One night, Pete and his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, get into a big fight, which sends Dennis to the morgue and Pete to jail. Initially, Pete keeps up ties to his crew, until a jail brawl forces him to realize the negative influence he has become on Joey, which encourages him to begin a process of rehabilitation that includes traditional Aboriginal healing circles and ceremonies.Powerful, courageous, and deeply moving, The Outside Circle is drawn from the author’s twenty years of work and research on healing and reconciliation of gang-affiliated or incarcerated Aboriginal men.

    "Judith Thompson hears the poetry of the inarticulate and the semi-literate, embodying the colloquialisms, the brand names, the fractured but expressive syntax, with the urgency of their speakers. These characters do terrible things, and they have terrible things done to them."—Urjo Kareda

    This play, first staged at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, is based on a tenth-century Jain myth about a king who finds his queen involved with an elephant-keeper.

    Set in Scotland in 1899, this dark and redemptive gothic comedy is a story of family secrets that have come to life and of the birth and evolution of ideas – and truly a play of morals. Reaching out in two directions to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and romanticism, Belle Moral embraces a complex range of turn-of-the-century thought including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, contemporary medical beliefs and the concept of eugenics.

    The Member of the Wedding—which became an award-winning play and a major motion picture—showcases McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and best.

    John’s neighbourhood after fourteen years in prison, he is swarmed by old friends and enemies, and a wife who hasn’t exactly been waiting for him. A cruel twist of fate has made Myrden famous: any wrongfully accused man released after such a lengthy incarceration is soon to be rich.He clings to his young granddaughter and an old love, hoping his coming settlement can free them from the cycles of revenge and failure that have marked his life. But old scores are not so easily left unsettled.Written in abrupt prose that brilliantly reflects Myrden’s cautious evaluation of everyone and everything in the overwhelming outside world, Inside pulls the reader forward with the quiet, creeping gravity of Greek tragedy. It is a story about the best kind of friend, the life a man can’t believe he deserves and the value of trying, no matter how doomed he seems to fail, to bring hope into the lives of those still worth loving.From the Hardcover edition.

    At once wryly humorous and deeply affecting, this sparkling novel follows the irresistible Lucy Bloom as she searches for her place in the world. When we first meet Lucy, she’s an imaginative eleven-year-old dreaming of a taste of freedom — and only beginning to grasp that all is not well between her parents. In the years that follow, Lucy’s journey to adulthood will see her question the limits of unconditional love, grow “criminally thin” as she stops eating, and discover complicated truths about what it means to be a young woman. Through it all, the central figure in Lucy’s life remains her mother, Joy, whose larger-than-life stories and boisterous voice belie a deep disappointment. As their relationship is tested again and again, Lucy comes to understand the resilience of the bonds that tie us to the ones we love.Among the characters we meet are Lucy’ s father, Frank, a failed glamour photographer turned travel agent who’s never been out of the country; her best friend, Erin, an artist whose outspoken iconoclasm will inspire and challenge Lucy; and Crashing Wave, Frank’s lover, a former exotic dancer and the woman Lucy comes to imagine as the ideal of all that is feminine.Set in Toronto throughout the 1990s, Where We Have to Go is a novel of self-discovery, family, and love. It introduces Lauren Kirshner as one of our most striking new voices, and reminds us that sometimes the most difficult journey is the one that takes us home.

    Time to make your dreams come true.

    In a series of elegant, nonchronological scenes spanning the years from 1946 to 2015, the play hopscotches through Mary Page Marlowe’s quiet existence as an accountant from Ohio—complicating notions of what it means to lead a “simple life.”

    Searching Manchester in desperation, she finds all roads lead to Pomona - an abandoned concrete island at the heart of the city.Here at the centre of everything, journeys end and nightmares are born.A sinister and surreal thriller from Alistair McDowall, Pomona received its world premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, on 12 November 2014.

    By turns darkly comic and heartbreakingly sad, Sweetland is a deeply suspenseful story about one man's struggles against the forces of nature and the ruins of memory. For twelve generations, when the fish were plentiful and when they all-but disappeared, the inhabitants of this remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement, and each has been offered a generous compensation package to leave. But the money is offered with a proviso: everyone has to go; the government won't be responsible for one crazy coot who chooses to stay alone on an island.  That coot is Moses Sweetland. Motivated in part by a sense of history and belonging, haunted by memories of the short and lonely time he spent away from his home as a younger man, and concerned that his somewhat eccentric great-nephew will wilt on the mainland, Moses refuses to leave. But in the face of determined, sometimes violent, opposition from his family and his friends, Sweetland is eventually swayed to sign on to the government's plan. Then a tragic accident prompts him to fake his own death and stay on the deserted island. As he manages a desperately diminishing food supply, and battles against the ravages of weather, Sweetland finds himself in the company of the vibrant ghosts of the former islanders, whose porch lights still seem to turn on at night.

    Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly.After time spent in foster homes, Cedar goes to live with her estranged father. Although she grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and sister, Phoenix, she's hoping for a new chapter in her life, only to find herself once again in a strange house surrounded by strangers. From a youth detention centre, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she'll never get to raise and tries to forgive herself for all the harm she's caused (while wondering if she even should). Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the idea of being reunited with her daughters and strives to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother. These are the Strangers, each haunted in her own way. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that pretends to offer success but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, they urge one another to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they'll ever emerge safely on the other side. A breathtaking companion to her bestselling debut The Break, Vermette's The Strangers brings readers into the dynamic world of the Stranger family, the strength of their bond, the shared pain in their past, and the light that beckons from the horizon. This is a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds that--despite everything--refuse to be broken.

    His parents retired and moved to Florida. That doesn't mean his family isn't still in Jersey. In fact, he sees both sets of his grandparents every Sunday for dinner. This is routine until he has to tell them that he's been offered a dream job. The job he's been waiting for - marketing executive - would take him away from his beloved, but annoying, grandparents. He tells them. The news doesn't sit so well. Thus begins a series of schemes to keep Nick around. How could he betray his family's love to move to Seattle for a job, wonder his grandparents? Well, Frank, Aida, Nunzio, and Emma do their level best, that includes bringing the lovely - and single - Caitlin O'Hare as bait.

    These characters inhabit an amoral universe where beauty reflects no truth and love is an empty delusion. Each character is ultimately annihilated by their own obsessions.Acclaimed and reviled when it exploded on the Quebec literary scene in 1959, Mad Shadows initiated a new era in Quebec fiction.

    Life was beautiful and bright, and every day soared with music. Now Ingrid is on a summertime wilderness survival trek for at-risk teens: addicts, runaways, and her. She’s fighting to survive crushing humiliations, physical challenges that push her to her limits, and mind games that threaten to break her. Then When the curtain fell on Margot-Sophia’s singing career, they buried the past and settled into a small, painfully normal life. But Ingrid longed to let the music soar again. She wanted it so much that, for a while, nothing else mattered. Now Ingrid is never going to make it through this summer if she can’t figure out why she’s here . . . and why the music really stopped.