Robert Raymond Cook, Ray Cook's son from his first marriage, was convicted of the crime, and had the infamy of becoming the last man hanged in Alberta. Forty-six years later, a troublesome character named Louise in a story that Betty Jane Hegerat finds herself inexplicably reluctant to write, becomes entangled in the childhood memory of hearing about that gruesome mass murder. Through four years of obsessively tracking the demise of the Cook family, and dancing around the fate of the fictional family, the problem that will not go away is how to bring the story to the page. A work of non-fiction about the Cooks and their infamous son, or a novel about Louise and her problem stepson? Both stories keep coming back to the boy. Part memoir, part investigation, part novella, part writer's journal, The Boy, is the author's final capitulation to telling the story with all of the troublesome questions unanswered.

    She confronts a dark and disturbing man who engages in kidnapping and murder. Underlying everything is the protagonist's budding new romance. If you read or watch psychological thrillers, this free book will start you off in my series of creepy people novels.

    The Tavorians for their part, have wizards much stronger than those found in Ket, men and women who could flay the skin right off you with nothing but a few words. 16 y/o Tanner is among those recruited and right away it is found he possesses a unique gift. Join Tanner as he does his part to defeat the Tavorians and win the day for the people of Ket,

    Now, home on leave to visit his dying grandfather, Harry is shocked to learn the old man had secrets -- and before passing away, he tells Harry two of them. One will change Harry forever and one just may save his life when a massive EMP hits and rips apart the fabric of the U.S. and perhaps the world, trapping him in the one place he thought he'd left behind. His small town turns in on itself. Is this the work of the ubiquitous KKK, a homegrown terrorist group right from the heart of Harry's world? Time is running out for Harry and his family. Some secrets cannot and should not remain hidden, but will he have to risk everything to set the world right?

    Her work as a translator draws her into an underworld of family-controlled drug cartels operating out of South America, and she falls in love with a son in one such family. Pregnant, she is kidnapped to an island off the coast of Colombia and slowly tricked into a dependence on cocaine. Her narrative - violent and bizarre, but also riveting, erotic and filled with the heady flamboyance of orchids - runs parallel to her account of life in "Death Clinic," as Death Row is called at the Heaven Valley Facility for Women. It is a moving story of friendship amongst three female inmates - portrayed with devastating wit - who share only the fact that they each have a date with the executioner.Cargo of Orchids swings through comedy and tragedy to shed a gradual, eerie light on the questions of guilt and innocence and moral ambiguity that lie at its heart.Excerpt from Cargo of Orchids:"Despite the freight of anger she carries, Rainy seems so frail it is hard to imagine her giving birth to anything heavier than tears. Rainy gave birth to twins and six months later left them on the railway tracks. She claims it prejudiced the jury. If she'd smothered them or driven them off a pier, it would have been more socially acceptable.-- But abandoning your kids on the tracks wasn't in fashion. She wishes now she'd gone out drinking for the evening instead, but she didn't have enough money to hire a babysitter and pay for the beer."

    Hope can lie dormant in the tiniest of seeds. . .In the blink of an eye, Daniel’s world spirals out of control. He watches helplessly as the bodies of his father and friends are buried in stone. Those he loved would never know the breath of life again. In this overwhelming loss, he despairs. Was this the end of hope? The rest of his family and the others in their small alliance had already fled the destruction of society, headed for the northern wilderness. Can he possibly reach them on his own?Salvation can be found in the most unlikely place . . .If he does, will the wilderness be the sanctuary of which they dream? Are their skills good enough to survive in the wilds on their own? Will it be possible to survive the evils that emanate from the decaying world they left behind? And if they do, is it truly possible for something beautiful to grow from the damaged seeds of society?The heart is the doorway to any dream...Their journey is one filled with beauty and peril. Their dream; to create a better world, one in which future generations will live with peace, love and kindness. of society?

    Her arresting, edgy poems about aging and grief are surprising and invigorating: a defiant balm. At the same time, she revels in the quirkiness and whimsy of the natural world: the vision of a fly, the naming of an eggplant, and a woman who — not unhappily — finds that cockroaches are drawn to her.“God draws a life. And then begins to rub it out / with the eraser on his pencil.” Lorna Crozier draws a world in What the Soul Doesn’t Want, and then beckons us in. Crozier’s signature wit and striking imagery are on display as she stretches her wings and reminds us that we haven’t yet seen all that she can do.

    Church, school then a little more church was her life. She wasn’t the girl to get asked on dates or even have a lot of friends. She mainly kept to herself until she was noticed by the one guy she had been dreaming about since she hit puberty. Deon was a force that Jess had no choice but to allow to come in and sweep her away. He was too charming, too handsome, and too tempting. He didn’t have rules and he didn’t let Jess’ young age stop him from getting what he wanted, which was her. Jess fought him off for as long as she could but finally gave in. Her life seemed to change overnight. She became confident. She was able to get the clothes that she wanted and be the girl that other guys liked and females wanted to befriend. Deon was her king and she just wanted to make him happy. She went against her parents’ wishes and everything she believed in to be with him and she would have taken on the world for him if she had to. He gave her everything she ever wanted and she found herself so wrapped up in him that she could see nothing else. Her fairytale soon turned into a nightmare once she learned she wasn’t the only girl he was loving. Next were the fights and the drama. Trying to leave Deon became a war that she wasn’t prepared to fight. What do you do when someone you love so much hurts you? How can you leave them when you can’t even go a day without them? Love is many things but it should never hurt. For Jessenia her life was nice until it wasn’t. She fell in love with a man that really didn’t love her at all and the battle to get back to herself wasn’t going to be an easy one. He said he loved her and she believed him. His type of love was pain most of the time and she started to bleed his love right out of her until one day she noticed the love was gone. To leave Deon, Jess has to find herself and find her strength. Will she succeed or will she forever be wrapped up in a man that really loves no one but himself? Heart of Stone by Mz. Lady P Heart of Stone is a short story that digs into the mind frame of Stone Williams. A heartless, ruthless, and abusive womanizer.K'Yonnah Kyles is his much younger girlfriend who thought she had met her Knight in Shining Armor, but in reality she was dancing with the devil and sleeping with the enemy.Not being able to take it anymore, K'Yonnah decides to do what's best for her. In the process, she'll find out secrets that Stone has been keeping from her. She will have to come to grips and face the fact that Stone never had any good intentions for her or her heart. Will she be able to get out of his clutches or is it too late for her to save her life from the heartless nigga known as Stone.Love Don't Have to Hurt by Lucinda John Aimee's dreams of a professional dancer had to be placed on hold when her father died of cancer. Living paycheck to paycheck, Aimee works to help her mother pay off her debts, take care of her brother, and attend a few classes at a community college. When Aimee's best friend, Shanice presents her with the idea of dancing at a strip club for extra money, she meets Lucas. A punch, slap, and a few kicks is how Aimee can explain her abusive relationship with Lucas. The guy that is suppose to be her safe haven, is the one that is causing her the most pain; physically and emotionally. Aimee feels obligated to stay with Lucas because of how he changed her and her family's lives, but when things turn fatal, will Aimee learns that love is not suppose to hurt? Or will it be too late?Fatal Attraction: The Love I Once RememberedHave you ever been deeply in love? Enduring so much because you thought things would get better? Or because you felt your good days, outweighed your bad? Well here's a story about a young lady dealing

     The world had less than seven hours to prepare. When it hit, the coronal mass ejection from the sun rolled back hundreds of years of technological innovation. Airplanes fell from the skies. Power grids crashed. Even electrical cabling was turned to slag. No internet. No cable TV. No electricity. No modern day conveniences of any kind, from fancy European sedans to smart phones to clean, running water. The entire world is plunged back into the Dark Ages in less than a second, courtesy of the most powerful Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) event in recorded history. Television development exec Tony Vincenzo has always lived a high-society life, first in Los Angeles, now in Manhattan. As New York City tears itself apart in an orgy of violence, Vincenzo has to leave his high-floor luxury condominium on Central Park South's Billionaire's Row in order to return to his wife and young son in the Hollywood Hills overlooking LA. But the only way to get there is to walk, and Vincenzo is no Joe Survivalist—he's the kind of guy used to the trappings of the good life. While society unravels all around him, he has to not only make it out of New York alive, but across the entirety of a nation descending into feral madness. His journey becomes more complex when he commits a truly selfless deed, and winds up with two young charges: seven-year-old Daniel, an autistic boy ill-equipped for a life of hardship, and his sassy four-year-old sister, Gabriella. Together, the trio will need every stroke of luck they can find to persevere in the lawless lands that lie ahead of them…and survive the brutality of the serial killer Roth who pursues them.

    Utilizing medical terminology and iconography to work through loss and detachment, McHugh’s startling rhymes and rhythms—along with her sarcastic self-reflection and infectious laughter—serve as antidotes to the sufferings of the world. Being “upgraded to serious” from critical condition is a nod to the healing powers of poetry."Not to Be Dwelled On"Self-interest cropped up even there,the day I hoisted three insteadof the ceremonially called-for twospadefuls of loamonto the coffin of my friend.Why shovel more than anybody else?What did I think I’d prove? More love(mud in her eye)? More will to work?(Her father what, a shirker?) Christ,what wouldn’t anybody giveto get that gesture back?She cannot die again; and Ido nothing but re-live.

    Winner of the 1999 Governor General's Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 1999 Pat Lowther Award and the 1999 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prize). SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH contains many poems of praise and grief for the imperiled earth drawing frequently on Jan Zwicky's experience as a musician and philosopher and on the landscapes of the prairies and rural Ontario.SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH was first published by the author in 1996 as a handmade book, each copy individually sewn for its reader in response to a request. It appeared between plain covers on recycled stock, with a small photo (of lavender fields) pasted into each copy. The only publicity was word of mouth.Part of Jan Zwicky's reason for having the author be the maker and distributor of the book was a desire to connect the acts of publication and publicity with the initial act of composition, to have a book whose public gestures were in keeping with the intimacy of the art. She also believed the potential audience was small enough that she could easily sew enough copies to fill requests as they came in. While succeeding in recalling poetry's public life to its roots, she was wrong about the size of that audience and her ability to keep up with demand as word spread, Hence, this facsimile edition. In publishing it, Brick Books has attempted to remain as faithful as possible to the spirit of those original gestures, while making it possible for more readers to have access to this remarkable book.

    With the suspense of a thriller and the moral depth of a Joseph Conrad classic, "The Stowaway is an adventure story of the highest caliber and a riveting tale of good and evil, all the more moving because it is based on actual events.

    Someone else is out there with him, though. Watching. Waiting to harm… Who is drugging people, forcing them to kill? Why are kids involved? And who is the mastermind behind the callous murders? Oliver trails DI Langham on the investigation, hoping they catch the killers sooner rather than later—before more bodies turn up, eviscerated, so wrecked they’re barely recognisable…

    One of the few in her community to forego bio-engineered enhancements, she’s the last truly organic person left on the rig. But she’s an expert in the arts of self-defence, and she’s been charged with training the Family’s youngest, who has been receiving death threats – seemingly from another timeline. Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city’s stability – serial killer? Or something much, much worse...?

    . . . Dauntlessly and resourcefully intellectual, Robertson can also be playful or blunt. . . . She wields language expertly, even beautifully."—The New York TimesWhat if the cinema of the present were a Möbius strip of language, a montage of statements and questions sutured together and gradually accumulating color? Would the seams afford a new sensibility around the pronoun "you"? Would the precise words of philosophy, fashion, books, architecture, and history animate a new vision, gestural and oblique? Is the kinetic pronoun cinema?These and other questions are answered in the new collection from acclaimed poet and essayist Lisa Robertson. The book is available with four different back covers, designed by artists Hadley+Maxwell.A quorum of crows will be your witness.And if you discover you were bought?You note the smell of rain, bread, and exhaust mixed with tiredness.And if you yourself are incompatible with your view of the world?And what is the subject but a stitching?Once again you are the one who promotes artifice.At 2 am on Friday, you burn with a maudlin premonition.And rankings and rankings and badges and repetitions.Lisa Robertson's book Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip was named one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010 and was longlisted for the 2011 Warwick Prize. Her other books include Debbie: An Epic, The Men, The Weather, and Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. She is the 2014 Bain Swiggett Professor at Princeton University.