All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twenty-five years later, but spirals back again and again to the "February" that persists in Helen's mind and heart.Writing at the peak of her form, her steadfast refusal to sentimentalize coupled with an almost shocking ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore gives us her strongest work yet. Here is a novel about complex love and cauterizing grief, about past and present and how memory knits them together, about a fiercely close community and its universal struggles, and finally about our need to imagine a future, no matter how fragile, before we truly come home. This is a profound, gorgeous, heart-stopping work from one of our best writers.

    In his hometown of Montreal, he is revered as much for his novels about the working-class neighbourhood of Saint-Henri as for his separatist views. But this is 2001. The dreams of a new nation are dying, and Luc himself is increasingly dissatisfied with his life.Hannah is Luc’s wife. She is also the daughter of a man who served as a special prosecutor during the October Crisis. For years, Hannah has worked faithfully as Luc’s English translator. She has also spent her adult life distancing herself from her English- speaking family. But at what cost?Hugo is their troubled fourteen-year-old son. Living in the shadow of a larger-than-life father, Hugo is struggling with his own identity. In confusion and anger, he commits a reckless act that puts everyone around him on a collision course with the past.Weaving together three unique voices, My October is a masterful tale of a modern family torn apart by the power of language and the weight of history. Spare and insightful, Claire Holden Rothman’s new novel explores the fascinating and sometimes shocking consequences of words left unsaid.

    These are stories about friendships and relationships confused by unsettling tensions bubbling beneath the surface. A woman who plans to conceive ends up in the arms of her husband's best friend; a man who baby-sits a neglected four-year-old ends up questioning his own dysfunctional relationship; a chance encounter at a gala event causes a woman to remember when she volunteered for a nightmarish drug-testing clinic; another woman discovers that her best friend who is about to get married has just had an affair; a young teenager tries to escape from her controlling father and finds an unexpected lover on a bus ride home; a wife tries to overcome her dying mother-in-law's resistance to her marriage by revealing to her own strange aural stigmata; a friend tries to talk another friend out of dating her cheating ex-boyfriend; and a superstitious candle-maker confesses to a tempestuous relationship that implodes spectacularly. Sarah Selecky is a talented young writer who evokes a generation teetering on the shoals of consumerism and ambiguous mores. Reminiscent of early Atwood, with echoes of Lisa Moore and Barbara Gowdy, these absorbing stories are about love and longing, stories that touch us in a myriad of subtle and affecting ways."

    Abandoned as an infant, Marcel is haunted by vague memories of his bohemian mother, and is desperate to know who his real parents are. When Oliver is promoted to foreign correspondent, he leaves Marcel in the care of his ill-equipped friends, including the beautiful Pippa. The world is being swept by a wave of liberation—coups, revolutions and the end of colonialism. While Oliver rushes toward the action, Marcel is set adrift in swinging London, a city of magic—and a city where he can never quite fit in. Just when it seems they will never be reunited, Marcel is sent to join Oliver in Vietnam. But by the summer of 1963, the war is escalating, and Oliver is finally overwhelmed by his doomed love for Pippa. When Marcel eventually uncovers the shattering truth about his mother, his entire world is rearranged. Now, as his fiftieth birthday approaches, Marcel is asked to take care of his friend’s eleven-year-old daughter, Iris. Prodded by her sharp-eyed company, he reflects on his own bittersweet childhood and the experiences that have shaped his present. Stray Love is beautifully illustrated with original drawings by noted Toronto artist/filmmaker Heather Frise.

    Maybe best left until middle age.)Publish paper comparing teenagers and chicken peer groups.Read entire Lord of the Rings series.

    And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend's girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student's name, that she could care more about her students than her ex's new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counselor, Walter, feels guilty—maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the school. And Walter, who's secretly been in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that's a little callous. He's also tired of Max's obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster.And then Max meets a drag queen named Crepe Suzette. And everything changes.

    Once a famous sniper, Abel finds himself a survivor of the Spanish Armada shipwrecks in 16th C Ireland. Following his capture by a brutal sheriff, Abel flees torture and death with a priceless emerald ring. Dozens of English troopers hunt the Spaniard across the Irish wilds, beating every last bush in a desperate attempt to find him.Muireann is a revered Irish poetess enjoying the hospitality of a neighbouring tribe. Tragedy strikes when the sheriff’s men kill her husband during a violent night raid, with her life barely saved by the fugitive Abel. Newly widowed and shocked by her loss, Muireann must somehow reach the distant lands of her tribe, where she can be reunited with her only son.Both runaways form an unlikely bond as they flee across a strange and stunning land, pushed to the edge of their wits and endurance. Yet unknown to Muireann, the ring Abel carries bears far-reaching consequences beyond Irish shores. Can the unlikely, desperate pair escape a ruthless sheriff who will never give up the chase?Accolades for 'The Sheriff's Catch'Winner in the 'Best Novel' category - The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, 2019Winner in the 'Best Historical Fiction' category - The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, 2019Winner in the 'Best Cover Design' category - The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, 2019Finalist in the 'Book Trailer' category - The Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2019Finalist - The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards, 2019Finalist - The Eric Hoffer Awards, 2019Finalist in the 'Outstanding Historical' category - The Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards, 2019Winner in the 'Best Cover Design' category - The e-book Cover Design Awards, November 2018Nominee in the 'Best Trailer for a Book or Novel' category - Golden Trailer Awards, 2018

    They range from the tragically funny opening story “Emergency Contact” to the audacious, drug-fuelled rush of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” to the deranged and thrilling extreme of “King Me.”The Beggar’s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut, written with an exceptional eye and ear and heart.

    Her guilt-plagued mother cannot accept her daughter's deafness. Grania's saving grace is her grandmother Mamo, who tries to teach Grania to read and speak again. Grania's older sister, Tress, is a beloved ally as well-obliging when Grania begs her to shout words into her ear canals and forging a rope to keep the sisters connected from their separate beds at night when Grania fears the terrible vulnerability that darkness brings. When it becomes clear that she can no longer thrive in the world of the hearing, her family sends her to live at the Ontario School for the Deaf in Belleville, where, protected from the often-unforgiving hearing world outside, she learns sign language and speech.After graduation Grania stays on to work at the school, and it is there that she meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man. In wonderment the two begin to create a new emotional vocabulary that encompasses both sound and silence. But just two weeks after their wedding, Jim must leave home to serve as a stretcher bearer on the blood-soaked battlefields of Flanders.During this long war of attrition, Jim and Grania's letters back and forth-both real and imagined-attempt to sustain their young love in a world as brutal as it is beautiful. Frances Itani's depiction of a world where sound exists only in the margins is a singular feat in literary fiction, a place difficult to leave and even harder to forget. A magnificent tale of love and war, Deafening is finally an ode to language-how it can console, imprison, and liberate, and how it alone can bridge vast chasms of geography and experience.

    Jewish Studies. Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction. Raised in Baltimore in the '90s, 17-year-old Samuel Gerson is ready to be rid of his high school baseball team, his protective upbringing, and the tight-knit Jewish community in which he's spent his whole life. But when he befriends enigmatic Dmitri Zilber, a recent Russian Jewish immigrant who is obsessed with the works of Dostoevsky, Samuel's world begins to shift. In the wake of his grandfather's suicide, as his life increasingly entangles with that of Dmitri and his beautiful sister Yelizaveta, it sets in motion a series of events that culminates in a disturbing act of violence. A quietly devastating portrait of late adolescence, THE SENSUALIST examines the culture we inherit as it collides with the one we create.I throw at you, without reservation, this adjective: masterful. This book is fast and warm, fraught and intimate--and no slouch in the funny department, either. Daniel Torday's voice is entirely his own. Baltimore is his. Dmitri Zilber is a brilliant character, and I am in love with his sister. I am constantly happy to be in their presence.--Adam Levin

    But Wanda's life changes radically on a routine trip to the grocery store when a gunman enters the supermarket and opens fire. The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes is the highly anticipated debut novel by Bridget Canning, one of the most promising new writers from Newfoundland, and is an energetic page-turner about the power of selflessness in a contemporary culture of fear and suspicion.

    But he discovers that there is more than a ghost causing mayhem. The Mansion is a fast-paced supernatural story about 10,000 words long.

    His surprise turns to astonishment when he discovers the group includes the young Princess Victoria and Prince Andrew, who are next in line for the British throne!When kidnappers strike, taking the grownups in the group hostage, Jamie and the rest of the children are forced to battle their way back to civilization alone. Encounters with bears, rapids and the menacing kidnappers threaten to stop them at every turn, but thanks to Jamie's level headedness and Victoria's quick thinking, the children outwit their pursuers ... but they're not out of danger yet!

    It's a time when the growing threat of fascism in Europe is a constant worry, and people escape from reality through radio and the movies. Meanwhile, the two sisters -- vastly different in personality, yet inextricably linked by a shared past -- try to find their places within the complex web of social expectations for young women in the 1930s.While Nora embarks on a glamorous career as a radio-soap opera star, Clara, a strong and independent-minded woman, struggles to observe the traditional boundaries of a small and tight-knit community without relinquishing her dreams of love, freedom, and adventure. However, things aren't as simple as they appear -- Nora's letters eventually reveal life in the big city is less exotic than it seems, and the tranquil solitude of Clara's life is shattered by a series of unforeseeable events. These twists of fate require all of Clara's courage and strength, and finally put the seemingly unbreakable bond between the sisters to the test.

    Around her revolves a vividly drawn cast of characters: her mother Adele; Misha, a Polish Jew; the willful, bitter Mother Superior; and her powerfully intelligent twin brothers, who sleep beside a map of the world they long to explore. Brilliantly imagined and buoyed by the clear-eyed perceptions of youth, it is an eloquent and profound story from a gifted writer.