Aria Ramdeen is learning to love herself — and her favourite foods — again. No guilt, no toxic boyfriend. Full of newfound confidence, she subscribes to LoveinTO, a Toronto-based dating website, where she’s matched with a crush she’s had for years: the attractive light-haired man who lives in her building. Aria messages him on the app, but there’s no response, leaving her quite embarrassed.

Rob Anderson, who’s recently divorced, secretly admires Aria. He just lacks the confidence to approach her. And since he’s let his LoveinTO sub­scription lapse, he doesn’t see Aria’s message. Suddenly, Aria seems guard­ed when they run into one another, and the pair endure months of long, awkward silences together in the elevator. Until one day, Rob decides to give the app another chance and subscribes again.

A fresh and entertaining modern story of two people from different back­grounds who find each other despite the pitfalls of dating technology, opin­ions from friends and family, and their own personal trauma. The Elevator will leave readers feeling hopeful about love, food and life in a big city.

Praise for The Elevator

Aria and Rob share a look and an attraction, but their lives are complicated, and connection doesn’t come easy. The world doesn’t pause for a look, though they-and we-wish it would. The Elevator is a warm, thoughtful, realistic novel of all the things that hold us back from love, from trauma and tough parents to bad timing, but also the kind friends, humour, and hamburgers that sustain us in the search for a partner. Love comes for Rob and Aria the way it does for most of us-in the middle of everything else.— Rebecca Rosenblum, These Days are Numbered, So Much Love

In The Elevator, Ramsingh crafts a poignant portrayal of the weariness of the modern dating world, steeped with missed opportunities, misguided intimacy, and a complex relationship with food. Brimming with vivid sensory details, Ramsingh centers a cast of characters both earnest and vulnerable in this engaging, compulsively readable story.—Deepa Rajagopalan, Peacocks of Instagram

Priya Ramsingh’s superpower as a novelist is the ability to create authentic and empathetic characters. She did it with Brown Girl in the Room and now with The Elevator. I found myself rooting for Aria and Rob. I cringed as they tried to navigate the world of dating apps, agonized over bad dates and self doubt and then I eagerly awaited the next chance encounter. — Scott Colby, best-selling author and opinion page editor at the Toronto Star

The OC meets The Unhoneymooners in this shipwreck romcom when the reunited cast of a hit show get stuck on a deserted island with nothing but their complete lack of survival skills, simmering drama, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good.

Agnes “Ness" Larkin has been out of the spotlight for twenty years since her quick departure from a starring role in a hit teen TV drama. When the show is tapped for a reboot, no one is more surprised than Ness that she signs on to rejoin the cast, leaving behind a normal—if not exactly thrilling—life in Toronto. Also back for round two are Libby, Ness's former best friend and soon to be makeup empire magnate, and Hayes, Ness's one-that-got-away who has risen to A-list fame (and somehow gotten even better looking) in the years she's been gone.

When they set off for filming near the Bahamas, a storm leaves the seven actors and one production assistant stranded on a small island with only an abandoned, derelict mansion to wait out the storm. But when the weather clears and a new day rises—their boat is gone too.

Stuck in a bizarre, crumbling house on an uninhabited island with possibly the most useless survival group in history, Ness and her co-stars are forced to revisit a minefield of past transgressions and come to terms with the adults they've become as they work together to ride out the storm. Or at least pretend to—they are actors, after all.

Interspersed with weather reports, fictional memoir excerpts, a dating profile and Perez-Hilton-esque blog posts, Not How I Pictured It is a rollicking novel of delightful absurdity, pithy dialogue, and no shortage of heart.

Critical Praise

"Devastatingly funny and a delight from the first page. It's smart and it made me laugh out loud over and over. In other words, I adored this book!" — Susan Juby, author of A Meditation on Murder

Not How I Pictured It was full of suspense, adventure, backstabbing old friends, middling survival skills, and best of all, a swoony second chance romance with a sexy movie star. When the entire cast of a decades old TV show gets stranded on a Caribbean Island on route to film their reboot, they have no choice but to mend their relationships and learn to work together to survive. I loved seeing Ness grow as she came to terms with her past… and wrestle with a snake! What an incredibly fun book!   — Farah Heron, Author of Jana Goes Wild and Accidentally Engaged

What if the cast of 90210 unwittingly reunited for a season of Survivor? Not How I Pictured It is fun, funny and full of drama. The perfect beach read from one of my must-read authors! — Chantel Guertin, bestselling author of Two for the Road

“Not How I Pictured It is a zany, rollicking good time with a powerful emotional reckoning at its core. Lefler grapples with fame, growing up, and what we owe the people we love, all the while keeping up the Romancing the Stone-style hijinks.” — Jenny Holiday, author of Canadian Boyfriend and Earls Trip

"Robin Lefler fires up the page with sharp wit, dazzling imagination, and pulse-jumping plot twists! Not How I Pictured It is an epic adventure romcom where top-tier tropes meet a gripping mystery. The end result is a sexy, thrilling, and at turns hilarious modern nod to Gilligan's Island. I could not put this book down." — Courtney Kae, author of In the Event of Love and In the Case of Heartbreak 

"There's no one I'd rather be trapped on a desert island with than Ness Larkin and the rest of the hilariously dysfunctional cast of Not How I Pictured It. Both a nonstop-entertaining survival romp and a heartwarming exploration of second chances, Robin Lefler's sophomore novel is a MUST for your 2024 beach bag." — Nicolas DiDomizio, author of The Gay Best Friend

"Gilligan's Island meets Gossip Girl—this is a rom com that will have you reaching for the popcorn. SO. MUCH. FUN." — Amy T. Matthews, Someone Else's Bucket List

"Lefler’s plotting is pure fun, like a reality show in novel form—especially when it becomes clear that this detour may have been no accident. Romance fans will fall in love with Ness and her insecurities and hate the designated villains (including the last person readers will suspect). This is a pleasure." — Publishers Weekly

Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order—and solve the murders of her fellow content creators—in this hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby 

When Buddhist butler Helen Thorpe is loaned out to help Cartier Hightower get her life in order, Helen finds herself working for a young woman entirely unbound by the fetters of good taste or sound judgment. One of Cartier’s fellow content creators has recently died in a strange accident. Soon after Helen arrives, another is killed in an equally bizarre way. Cartier begins to drag Helen around on the influencer circuit, where neither of them is particularly welcome. Then comes the terrible incident at the EDM nightclub that turns Cartier into a global pariah, at least according to social media.

Helen hopes a period of simplicity and reflection and an internet detox will help Cartier find her true nature and maybe acquire some social graces. But Helen’s job gets much harder when Cartier’s friends show up at the lavish ranch where Cartier and Helen have retreated. Soon, Helen finds herself trying to avoid becoming Instafamous while bringing some peace to a girl who very much needs it. This task turns out to be even more impossible when it becomes clear that they have been followed to Weeping Creek Ranch by a murderer. 

Critical Praise

“Juby has offered a cosy mystery with a unique vibe. There’s the murder mystery aspect with its menacing undertones, but this is clearly a comedic book, with delightful humour on every page. It kept me constantly amused, and I chuckled aloud more than a few times. Then, without warning, Juby delivers a gut punch of serious pathos, building empathy for a character while hitting the reader with Buddhist dharma teaching.” — The British Columbia Review

A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and David Chariandy's Brother

When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.

Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.

Years later, in the aftermath of Antony's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet's efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.

Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.

Weaving the women's stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.

Critical Praise

“Charlene Carr's deep dive into the complexities of race and belonging force, in the gentlest of ways, all of us to confront our own role in making the world a safer place. Carr's exploration of unresolved grief and the impact on family is one we need to hear; one we need to understand. A story of family and the decisions we make, We Rip the World Apart is a truly human exploration full of doubt, regret and most importantly, love. A remarkable story from a remarkable storyteller.” — Amanda Peters, bestselling author of The Berry Pickers

“At once intimate and epic, Charlene Carr crafts a sweeping portrait of motherhood and a woman’s right to choose across three generations of a Jamaican-Canadian family overcoming generational trauma. We Rip The World Apart explores the experiences of interracial couples and their biracial children, telling a nuanced tale of hurt and hope, all about finding yourself and your community.” — William Ping, author of Hollow Bamboo

"Charlene Carr’s eye for examining life’s most complicated spaces is at its sharpest in this frank, fearless reflection on race, identity, and parenthood. Spanning generations and brimming with family secrets, We Rip the World Apart is page-turning and propulsive, heartbreaking and hopeful in turn. An important and necessary book that will stay with me for a long time.” — Shelby Van Pelt, New York Times bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures

"The novel has the raw feel of a protest, while retaining the heart that sees a family to keep trying to connect despite generations of trauma. Moving, intelligent and complex, it deftly explores our struggle to understand even those who are closest to us, the different types of violence we perpetrate on one another, the identities we fight against and the ones we choose to project, and the different ways in which we cope and respond, despite our uncertainty that any of our choices are the correct ones....[A]t times a raised fist, at others a much needed embrace." — Craig Shreve, author of The African Samurai

"For fans of Britt Bennet’s The Vanishing Half and Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake, Charlene Carr’s latest is both a charged emotional epic and a gentle exploration of the nuances of love. Motherhood, autonomy, race, politics, grief—every brushstroke works to paint a complex and important picture of the world as it is, and as it could be. This novel is sure to inspire book club discussion and personal reflection, and to stay on your mind long after the final page is turned. Truly a can’t-miss read!" — Marissa Stapley, New York Times bestselling author of Lucky  

A tender and funny debut about a Vietnamese Canadian family who will do whatever it takes to keep their no-frills nail salon afloat after a multimillion-dollar chain opens across the street.

Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have made a good life for themselves in Toronto, but their landlord has just jacked up the rent of their family-run nail salon, Sunshine Nails, and it’s way more than they can afford. When Take Ten, a glamorous chain offering a more luxurious salon experience, moves into the neighborhood, the Tran family is terrified of losing their business—and the community they’ve built around them.

But daughter Jessica comes to their rescue. She’s just moved back home after a messy breakup and an even messier firing. Together with her workaholic brother, Dustin, and recently immigrated cousin, Thuy, they devise some good old-fashioned sabotage. But as the line between right and wrong gets blurred, relationships are put to the test, and Debbie and Phil must choose: Do they keep their family intact or fight for their salon?

Full of memorable manicures and even more memorable characters, Sunshine Nails is a humorous and heartfelt novel about family, resilience, and what it means to start over.

A Most Anticipated Book Pick by Toronto Star, CBC, The Walrus, Good Morning America, Bustle, CrimeReads, Electric Literature, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, The Nerd Daily, and Paste.

A mind-bending, gripping novel about Native life, motherhood and mental health that follows a young Mohawk woman who discovers that the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.

On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve is nothing but supportive; and they’ve recently moved into a new home in a wealthy neighbourhood in Toronto. But Alice could not feel like more of an imposter. She isn’t connecting with Dawn, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from their white, watchful neighbours. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.

At first, Alice is convinced her discomfort is of her own making. She has gotten everything she always dreamed of, after all. But then strange things start happening. She finds herself losing bits of time, hearing voices she can’t explain, and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbours’ passive-aggressive behaviour begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival. . . . She just has to finish it before it’s too late.

Told in Alice’s raw and darkly funny voice, And Then She Fell is an urgent and unflinching look at inherited trauma, womanhood, denial, and false allyship, which speeds to an unpredictable—and surreal—climax.

Would you trap yourself in a deadly universe to save your loved ones?

All Spencer Newton wants is to fit in. He's always been the nerdy kid, cursed with not only being a genius, but also with ADHD. He's a magnet for harassment. And it seems impossible to avoid torment when the worst perpetrator isn't human, but a manipulative interdimensional being called The Molecule Thief.

As conflict between dimensions rise, the only solution the U.S. military sees is nuclear. That is, until this mysterious Molecule Thief offers Spencer an alternative to annihilation. But Spencer isn't sure if the Molecule Thief is real or all in his head. Can Spencer trust himself to save the world, or will his faith in the Molecule Thief cost him everyone he loves?

________________

L.P. Styles writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. With a limitless and sometimes twisted imagination, L.P. Styles gives readers quirky and inventive worlds to escape into.

From the writer and producer of the hit TV shows Republic of Doyle and Son of a Critch, a poignant coming-of-age debut novel about the mysterious disappearance of a young girl and the fragility of childhood bonds, set against the backdrop of a small island community adapting to an ever-changing landscape.

In 1991, on a small, isolated island off the coast of Newfoundland, twelve-year-old Pierce Jacobs struggles to come to terms with the death of his father. It’s been three years since his dad, a fisherman, disappeared in the cold, unforgiving Atlantic, his body never recovered. Pierce is determined to save enough money to fix his father’s old boat and take it out to sea. But life on the island is quiet and hard. The local fishing industry is on the brink of collapse, threatening to take an ages-old way of life with it. The community is hit even harder when a young teen named Anna Tessier goes missing.

With the help of his three friends, Pierce sets out to find Anna, with whom he shared an unusual but special bond. They soon cross paths with Solomon Vickers, a mysterious, hermetic fisherman who may have something to do with the missing girl. Their search brings them into contact with unrelenting bullies, magnificent sea creatures, fierce storms, and glacial giants. But most of all, it brings them closer to the brutal reality of both the natural and the modern world.

Part coming-of-age story, part literary mystery, and part suspense thriller, Closer by Sea is a page-turning, poignant, and powerful novel about family, friendship, and community set at a pivotal time in modern Newfoundland history. It is an homage to a people and a place, and above all it captures that delicate and tender moment when the wonder of childhood innocence gives way to the harsh awakening of adult experience.

NOW A NETFLIX FILM

“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.

The 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.

From 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.

From 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.