Fiction Books

In this breathtaking new novel from the #1 bestselling author of Every Summer After, a random connection sends two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects.

Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t.

At thirty-two, Fern’s life doesn’t look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern’s back home, running her mother’s Muskoka lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend’s the manager, and Fern doesn’t know where to begin.

She needs a plan—a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern’s going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern’s not sure she wants to know what it is. 

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?

One of:
TODAY’s “36 new books we can’t wait to read in 2023”
Buzzfeed’s “33 Romance Books to Look Out for in 2023”
CBC’s “30 highly anticipated Canadian titles coming this year”
SheReads' “Most Anticipated Romances of 2023”

“A breathtaking tale of star-crossed lovers that gripped me from page one. Meet Me At The Lake is nostalgia, summer breeze, second chances and pure heart.”
—Elena Armas, New York Times bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception

“A perfect summery blend of sexy romance and second chances, Meet Me at the Lake is a poignant waltz between evergreen pines and poplars and heartache. I fell in love with Will and Fern over and over and over again.”
—Ashley Poston, New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics

“A completely addicting love story about the ways we find who we are and what we want amidst changing dreams and chances missed. Carley Fortune gives us another perfect summer read brimming with heart, a book to devour in a day, swept away in the nostalgia of young, sexy love. Every Summer After fans, this will not disappoint!”
—Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

“Meet Me at the Lake is a tender, sweet story that captures the joy and sorrow of growing up. Carley Fortune's latest is a love letter to moms and daughters, as well as second chances.”
—Elissa Sussman, bestselling author of Funny You Should Ask

"Meet Me at The Lake is a beautiful, heart-tugging, love story about secrets, lies, missed connections and second chances. Set against the idyllic backdrop of a family hotel on a rural lake, this novel brims with the warmth of summertime and the feeling of home. An exquisite, emotional read.”
—Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of Stars in an Italian Sky

“Carley Fortune is the master of the love story, tapping into our most primal needs—to be valued and seen for who we really are. Meet Me At The Lake is story telling perfection.”
—Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script

“Readers experience Carley Fortune's writing with all five senses. In Meet Me At The Lake, that means you'll taste Peter's sourdough. You'll hear the sound of the trees swaying by the lake. You'll smell the gin and the watered-down tonic. You'll see Fern waiting down by the docks. And you'll feel every pulse of electricity from Will. This is a beautiful story of letting go of expectations, growing into who you're meant to become, and letting love in when you don't feel you deserve it. The perfect summer read and an excellent follow-up to Every Summer After. Carley's talent sings on every page.”
—Iman Hariri-Kia, author of A Hundred Other Girls

“THE quintessential book of summer. Nestled in the heart of Canada's cottage country, Fortune masterfully crafts yet another enthralling tale of love and second chances that will burrow itself deep into your soul long after the last page."
—Amy Lea, author of Exes and O’s

“Fortune (Every Summer After) shines in this beautiful tale of love, loss, and forgiveness. This searing story of hard-won second chances is not to be missed." 
—Publishers Weekly

“This contemporary romance is an immersive second-chance love story that will transport readers with its dual evocation settings of stunning rural Ontario and thrilling Toronto."
—Library Journal

Preorder your copy!

Our WJB Book Club Pick for April! Use code BOOKCLUB for 20% off, and join us at Craft Heads Brewing Company on Thurday April 27th from 7-9pm!

From the author of Canada Reads finalist Scarborough, a stunning new novel about the unbreakable bond of family and the magic that can happen when we meet in the middle

Like many Overseas Filipino Workers, Mary Grace Concepcion has lived a life of sacrifices. First, she left her husband, Ale, to be a caregiver in Hong Kong. Now, she has travelled even farther, to Canada, in the hopes of one day sponsoring Ale and having children of their own.

But when she arrives in Toronto, she must navigate a series of bewildering and careless employers and unruly children. Mary Grace seeks new employment as a Personal Support Worker and begins caring for Liz, an elderly patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease, whose health is as fragile as her rundown bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough. While Mary Grace's time with her charge challenges her conservative beliefs, she soon becomes Liz's biggest ally, and the friendship that grows between them will turn out to be just as legendary as Liz's past.

Beautifully narrated by the all-seeing eye of Mary Grace's newborn baby, The Story of Us is a novel about sisterhood, about blood and chosen family, and about how belonging can be found where we least expect it.

WJB Book Club Pick for August! 

Join us to discuss at Craft Heads Brewing Company on Thursday, August 31st at 6:00pm.

Use code BOOKCLUB for 20% off this title!

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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

WJB Book Club Pick for July!

Pick up your copy today and join us to discuss the book on July 27th at 6:00pm at Craft Heads Brewing Company (across the street from our store). 

Use code BOOKCLUB for 20% off!

From the #1 bestselling author of The Push, a propulsive page-turner about four suburban families whose lives are changed when the unthinkable happens—and what is lost when good people make unconscionable choices.

On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighbour­hood couples and their children gather for a barbecue as the summer winds down. Everything is fabulous until Whitney, the picture-perfect hostess, explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack—loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then his mother can only sit by her son’s hospital bed, where his life hangs in the balance.

Over the course of a tense three days, the women of the neighborhood grapple with what led to that terrible night. People-pleasing Blair, Whitney’s best friend, suspects something isn’t as it seems. Rebecca, the ER doctor who helps treat Whit­ney’s son, has struggled to have a child of her own. And the all-knowing Mara, the older woman next door, watches everyone’s world unravel from her front porch.

Exploring envy, women’s friendships, desire, and the intuitions that we silence, The Whispers is a chilling novel that marks Ashley Audrain as a major fiction talent.

Bernice Meetoos will not be broken.

A big, beautiful Cree woman with a dark secret in her past, Bernice (”Birdie”) has left her home in northern Alberta to travel to Gibsons, B.C. She is on something of a vision quest, looking for family, for home, for understanding. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns--Jesse from The Beachcombers--because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Birdie heads for Molly’s Reach to find answers, but they are not the ones she expected.

With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Birdie begins to draw from her dreams the lessons she was never fully taught in life. Informed by the lore and knowledge of Cree traditions, Birdie is a darkly comic and moving first novel about the universal experience of recovering from tragedy. At heart, it is the story of an extraordinary woman who travels to the deepest part of herself to find the strength to face the past and to build a new life.

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AINSLIE HOGARTH is the author of the YA novels The Lonely and The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated). She lives in Canada with her husband, kids, and little dog.

Hartley Addison is the nicest guy in Port D’Espere, Ontario. Everybody loves him, even when they disagree with him. He’s never officially run for mayor of his small lakeside town but he keeps getting elected anyway. The town has been a major environmental dumpsite for decades and most of his constituents prefer to look the other way and accept the government line: There is no problem. At home, his wife is slowly disappearing before his eyes, and the young reporter he’s taken under his wing is out on the lake every night doing something downright mysterious. When the media circus comes to town chasing a runaway story about Boyd Banta, an escapee from the local poultry plant, Hart wants to believe that help has arrived at last. Will he finally get some much-needed national attention and possibly a little justice for his contrary citizenry, whether they want it or not? King of Hope brings Southern Ontario Gothic with an environmental twist, through the lens of a small town that’s been facing radical environmental uncertainty for generations.

Praise for King of Hope

Kim Conklin has written an important story for our times with repercussions and relevance reaching far beyond the town of Port D’Espere, Ontario where the story is set. First-rate storytelling keeps the pages turning. Bravo.—Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Port Despere thinks of itself as a “great place to grow” but behind its picturesque façade, something sinister lurks. Kim Conklin has created a memorable cast of characters who try to make sense of their lives in their own distinct and often quirky way. Before they can make sense of their present, however, each character must first come to understand their town and the hold it has on them.—Heidi L.M. Jacobs, author of Molly of the Mall, 2020 Winner of the Stephen Laycock Medal for Humour

From Giller Prize finalist Alexander MacLeod comes a magnificent collection about the needs, temptations, and tensions that exist just beneath the surface of our lives. Named a Canadian Fiction title to watch by the CBC, Quill & Quire, and 49th Shelf. Featuring stories published in The New Yorker, Granta, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

Startling, suspenseful, deeply humane yet alert to the undertow of our darker instincts, the eight stories in Animal Person illuminate what it means to exist in the perilous space between desire and action, and to have your faith in what you hold true buckle and give way.
     A petty argument between two sisters is interrupted by an unexpected visitor. Adjoining motel rooms connect a family on the brink of a new life with a criminal whose legacy will haunt them for years to come. A connoisseur of other people’s secrets is undone by what he finds in a piece of lost luggage. In the wake of a tragic accident, a young man must contend with what is owed to the living and to the dead. And in the O. Henry Award-winning story “Lagomorph,” a man’s relationship with his family’s long-lived pet rabbit opens up to become a profound exploration of how a marriage fractures.
     Muscular and tender, beautifully crafted, and alive with an elemental power, these stories explore the struggle for meaning and connection in an age when many of us feel cut off from so much, not least ourselves. This is a collection that beats with raw emotion and shimmers with the complexity of our shared human experience, and it confirms Alexander MacLeod’s reputation as a modern master of the short story. 

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ALEXANDER MacLEOD was born in Inverness, Cape Breton, and raised in Windsor, Ontario. His first collection, Light Lifting (Biblioasis), was a national bestseller, won an Atlantic Book Award, and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award, and the Commonwealth Book Prize. In 2019, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story “Lagomorph,” which was originally published in Granta and is included in his forthcoming new collection, Animal Person. MacLeod holds degrees from the University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill. He currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

From Canada's much-missed, nationally bestselling storyteller, a must-have collection featuring ten never-before-published stories and ten classic favourites, perfect for old fans and Vinyl Cafe newcomers alike.

From the unforgettable Christmas classic “Dave Cooks the Turkey” to the tender tribute to ice-cream-loving, potato-sitting Arthur the dog in “Morte d’Arthur”; from the joys and challenges of marriage in “The Canoe Trip” to the celebration of childhood adventure in “The Waterslide.” 
 
From the beginning of life (the hilarious “Labour Pains”) to the end (the touching “Love Never Ends”) and all the moments—big and small—in between, these stories remind us that there are occasions to celebrate every day.

For more than two decades, Stuart McLean entered the hearts and homes of Canadians via The Vinyl Cafe radio show, his many tours across the country, and multiple nationally bestselling books. His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.

This collection is both timely and timeless, a rich celebration of Stuart McLean's inimitable voice, and of the importance of love, community, kindness, and the healing power of laughter.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES

Winner of the Toronto Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award

Finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Sunburst Award

Longlisted for the Baileys Prize and for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller

The international publishing sensation now available in paperback: an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse

One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame and the beauty of the world as we know it.

WINNER: Canada Reads 2022

WINNER: Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction

WINNER: Amazon First Novel Awards

WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize 

Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize

Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize

Finalist: BC & Yukon Book Prize

Shortlist: Indigenous Voices Awards

Finalist: Kobo Emerging Author Prize

National Bestseller; A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year; A CBC Best Book of the Year; An Apple Best Book of the Year; A Kobo Best Book of the Year; An Indigo Best Book of the Year

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.

Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.

Fuelled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Maisie internalizes her pain and continually places herself in dangerous situations. Famous for his daring escapes from the school, Kenny can’t stop running and moves restlessly from job to job—through fishing grounds, orchards and logging camps—trying to outrun his memories and his addiction. Lucy finds peace in motherhood and nurtures a secret compulsive disorder as she waits for Kenny to return to the life they once hoped to share together. After almost beating one of his tormentors to death, Howie serves time in prison, then tries once again to re-enter society and begin life anew.

With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.