Book picks similar to
Merrybegot by Mary Dalton


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On Island: Life Among the Coast Dwellers


Pat Carney - 2017
    Featuring a revolving cast of characters—the newly retired couple, the church warden, the musician, the small-town girl with big city dreams—Carney’s keen observations of the personalities and dramas of coastal life are instantly recognizable to readers who are familiar with life in a small community. With her narrative of dock fights, pet shows, family feuds, logging camps and the ever-present tension between islanders and property-owning “off-islanders,” Carney’s witty and perceptive voice describes how the islanders weather the storms of coastal life.Carney writes evocatively of the magical landscape of the British Columbia coast, where she has lived and worked for five decades. At the same time, she addresses the less-idyllic moments that can also characterize coastal life: power outages, winter storms, isolation. On Island brings the West Coast landscape—human and natural—to life, and gives islanders and mainland dwellers alike a taste of what it means to be “on island.”

Unless


Carol Shields - 2002
    That is, until her oldest daughter Norah mysteriously drops out of college to become a panhandler on a Toronto street corner -- silent, with a sign around her neck bearing the word "Goodness."--back cover

No Great Mischief


Alistair MacLeod - 1999
    Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.

Death on the Ice: The Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914


Cassie Brown - 1972
    John's.  The year 1914 witnessed the worst in the long line of tragedies that were part of their harsh way of life.For two long, freezing days and nights a party of seal hunters--one hundred thirty-two men--were left stranded on an icefield floating in the North Atlantic in winter.  They were thinly dressed, with almost no food, and with no hope of shelter on the ice against the snow or the constant, bitter winds.  To survive they had to keep moving, always moving.  Those who lay down to rest died.Heroes emerged--one man froze his lips badly, biting off the icicles that were blinding his comrades.  Other men froze in their tracks, or went mad with pain and walked off the edge of the icefield.  All the while, ships steamed about nearby, unnoticing.  And by the time help arrived, two-thirds of the men were dead.This is an incredible story of bungling and greed, of suffering and heroism.  The disaster is carefully traced, step by step.  With the aid of compelling, contemporary photographs the book paints an unforgettable portrait of the bloody trade of seal hunting among the icefields when ships--and men--were expendable.

Chronicles of Avonlea


L.M. Montgomery - 1912
    There was the case of Ludovic Speed, who wouldn't propose to the woman he had courted for fifteen years until Anne devised a plan to "speed" him up . . . if it didn't backfire and break his heart. But no one could blame mischievous Anne for the hilarious battle of the sexes that erupted when a man-hating woman and her cat got quarantined in the same house with a woman-hating bachelor and his dog. From sprawling Penhallow Grange, where a family waits nearly forever for two quarreling lovers to break their stubborn silence, to the tumbledown farm of Old Man Shaw, who awaits the retum of his beloved daughter, L. M. Montgomery has written twelve tales of secret hopes and hidden dreams, filled with enchantment and humor.

Radicalized


Cory Doctorow - 2019
    Radicalized is the story of a desperate husband, a darknet forum and the birth of a violent uprising against the US health care system.The final story, The Masque of the Red Death, tracks an uber-wealthy survivalist and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement


Camilla Gibb - 2010
    She remembers him only in fragments, as an injured artist from whom she and her mother were separated during the war. In her journey, Maggie finds herself at a makeshift pho stall, where the rich aroma of beef noodle soup lures people off Hanoi's busy streets and into a quiet morning ritual. Old Man Hung, the enlightened proprietor of the beloved pho stall, has survived decades of poverty and political upheaval. Hung once had a shop that served as a meeting place for dissident artists. As Maggie discovers, this old man may hold the key to both her past and her future. Among Hung's most faithful customers is Tu', a dynamic young tour guide who works for a company called New Dawn. Tu' leads tourists through the city, including American vets on war tours, but he has begun to wonder what it is they are seeing of Vietnam-and what they miss entirely. In Maggie, he finds a young Americanized woman in search of something quite different, leading him beyond his realm of expertise. In sensual, interwoven narratives, Maggie, Hung, and Tu' come together in a highly charged season that will mark all of them forever. The Beauty of Humanity Movement is a skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption and renewal of love. The story of these characters is tinged with longing for worlds and loved ones lost but also filled with the hope that faith can heal the pain of their shared country's turbulent past. This is the distinct and complex story of contemporary Vietnam, a country undergoing momentous change, and a story of how family is defined-not always by bloodlines, but by heart.

Catching the Light


Susan Sinnott - 2018
    No landwash, no vague intertidal zone, no undecided. She stood at the edge, a mass of instincts and yearnings and despair, while the dawn painted itself in around her, shade by delicate shade. The kids call her Lighthouse: no lights on up there. In a small town, everyone knows when you can't read. But Cathy is just distracted by the light, lines, and artistry of everyday life. She is a talented artist growing up in the tiny fictional town of Mariners Cove, Newfoundland, where such talent is far from appreciated. Cathy becomes convinced success and acceptance await her at NSCAD University in Halifax. Hutch Parsons is everything Cathy is not: energetic, popular, smart. He's charismatic, always on the go, and can't wait to launch his fishing career. But one icy evening Hutch's life comes crashing down around him, and he must learn to rebuild the broken pieces slowly and carefully--something he may need an artistic eye for.Dancing between points of view, Catching the Light explores the ordinary lives of two extraordinary people. With gorgeously lyrical language and a strong sense of place, this tender novel announces a bright new voice in Atlantic fiction. Winner of the 2014 Percy Janes First Novel Award for an unpublished manuscript.

Shoeless Joe


W.P. Kinsella - 1982
    What follows is a rich, nostalgic look at one of our most cherished national pastimes and a remarkable story about fathers and sons, love and family, and the inimitable joy of finding your way home.

Frying Plantain


Zalika Reid-Benta - 2019
    We see her on a visit to Jamaica, startled by the sight of a severed pig’s head in her great aunt’s freezer; in junior high, the victim of a devastating prank by her closest friends; and as a teenager in and out of her grandmother’s house, trying to cope with the ongoing battles between her unyielding grandparents.A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker. In her brilliantly incisive debut, Zalika Reid-Benta artfully depicts the tensions between mothers and daughters, second-generation Canadians and first-generation cultural expectations, and Black identity and predominately white society.

Hellgoing


Lynn Coady - 2013
    Selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book and for The Globe's Top 10 Books of 2013.With astonishing range and depth, Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Lynn Coady gives us nine unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last.A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can’t seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day.Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, compassionate in her humour yet never missing an opportunity to make her characters squirm, fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history.

Empire of Wild


Cherie Dimaline - 2019
    A messed-up, grown-up, Little Red Riding Hood.Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year--ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument. One terrible, hungover morning in a Walmart parking lot in a little town near Georgian Bay, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher named Eugene Wolff. By the time she staggers into the tent, the service is over. But as she is about to leave, she hears an unmistakable voice.She turns, and there Victor is. The same face, the same eyes, the same hands. But his hair is short and he's wearing a suit and he doesn't recognize her at all. No, he insists, she's the one suffering a delusion: he's the Reverend Wolff and his only mission is to bring his people to Jesus. Except that, as Joan soon discovers, that's not all the enigmatic Wolff is doing.With only the help of Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with a knowledge of the old ways, and her odd, Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan has to find a way to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor. Her life, and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon it.