Book picks similar to
Arrhythmia by Alice Zorn


canadian-literature
fiction
9-12-2026
adult-fiction

Growing Up Next to The Mental


Brian M Callahan - 2018
    No more than eeny, meeny, miney, mo and who we were supposed to catch by the toe.Wish Mooney’s earliest memory in life is finding a corpse in the Waterford River. Jarring stuff for a four-year-old, yet far from the most shocking or bizarre he would witness growing up in west end St. John’s next door to the Waterford Hospital. Or, as it was unabashedly labelled before the advent of political correctness: the Mental.An unfortunate moniker, but one legitimately derived from the original name of the place—the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases—when it opened in 1854. Not until 1972 would it be renamed after the river that runs by it. But in Mooney’s world, which revolved mostly in and around the asylum’s drab, depressing confines in the mid-1970s, it was colloquially the Mental, just as its largely despondent inhabitants were the mental patients.Thus was the oft-surreal environment that unavoidably enveloped Wish and the rest of the Irish Catholic Mooney clan, including the quietly acknowledged other realities of the place—the sad, the tragic, the maniacal. Little did Wish ever consider that any or all of that would come full circle later in life when, as the court reporter for the Daily News, he would be thrust into the middle of his own life story, replete with shocking conclusion.

Company Town


Madeline Ashby - 2016
    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...?

Extensions


Myrna Dey - 2010
    wound up at a garage sale in small-town Saskatchewan almost one hundred years later. As Arabella sifts through caches of long-forgotten letters and unearths long-buried memories, she pieces together the heartbreaking truth of her family history and resolves a nearly century-old murder. In her debut novel, Myrna Dey skillfully moves back and forth between two time periods and two memorably resourceful heroines.

Out of Sight


Isabelle Grey - 2011
    He has no wife, no child, and refuses ever to get inside a car.Leonie is certain she can help this man, that her love will heal his emotional wounds. But Patrice will not tell her anything about his past. So she decides to search herself – unaware of what she’ll discover.Five years before, Patrice was living in London. He was called Patrick, and he had a wife and child. And one fateful day in July changed his life for ever.

Alligator


Lisa Moore - 2005
    John's, Newfoundland. St. John's is a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O'Connor country. Its denizens jostle one another in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Colleen is a seventeen-year-old would-be ecoterrorist, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. Her mother, Beverly, is cloaked in grief after the death of her husband. Beverly s sister, Madeleine, is a driven, aging filmmaker who obsesses over completing her magnum opus before she dies. And Frank, a young man whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers, is desperate to protect his hot-dog stand from sociopathic Russian sailor Valentin, whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters. Alligator is a remarkable book, a suspenseful, heartfelt, and sexy story that examines the ruthlessly reptilian and painfully human sides of all of us.

McIntyre Security Bodyguard Series - Box Set 4


April Wilson - 2021
    She doesn't remember any of it, but she has the bruises and lacerations all over her body as painful reminders of something she just wants to put behind her. The problem is, she can’t move on. Everything she’d ever hoped for was torn away from her that night. The man she’s been crushing on has vowed to restore her sense of safety and security. He’ll stop at nothing to catch the assailant who hurt her. The tragic irony is, now he wants her in his life. But it’s too late now.Mack Donovan has always kept a careful distance from Erin. She’s sweet, beautiful, and innocent - way too young and too good for him. After a career in the military and a stint as a mercenary, he’s done things he's not proud of. He thinks his hands are too dirty to touch her. When he rejects her invitation to attend a New Year’s Eve party, the unthinkable happens. A sexual predator drugs Erin and steals not just her innocence, but her sense of self. Mack will stop at nothing to find him and end him. In the meanwhile, he’s not giving up on Erin. He will show her that not all men are monsters.With This RingAnnie is marrying her best friend today, the love of her life. She's waited years for this day, and she's not going to let anything get in the way. So what if she's nine months pregnant with twins and starting to feel contractions? She only has to make it until the ceremony is done. What could possibly go wrong? As a follow-up novella to Annie and Jake's second chance romance (Redeemed), WITH THIS RING is a heart-warming look at love, romance, family, and childbirth.Collateral DamageWhen Sophie McIntyre's blind date goes horribly wrong, she finds herself running for her life. Dominic Zaretti is a man who gets things done—one who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty in the process. His job is to disappear with Sophie and keep her alive until the threat is neutralized. But when Dominic falls for the curvy, statuesque beauty, he finds himself making the ultimate sacrifice to keep her safe.

Every Time We Say Goodbye


Jamie Zeppa - 2011
    Now, she's fallen in love with her baby boy but is locked in combat with her sister-in-law over his care. Wanting an independent life for herself and her son, Grace leaves Sault Ste. Marie to find work, and a place of her own, in southern Ontario. But she worries: when she returns for her baby, will her brother and sister-in-law give him up?1957: Teenaged Dean Turner breaks open a locked box and finds adoption papers with a birth certificate for Daniel Turner, son of Grace Turner and an unknown father. His parents deny that he is adopted, but four years later, Dean leaves home to find the mysterious Grace.1961: Laura falls in love with Dean Turner soon after he sits down at her table in the Queen Street Eaton's cafeteria, but he disappears as suddenly and as devastatingly as he appeared. When she encounters him in Sault Ste. Marie three years later, she is determined not to let him slip away again.1973: Eight-year-old Dawn Turner waits for her father one morning at the front door of her grandparents' house. Dawn and her little brother are finally starting a life with their father, Dean, and his new wife. But when the new beginning doesn't work out, she and Jimmy end up back with their grandparents. As Dawn grows up, she must work to understand her family's mysteries and disappearing acts before she loses track of herself completely. Jamie Zeppa paints a tender and perceptive portrait of the unconventional, though not entirely dysfunctional, Turner family. Rich with mystery, broken promises and in the end, some mending of hearts, Every Time We Say Goodbye explores what it means to leave, to be left, to be absent; what connects parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives - and what drives them apart.

Ragged Company


Richard Wagamese - 2008
    During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world, and once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favour of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck. A found cigarette package (contents: some unsmoked cigarettes, three $20 bills, and a lottery ticket) changes the fortune of this struggling set. The ragged company discovers they have won $13.5 million, but none of them can claim the money for lack proper identification. Enlisting the help of Granite, their lives, and fortunes, become forever changed.Ragged Company is a journey into both the future and the past. Richard Wagamese deftly explores the nature of the comforts these friends find in their ideas of “home,” as he reconnects them to their histories.

Kyle Achilles Series Complete Collection


Tim Tigner - 2019
     Amazon Prime members can also read this for FREE on a Kindle. To learn how, go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom... This collection contains all the Kyle Achilles books as of February, 2019, arranged in the suggested reading order. Includes Amazon #1 Bestsellers PUSHING BRILLIANCE, THE LIES OF SPIES, CHASING IVAN, FALLING STARS and TWIST AND TURN. See the individual books for detailed descriptions and reader reviews of the stories destined to keep you reading late into the night. "Achilles is my new Mitch Rapp." —Robert Getty "Reads like Reacher with a little Ludlum and Flynn mixed in.” —Jeff Bowden "My first thought was a new Jack Reacher—only better." —Lucia O'Brien "Think of Tim Tigner as Tom Clancy without the filler." —Larry Nesbit "Every bit as spellbinding as David Baldacci." —Kathryn Grady _______________________________________ PUSHING BRILLIANCE He didn’t do it. He really didn't. But proving it, will be a killer. Imagine Harrison Ford's THE FUGITIVE meets Tom Clancy's HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. ________________________________________ THE LIES OF SPIES The American president sent him... The Russian president caught him... The free world is counting on him... But he doesn't remember. Imagine Robert Ludlum’s THE BOURNE IDENTITY meets Lee Child’s PERSONAL. ________________________________________ CHASING IVAN Europe's smartest criminal, versus America's best spy. And then there's poor Emily, stuck in between. Imagine THE DAY OF THE JACKAL meets BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY. _______________________________________ FALLING STARS Two distressed heroes. Three dastardly crimes. And the slickest heists of all time. Imagine Bin Laden meets Bernie Madoff—and hold on for the ride. _______________________________________ TWIST AND TURN Their plan was brilliant, their tactics cunning, but then came a twist, they never saw coming. Imagine BREAKING BAD meets THE SUM OF ALL FEARS. _______________________________________ Amazon named Tim Tigner an All-Star Author in December, 2017 and every month since for being one of the most popular authors in Kindle Unlimited. His books are recommended for fans of David Baldacci, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Nelson DeMille’s John Corey, Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, Mark Greaney’s Gray Man, Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X, Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport, Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon, Brad Tayl

Heart Swarm


Allan Watson - 2015
    Five years ago Harlan headed up the investigation of an identical murder in the same woods; a mishandled investigation that effectively destroyed his credibility as a detective. The new case immediately takes a bizarre twist when the body is identified as the same girl found hanging in the woods five years ago. The following day a local man commits suicide and the police find more dead girls hidden in his basement. The case seems open and closed. Until the killing spree begins. Harlan finds himself drawn into a dark world where murder is a form of self-expression and human life treated as one more commodity to be used and discarded. The only clue that links everything is a large oil painting of ‘Sagittarius A’ – a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy orbited by thirteen stars daubed in blood with the words – Heart SwarmThis edition is no longer available.

Restlessness


Aritha van Herk - 1998
    Unable to commit suicide, she hires a professional killer and contracts him to kill her, by her choice and on her terms. In an effort to dissuade her from death, her killer elicits from her stories about her travels. In this reversal of Sheherazade, who saves her life through a continuous story, Restlessness becomes a story about how to avoid story, a travel book about how to evade travel, a manual for how to stay put.

In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo


Claire Tacon - 2018
    More than twenty years later, we find Henry working at Frankie's Funhouse, where he repairs the animatronic band that Starr loves, wrestling with her attempts at living outside the family home. His wife, Kathy, wishes he would allow Starr more independence, hoping that Henry will turn his attention a little more to their own relationship and to their other daughter, who is pregnant. As tensions mount Henry's young co-worker, Darren, reveals he needs to get to Chicago Comic Con to win back his ex-girlfriend, so Henry packs Starr (and her pet turtles) and Darren (still dressed as Frankie the mascot) into the van for a road trip no one was prepared for.

Beforelife


Randal Graham - 2017
    The people who live there don’t believe in you, either. What if you went to heaven and no one there believed in Earth? This is the question at the heart of Beforelife, a satirical novel that follows the post-mortem adventures of widower Ian Brown, a man who dies on the book’s first page and finds himself in an afterlife where no one else believes in “pre-incarnation.” The other residents of the afterlife have mysteriously forgotten their pre-mortem lives and think that anyone who remembers a mortal life is suffering from a mental disorder called the “Beforelife Delusion.”None of that really matters to Ian. All he wants to do is reunite with Penelope, his wife. Scouring the afterlife for any sign of her, Ian accidentally winds up on a quest to prove that the beforelife is real. This puts him squarely into the crosshairs of some of history’s greatest heroes and villains, all of whom seem unhealthily obsessed with erasing Ian’s memories and preventing him from reminding anyone of their pre-mortem lives. Only by staying a step ahead of his enemies can Ian hope to keep his much-needed marbles, find Penelope, and restore the public’s memories of the beforelife.

Exit Papers from Paradise


Liam Card - 2012
    Forced to take over his father's plumbing business straight out of high school, Isaac's had dreams of attending the University of Michigan that fell by the wayside. However, the unfortunate setback didn't stop him entirely. For the past decade, he has absorbed every medical textbook and journal available to him. For practical experience, Isaac performs surgeries on the wildlife around his house, preparing for the day he attends Michigan. Yet the years continue to pass and Isaac remains stuck in Paradise, Michigan, as a plumber. That is, until this year, when an event pushes him to apply as an undergraduate for the first time. Exit Papers from Paradise is about the gap between the person we are and the person we desperately want to be.www.exitpapers.com

Summer of My Amazing Luck


Miriam Toews - 1996
    Lucy Von Alstyne sends fictitious letters to her friend Alicia, pretending to be the father of Alicia's twins, and the two welfare mothers and their five children set off on a journey to find him, facing along the way the complications of living in poverty and raising fatherless children.