around us. In this brilliantly researched and insightful novel, Mary Sharratt offers a deeply moving portrait of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed, a triumphant exploration of the life she might well have lived.

    Chronicles of her strategies for surviving civilization's decline -- herbal remedies, macrobiotics, a bit of Xanax -- have established her as one of the most captivating and eagerly read voices in modern literature. In this new collection of stories, Julie Hecht reclaims the darkly funny, existential territory for which she is known: "People say 'Good morning,' but don't believe them. It's just something to say." The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world -- whether she's attempting to withdraw money from a bank machine, worrying about Paul McCartney, or seeking a nonexistent place of calm on Nantucket, where nail guns and chain saws have replaced the sounds of birds singing. Appalled by life in our times, the narrator recounts innumerable artifacts from a now vanished America (civility, idealism, Elvis Presley, well-made appliances). She is also exquisitely attuned to the absurdities of our culture; her acute observations illuminate every subject, from the dangers of microwave ovens to the disappearing ozone layer. With deadpan wit, the author reveals the truths of a new century. Happy Trails to You is a radically distinctive work of American fiction.

    Here is Eve brought to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed–as a wife, a mother, and a woman. With stunning intimacy, Elliott boldly reimagines Eve’s journey before and after the banishment from Eden, her complex marriage to Adam, her troubled relationship with her daughters, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons, Cain and Abel. From a woman’s first awakening to a mother’s innermost hopes and fears, from moments of exquisite tenderness to a climax of shocking violence, Eve explores the very essence of love, womanhood, faith, and humanity.

    Now everyone in the village is surprised that Every had the nerve to reappear in this tale of loss and of finding.

    Readers of Denis Johnson, David Foster Wallace, Mary Gaitskill, Susanna Moore, and other contemporary fiction writers will welcome this haunting novel about a 27-year-old woman who flees her failed marriage only to find herself involved in a perplexing spiral of murder, counterfeit, and false identity.

    The last volume in an unforgettable trilogy (with A Short History of a Small Place and Off for the Sweet Hereafter)

    In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew—and risks losing everything: his wife, locked into her religious prejudices; his congregation, which shuns Asher after he delivers a passionate sermon in defense of tolerance; and his young son, Justin, caught in the middle of what turns into a bitter custody battle. With no way out but ahead, Asher takes Justin and flees to Key West, where he hopes to find his brother, Luke, whom he'd turned against years ago after Luke came out. And it is there, at the southernmost point of the country, that Asher and Justin discover a new way of thinking about the world, and a new way of understanding love.Southernmost is a tender and affecting book, a meditation on love, atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

    Who would have imagined that God would make a prayer group as mismatched as ours the closest of friends? I almost didn't even go to the Chicago Women's Conference--after all, being thrown together with five hundred strangers wasn't exactly my "comfort zone." But something happened that weekend to make us realize we had to hang together, and the "Yada Yada Prayer Group" was born! When I faced the biggest crisis of my life, God used my newfound Sisters to show me what it means to be just a sinner saved by grace.

    An artist at heart, Anna works a day job as a private assistant for Bambi Von Bizmark, a megarich Upper East Side matriarch who’s about to be honored at the illustrious Opera Ball.Caught between the staid world of great wealth and her unconventional life as an artist, Anna struggles with her true calling. If she’s supposed to be a painter, why is she so much more successful as a personal assistant? When her boyfriend lands a fancy new job, it throws their future as a couple into doubt and intensifies Anna’s identity crisis. All she has to do is ensure everything runs smoothly and hold herself together until the Opera Ball is over. How hard could that be?Featuring a vibrant array of characters from the powerful to the proletarian, Perfectly Impossible offers a glimpse into a world you’ll never want to leave.

    Wandering there, she uncovers, in the ruins of a log cabin, the writings of a young woman who lived more than a hundred years before. Into Alyson's story Merilyn Simonds weaves the moving tale of Margaret MacBayne, who, with her family, left behind hardship in a seaside Scottish town in the hope of building a new home in the Canadian wilderness. Margaret, an expert on herbs, contemplates revenge when her brothers rob her of her happiness. When Alyson too suffers great loss, she must decide if retribution is worth the price. Taut and uplifting, sensuous and astute, The Holding is psychologically complex and beautifully rendered. Simonds brings us an intimate journey of discovery into the things we keep most guarded, whose truths often lie in unexpected places.