She has a nice home in the suburbs, a husband working on Wall Street, and two fabulous kids. But when the FBI rings the doorbell at midnight, storming her home and arresting her husband Tom for murder, her peaceful world is shattered.When Tom is killed under mysterious circumstances within hours of his arrest,Brynn finds herself following a trail of cryptic clues planted by Tom himself. Soon it's clear that her husband was leading a secret life, and now those same secrets threaten to kill her next.

    Blaming Jack for his own failings, he sets his sights on Jack as a scapegoat. Fighting for his life, and new found love with Lori Darden, the pair learn how dangerous it can be to raise the ire of a psychopathic boss.When the chain of command breaks down, Jack Bass fights back and attempts to prevent his world from turning to ash right before his very eyes.Jack Bass is…In the Line of Ire.

    Get rid of her tonight!” He towered over her as she cringed in fear. But Hansa, a thirteen-year-old child-bride in rural India, refuses to remain a victim of the oppressive society where a female child is an unwanted burden. Instead of drowning her baby, Hansa escapes from her village with three-month-old Tara.Hansa soon discovers that life as a teenage mother is fraught with danger. But a single lie opens the door to a promising opportunity far from home.Just seven years later, Hansa finds herself fighting for Tara’s life once more, this time in an American court, with a woman she calls ‘Mother.’Will the lie upon which Hansa built her life, defeat its own purpose? How can she succeed when no one believes the truth? A story of two mothers, two daughters and a fight to save a child, Fighting for Tara explores the depth of love and motherhood.

    Just as she contemplates leaving him, she discovers that she is pregnant with his child. As she grapples with this news, she learns that her loathed father has killed himself. Left confused and bereft by these developments and haunted by visions of a little boy, she meets a seductive young painter and, despite knowing it could lead to crisis, begins an affair with him in her eighth month of pregnancy.Told with an eye for startling details and an unerring sense for psychological truth, this harrowing, passionate, obsessively compelling literary debut captures the reality of a young woman's inner landscape while spinning a tale that will hypnotise readers to its last satisfying pages.

    

    A book of post-9/11 Canada, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao demonstrates that violent politics are all-too-often homegrown in North America but ignored at our peril. In 2004, almost 20 years after the fatal bombing of an Air India flight from Vancouver, 2 suspects--finally--are on trial for the crime. Ashwin Rao, an Indian psychologist trained in Canada, comes back to do a "study of comparative grief," interviewing people who lost loved ones in the attack. What he neglects to mention is that he, too, had family members who died on the plane. Then, to his delight and fear, he becomes embroiled in the lives of one family caught in the undertow of the tragedy, and privy to their secrets. This surprising emotional connection sparks him to confront his own losses. The Ever After of Ashwin Rao imagines the lasting emotional and political consequences of a real-life act of terror, confronting what we might learn to live with and what we can live without.

    Now, approaching middle age, Mickey is lucky just to be landing gigs singing at barmitzvahs. When his former high school sweetheart reappears, Mickey's life begins to feel like a stuck record - but even a one-hit wonder deserves a second chance.

    The ten year old girl from a small town in Indiana doesn’t understand why she can feel what others feel, or see what others have seen. She only knows the hurt upon looking into the eyes of her mother—the beneficiary of her father’s recent run of bad luck. A streak that has hardened his heart and often finds him drowning in the bottom of a bottle. She tries hard to be just like the other fifth graders, but life at home is hard and the pain is difficult to endure. It isn’t until the day Riley meets Carl Boyd, a Vietnam veteran, that everything changes. Visions of a terrible past, not just from war, but from a life that has stolen much from him, begins to surface in Riley’s mind. But this is far more intense and frightening than anything she has experienced before. Riley discovers her gift is quickly evolving and finds herself swimming in the memories of Carl Boyd, and experiencing a past he can’t put behind him. Even more troubling; perceiving a future of which he doesn’t yet know—a future filled with danger. All are reluctant to come to terms with Riley’s ability, especially her father. But then, he has seen this before.

    Though largely written off as dead, some claim to have had brushes with Cassady, now said to be homeless and bumming change on the streets of his native Los Angeles. Intrigued, Jason Maddox, a would-be filmmaker and Cassady fan, decides to investigate. But the man he eventually finds and befriends is damaged in ways he could never have imagined, and Jason’s own life begins to unravel as he tries to save the hapless Jim Cassady from himself.A mystery wrapped in a roller-coaster account of the American pop-culture underbelly, Banned for Life has been cited as a "cult favorite" by the New York Journal of Books, with a reputation that continues to expand. "Every once in a while, I read a book that I think everyone else should read. A book that lovers of all genres can enjoy. A book that I wish I could buy for every single non-reader out there to prove to them what they are missing. [Banned for Life] is one of those books...once I started, I knew I was not going to want it to end. It called to me every time I put it down. It begged. It screamed. I savored every moment of it, and I dreaded reading that final sentence." — The Next Best Book Blog "....pitch-perfect, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartrendingly sad...one of those rare books that tells the story of a generation." — Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick "...[Banned for Life] follows Jason Maddox's serio-comic adventures in the underground punk scene, stretching beyond mosh-pit mayhem and barroom brawls to explore death and obsession and purpose. The author zigzags confidently between a resonant coming-of-age tale in North Carolina, la vie bohème in hardscrabble New York, and a tempestuous L.A. love affair...even readers ambivalent to punk will be drawn in by the peculiarly irresistible voice of Jason..." — The Nervous Breakdown "Haney's characters are nuanced and interesting and you actually care about what's going to happen to them..."— Maximum RocknRoll "...literary fiction at its best. Like Melville [in Moby-Dick], D. R. Haney has created a world so rich in detail, so authentic, so damned cool, you want to take up a harpoon—or, in this case, a guitar—and join the fray." — Greg Olear, author of Totally Killer and Fathermucker "...a powerful and affecting novel that hits all the right notes." — Largehearted Boy

    Now, finally, Caroline is pregnant. Both Caroline and Jeffrey are thrilled. And, wanting a lasting memory of the happiness she feels, Caroline decides to keep a pregnancy journal, writing to the baby she already loves.Caroline's pregnancy coincides with the trial of Jeffrey's career, the murder of a pregnant woman by her celebrity fianc�. For father-to-be Jeffrey, a man murdering his unborn child is as incomprehensible as it is painful.But there are other dangers for pregnant women and their babies, perils that lurk in silence amid the joy. For Caroline, such perils are medical. Her pregnancy is placing her health -- and even her life -- in jeopardy. But when it comes to a choice between her own life and her baby's, there's never, for Caroline, the slightest doubt.It's a decision of love -- for the baby she cherishes and the husband who loves Caroline more than she believed any man ever could. A man who deserves the chance to become the father he was meant to be.

    But in the days after hisfather has a startling accident, Toby makes a series of terrible, wincing choices. As a result, he is fired from his job as an etiquette commentator and loses his superb condo, his beautiful girlfriend and his beloved BMW. Worse still, he must move back to the grey Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux and live in his parents’ basement.With his silent BlackBerry and a sudden absence of friends or saviours, Toby feels he has reached the limits of misery and humiliation. But his father’s increasingly frightening behaviour is where the real trouble—and risk—lies. Who is this man? What can Toby do? Then, in a moment of misplaced gallantry, Toby encounters an unstable francophone mother who disappears and abandons her two-year-old son, Hugo, to his care. Trapped with a toddler and forced to deal with his father’s tragedies, Toby emerges from the basement bungalow of his life—muddy, broke, bruised, heartbroken—but, finally, a man.

    In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel--sort of a Clerks meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf--we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged aisles associate at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And Roger's co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6.One day, Bethany discovers Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she's never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right.These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life.Coupland electrifies us on every page of this witty, wise, and unforgettable novel. Love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them ...and even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.

    When news spreads of a high school teacher's relationship with his underage student, participants and observers alike soon take part in an elaborate show of concern and dismay. But beneath the surface of the teenage girls' display, there simmers a new awareness of their own power. They obsessively examine the details of the affair with the curiosity, jealousy, and approbation native to any adolescent girl, under the watchful eye of their stern and enigmatic saxophone teacher, whose focus may not be as strictly on their upcoming recital as she implies.

    Which is a hard act to pull off when your mother is distracted, your girlfriend too beautiful and your father in and out of a mental institution. Lost Between Houses unfolds with mingled sarcasm, grief and awe, and grips the reader until its startling climax.

    His memories cluster around the houses they lived in, the schools he went to, the uncles and aunts and cousins he knew as a boy. This is an extremely funny book and the account of how Ted O'Malley repaired the plumbing is likely to become a classic of its kind. It is also a warm and touching book. As a picture of its time, it is clear, true and absolutely unforgettable