Books
My Face In The Light
Regular price $23.00LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 TORONTO BOOK AWARD
“My mother is an artist and I am a liar. Or, if I scratch the surface, my mother is a sick woman and I am an actress . . .”
Justine feels uneasy in her marriage, her theatre career and her relationship with her estranged mother, a famous painter. An intuitive and uncanny mimic, distinguished by a pronounced scar across her forehead (the result of a childhood accident), Justine has made acting the centre of her life since she was a teenager, but lately her outwardly charmed life in Toronto has begun to ring false. After a disastrous audition in London, England, a chance encounter with a stranger leads to an unorthodox business proposition that would allow Justine to abandon the world she knows indefinitely. As the complications and contradictions of leaving a life behind swell to the point of crisis, Justine must confront the collateral damage of a traumatic, long-repressed past.
In psychologically astute prose full of provocative insights, My Face in the Light is a piercing, poignant novel about truth in art and identity. It’s the story of a young woman owning up to the lies she’s fallen in love with, and figuring out if she can still recognize herself when she finally lets them go.
MARTHA SCHABAS’s first novel, Various Positions, was named a Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and NOW Magazine, and was shortlisted for an Evergreen Fiction Award. She was The Globe and Mail’s dance critic from 2015 to 2020, where she also wrote about theatre and books. Her essays, arts criticism and short fiction have appeared in publications including The Walrus, Hazlitt and The New Quarterly.
The Long Road Home
Regular price $24.99
NSTANT BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
From a leading scholar on the politics of race comes a work of family history, memoir, and insight gained from a unique journey across the continent, on what it is to be Black in North America.
When Debra Thompson moved to the United States in 2010, she felt like she was returning to the land of her ancestors, those who had escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad. But her decade-long journey across Canada and the US transformed her relationship to both countries, and to the very idea of home.
In The Long Road Home, Thompson follows the roots of Black identities in North America and the routes taken by those who have crisscrossed the world’s longest undefended border in search of freedom and belonging. She begins in Shrewsbury, Ontario, one of the termini of the Underground Railroad and the place where members of her own family found freedom. More than a century later, Thompson still feels the echoes and intergenerational trauma of North American slavery. She was often the Only One—the only Black person in so many white spaces—in a country that perpetuates the national mythology of multiculturalism.
Then she revisits her four American homes, each of which reveals something peculiar about the relationship between American racism and democracy: Boston, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the American Revolution; Athens, Ohio, where the white working class and the white liberal meet; Chicago, Illinois, the great Black metropolis; and Eugene, Oregon, the western frontier. She then moves across the border and settles in Montreal, a unique city with a long history of transnational Black activism, but one that does not easily accept the unfamiliar and the foreign into the fold.
The Long Road Home is a moving personal story and a vital examination of the nuances of racism in the United States and Canada. Above all, it is about the power of freedom and the dreams that link and inspire Black people across borders from the perspective of one who has deep ties to, critiques of, and hope for both countries.
Finding Edward
Regular price $24.95
Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land.
A chance encounter with a panhandler named Patricia leads Cyril to a suitcase full of photographs and letters dating back to the early 1920s. Cyril is drawn into the letters and their story of a white mother’s struggle with the need to give up her mixed race baby, Edward. Abandoned by his own white father as a small child, Cyril’s keen intuition triggers a strong connection and he begins to look for the rest of Edward’s story.
As he searches, Cyril unearths fragments of Edward’s itinerant life as he crisscrossed the country. Along the way, he discovers hidden pieces of Canada’s Black history and gains the confidence to take on his new world.
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Casey Plett is the author of the novel Little Fish and the short story collections A Dream of a Woman and A Safe Girl to Love; co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers; and the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney's Internet Tendency and her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Maclean's, The Walrus, Plenitude, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the winner of two Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, winner of the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and she received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She lives in Windsor, Ontario.
Last Winter
Regular price $24.95As gripping and unforgettable as Fredrik Backman's Bear Town and Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone, this haunting novel digs into the impact of a fatal avalanche on a small BC mountain town, as seen through the eyes of those who survive the tragedy.
"Heart-rending and heart-stopping." —Alix Ohlin, author of Dual Citizens
"...lays bare the truths of mental illness...epically unforgettable." —Jen Sookfong Lee, author of Superfan
"Deeply raw...Insightful and unsparing, this is an important book." —Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People
Content Note: this is an important book and a powerful depiction of extreme Bipolar disorder. It deals with sensitive subject matter, and we encourage readers to take care of themselves and their mental health while reading.
Last Winter is the story of a child who might not survive the heartbreak of her father’s death and a mother who struggles to both parent and manage her grief in the grips of a Bipolar crisis.
Fiona and Gus’s marriage has veered off course. Fiona’s mental health is shaky at best, and is now further strained under the weight of a transgression that she would like to both forget and repeat. Gus, a pro snowboarder turned backcountry guide, is exhausted by Fiona's mood swings and her ambivalence about their relationship, but mostly by the impact of her erratic behaviour on their eight-year-old daughter, Ruby. Ruby loves them both, but has a much closer relationship with her father, and has stopped talking in the face of the tensions between her parents.
In the midst of this marital crisis, Gus takes Ruby’s class on an overnight trip into the wilderness, where Ruby is one of only two children to survive the avalanche that kills the others, including her beloved father. While Fiona’s mental health is unravelled further by grief, Ruby is flattened by Gus’s loss. After the search ends with no sign of her father, Ruby is determined to find him herself, using the survival skills he taught her and believing that he must still be alive. Her trek back into the snow sets off events that stretches her own resourcefulness and her mother's fragile coping skills to the breaking point.
Atmospheric and deftly told with an economy of words and a finely tuned gaze on the small moments that build up to an inexorable and shocking end, Last Winter is a contemporary drama that will grip readers both for the story and for the vibrant portrayal of the complexities of family life.
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Miriam Toews is the author of seven bestselling novels: Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/Timothy Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.
Birnam Wood
Regular price $36.95Birnam Wood is on the move . . . A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster has created an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice.
For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira, Birnam Wood’s founder, stumbles on an answer: occupying the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. The enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira and Birnam Wood, he makes them an offer that would set them up for the long term. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
On The Ravine
Regular price $34.95In his downtown Toronto condo, Dr. Chen awakens to the sound of streetcars below, but it is not the early morning traffic that keeps him from sleep. News banners run across his phone: Fentanyl Crisis; Toxic Drug Supply; Record Number of Deaths. From behind the headlines, on the same screen, glow the faces of his patients, the faces of the what-ifs: What if he had done more, or less? Or something different? Would they still be alive?
Claire is a violinist; she feels at one with her music, taking flight in its melody, free in its movement. But now she rises and falls with the opioids in her system, becoming increasingly reckless. After two overdoses in twenty-four hours, she sits in the blue light of her computer, searching a notice board for recommendations: my doctor saved my life; my doctor is just another dealer. And then another message catches her attention, about Chen’s clinic: be a guinea pig—why not get paid to take it?
When Claire’s life intersects with Chen’s, the doctor is drawn ever more deeply into the complexities of the doctor-patient relationship, the implication and meaning of his intention to treat. Chen must confront just how far he would go to save a life.
Combining the depth of his experience as a physician with the brilliance of his literary talent, Vincent Lam creates a world electric in its precision, radiant in its detail. On the Ravine is a gripping novel of profound emotional force, a soaring achievement from a singular voice in Canadian fiction.
VINCENT LAM’s first book, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. The Headmaster’s Wager, Dr. Lam’s first novel, was shortlisted for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award and the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Dr. Lam is also the co-author of The Flu Pandemic and You, a non-fiction guide to influenza pandemics, which received a Special Recognition Award by the American Medical Writers’ Association in 2007. He served as executive editor and co-author of the textbook, Opioid Agonist Therapy: A Prescriber's Guide to Treatment, published in 2022. In 2011, he published a biography of Tommy Douglas, “father of medicare,” for Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians Series. Dr. Lam is an emergency physician and addictions physician who lives in Toronto. He is the medical director of the Coderix Medical Clinic.
Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality
Regular price $32.95Living forever isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Hearts can still break, looks can still fade, and money still matters, even in eternity. The ghosts, zombies, and demons in this collection are all shockingly human, and they’re ready to spill their guts. Vanity, love, and tragedy are all candidly explored as the unfulfilled desires of the dead are echoed in the lives of modern-day immigrants. Story-by-story, the line between ghost and human, life and death, becomes increasingly blurred.
There’s a courtesan from 17th century China who, try as she might, just can’t manage to die. Grandmama Wu, who returns from the dead to protect her grandchildren from bullies. Not to mention an Internet-order bride who inadvertently brings the apocalypse to Nebraska City.
From Shanghai to Vancouver, the women in this collection haunt and are haunted—by first loves, troublesome family members, and traumatic memories. Intertwining horror, the supernatural, and mythology, Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality riotously critiques contemporary life and fearlessly illuminates the ways in which the past can devour us. A collection about transformation and what makes us human, it solidifies Lindsay Wong as one of the most vital and electrifying voices in Canadian literature today.
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LINDSAY WONG is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2019. She has written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love and Misfortune. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg. Follow her on Twitter @LindsayMWong, Instagram @Lindsaywong.M, or visit www.lindsaywongwriter.com.
Stolen
Regular price $24.99“An extraordinary novel. A coming-of-age-story you will get lost in.” —Fredrik Backman, internationally bestselling author of The Winners
Part coming-of-age novel, part sweeping family saga, and part love song to a disappearing natural world, Stolen is the internationally bestselling and award-winning debut novel about a young Sámi girl and her struggle to defend her family’s reindeer herd and their traditional way of life—for readers of Katherena Vermette and Michelle Good.
It is winter, north of the Arctic Circle. A few hours of pale light is all the sun has to offer before the landscape is once more enveloped in complete darkness. This is Sápmi, land of the Sámi, Scandinavia’s Indigenous people.
Nine-year-old Elsa is the daughter of Sámi reindeer herders. Her community is under constant threat—from the Swedish population who don’t always value the Sámi way of life, from the government that wants to claim their land for mining, and from violent poachers who slaughter their reindeer for sport and for sale on the black market.
One morning, when Elsa goes skiing alone, she witnesses a man brutally killing her beloved reindeer calf. Elsa is terrified by what she sees. Fearing for her own life and for the lives of her family members, she remains silent.
Ten years pass, and Elsa is now trying to claim a role for herself in her community, where male elders expect young women to know their place. Meanwhile, the hostility toward the Sámi continues to escalate, and the police won’t do anything to protect them. When Elsa becomes the target of the man who killed her reindeer calf all those years ago, something inside of her breaks. The guilt, fear, and anger she’s been carrying since childhood come crashing over her, leading to a final catastrophic confrontation.
Told in three parts, Stolen is a powerful, propulsive, and cinematic novel about a courageous young Sámi woman struggling to defend her Indigenous heritage against the cruelty of the modern world for justice and for the future of her people.
We Spread
Regular price $29.99The author of the “evocative, spine-tingling, and razor-sharp” (Bustle) I’m Thinking of Ending Things that inspired the Netflix original movie and the “short, shocking psychological three-hander” (The Guardian) Foe returns with a new work of philosophical suspense.
Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.”
Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?
At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old.
Iain Reid is the author of four previous books, including his New York Times bestselling debut novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed the film adaptation for Netflix. His second novel, Foe, is being adapted for film, starring Saoirse Ronan, with Reid cowriting the screenplay. His latest novel is We Spread. Reid lives in Ontario, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @Reid_Iain.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Regular price $18.99Something very wrong is happening here.
Jake and I have a real connection, a rare and intense attachment. What has it been...a month?
I’m going to meet his parents for the first time, at the same time as I’m thinking of ending things.
Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”
And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.
I’m thinking of ending things.
A woman embarks on a road trip with her new boyfriend. Doubts about the relationship claw at the back of her mind. An unexpected detour unravels into nightmare.
In his acclaimed literary fiction debut, Iain Reid explores the darkest depths of the human psyche, confronting the value we find in relationships and the limitations of solitude. Taut with dread, this novel will haunt you long after the last page is turned.
Iain Reid is the author of four previous books, including his New York Times bestselling debut novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed the film adaptation for Netflix. His second novel, Foe, is being adapted for film, starring Saoirse Ronan, with Reid cowriting the screenplay. His latest novel is We Spread. Reid lives in Ontario, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @Reid_Iain.
The Sleeping Car Porter
Regular price $23.95WINNER OF THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 20 LITERARY FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
OPRAH DAILY: BOOKS TO READ BY THE FIRE
THE GLOBE 100: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022
CBC BOOKS: THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2022
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.
Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.”
On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter’s memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.
"Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter offers a richly detailed account of a particular occupation and time—train porter on a Canadian passenger train in 1929—and unforcedly allows it to illuminate the societal strictures imposed on black men at the time—and today. Baxter is a secretly-queer and sleep-deprived porter saving up for dental school, working a system that periodically assigns unexplained demerits, and once a certain threshold is reached, the porter loses his job. Thus, success is impossible, the best one can do is to fail slowly. As Baxter takes a cross-continental run, the boarding passengers have more secrets than an Agatha Christie cast, creating a powder keg on train tracks. The Sleeping Car Porter is an engaging and illuminating novel about the costs of work, service, and secrets." – Keith Mosman, Powell's Books
Reviews
“Mayr’s prose is vivid but never overwrought, capturing the surrealism of intense fatigue in constant motion … Readers will be captivated.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
"In 1929, being a passenger train porter was fraught with challenges...Baxter’s own sleep deprivation is perhaps the most intriguing character of the book. It leads to hallucinations, questionable decisions, and borderline supernatural suggestions."– Kirkus Reviews
"Suzette Mayr’s novel The Sleeping Car Porter an artfully constructed story that moves, beguiles, and satisfies." – Brett Josef Grubisic, The Toronto Star
"Suzette Mayr brings to life –believably, achingly, thrillingly –a whole world contained in a passenger train moving across the Canadian vastness, nearly one hundred years ago. As only occurs in the finest historical novels, every page in The Sleeping Car Porter feels alive and immediate –and eerily contemporary. The sleeping car porter in this sleek, stylish novel is named R.T. Baxter –called George by the people upon whom he waits, as is every other Black porter. Baxter’s dream of one day going to school to learn dentistry coexists with his secret life as a gay man, and in Mayr’s triumphant novel we follow him not only from Montreal to Calgary, but into and out of the lives of an indelibly etched cast of supporting characters, and, finally, into a beautifully rendered radiance." – 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury
"Mayr’s new novel, through painstaking historical research, reconstructs the workdays of a Black, lower-class, closeted gay man." – Reinhold Kramer, The Winnipeg Free Press
"Baxter works the trains as they run from Toronto to Winnipeg, through Calgary and Banff to Vancouver. Passengers on board wrestle with the details of their lives: hats and weddings, books and paperwork, drinks and cigars, childhood loss and bad telegrams, boots to be shined, a scrutinized pocket watch, communication with the dead. Baxter continuously serves them, ever watchful, needing perfection. Ten more demerits will get him fired, and a black man hiding his desire for other men has plenty of reasons to fear being targeted by whites with money. Endless patience is required to be a sleeping car porter. He's always exhausted, but it's a job, and he's saving, determined to pay for school and become a dentist who will one day be important. Then he'll be the one riding. For now, his dreams keep him alive, and time spent with people shoved together in tight spaces can shake up whole worlds. In the end, it's a little girl who fully reveals him. She’s just lost her mother and won't sleep, clinging to Baxter instead. This is intensely researched historical fiction that doesn’t feel like history. It feels like heart." – Tim McCarthy, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI
"Mayr evokes the mystique of transcontinental travel and the tumult of lives on the margins in this much-anticipated period novel. All aboard!" – Oprah Daily
“I couldn’t help imagining what a film Wes Anderson might make of Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter. The novel’s main character is a gay Black porter riding the rails in 1920’s Canada, coping with a horde of difficult long-haul passengers, including a child who appears to have permanently attached herself to his leg. Terrified that a breach of one of the railway’s insanely restrictive rules will get him fired before he can save enough money for dental school, he amuses himself—and keeps awake on his grueling shifts—by imagining the medical horrors that lie behind the smiles (or grimaces) of his clientele.” – The New York Times
The Stand-Up Groomsman
Regular price $23.00"A low-angst charmer."—New York Times Book Review
A bridesmaid and groomsman put their differences aside to get their best friends down the aisle in this opposites-attract steamy romantic comedy.
They say to never meet your heroes, but when Vivian Liao's roommate gets engaged to her favorite actor’s costar, she has no choice but to come face-to-face with Melvin Lee again. He's just as funny and handsome as he is on-screen...but he thinks she’s an ice queen and a corporate sellout. It's none of his business how she chooses to live her life, no matter how charismatic he is.
Mel is used to charming audiences as an actor and stand-up comedian, but he can't seem to thaw Vivian’s defenses. If she can ignore the simmering attraction below the surface, so can he. The only thing uniting them is their goal for their friends’ wedding to go off without a hitch.
As they collaborate on wedding cake and karaoke parties, Mel realizes he might have seriously misjudged this bridesmaid, while Vivian discovers the best man might just be as dazzling off-screen as he is on. With the wedding underway, maybe more than one happily ever after is in the future.
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Jackie Lau decided she wanted to be a writer when she was in grade two, sometime between penning “The Heart That Got Lost” and “The Land of Shapes.” She later studied engineering and worked as a geophysicist before turning to writing romance novels. She is now the author of over a dozen romantic comedies.
Jackie lives in Toronto with her husband, and despite living in Canada her whole life, she hates winter. When she’s not writing, she enjoys gelato, gourmet donuts, cooking, hiking, and reading on the balcony when it’s raining.
Mexican Gothic
Regular price $23.00NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian
IN DEVELOPMENT AS A HULU ORIGINAL LIMITED SERIES PRODUCED BY KELLY RIPA AND MARK CONSUELOS • WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Men’s Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
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Half-Bads In White Regalia: A Memoir
Regular price $24.95*LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2023*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A family tries to learn from the mistakes of past generations in this whirlwind memoir from a wholly original new voice.
The Caetanos move into a doomed house in the highway village of Happyland before an inevitable divorce pulls Cody’s parents in separate directions. His mom, Mindimooye, having discovered her Anishinaabe birth family and Sixties Scoop origin story, embarks on a series of fraught relationships and fresh starts. His dad, O Touro, a Portuguese immigrant and drifter, falls back into “big do, little think” behaviour, despite his best intentions.
Left alone at the house in Happyland, Cody and his siblings must fend for themselves, even as the pipes burst and the lights go out. His protective big sister, Kris, finds inventive ways to put food on the table, and his stoic big brother, Julian, facilitates his regular escapes into the world of video games. As life yanks them from one temporary solution to the next, they steal moments of joy and resist buckling under “baddie” temptations aplenty.
Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano delivers a fever dream coming-of-age garnished with a slang all his own. Half-Bads in White Regalia is an unforgettable debut that unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity.
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CODY CAETANO is a writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where he wrote this memoir under the mentorship of Lee Maracle. Excerpts of Half-Bads in White Regalia earned him a 2020 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose.
The Brutal Telling | A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, Book 5
Regular price $22.50From New York Times Bestselling Author Louise Penny
A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery Novel, Book 5 of 18
Chaos is coming, old son.
With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. As families prepare to head back to the city and children say goodbye to summer, a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets buried in the wilderness.
No one admits to knowing the murdered man, but as secrets are revealed, chaos begins to close in on the beloved bistro owner, Olivier. How did he make such a spectacular success of his business? What past did he leave behind and why has he buried himself in this tiny village? And why does every lead in the investigation find its way back to him?
As Olivier grows more frantic, a trail of clues and treasures from first editions of Charlotte’s Web and Jane Eyre to a spider web with the word “WOE” woven in it lead the Chief Inspector deep into the woods and across the continent in search of the truth, and finally back to Three Pines as the little village braces for the truth and the final, brutal telling.
Louise Penny is an international award-winning and bestselling author whose books have hit number one on the New York Times, USA Today and Globe and Mail lists. Her Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been translated into thirty-one languages and have sold over 10 million copies worldwide. In 2017 she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. In 2021, she co-authored the standalone thriller State of Terror with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Louise Penny lives in a village south of Montreal.
A Rule Against Murder | A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, Book 4
Regular price $22.50From New York Times Bestselling Author Louise Penny
A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery Novel, Book 4 of 18
Wealthy, cultured and respectable, the Finney family is the epitome of gentility. When Irene Finney and her four grown-up children arrive at the Manoir Bellechasse in the heat of summer, the hotel's staff spring into action. For the children have come to this idyllic lakeside retreat for a special occasion - a memorial has been organised to pay tribute to their late father. But as the heat wave gathers strength, it is not just the statue of an old man that is unveiled. Old secrets and bitter rivalries begin to surface, and the morning after the ceremony, a body is found. The family has another member to mourn.
A guest at the hotel, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache suddenly finds himself in the middle of a murder enquiry. The hotel is full of possible suspects - even the Manoir's staff have something to hide, and it's clear that the victim had many enemies. With its remote location, the lodge is a place where visitors come to escape their pasts. Until the past catches up with them...
Louise Penny is an international award-winning and bestselling author whose books have hit number one on the New York Times, USA Today and Globe and Mail lists. Her Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been translated into thirty-one languages and have sold over 10 million copies worldwide. In 2017 she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. In 2021, she co-authored the standalone thriller State of Terror with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Louise Penny lives in a village south of Montreal.
The Cruellest Month | A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery, Book 3
Regular price $22.50From New York Times Bestselling Author Louise Penny
A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery Novel, Book 3 of 18
Easter in Three Pines is a time of church services, egg hunts and seances to raise the dead.
A group of friends trudges up to the Old Hadley House, the horror on the hill, to finally rid it of the evil spirits that have so obviously plagued it, and the village, for decades. But instead of freeing a spirit, they create a new one. One of their numbers dies of fright. Or was it murder? Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Surete du Quebec. As they peel back the layers of flilth and artiface that have covered the haunted old home, they discover the evil isn't confined there. Some evil is guiding the actions of one of the seemingly kindly villagers.
But Gamache has a horror all his own to confront. A very personal demon is about to strike.
Easter in Three Pines. A time of rebirth, when nature comes alive. But something very unpleasant has also come alive. And it become clear - for there to be a rebirth, there first must be a death.
Blood Scion
Regular price $23.99“Equal parts soaring fantasy, heart-pounding action, and bloody social commentary, Blood Scion is a triumph of a book.” —Roseanne A. Brown, New York Times bestselling author of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin
This is what they deserve.
They wanted me to be a monster.
I will be the worst monster they ever created.
Fifteen-year-old Sloane can incinerate an enemy at will—she is a Scion, a descendant of the ancient Orisha gods.
Under the Lucis’ brutal rule, her identity means her death if her powers are discovered. But when she is forcibly conscripted into the Lucis army on her fifteenth birthday, Sloane sees a new opportunity: to overcome the bloody challenges of Lucis training, and destroy them from within.
Following one girl’s journey of magic, injustice, power, and revenge, Deborah Falaye’s debut novel, inspired by Yoruba-Nigerian mythology, is a magnetic combination of Children of Blood and Bone and An Ember in the Ashes.
Critical Praise
"A compelling story of magic, survival and revenge, with a complex heroine at its center worth rooting for. An explosive, powerful debut.” — Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times & international bestselling author of the Caraval series and Once Upon A Broken Heart
“Falaye expertly walks the line between showing the ultra-violent reality child soldiers face while giving room for their humanity and innocence to shine. Equal parts soaring fantasy, heart-pounding action, and bloody social commentary, Blood Scion is a triumph of a book.” — Roseanne A. Brown, New York Times bestselling author of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin
“A thrilling debut fantasy! Falaye creates an intricately woven world that draws beautifully on Yoruba-Nigerian mythology, with a fast-paced, heart thumping plot that will have you rooting for Sloane and her friends to not only survive but get the justice they deserve! This story is full of heart, resilience, and magic that will pull you in from the very first page and have you thirsting for more by the end." — Kat Cho, international bestselling author of Wicked Fox and Vicious Spirits.
“Blood Scion is a dark, masterful indictment of the casualties of self in the brutal fight for the right to exist. This unflinching masterpiece is twisty, raw, and impossible to put down. Fans of An Ember In The Ashes and The Hunger Games have found their next obsession.” — J.Elle, New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Ebony.
“Brilliant and brutal, Blood Scion kept me up all night with its page turning action, complex characters, and shocking twists. Falaye is fearless, her prose addictive, and I’m dying for the sequel!” — Kristen Ciccarelli, internationally bestselling author of The Last Namsara
“This epic fantasy debut, inspired by Yoruba-Nigerian mythology, reminds readers that sometimes monsters are not born, they are made… fast-paced and engaging.” — Booklist
"An epic tale of ancient magic based in Nigerian mythology... Falaye’s harrowing duology opener of survival, sacrifice, and vengeance illustrates the effects of trauma and the strength of love in driving acts potentially heinous and heroic." — Publishers Weekly
“An exciting fantasy infused with the magic of the Orisha pantheon… From its gritty social commentary on colonization and imperialism to its depiction of an unforgiving heroine, Blood Scion demands critical engagement from its readers.” — Quill & Quire
“Undoubtedly a 10/10. You’ll want to have this on your shelf.” — The Nerd Daily
Deborah Falaye
Biography
Deborah Falaye is a Nigerian Canadian young adult author. She grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, where she spent her time devouring African Literature, pestering her grandma for folktales, and tricking her grandfather into watching Passions every night. When she’s not writing about fierce Black girls with bad-ass magic, she can be found obsessing over all things reality TV. Deborah currently lives in Toronto with her husband and their partner-in-crime yorkie, Major. Blood Scion is her first novel.
Bad Cree
Regular price $24.99A haunting debut novel where dreams, family and spirits collide
Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometres away in the far reaches of Treaty 8.
Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her older sister and Kokum before their untimely deaths. As Mackenzie's life spirals into a living nightmare—crows are following her around and she's getting texts from her dead sister on the other side—it becomes clear that these dreams have terrifying, real-life consequences. Desperate for help, Mackenzie returns to her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties in her small Alberta hometown. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her.
Haunting, fierce, an ode to female relations and the strength found in kinship, Bad Cree is a gripping, arresting debut by an unforgettable voice.
Critical Praise
"With creeps that are ever-creepy and love flowing like beer at a bush party, Bad Cree is a book about the power of dreams, home and family. It reads like a tribute to the ones who came before us Lee Maracle, Jeanette Armstrong, Eden Robinson. This book is tough iskwew in flannel shirts with long unbrushed hair, just looking good. It’s tea rings on Formica tables, cigarette smoke wafting through windows, and an eerie magical realism that only belongs to the bush. Full of Auntie power, Jessica Johns is really coming into her own immense storytelling ways." — Katherena Vermette, author of The Break and The Strangers
"Bad Cree is a masterwork of creeping tension. Wry, moody and subversive, Johns explores the power of connections, both the harm and the healing, with characters rich and warm, tangled in each other, to the land and to the supernatural. Couldn't put it down." — Eden Robinson, author of the Trickster trilogy
"Bad Cree deftly explores the permeable boundaries of dreams, reality, and culture, as well as complex family dynamics and relationships. A compelling novel that is a mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart." — Paul Tremblay, author A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club
“In evocative yet understated prose, Jessica Johns weaves a captivating tale of love, loss, the violence of greed and the healing power of family. In Bad Cree, Johns delivers a suspenseful and thought-provoking page turner you won’t want to put down.”
— Michelle Good, #1 bestselling author of Five Little Indians
"Both tactile and dreamy, terrifying and beautiful, Bad Cree will wrap you up and pull you along for the journey -once it starts, there’s no backing out, no pause, no stall. I have been waiting years for Jessica John’s books – I say books because there had better be more! She did not disappoint." — Cherie Dimaline, author for The Marrow Thieves and Empire of Wild
“Reading this book is like getting lost inside of a cloud. Jessica Johns has captured the strength, joy and devastation of community and siblinghood and also the powers within. . . . I suggest reading this alongside a friend, or a sibling or an aunty. It’s a surreal dreamy unraveling delight you’ll want to hug about. — Téa Mutonji, author of Shut Up You're Pretty
“The novel serves as a window into a world where dreams intersect with waking reality, and where that unseen dimension is as much a part of the life of a tight-knit family and community as bingo, jokes, and video games. It works equally well as spine-tingling thriller and a touching meditation on grief.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A single death sets this story in motion, but Johns used one lost life to explore generational trauma and the ways in which families and communities can break harmful cycles and heal themselves. At the same time, she delivers a narrative that is truly chilling and suspenseful." — Kirkus Reviews
“Johns laces cryptid terror into the sense of loss that her community feels. . . Visceral details will have readers hanging on the edge of every chapter, waiting to see when the wheetigo will strike next. Perfect for fans of Ramona Emerson’s Shutter and Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians—Johns is a writer to watch.” — Booklist (starred review)
“[Bad Cree] is. . .a story about grief and family and the lingering effects of the infringement of industrialism on native lands. . .When the book ends, what readers will remember most are the moments these characters shared together, playing cards and talking late into the night.” — Library Journal
"A narrative that is truly chilling and suspenseful. A powerful exploration of generational trauma and an artful, affecting debut.” — Kirkus Reviews
Someone We Know
Regular price $19.95"No-one does suburban paranoia like Shari Lapena--this slowly unfurling nightmare will have you biting your nails until the end."
--Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10
The new domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, and An Unwanted Guest, Shari Lapena
Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did . . .
"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out."
In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.
Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?
In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .
You never really know what people are capable of.
____________________________
Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times (London) bestsellers. Her books have been sold in thirty-eight territories around the world. She lives in Toronto