Fiction

International intrigue on the eve of the birth of a nation at Britain’s Highclere Castle, aka Downton Abbey.

In late 1866, John A. Macdonald and other Fathers of Confederation arrived in London to begin discussions with Britain to create Canada. Macdonald and two of his colleagues stayed briefly at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the stately home of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, Britain’s colonial secretary. Those are the facts.

Today Highclere Castle is widely known as the real-life location for the popular television series Downton Abbey. In Richard Rohmer’s novel, Macdonald talks with Carnarvon at Highclere about legislation to give Canada autonomy, the danger of Irish Fenian assassination plots, and the proposed American purchase of Alaska from Russia. Later, back in London, a fire partially destroys Macdonald’s hotel room, and the future prime minister, trying to curb his fondness for alcohol, woos and marries his second wife, Agnes. In the end, Macdonald wins the passage of the British North America Act but fails in his bid for Alaska when U.S. Secretary of State William Seward buys that strategic territory.

Secret deals, romance, and international intrigue all figure in this rousing tale of historical speculation set on the eve of the birth of a nation.

A young First Nations man sets out from his Muskoka home in a quest for redemption after a terrible fire.

In the early 1930s, Oscar Wolf, a 13-year-old Native from the Chippewas of Rama Indian Reserve, sets fire to the business section of his village north of Toronto in a fit of misguided rage against white society, inadvertently killing his grandfather and a young maid. Tortured by guilt and fearful of divine retribution, Oscar sets out on a lifetime quest for redemption.

His journey takes him to California where he works as a fruit picker and prizefighter during the Great Depression, to the Second World War where he becomes a decorated soldier, to university where he excels as a student and athlete, and to the diplomatic service in the postwar era where he causes a stir at the United Nations in New York and in Colombia and Australia.

Beset by an all-too-human knack for making doubtful choices, Oscar discovers that peace of mind is indeed hard to find in this saga of mid-20th-century aboriginal life in Canada and abroad that will appeal to readers of all backgrounds and ages.

Michael Quinn, former rock star, turned his back on a band on the verge of superstardom twenty-four years ago. Hes spent his life since hiding from everything hed been. When a woman chased by thugs jumps into his car, he tries to help. But this sets in motion a chain of events which turns his life upside down, even more so when his best friend is murdered and the girl disappears. Meanwhile, the thugs are looking for Michael. Only by finding the mystery girl can he hope to get out of a hole thats getting bigger. Now he must confront what he was, what he is now and what he might have been.

Murder isn’t something that just happens on TV.

Travel writer Ria Butler has to outsmart a killer on the set of a reality TV show. Ria is supposed to be looking at blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos. Instead, she circumnavigates her unsettled relationship with investigative reporter Glenn Cooper and flies to the set of the TV show that her brother is producing in the British Virgin Islands. On location, she learns a production assistant has gone missing — only her tattooed foot has been found. While Ria tries to outwit a killer, Glenn tries to outlast Ria’s commitment detour, and a producer tries to outplay the police. When the reality series goes to air, it really does have the most dramatic finale ever — and someone is Really Dead.

Victoria Morgan, violin virtuoso extraordinaire, and her devoted piano accompanist are on yet another European tour currently stopping in Vienna. While playing to a full house, Tory leaves the stage and disappears in the middle of this important concert, leaving behind a puzzled (and angry) audience. Why would a seasoned professional so intent on maintaining her well-established career do something so damaging? Especially after some very negative reviews from local press? Tory’s decision to leave proves to be especially fatal to her career, since the rumours of her disappearance involve the accusation that Tory has committed the brutal murder of a high profile Viennese figure. While the press continues to hound everyone who knew Tory for answers, it appears she is running from them, the police and her long-suffering husband Oscar Lukesh, affectionately known as Rocky. Or is she? The action is set around the appearance of a mysterious score for a recently discovered violin concerto of incredible worth. Is it truly by Beethoven as the owner claims, and will Tory be the first to debut this dream violin piece, or are all of these things just hollow promises and a way to bait a trap? Now it looks like it’s up to Rocky to help save Tory from herself and figure out who is committing the growing number of murders - if it really isn’t his wife.

How do you cope when your husband of more than 30 years announces he’s leaving — and you didn’t see it coming?

Ellen is blindsided by her husband’s request for a divorce and the news that everything she thought they jointly owned is in his name.

Depressed and defeated, her life spirals out of control, until she impulsively decides to buy a bike and attempt the journey of a lifetime. Nervous and tenuous at first, she eventually gains strength and confidence and sets her sights on riding to California.

Just as she determines this is something she is really going to do, tragedy strikes. The family draws together and Ellen’s husband decides he wants her back. Everyone is in favour of the plan, except Ellen, who feels that her hard-won independence is being stripped away.

Now Ellen is truly at a crossroads. For the first time in her life, she must do what is best for her, ignoring the pressures placed upon her by other people.

Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival.

Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out.

At turns funny and strangely sobering, this “found memoir” is a picaresque tale of inspired, heroic deceit, incompetence, and — just possibly — triumph. Follow the flailing escapades of maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette at the Calgary Folk Festival, as he leaves a trail of empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, bruised egos, and obliterated relationships behind him. His top headlining act has abandoned him for the Big Time. In a fit of self-delusion or pure genius (or perhaps a bit of both), Ouiniette devises an intricate scam, a last hurrah in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his girlfriend, the music industry, and the rest of the world. He reveals his path of destruction in his own transparently self-justifying, explosive, profane words, with digressions into the Edmonton hardcore punk rock scene, the Yugoslavian Civil War, and other epicentres of chaos.

"She had a voice like an angel, smooth and complex as a twenty-year-old single malt, rich as thick cream. Everyone who heard Olivia sing felt as if she could see right into their souls, that her songs were meant for them alone. This was the magic her artistry conjured. In earlier times, she wouldhave been put to death as a witch. Such was the talent of Olivia Saint." Meet Andy Curran, drummer in a struggling jazz trio. When a distinctly odd street person sings at an open mic night at the club where they work, it’s clear they’ve found their salvation: a vocalist of incredible talent. After she departs as abruptly as she’d arrived, Andy sets out to discover where Olivia Saint has gone and who she really is. That knowledge soon proves to be deadly indeed. In A Case of You, a crime novel that sweeps from the jazz clubs of Toronto, to New York City and Northern California, Rick Blechta has created a compelling story, rich in detail and compassion, and populated with characters not easily forgotten.

Weaving finely spun filaments of the lyric and mythic, Barbara Lambert creates a vivid tapestry of a year in the life of Vancouver's Allegra Schliemann, a middle-aged woman in the throes of a knotty love affair with a married man, a newly-crafted career as an artisan and a battle against a debilitating disease. Unable to see her way clear of the emotional clutter these changes wreak, Allegra hires would-be artist Brad Lindhall to fashion her a mirrored wall, praying it will bring light and clarity into the encroaching dusk of her own life. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Brad's estranged wife Mona researches a work known as A Brief History of Cloth and Clay for an upcoming installation, her voice reaching into the past and across the country. In this brilliant recasting of a traditional love triangle, three artists find their way into the heart of genius, and of darkness, emerging strangely and irrevocably intertwined. Like her many mythological predecessors — Philomela, Ariadne and Athena — Allegra encircles lovers, entraps enemies and unfurls in the face of adversity.

"Death of a Hero", published in 1929 was the author’s literary response to the war. He went on to publish several works of fiction. In 1942, having moved to the United States, he began to write biographies. This last work was very controversial, as it was highly critical of the man still regarded as a war hero.

Maria Chapdelaine, the quintessential novel of the rugged life of early French-Canadian colonists, is based on the author's experiences as a hired hand in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area. A young woman living with her family on the frontier in Quebec, Maria endures the hardships of isolation and climate, and chooses between three suitors: a trapper, a farmer, and a Parisian immigrant.

Powerful in its simplicity, this novel captures the essence of the virtues of faith and tenacity that are the key ingredients of survivance. Translated into many languages and with some two hundred editions, it is enshrined as a classic of Canadian letters. A new introduction provides insights into Hemon's life.

"This is a true story. The story of La Sagouine, a scrubwoman, a woman of the sea, who was born with the century, with her feet in the water. Water was her fortune: the daughter of a cod fisherman, a sailor's girl, and later the wife of a fisherman who took oysters and smelts. A cleaning woman also, who ends up on all fours, with her bucket in front and her hands in the water." -Antonine Maillet

With well over 10,000 copies sold in French and English editions, La Sagouine is fast becoming a classic of its genre. The single character is that of La Sagouine, the washerwoman, who fills the stage with the voice of poverty, and of pride. Straight from the heart of Acadian New Brunswick, she is the embodiment of her world, and yet touches the hearts and souls of readers and audiences from all walks of life.

Short-listed for the 1992 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel

Bookstore clerk Rosalie Cairns was the one who found the body at the edge of the river; why did that make her a suspect?

As the quiet town is rocketed by a series of murders, neighbour distrusts neighbour, and the bookstore, once her refuge, is the centre of intrigue. The evidence against her husband mounts, and Rosalie is forced to join the dangerous hunt for the killer.

Not just a slick and hard-boiled mystery, this is a rich study of characters reacting to unexpected horror, and a look into the depths of small town life.

Meet some fascinating females:

• Jennie Baxer, 1890s journalist and world traveller
• Nelvana of the Northern Lights, created for comic book-starved Canadians during the Second World War
• the 60s’ Eve Adam, the "Rock Hit of Prague," whose methods violate all the "rules" for detective books
• and, very much of the 1990s, vampire detective Vicki Nelson, whose beat is Toronto’s Queen Street West

As well as the fifteen investigating women in the book, Skene-Melvin’s introduction describes hundreds of female sleuths and their creators in an in-depth analysis of women detective fiction by Canadians.

You will recognize many of the writers included in Investigating Women: Grant Allen, Robert Barr, Marisa De Franceschi, Adrian Dingle, Katherine V. Forrest, Hulbert Footner, Maurice Gagnon, Margaret Haffner, Joan Hall Hovey, Tanya Huff, Medora Sale, Josef Skvorecky, and Betsy Struthers.

For each of the selections a brief note sets the story; bibliographies help readers find other books by the authors featured in Investigating Women.

This magical new novel by Governor General and Trillium Prize nominee Mark Frutkin, set in 13th century Venice and Cathay, is a dazzling fresco of shimmering language, brimming with golden tableaus of arid deserts and cobblestone alleys, the wafting scent of cardomin and the mystical trill of a praying friar. It is the story of Marco Polo as he is about to set sail on an arduous and lengthy pilgrimage with his father, uncle and faithful guide across the sun-soaked silk route, the rich path of the carpet-makers and the black seas of the Indian Ocean.

Doggedly pursued by a vengeful assassin of the Venetian Doge, Marco is eager to arrive in the promised land of the mighty Kublai Khan and bask in the safety offered by his royal legions. But while enjoying the myths of the new land, Polo is haunted by the recurring appearance of a winged lion which lurks behind his dreams and roams the palace of his heart. Even upon his return to Venice, a naval battle and capture by their rival Genoa, even as he languishes in an enemy jail cell recounting his trials to an incredulous inmate, there is always the heartbeat of the lion.

Dave Bolden’s life feels like it’s on repeat. He works his eight hours at a boutique accounting firm, goes home, gets drunk and wakes up the next day to go back to work with a hangover. But his life changes when an eighteen-wheel truck crashes through the front windows of his workplace, killing everyone except him. Shortly after the accident, he is approached by an eccentric businessman, Mr. Thorrin, who interprets Dave’s survival as luck and sets out to exploit what he perceives as a gift. Mr. Thorrin wants Dave to participate in gambling, stock manipulation and extreme betting, all based on this belief. Complicating Dave’s life further is his strained relationship with his father, a lifelong compulsive gambler. The more he interacts with his father, the more he realizes a series of events from his childhood support the theory that he is unusually lucky. What transpires is a series of extreme tests of luck, orchestrated by the very mysterious Mr. Thorrin. The more Dave denies that he is lucky, the more he finds himself in situations that make it appear that he is. As the stakes rise both financially and personally, Dave is left to decide whether his run of good fortune is a gift or a curse.

A time of turmoil, when destinies were forged… In this searing historical novel by Toronto author S.P. Hozy, set amid the turmoil of early twentieth century Shanghai, three women, one Russian, one Chinese, and one French, determine the tragic fate of a young piano prodigy. Which of them is really responsible? A Cold Season In Shanghai is set against the backdrop of revolution in China, when decadent Shanghai was like no other place on earth. The narrator is Tatiana, a Russian woman brought up in a wealthy family. Looking back on her actions thirty years later from her new life in Toronto, she recalls the complex relationships between the three women and the effect they had on each others lives. She suspects she may have been the catalyst for a series of devastating events which caused havoc in the lives of her friends. Tormented by the aftermath of her decision, she chooses to live a life of careless abandon, turning her back on her family and, ultimately, her friends.

Short stories about exploring the unknown. Tom Henighan’s numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry include The Maclean’s Companion to Canadian Arts and Culture, The Well of Time, and the YA novel Viking Quest (2001). He lives in Ottawa, and teaches at Carleton University.

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold."

Robert W. Service, "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

The sequel to Tree Fever is a story of redemption and the power of belief. Tree Fever, Hood-Caddy’s first novel, introduced strong, spiritual heroine Jessie Dearborn, who struggled to save an old growth stand from a ruthless developer in her small Muskoka town and found her life’s meaning in the process. Flying Lessons once again finds Jessie and her small group of friends fighting those who would despoil the beauty of nature, this time the builders of a resort which will destroy the ecosystem of the lake on which she lives. Jesse must wage an exhausting uphill battle against the callousness of those who would exploit the natural world for their own gain. At the same time, Jessie finds herself unexpectedly saddled with a friend’s home-based bird sanctuary, where she cares for an injured baby loon who inspires her with its will to live. But Flying Lessons is really the story of two different women as Alex, a hard-driven investment lawyer from the city, faces her own mortality and seeks a healing sanctuary at Jessie’s home, where she learns to listen to her inner self again. This is another uplifting tale of personal growth and idealism by a writer with a compassionate, distinctive vision of the world.

In the third Belle Palmer mystery, Belle takes her friend and employee on a snowshoe trek. Miriam MacDonald brings her spoiled mini-poodle, a gift from investment broker boyfriend, who promises huge returns on her life savings. Later that week, Miriam discovers Elphinstone bludgeoned to death in his condo. Although Miriam’s fingerprints alone are found on the Inuit sculpture murder weapon, the collapse of Elphinstone’s empire has ruined hundreds of people and made him many dangerous enemies. Miriam is eventually charged with second-degree murder and then, as Belle struggles to pull the pieces of a very complicated puzzle together, Miriam rushes off to North Bay to be with her ailing daughter, and Belle inherits the obnoxious poodle.. Meanwhile, a stalker now has Belle watching her back in the Northern Ontario bush she calls home. Will she find the killer before a bullet finds her?

In the second Camilla MacPhee mystery, it’s now forty below in Canada’s capital, but victims’ advocate Camilla is feeling the heat. When a savage serial batterer goes on the rampage looking for revenge against his former girlfriend, the terrified woman turns to Camilla and Justice for Victims for help. But a sudden change of fortune causes her client to really feel the chill. Camilla wades into the investigation, now one of murder, and gets a frosty reception from the police. Soon everyone connected with the case is either cooling their heels behind bars or trying to avoid cold storage in the morgue. Camilla’s really skating on thin ice looking for this killer - literally.

In the sequel to Northern Winters Are Murder, it’s now high summer in Northern Ontario, where everyone is bear bait, even the bears. Gunshots chase Belle Palmer from her quiet forest paths. Then, on her remote lakeside road, the savage and unexplainable murder of an elderly neighbour puts her on guard against two-footed killers. Does the answer lie in the woods? In the alleys of the Nickel Capital? Or in the black rock moonscape of an ecological disaster area Belle’s investigations gradually uncover the sordid details of a sexual abuse scandal in a residential school years before that has left scars on its victim that can never heal. The horrifying truth and its deadly fallout may destroy many more lives before this tragedy reaches its last act.

Take one of the crowning musical geniuses of mid-nineteenth century Europe; surround him with enemies, some of whom are fiercely jealous of his talent, others in love with his beautiful wife (a musical genius in her own right); add several scoundrels including a seller of stolen jewels and a kleptomaniac music critic who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstancesand there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in the Germany of the 1850s, as told by the narrator, Dsseldorfs top detective, Inspector Hermann Preiss. A delightful historical mystery with a light touch, the reader is lead into the world of mid-nineteenth century music, where classical composers were stars and their egos were just as monstrous as the rock stars of today. Enter Brahms as the latest rising star in the firmament, and the world of Robert and Clara Schumann is rocked to its core. A mysterious off-key A on the Schumanns piano leads to one of the more interesting cases that Inspector Preiss has ever tackled. But are all mysteries meant to be solved? Inspector Preiss has the final answer.

Lucky Strike is a light-hearted laugh-out-loud mystery with a cast of characters who epitomize life Down East. Eric Spratt, a conservative accountant from Toronto, is forced to flee to the remote Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia and there, become Charles Trenchant, reclusive writer. He knows that anonymity and discretion are the only weapons he has to protect himself from the retribution of the Mafia dons whom he helped to send to jail. Surely, fifty years of a quiet, unassuming existence would prepare him for the life that he must now lead. However, the steamroller hospitality of the rambunctious locals overwhelms any hope that Charles has to keep his profile lower than low. Within days he is embroiled in their nefarious doings and wild antics. The resident rector, Father Donald Peasgood, and his redoubtable sister drag a reluctant Charles into the fold, while his disreputable next-door neighbor involves him in a scheme to burn down the house for the insurance money. Despite his best intentions to remain aloof, Charles lurches from crisis to crisis as this rollicking tale hurtles like a runaway train to its inevitable disastrous climax. When one very unpleasant lady ends up dead, and Charles is the prime suspect, it looks like the only way he can save himself is to flee the humble sanctuary and the open-hearted people he has come to love on the Eastern Shore. Lucky Strike is as full of fun as a Cape Breton kitchen party and as refreshing as a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

This true story, written as historical fiction for readers young and old, is a wonderful Canadian tale about a very special horse. It is the story of Tammy, a young girl who helps at the birth of an undersized foal at the RCMP ranch at Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan, and makes a pet of her. Although undersized, Burmese is a beautiful animal that goes into the musical ride and becomes leading file. Given to the Queen, she becomes Her Majesty’s favourite horse and is ridden by the Queen for eighteen years. Upon retiring, she is put out to pasture where the Queen can always see her, and when Burmese dies, Her Majesty shows her affection by having a bronze statue cast and placed at Windsor Castle.

After more than thirty years as the muckraking publisher of the Coast Chronicle on the B.C. shoreline, Albert Sloan made plenty of enemies. But when his body is found hanging in an apple grove off Settlers Road, the Mounties waste no time ruling his death a suicide. At the urging of Sloans widow, reporter Pat Ross is drawn into an investigation of Sloans last days. As the truth emerges, and even after a second high-profile death-by-apparent-suicide occurs, Pat is left to wonder: Had Albert Sloan stumbled onto the story of a lifetime, or was he simply a vindictive, defeated politician whose sordid past and giant ego finally caught up with him?

Remembrance Day is a proud day for Camilla MacPhee’s good friend, Mrs. Violet Parnell, one of five thousand Canadian women to go overseas during World War II. But the next day she has vanished. Camilla, with only a few letters and documents to guide her, follows her friend to Tuscany, chasing though historic towns, across high promontories and along steep mountain roads. Vanishing old partisans and Allied aircraft crash sites keep Camilla hopping as she tries to find Mrs. P. before someone with a deadly serious reason to keep the past hidden finds her first. The fifth Camilla MacPhee takes the irascible Ottawa lawyer’s adventures to an exotic new locale, with the usual murderous results.

Vikkan Lantry, a pianist with more talent than ambition, is content with his job at an upscale cocktail lounge until a request from reclusive soprano, Ulrike Vogel, draws him grudgingly back into the world of classical music. Ulrike’s mysterious past, and her friendship with elderly Viennese piano teacher, Dieter Mann, usher Vikkan into an intrigue that begins in the nineteenth century with an unknown song cycle composed by Robert Schumann, and ends in the present-day with a grisly double murder. As Vikkan probes the layers of deceit obscuring a killer’s identity, The Schumann Proof reveals itself to be a study in ambition gone awry. The theme is hardly new, but The Schumann Proof gives it a fresh slant, examining not only the devastating results of too much seeking after personal glory, but the painful consequences of too little.

The third Polly Deacon novel finds our heroine in the unlikely (and uncomfortable) job of designing a mascot (Kountry Kow) for a new mega-grocery store, despite vitriolic opposition by local merchants, including her aunt. This is nasty enough, but when allegations of municipal corruption arise concerning the sale of the property on which the store will stand, Polly’s sleuthing instincts take over, to the usual chagrin of her sometimes boyfriend, surly Detective Mark Becker. But the scene starts to get really ugly when people start dying - not exactly the family environment that the developers desire!

Two wrongs may not make a right, but what about three? JP Rodriguez’s debut novel is an examination of what it means to live a modern life and the price of inaction in a world where chances at redemption and happiness are all too few. Watched over by the majestic mountains of the Canadian west, the narrator came early to understand that every action creates a reaction, and what goes up comes downusually hard. So he’s spent his life in an emotional straitjacket, living comfortably on the surface of things. Only once has he ever come close to betraying his philosophy, but he came to his senses before it was too late and left her. At least thats what he thinks until the morning he wakens to a violent and inexplicable nausea. Haunted by the love he threw away and his former lover’s mysterious murder, he leaves his job and sets off in search of direction. On an epic journey over land and sea, through past and present, his heart and mind struggle to find common ground. Mile by mile, he develops the justification for an act of deliberate violence and maybe his own redemption.

Music may soothe the savage breast, but in this fifth collection of witty and wicked crime fiction from the Ladies’ Killing Circle, music provides the background for tales of murder and mayhem. Eighteen stories by Canadian women crime writers along with poems from Joy Hewitt Mann take their inspiration from titles as varied as the upbeat "Wake Up Little Suzie" through the romantic "Summertime" and musicals such as "There’s No Business Like Show Business". It’s a collection you won’t want to put down until you’ve read every one and hummed all the tunes. You’ll never listen to your favourite songs again without wondering what nefarious deeds they may have inspired.

Winner of the 2004 ForeWord Book of the Year Award

Toronto in 1856 is industrializing with little time for scruple or sentiment. When Reform politician William Sheridan dies suddenly and his daughter Theresa vanishes, only one man persists in asking questions. A former suitor of Theresa’s, bank cashier Isaac Harris has never managed to forget her, despite her marriage to another man. Thrust into the role of amateur detective, he must now struggle with the demands of his job and the shortcomings of the fledgling city police. He also faces the hostility of Theresa’s powerful husband, a steamboat and railway magnate. Harris’s search takes a grisly turn when, in a valley outside of town, he finds human remains decked in traces of Theresa’s finery. If she is dead, who is responsible? And who cares to find out, apart from the man who wooed her too timidly and now would do anything to make up for it? Death in the Age of Steam whirls the reader through a richly realized Victorian landscape, from Niagara Falls to Montreal and north as far as the shores of Lake Superior. It’s a world at once near and exotic, a world of noise and smoke and churning pistons, but a world still very familiar to denizens of the 21st century.

The starter’s gun explodes, and Hollis Grant excitedly begins her very first marathon race, only to stumble almost immediately over a body lying in the road, the body of the Reverend Paul Robertson, her soon-to-be ex-husband. When the crush of runners passes and the medics arrive, it becomes clear that the Reverend has not collapsed from the rigours of the race, but has been brutally stabbed. Although Hollis has emotionally distanced herself from her husband some time ago, her challenge now - before the police make her, as the estranged wife, the prime suspect - is to find out who, among his many detractors, would hate the Reverend enough to stick a knife in his back. Could it be a parishioner at his church who dislikes his activist stance towards gay marriage? Could it be one troubled soul among the many who have sought his psychological counselling and then found themselves laid bare in the Reverend’s latest book? Or could it be the angry husband of one of the church ladies whom the charming Reverend has bedded? As Hollis and Detective Rhona Simpson probe the secretive life of Paul Robertson, they discover multiple motives for hatred and murder. As the murderer comes after Hollis herself, the solution to his murder takes on the urgency of life and death.

Sport, fitness, games and murder are the main themes of this collection of wicked and witty crime fiction and poetry by the Ladies’ Killing Circle, who brought you Menopause is Murder and Cottage Country Killers. From the gym to the golf course to the supposedly peaceful practice of tai chi, murder, rage and revenge refuse to respect the human quest for immortality through fitness and can victimize the most tanned and toned bodies as easily as those of couch potatoes and gourmands. Excessive good health can lead to an early demise in this energetic new anthology. You’ll watch your back in the hot tub after reading this book…

There is a killer at work in the sleepy village of Cedar Falls. The peaceful order of puppet-maker Polly Deacon’s back-to-nature rural life is violently interrupted when she finds her best friend Francy’s abusive husband lying dead in the dump with a hole in his chest. What’s worse, Francy can’t remember what happened the night of the murder. The cops soon get involved…and in more ways than one, as Polly finds herself falling for hunky officer Mark Becker. Afraid that the police will arrest Francy for the murder and exasperated with their ineptitude, Polly decides that only she can get to the bottom of the mysterious murder. The situation comes to a head as the outspoken and resourceful Polly begins receiving threats to her life. As she searches for answers, Polly discovers that the puzzle often points inward and she is forced to question her values and her friendships. But where there is death, there is also grief and passion, and passion in Cedar Falls is never simple, and sometimes, as Polly discovers, it can also be deadly.

Being promotions director of a large shopping mall isn’t the most stress-free job on the planet, but Jenny Turnbull enjoys it and is darn good at it. But her job becomes quite a bit more gruesomely stressful when an unseen gunman goes on a spree in a bloody food court massacre during her special Hallowe’en promotion. And the situation gets totally out of hand when it turns out that the surviving victim, whose life is hanging by a thread in hospital, is the deadbeat son of a powerful, vindictive and grudge-carrying local city councillor. Dark secrets hidden in the mall’s back corridors come to light, rumours of drugs, child prostitution and infidelity, some involving the victims. Or was the murderer simply a crazed customer like the one that threatened Jenny on the very day of the murders? As Christmas nears, the mall Santa quits suddenly and the pressure is on for Jenny – protect the mall’s reputation as a safe place to shop, find a new Santa two weeks before the big mall parade and help solve the mystery of the murder. The inner workings of a large urban mall make fascinating reading but don’t detract from the central questions. How will Jenny find the time and resources to unravel the tightly wound skein of this mystery?

In the sequel to Down in the Dumps, Polly finds herself touring as set and puppet designer for a small rural theatre company. When the stage manager mysteriously fails to appear for the first rehearsal, Polly has to step in and do the job. The full-time employment is welcome, but the work is hell. Dealing with a cast of viciously feuding actors, a mysterious practical joker whose tricks are decidedly gruesome, and a deepening conviction that the stage manager has been murdered, Polly finds her new job more than a little stressful. Where’s the stage manager’s body? Is somebody really out to get the star of the show? Will the show open with all of the cast still breathing? The local police won’t show an interest, so the intrepid Polly investigates alone, unwittingly carrying out the murderer’s master plan, which almost ends in curtains for everybody.

Northern Ontario realtor Belle Palmer is showing the lakefront mansion of a prominent businesswoman when she discovers the lady strangled in her bathtub. Could this third break-and-enter death reveal a serial killer at large in the Nickel Capital? The womans only child, a precocious twelve-year-old, comes to stay with Belles neighbours and wins her heart and theirs. Then after an argument, the boy disappears, riding off into the cold September night on his bicycle. Racing against time as fall temperatures plummet, Belle hooks up with a bumbling PI and joins the search. Belle must flee into the bush, where she has every chance of becoming lost and disoriented, chased by murderers who will stop at nothing to protect a multi-million-dollar criminal empire.

Winston Patrick, a successful lawyer but dissatisfied with his career defending the downtrodden of Vancouver’s criminal world, trades in the courtroom for the high school classroom. Soon Winston’s past life meets his present when a student accuses a fellow colleague of a teacher-student love affair. Reluctantly, Winston agrees to provide legal defence, but the case takes an even uglier turn: the student is murdered, making her alleged lover the prime suspect. And this is no ordinary student. With her family connections reaching as high as the Prime Minister’s office, Winston and his friend Detective Andrea Pearson find themselves immersed in a murder investigation that could cause an international incident, if it doesn’t cost Winston his own life first.

As if it weren’t bad enough being a failed romance writer with no sex life, poor Fiona Silk has to cope with the spectacularly embarrassing demise of her old lover, the poet, Benedict Kelly. It’s exactly the sort of thing people notice in St. Aubaine, Quebec, a picturesque bilingual tourist town of two thousand. Now the police start getting nasty, the media vans stay parked on her lawn and the neighbours’ tongues keep wagging in both official languages. Worse, someone’s bumping off the other suspects. Can Fiona outwit a murderer in the mood for some serious mischief?

Jeanie and Frank are both involved in demanding careers and have young children who are clamouring for their share of their parents’ time. Just as Jeanie decides to leave her job as a horse trainer, deferring to her husband’s movie industry career, one of the principals of the race track where she works is murdered and she is thrown back into the maelstrom of racetrack politics and the care of the valuable horses. Frank’s seeming indifference to the pressures of her life puts the marriage into jeopardy. When the entire family heads off to Jamaica for a well-earned vacation, Frank’s increasing absences lead Jeanie to question the very foundations of their relationship. However, an unusual bequest in the murdered owners’ will puts Jeanie in a situation where she must make the biggest decision of her life and brings the novel to an exciting climax where Jeanie has the most to lose.

It’s Labour Day, Camilla’s favourite weekend of the year. She’s planning to relax and ponder what’s happening in her relationship with policman Sgt. Ray Deveau. She’s emphatically not planning to get involved in anything that means trouble. No wonder the news that an old acquaintance has had an accident comes as a surprise. There must be some mistake. By the time Camilla unearths Laura’s connection to a violent revolutionary group active two decades earlier, she’s had several blows to the head and discovered that people shes been talking to keep ending up dead. Someone will do anything to keep Laura’s connections secret. Getting arrested is the least of Camilla’s problems.

Belle Palmers old high-school boyfriend rents a property on her road. Zoologist Gary Myers is studying the behaviour of elk in the wilderness., but soon he is found drowned. Did he fall and hit his head, or did a more sinister event occur? Meanwhile, someone has broken into his cottage, taking a camera and laptop. A clipping about poisoning on reserves leads Belle to visit the place of his demise. Seconds after she arrives, she is at gunpoint. She must paddle into the bush with no way back. Who has been causing havoc in the wilderness and will stop at nothing to cover their crimes?

In the fourth Polly Deacon mystery, pregnant and grumpy, Polly yearns to escape the increasingly annoying advice of family and friends. When an opportunity comes up to travel to England to attend a puppetry conference, she jumps at it, in spite of her "delicate condition". The trouble starts when someone tries to steal her luggage at the airport, and by the time she arrives in Canterbury, she knows someone’s stalking her. When another woman is found dead, a mangled puppet nearby, the question arises - is Polly next? Set against the backdrop of the ancient town where Thomas Becket was murdered, this fourth Polly Deacon mystery places puppet-maker Polly in the middle of a pea-souper fog, eluding a persistent thug, refusing to cooperate with the police and desperately trying to stay out of trouble. This is hard to do - when you’re sleuthing for two.

After surviving the horrors of the Great War, Paul Shenstone works as a police detective in 1920s Toronto, rooting out petty criminals and rumrunners. The unusual murder of a prominent industrialist gives him the biggest case of his career and a not entirely welcome opportunity to make his name on the force. The waters are muddied when the investigation starts uncovering connections between the deceased Digby Watt and soldiers Shenstone knew in Flanders. What will Shenstone’s choice be if he has to arrest one of his own comrades? He has promised Watt’s attractive and independent daughter that he will bring the perpetrator to justice, but bonds forged in war are not easily broken. In the end, what does justice require, restitution or punishment?

The fourth in Delany’s Klondike Mystery series is a madcap romp through the mud of 1898 Dawson City.

Book Four of the Klondike Mystery Series by Vicky Delany!

The year is 1898. The place is Dawson City, Yukon. A man staggers out of the dusk to collapse at the feet of a startled Fiona MacGillivray, shattering the peaceful calm of a warm July night. Before breathing his last, he gasps two words: "MacGillivray, Culloden." Fiona doesn’t know the man and she would prefer not to find out why he linked her name with the "bloodiest of all battles."

As international intrigue abounds and handsome Corporal Richard Sterling of the NWMP searches for the murderer, Fiona’s son Angus takes a job as a photographer’s assistant, a new dancer almost causes a riot, and Fiona tells herself she is not at all bothered by the amount of attention Richard Sterling is paying to the pretty and charming photographer, Miss Eleanor Jennings.

This is the latest installment of the Klondike Mysteries, starring Fiona MacGillvary. The first three books of the Klondike Mystery series are Gold Web, Gold Fever, and Gold Mountain.

Another freezing winter descends in seeming peace upon the Northern Ontario lake where realtor Belle Palmer lives genteelly with her dog, tropical fishes and classic film collection. But the snow-laden tranquillity is tragically disturbed when a good friend is lost in a freak snowmobile accident on an isolated lake. Or so it seems. Belle and others suspect foul play, but a motive and a criminal prove hard to find. Resort owners, anti-environmentalists and the new local drug dealers may all have had reason to want Jim Burian quietly removed, and information isn’t forthcoming. Belle is determined to find out what happened to this decent man, but she is shocked when she discovers what twisted roots underlie this savage crime on idyllic northern ice.

Poor Fiona Silk is broke again. Her romance writing career is tanking, and her tiny house in the lovely community of St. Aubaine may be sold for unpaid taxes. But Fiona’s new agent has a planFiona can write an erotic cookbook. This project would be easier if Fiona had a sex life or a working oven. Soon bad things start to happen to people, but, oddly, only when Fiona is nearby. Before long, her tiny home is in flames and the body count is rising. Will Canada’s most reluctant sleuth stop a killer before her own goose is cooked?

In the third action-packed thriller of the West Quebec series, Meg Harris is back more determined than ever to fight against injustice, but sometimes the line between right and wrong is fuzzy. During a wild, whitewater paddle down a wilderness river, Meg discovers the skull and bones of a woman whose very existence takes the archeological world by storm. But when her neighbours, the Migiskan Algonquin, declare their rights to the ancient remains, Meg becomes embroiled in a fight that pits ancient beliefs against modern ones and can only lead to murder. As Meg races to catch the killer, she finds herself once more daring the rivers fury, this time with the added horror of a raging forest fire. In this book R.J. Harlick explores the controversy surrounding ancient human remains. Who owns them, the museums that house the archeological finds or the First Nations descendents? Should they be used to further mans knowledge or returned to the earth to maintain peace and harmony? Questions to which there are no easy answers, as Meg Harris discovers when she tries to balance her love for Eric Odjik and her friendship with the Migiskan with her beliefs as a modern woman.

This is the third book in the Meg Harris Mystery series. The next book is Arctic Blue Death.

Homicide becomes more than an academic study for Toronto criminologist Ted Boudreau when his own suburban home is burglarized, with deadly results. Was his computer targetted because of his interest in a secretive biker gang? Teds attempts to deal with the aftermath bring him into conflict with family, police detectives, and the Crown prosecutor assigned to the caseas well as with his university colleagues, whose penal philosophy Ted no longer believes can stand the test of real-life experience. His pursuit of justice must compete with his duty not to compromise the source of his dossier on the ruthless Dark Arrows Motorcycle Club.

This newest anthology of short crime fiction from the Ladies’ Killing Circle takes a spirited look at baby boomers as they go from young, hairy and hip to old, bald and bad. The children of the sixties are are up to no good in another wicked anthology from this prolific collective of writers. The editors, themselves celebrated short crime fiction writers, have assembled such luminaries of crime fiction as Barbara Fradkin, H. Mel Malton, Vicki Cameron and Melanie Fogel, as well as Arthur Ellis Award winners Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini and Sue Pike.

The life of fiftyish Jessie Dearborn takes an unexpected turn when a ruthless developer threatens to cut down century-old trees in her small northern town in order to build a condominium. Surprising even herself, she steps in front of a chainsaw to defend the trees she loves. As the fight to save the trees intensifies, a group of gutsy, quick-witted older women joins the battle and explodes the issue into the newsmedia. At this turning point in her life, a native man helps Jessie by teaching her to trust her own instincts. Passion erupts between them and Jessie discovers a middle-aged sexuality as hot as the midday sun. Like a Group of Seven painting, Tree Fever is a love affair with nature, its wisdom, raw colours and elemental beauty.

Winner of the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel

In 1840, the theatre world in London is shocked by the brutal killing of one of its youngest and most successful entrepreneurs, bludgeoned in his house. The discovery of a contentious theatre contract, a collection of promissory notes and a walking stick, its bloodied ivory head in the shape of a dog, are the only leads. Inspector Owen Endersby, of the recently formed London Detective Police Force, is called upon to apprehend the culprit before Christmas Eve. The inspector has six days to chart the by-ways of the Criminal Mentality. The case soon involves street vendors, downstairs servants, money lenders and the greatest performers of the stage. Who had motive to batter the young man to death? Without the techniques of the modern-day detective, Inspector Endersby must root out the villain any way he can by disguise, break-and-enter, bribery, mail tampering and physical force.

Cordi O’Callaghan is trapped on a remote island research station and in way over her head. While a hurricane rages, Cordi stalks a murderer — or is it the other way around?

Zoologist Cordi O’Callaghan thinks she’s in for a relaxing birdsong study at a research station on Spaniel Island, off the coast of South Carolina. But, as usual, she can’t escape the chaos that follows her everywhere she goes. As a hurricane rages, trapping her and the rest of the researchers, the director of the station is found dead under troubling circumstances.

Unable to resist a mystery, Cordi sets out to investigate, and ends up getting a crash course on the life habits of bats, sea turtles, and rattlesnakes — and a refresher on attempted murder.

An unexpected conflict forces Verna to re-examine her life.

What was it Donald used to say? "When it comes to children, you pay now or pay later. You never don’t pay."

Middle-aged Verna Macoun Woodcock returns to the family cottage for the first time in 38 years to scatter the ashes of her husband, father, and twin sister. At first she is alone except for her dad’s dog, the lake, bitter memories, and a barely hidden drinking problem. But soon Verna is forced to open up her tightly shut world to others: strong-willed handywoman Winonah; the neglected children of her sister, each lost and broken in their own way; even the ghost of Winonah’s dead brother, Lionel, who can’t seem to make it to the Sky World.

Just as Verna is starting to accept this newfound family, she discovers a menacing prospector who posts a notice on the cottage door, stating his intention to dig for ore. As it turns out, the Macouns hold the surface rights for the land, but not the mineral rights. For the first time in her life, Verna has something to fight for and family at stake.

Detective Miranda Quin is not only fighting crime, she’s fighting for her life.

The summer before 9/11, Toronto homicide detective Miranda Quin wakes up to find her lover dead beside her, yet has no memory of going to bed with him. Horrified by the results of the forensic investigation, the normally feisty Miranda moves through events in a daze while her partner, Detective David Morgan, offers support.

Because Miranda is the prime suspect, neither she nor Morgan are able to pursue the case officially, freeing them from jurisdictional constraints. They find it impossible to avoid being pulled into the rush of events that follow from one mysterious death to another in a quirky narrative that brings in a New York policeman who reads Thoreau and a beautiful and dangerous European wine expert who is not what she appears to be. As the plot moves from Toronto to New York and London, a deadly fraud leads to explosive revelations of drug smuggling as a cover for international terrorism.

Judith finds the courage to stand up for her beliefs and protest anti-Semitic hypocrisy.

Judith is a young woman who lived in Israel for a decade, was a peace activist there, and defines herself as "left-wing," yet in graduate school back in Canada, she discovers that vilification of Israel is the expected norm. When the keynote speaker for Anti-Oppression Day turns out to be a supporter of terrorist attacks not only against Israeli military targets, but also against Israeli civilians and Jews around the world, Judith protests. As a result, she is marginalized by the faculty and her peers, and her life begins to unravel.

This is a moving novel about love, betrayal, and the courage to stand up for what one believes, as well as a searing indictment of the hypocrisy and intellectual sloth that threaten the integrity of our society.

'Wistful Woman' painting on the cover was created by Peter Worsley (http://www.peterworsley.com/), and used with the artist’s permission.

In Karen Hood-Caddy’s third inspiring novel featuring environmentalist heroine Jessie Dearborn, Jessie is concerned about the health of the water in her northern town. Harley, Jessie’s Ojibway partner, declares he wants to move further north to where the real wilderness is. She is torn between her allegiance to Harley and her devotion to the land. The Guerrilla Grannies, a group of feisty seniors, start a door-to-door campaign to raise environmental awareness. Trouble erupts when Jessie and Elfy, one of the more cantankerous seniors, get into a scrap with a local hockey hero and end up getting arrested. But this is also the story of Dan Goreman, whose life is in disarray from a bitter divorce. He decides to to accept a job his father has arranged for him at a water-treatment plant near Jessie’s home town. Dan falls in love with Meagan, whose family owns a resort in the area. Dan becomes very attached to Meagan’s six year-old son, but she is concerned about Dan’s unresolved past and asks him to see a therapist. Begrudgingly, Dan agrees and meets Jessie, who challenges him to be more truthful about his past. When the resort’s sewage lagoons burst and some of the waste gets into the town’s water, Dan makes a fatal mistake that could kill someone that he loves. Now Jessie has many more problems to solve in her quest to save Elfy from a jail term, help protect the lands and lakes which she loves and begin to understand the patterns in her own life.

A dramatic, heart-warming a tale of life on the sea.

Set in 1813, Second Summer of War is a sequel to Come Looking for Me.

With the British traitor Captain Thomas Trevelyan incarcerated on a prison hulk in Portsmouth Harbour, Princess Emeline "Emily" Louisa sails back to England and is summarily dispatched to Hartwood Hall, home of the disagreeable Duke and Duchess of Belmont. There she endures weeks awaiting Trevelyan’s trial, unable to leave the estate or find useful occupation. Relations with her guardians, chilly at best, soon escalate into a battle of wills when they attempt to marry her off in order to secure favour with her uncle, the Prince Regent. Meanwhile, England’s naval war with the United States continues to rage on the Atlantic.

When Fly Austen and his friend, Dr. Leander Braden, are given Admiralty Orders to testify at the trial, they return home with the hope of seeing Emily one last time. Their journey is anything but uneventful as they encounter devastating storms, menacing ships, and a spectre that proclaims their impending doom.

Dying is the best way to revive your musical career … even if you’re not really dead.

It’s all slipping away from Roc Molotov – his band, his girlfriend, and worst of all, his ability to play the game demanded by the star-making machinery of the music business. When the best record he’s ever made is about to pass unnoticed, his oldest friend and manager, Uncle Strange, concocts the perfect scheme. Roc will fake his death, on MTV, in front of millions of viewers, assuring massive success on his latest project and the ability to create a body of "posthumous" songs to feed the grieving fans and satisfy his still-active artistic imagination. The plan works to perfection, but the ever-restless Roc finds that being dead has its limitations in this novel that’s sex, death, and rock n’ roll, played in a satirical key.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson continue their 1892 Canadian travels, by stagecoach, sleigh, horse, train, naval ship, inland canoe and fifty-foot war canoe, making their way across the prairies, through the Rockies, to Vancouver Island and north to Cariboo country. In Calgary, they assist Superintendent Sam Steele of the N.W.M.P. in his inquiries, to track down "cattle thieves, whiskey smugglers, rogues and confidence men." On an exhilarating ride through Kicking Horse Pass, they share the cow catcher with Sarah Bernhardt, whose Vancouver performance of La Dame aux camélias is, writes Watson, "undoubtedly the most moving theatrical experience I have ever had."

Sherlock Holmes: Travels in the Canadian West is the final book in a trilogy of Holmes in Canada by Ronald C. Weyman. Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River are the setting for Sherlock Holmes and the Mark of the Beast; in Sherlock Holmes and the Ultimate Disguise the Londoners visit Toronto, Niagara Falls and (though not by choice) the Kingston Penitentiary.

A moving historical tale and remarkable literary achievement, City Wolves is the story of Canada’s first woman veterinarian, Meg Wilkinson. Born in 1870 on a farm near Halifax, Meg’s childhood experience with wolves makes her determined to be a veterinarian. Supported by the seemingly eccentric Randolph Oliphant and inspired by the ancient Inuit who first turned wolves into sled dogs, Meg surpasses the horse doctors at vet college and becomes the notorious ’dog doctor of Halifax’ in the 1890s. After her unusual marriage ends abruptly in Boston, Meg travels to Vancouver and up to the Yukon, seeking the legendary sled dogs. Arriving at the beginning of the Klondike gold rush, she makes her way amidst Mounties, dance hall girls, Klondike Kings, mushers, priests and swindlers…all the mangy and magnificent people, dogs and spirits that populated raucous Dawson City.

Observed through the restless spirit of Inuit Ike, this is lively, insightful, historical fiction, subtly revealing the wolf-like nature of humans and the human nature of wolves. Both earthy and reflective, City Wolves is an important story told with compassion, humour and unflinching realism. In this her fifth novel, Dorris Heffron has created a wide range of unforgettable characters and achieved a breadth of vision exploring the deep conflicts and interconnection of social beings in a way that is uniquely Canadian and profoundly universal.

Hockey is a dangerous game, but it’s what happens off the ice that can get you killed …

Curtis Ritchie is the only news in town when Ottawa takes the young hockey sensation first overall in the annual spring draft. But on the eve of Ritchie’s rookie season, the media frenzy over the signing and the controversial trades that secured the young star are eclipsed by news of his murder. As Ottawa Major Crimes Unit investigator Jack Smith reassembles Ritchie’s life, he is surprised by how much it differs from the fledgling star’s clean-cut image. A long list of suspects soon emerges, any one of whom had good reasons to want Ritchie dead. But there’s something else about the young phenom — a secret so profound that its revelation to the wrong person could only have meant Ritchie’s end.

When his best friend is murdered in a fit of jealous rage, Izzy Schneider is compelled to reconstruct the relationship and exhume a hidden past that tests the authority of truth and weighs the burden of history. In A Good Man, critically acclaimed novelist Cynthia Holz examines Izzy’s complex lifelong friendship with Phil Lewis. Izzy escapes from Nazi Germany as a young man, leaving behind his family, who later perish in the Holocaust; Phil, a war hero, stays and fights with the partisans and saves hundreds of lives. For the rest of his life, Izzy suffers constant, unbearable guilt because he did not remain to fight like his friend Phil, and because his family is lost forever. Izzy’s daughter, Eva, tangled in the legacy of Phil’s good life and Izzy’s shame, struggles to understand her father and to make amends for a secret love affair that threatens to tear both families apart.

A superb story of loss and regret, A Good Man explores history distorted through the shaded lens of time.

A Canadian ex-pat and a Korean former "comfort woman," each scarred by their pasts, seek redemption.

Two separate lives become connected in South Korea: traumatized former Korean "comfort woman" Eun-young, who struggles with her past of rape and violence; and Michael, a troubled young Canadian arriving in Korea to teach ESL, whose principles and humanity are tested by Seoul’s seedy expatriate underbelly. A world away and two generations apart, their lives collide through the fiery Jin, who challenges stereotypes of her race and gender as well as Michael’s morality.



Through meticulously crafted and heart-wrenching prose, Sad Peninsula takes the reader across oceans and decades, outlining the boundaries between seduction and coercion, between love and destruction, between a past that can’t be undone and a future that seems just out of reach.

A cheating spouse sparks the creation of a monthly dinner club as the heroine attempts to have an affair of her own.

After Mary Ann’s husband cheats on her, the suburban mom decides to have her own affair. She starts up a neighbourhood dinner club as a cover and invites three men she has earmarked as potential lovers. Along for the ride is her best friend, Alice, who has recently returned with her young daughter to Oakdale, the cozy bedroom community where the two women grew up and briefly shared a telepathic past.

Over good food and wine, new friendships develop, new dreams simmer, Mary Ann pursues her affair candidates, and Alice opens her heart and mind to ways out of her single-working-mother social rut. The stars align on the night the core dinner club members consume an aphrodisiac, go to a local dive bar, hit the dance floor, and rock their worlds.

Appetizing fare for readers who like their fiction sharp and witty with a strong dash of spice, The Oakdale Dinner Club is a suburban comedy of manners that proves it’s never too late to start over.

Salt Fish Girl is the mesmerizing tale of an ageless female character who shifts shape and form through time and place. Told in the beguiling voice of a narrator who is fish, snake, girl, and woman - all of whom must struggle against adversity for survival - the novel is set alternately in nineteenth-century China and in a futuristic Pacific Northwest.

At turns whimsical and wry, Salt Fish Girl intertwines the story of Nu Wa, the shape-shifter, and that of Miranda, a troubled young girl living in the walled city of Serendipity circa 2044. Miranda is haunted by traces of her mother’s glamourous cabaret career, the strange smell of durian fruit that lingers about her, and odd tokens reminiscient of Nu Wa. Could Miranda be infected by the Dreaming Disease that makes the past leak into the present?

Framed by a playful sense of magical realism, Salt Fish Girl reveals a futuristic Pacific Northwest where corporations govern cities, factory workers are cybernetically engineered, middle-class labour is a video game, and those who haven’t sold out to commerce and other ills must fight the evil powers intent on controlling everything. Rich with ancient Chinese mythology and cultural lore, this remarkable novel is about gender, love, honour, intrigue, and fighting against oppression.

A surprise attack on the nation’s military bases and power stations sends the Armed Forces scrambling.

When impoverished, disheartened, poorly educated, but well-armed aboriginal young people find a modern revolutionary leader, they rally with a battle cry of "Take Back the Land!" Theirs is a fight to right the wrongs inflicted on them by "the white settlers."

They know they are too small to take on the entire country, but they don’t need to. Over a few tension-filled days as the battles rages over abundant energy resources, the frantic prime minister can only watch as the insurrection paralyzes the country. But when energy-dependent Americans discover the southward flow of Canadian hydroelectricity, oil, and natural gas is halted, they do not remain passive.

Although none of the country’s leaders see it coming, the shattering consequences unfold with the same plausible harmony by which quiet aboriginal protests decades ago became the eerie premonitions of today’s stand-offs and "days of action."

Viva Straight, a single woman who works for the Refugee Board of Canada, has set off with her mother for their annual holiday in the Dominican Republic when their plane is mysteriously diverted to the Philippines. There she meets and has a night of bliss with the enigmatic Monsieur Epee, who presents himself to her imagination as the ideal man – apart, perhaps, from the fact that he is possessed of a beautiful wife already.

So begins Leon Rooke’s exhilarating new novel populated by Viva’s extended family, numerous beautiful wives, seductive men, an unusual cat, Father Sin, the Sock People, the author himself and his researchers, a few ghosts, and even the shoe lady herself, Imelda Marcos.

The Beautiful Wife is an endearing marvel of narrative invention and narrative drive. It explores the quest for love and the mystery of attraction between men and women, celebrating links between art and politics and romantic love. It demonstrates, as well, the miraculous pull of myth and the pure necessity of ideals. Hailed as a national treasure, Leon Rooke is a master conjurer for whom grief, love and laughter are essential ingredients, profoundly mixed. The Beautiful Wife is fresh proof of Rooke’s own astonishing imagination and the power of love.

In this third book in the series, can Moretti and Falla solve a mysterious case of vampirism?

While investigating the apparent suicide of a hermit, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his partner, Liz Falla, of the Guernsey Police have to deal with what seems to be an outbreak of vampirism. Can the threat be real? Or is it something possibly provoked by Hugo Shawcross, who is writing a play about vampires for a local theatre group, and who narrowly escapes becoming the first victim?



As the investigation unfolds, links begin to emerge between the hermit’s death, the play in progress, and the tangled lives of one of the Channel Islands’ most prestigious families. With the dubious help of island witches, and the distraction of his partner’s seductive aunt, Moretti employs all his deductive skills to see where the truth lies. Is it to be found among the clues about vampirism and the living dead that present themselves? Or is it buried deep in the past among hidden motives of sex, love, and obsession? The pressure is on Moretti and Falla to uncover the real reason before the attacker strikes again.

A music star attracts a secret admirer, who turns into a dangerous stalker, and then, perhaps, a killer.

When soprano Marta Hendriks finds a bouquet of red roses in her dressing room after a performance, she’s surprised as well as charmed. The card only says "Roses for a Diva." And as miles and performances rack up in her globe-hopping career, the bouquets continue to mysteriously appear.



But then strange things start happening in her private life. She’s certain someone has been in her apartment, breaking her most treasured possession. After calling in private investigator Shannon O’Brien, Marta is shocked to discover her entire life has been invaded.



When one of the other stars in a Roman production of Tosca is murdered, everyone realizes the situation is more dire than they had imagined. Who Marta’s stalker? What does he want?

And where will he stop?

A private investigator and a journalist take on a ruthless gang in Calgary to rescue a runaway and find justice for themselves.

In 2005, journalist Adam Cullen’s wife, Donna, is killed by an arsonist. In desperation after police, fire department, and insurance investigators all give up trying to find the culprit, Cullen hires private detective Mike Cobb, but he, too, is stymied. Seven years later, Cobb re-enters Cullen’s life. A search for a crack-addicted teenage runaway is tangled up with Calgary’s most ruthless criminal organization — and a possible lead on Donna’s killer.

The parallel investigations take the two onto Calgary’s meanest streets, populated by a vicious biker gang, a silky-smooth pedophile, and an assortment of people who aren’t at all what they seem.

As they weave their way through long-buried secrets, Cullen and Cobb will come face-to-face with a cruelty they could never have expected … and a killer about to strike again.

A story of adventure and romance set in the wilds of Rupert’s Land in the early 19th century.

When Orkneywoman Rose is shipwrecked on the shores of Rupert’s Land, she quickly falls in love with Alexander, a Half-caste man who is guiding her people into the dark heart of the continent. But after the death of her father at the hands of another Native, Rose turns against Alexander and all his kind.



Heartbroken, Alexander returns to his wild life of running buffalo on the prairie. Although parted from Rose by endless miles and hard fate, his heart remains bound to hers, and on the eve of war he is compelled to reclaim her love, setting himself against his people amid a conflict that will help form a nation.