The action hinges upon a sudden mischance in which accident and intention tragically coincide. Swept along by the inexorable logic of events, Callaghan’s protagonists are forced to re-examine the nature of individual conscience and responsibility. In their personal struggle is expressed the mood of the age, its cynicism and anger, its desperate idealism, and its agonized longing for redemption.

    . . Haunting, gripping, and surprisingly nuanced . . . A work of great depth and seriousness."—Kirkus Reviews When Sister Angela receives an anonymous package containing an ornate silver candlestick, an object she hasn't seen in twenty-five years, her safe and secure life begins to shatter. Suddenly, she must confront her darkest secret: her participation in a crime from which she can no longer hide. As she sets about discovering who sent her the package, memories of St. X. School for Girls come back to haunt her. At the center is a group of girls who call themselves The Sisterhood, from whom fourteen-year-old Angela desperately seeks comfort and approval. Saddened by her mother's declining health and her father's abandonment, Angela looks up to the group's beautiful and alluring leader, Rachel. When she is encouraged by Rachel to play a joke on another student, the rituals of The Sisterhood take a violent turn. Now, from within the safe refuge of her convent and with the unexpected help of a young pregnant girl, Angela at last faces the truth-and the boundaries of faith.In the tradition of The Secret History and Lying Awake, The Divine Economy of Salvation is a dark, powerful, and suspenseful story that captures the innocence and cruelty of adolescence and the mysteries of adulthood.

    Two men, unknown to each other, whose glimpses of the other's possible future suggest that one of them will be murdered and the other will be the murderer.

    Denizens of the ubiquitous small towns around Ontario, as far from their native land as can be imagined yet united by their proximity to the local Chinese laundry, her characters have in common their driving desire to assimilate, to fit in, to belong to a "majority" culture. But they are also people trapped by a certain cultural pride in confronting a world that may feign acceptance while at the same time reminding them that they are "other." In the words of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Judy Fong Bates's "deceptively simple narratives expose the hopes and hardships that define her characters' lives." Her graceful writing is full of compassion, insight, and honesty; it opens our eyes to the commonality of what it is to be human.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    ‘Perhaps, Miss Marcella, it may be that in your last situation, the house did not have a panic room?’‘The School of English’ invites us behind the stucco façade of a Notting Hill mansion where fear and cruelty grip a household.

    This is the story of the first 10 years of the Nation's Music Station. When MuchMusic launched in 1984, it was truly the Wild (Canadian) West of television--live, gloriously unpredictable, seat-of-the-pants TV, delivered fresh daily. Much was the dream child of TV visionary Moses Znaimer, and John Martin, the maverick creator of The New Music. An entire generation of Canadians lived and breathed TV's new kid in town and because it was live and largely improvised, viewers and VJs both shared the experience and grew up together, embracing the new music that became the video soundtrack of our lives. The careers of Canadian legends like Glass Tiger, Colin James, the Parachute Club, Honeymoon Suite, Blue Rodeo, Corey Hart, Jane Siberry and Platinum Blonde were launched when Much brought them closer to their fans. Much also brought us international acts, and events like the Bon Jovi BBQ and Iggfest, with Iggy Pop improvising songs in the midst of his fans on the sidewalk on Queen Street. This was also an era in which music found its conscience with events like Live Aid and the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour. And Much covered them all. With stories of the bands, the VJs, the music, the videos, the style and the improvisational approach to daily broadcast life at Much, and told by the people who were there--the colourful cast of on-air VJs, the artists who found their way into the living rooms of the nation as never before, and the people behind the camera--"Is This Live?" delivers a full-on dose of pop culture from the 1980s and '90s, when the music scene in Canada changed forever."

    Can you imagine Draupadi in a Brothel house? How did she end there and who is responsible for that? Read this short story to meet her and know about her life.

    In this, his first book, he collects the most illuminating and timely interviews from the past ten years, book-ending each with his behind-the-scenes recollections and anecdotes. Mansbridge acts as our guide as we get the inside story from prominent figures from all walks of life, including world leaders, music legends and sports heroes.Among the more than 40 interviewees included in the book are:Bill ClintonSidney CrosbyBill GatesDiana KrallBenjamin NetanyahuBarack ObamaShimon PeresDesmond TutuBrian Wilson

    Vassanji. That fateful evening in Kenya becomes “the obsessive and dark centre” of the young man’s existence and leads him, years later in Toronto, to unearth an even darker family secret.In “The Girl With The Bicycle,” a man witnesses a woman from his hometown of Dar es Salaam spit at a corpse as it lies in state at a Toronto mosque. As he struggles to fathom her strange behaviour, he finds himself prey to memories and images from the past–and to perilous yearnings that could jeopardize his comfortable, middle-aged life.Still reeling from the impact of his wife’s betrayal, a man decides to stop in on an old college friend in “Elvis, Raja.” But he soon realizes that it’s not always wise to visit the past as he finds himself trapped in a most curious household, where Elvis Presley has replaced the traditional Hindu gods. The other stories in the collection also feature exceptional lives transplanted. A young man returns to his roots in India, hoping to find his uncle and, perhaps, a bride. Instead, he becomes a reluctant guru to the residents of his ancestral village. A mukhi must choose between granting the final sacrilegious wish of a dying man and abiding by religious custom in a community that considers him a representative of God. A woman is torn between the voice of her dead husband–a cold and grim-natured atheist–and her new, kind and loving husband whose faith nevertheless places constraints on her as a woman. On Halloween night, a scientist lays bare his horrifying plan to seek vengeance on the man who thwarted his career. Set variously in Kenya, Canada, India, Pakistan, and the American Midwest, these poignant and evocative stories portray migrants negotiating the in-between worlds of east and west, past and present, secular and religious. Richly detailed and full of vivid characters, the stories are worlds unto themselves, just as a dusty African street full of bustling shops is a world, and so is the small matrix of lives enclosed by an intimate Toronto neighbourhood. It is the smells and sentiments and small gestures that constitute life, and of these Vassanji is a master.Vassanji’s seventh book and his second collection of short stories, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the 2006 Toronto Book Award. The jury said: "Vassanji's Naipaulian language is like a sharp short knife that cuts through the superficial and gets to the heart and soul of the narrative.”From the Hardcover edition.

    Illustrator and writer's Carolyn Marie Castagna's first shared short story.A small icicle hanging from a roof peers inside a window at a small reading room, and learns about magical human qualities, and the importance of the one most special human feeling.

    Who is he? And why would anybody kill him? Faukon Abbey CID officers, DI Greene and DC Ford and their friend Carter, a journalist at Abbey Chronicle uncover all hidden tragedies, murder being just one. They uncover what really happens behind the old town elegant facades - where evil crimes go unseen and unreported because they don't happen to people like us - - Or do they? And what happens when we find out? A tale of hidden secrets brought to light - about what happens when Pandora's box is opened, and revenge is unleashed.'

    

    In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age.  By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.  Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in Wilderness Tips take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.Contents:True trash --Hairball --Isis in darkness --The bog man --Death by landscape --Uncles --The age of lead --Weight --Wilderness tips --Hack Wednesday.