Iris Trimble is trying to hold it all together. She may very well fly off the face of the earth if she doesn’t hang on to the kitchen counter. At least that’s how she feels after her mother, Bernice, a lively, recently widowed fifty-five-year-old breaks the news that she has early onset Alzheimer’s.In an effort to cope with the stress, Iris makes her mother’s famous Everything-That-Is-Bad-For-You casserole, a childhood favourite. Her siblings, on the other hand, ar...

From holding hands in the womb to holding each other’s hair back when they puked, twins Laura and Lizzie grew up only having each other. They couldn’t count on their practically feral mom, absent dad, or even the boys they liked. They’re polar opposites—Laura’s reserved while Lizzie’s reckless—but their shared mischievous giggles and dreams for the future kept them going. One day, Laura finds a familiar book of poems in Lizzie’s apartment and is dragged through their turbulent past. Togeth...

The Drowning GirlsBessie, Alice, and Margaret have two things in common: they are married to George Joseph Smith, and they are dead. Surfacing from the bathtubs they were drowned in, the three breathless brides gather evidence against their womanizing, murderous husband by reliving the shocking events leading up to their deaths. Reflecting on the misconceptions of love, married life, and the not-so-happily ever after, The Drowning Girls is both a breathtak...

Sisters Billie, Ava, and Scarlet start a new tradition of family dinners every second Sunday, rain or shine. But when Billie doesn’t show up one night, her sisters have every reason to worry. With a history of self-harm and regularly being on and off her medication, they’ve become all too familiar with Billie’s unpredictable behaviour. Now that Billie has disappeared—leaving behind her disastrous apartment, her phone, and a mysterious message—a frantic chase ensues, pushing their unshakabl...

Garin was two years old when his mother disappeared from a rundown East Vancouver neighbourhood. Now that the Robert Pickton trials are gaining national attention, Garin wonders if his mother, a First Nations woman, could be one of the unidentified victims. His ailing father isn't forthcoming with answers, and Garin's suspicions are at an all-time high. In the midst of all this, his roommate Yuko has taken in Kate, a young pregnant hitchhiker who unintentionally wreaks havoc on their frien...

A deal has been struck between two men in India—twenty-one hundred rupees in exchange for a young village woman named Rekha. Sent to Calcutta without knowing why, Rekha finds herself in the confines of a brothel with Jamuna, a prostitute and madam, who is resigned to her trade. In these conditions, Rekha must shape her destiny and find inner liberty.

Standing outside his father’s study in Paraguay, Rudi is smoking cigarettes, trying to work up the courage to go in. It has been seven years since he stood in that same spot; seven years since he left his family and their history behind him. As a teenager, Rudi discovered that his father was a doctor at Auschwitz. Trying to reconcile his inherited guilt, Rudi lashed out against his family and his friends, and eventually fled to Germany. While there, he follows in his father’s footsteps by ...

When Margaret learns of the death of her former husband, she recalls their earliest days together as Ph.D. candidates, beginning a journey through her past. Told through the sensations of Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the subject of her uncompleted thesis, Margaret evokes beautiful, ordinary and painful sexual memories from before, after and during their marriage. Stevens, a guiding voice in her head for twenty-five years, cajoles Margaret into unearthin...

Master Corporal Tanya Young, Captain Stephen Hughes, Private Jonny Henderson, and Sergeant Chris Anders have lived through an atrocity while holding one of the most volatile regions in Afghanistan. As each of them is interviewed by an unseen broadcasting organization, they recount their version of events leading up to the horrific incident with painful, relenting replies. What begins to form is a picture of the effects of guilt and the psychological toll of violence in a war where the enem...

An old man in a military uniform and a Santa hat is dumped at the police station. He doesn’t speak English, and a lawyer’s business card is baited on the meat hook that hangs on his neck. As a lawyer, a police officer and a translator struggle to unravel the truth, they uncover a past that won’t stay buried, and a decades-old quest for justice that must be served.This edition includes a foreword by Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court of Canada justice and former Chief Prosecutor of...

At 4:00 a.m. on a secluded farm, a woman fights to take her life back from a serial killer as her desperate sister and a haunted police officer reach across time and distance in an attempt to rescue her.

Based on the true story of an Irish family with seven sons and one daughter immigrating to Biddulph Township near London, Ontario, in 1844, The Donnellys tells the tale of mystery and truths stranger than fiction. It is the story of a secret society and a massacre that shocked the Canadian public, a story overlooked by the artistic community until Reaney's play elevated the events to the level of legend. First published in 1975, this script takes its place among other true Canadian classic...