Prissy Montgomery goes to great lengths to avoid having sex with her husband, Howie. So when he confesses to having an affair, and requests a divorce, she shouldn’t be all that surprised. With her fourteen-year-old son in tow she leaves the comfort of her Toronto home and heads back to Paradise Bay, her childhood home in Newfoundland. But Prissy’s mother, in an effort to spare her daughter humiliation, takes out an obituary to announce Howie’s untimely demise. Prissy is horrified by the de...

ACCLAIMED NEWFOUNDLAND AUTHOR Jill Sooley’s second novel, Baggage, examines the step family. Drawing on humour and heart¬break, as she did in Widows of Paradise Bay, this story unfolds from the perspectives of three women – Marie, mother and stepmother; Floss, Marie’s daughter who grew up in a broken home and must deal with her mother’s second marriage; and Lolly, the rebellious step¬daughter and young single mother who has never felt comfortable in her place within the stepfamily. Baggage...

Imagine a new life. Maxine Carter suddenly finds herself searching for a fresh start—a way around her own gnawing fear of an untimely death and a wasted life. What she discovers is her neighbour’s nine-year-old son, Kyle. As Maxine becomes the boy’s constant companion and as Kyle deals with his parents’ increasing absence and with life as an outsider in a new city, he slowly manages to reinvent Maxine’s real and imaginative life. Smart, funny, and poignant, Claire Wilkshire’s impressive de...

Inspired by postcards found in a 150-year-old house in Coley's Point. Triffie and Kit are closer than sisters. But for two girls growing up in a tiny Newfoundland outport at the dawn of the twentieth century, having the same dreams and ambitions doesn't mean life will hand you the same opportunities. A teacher's certificate offers Kit the chance to explore the wider world, while Triffie is left behind, living the life she never wanted with the man she swore she'd never marry. The letters s...

If you could take just one thing back… Every Little Thing explores how lives are shaped by the butterfly effect of decisions that go desperately wrong. After a shocking family tragedy, Cohen Davies feels isolated, guilty, and numb to everything except the allure of his new neighbor, Allie Crosbie. She’s a free spirit, and he sees in her the perfect place to bury his troubles. But when Allie’s father asks an unfathomable favour, Cohen’s decision to help him sets off a chain reaction of irre...

Marilyn Dumont's Metis heritage offers her challenges that few of us welcome. Here she turns them to opportunities: in a voice that is fierce, direct, and true, she explores and transcends the multiple boundaries imposed by society on the self. She mocks, with exasperation and sly humour, the banal exploitation of Indianness, more-Indian-than-thou oneupmanship, and white condescension and ignorance. She celebrates the person, clearly observing, who defines her own life. These are Indian po...

A history of the persecution of gay men by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. When the Nazis came to power in Europe, the lives of homosexuals came to be ruled by fear as raids, arrests, prison sentences and expulsions became the daily reality. When the concentration camps were built, homosexuals were imprisoned along with Jews. The pink triangle, sewn onto prison uniforms, became the symbol of their persecution. This book combines historical research with first-person accounts and indi...

Nearing death, an old man laments his poor choice of a wife, and has orchestrated a situation where he will see his childhood love one last time. From these circumstances emerges Stella, a woman who grapples with her family ghosts as they reach across the generations.

Based on a true story, Tell Anna She’s Safe is the tale of two women, one missing, the other searching for her. Driving home alongside West Quebec’s Gatineau River one April afternoon, researcher Ellen McGinn spots a parked car that looks like it might belong to her friend and colleague, Lucy Stockman. She soon finds out that Lucy has disappeared. Ellen has an unusual dream in which she receives three clear messages: she is to search and to write everything down—and Lucy is safe. But is sh...

Shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and longlisted for the 2006 ReLit Awards. A Globe 100 title in 2005.Evade your eye. Try to see as others dowhat is desired or refused. What went wrong.Or right, then wrong. Objectively, what hangs.Pull yourself together. Years are neither kindnor cruel. You drag on. The girl is gone.Consider that it might be time to call ina professional. Blood is fearless, runs...

Myra, naive and curious, is on a family vacation to the southernmost tip of Florida – a mangy Key West full of Spring Breakers. Here, suffering through the embarrassments of a family on the verge of splitting up, she meets Elijah, a charismatic Tanzanian musician who seduces her at the edge of the tourist zone. Myra longs to lose her virginity to Elijah, and is shocked to learn he lives with Gayl, a secretive and violent woman with a strange power over him. Myra and her family return to an...

When Lillian and Audrey hatch a plot to escape from Tranquil Meadows Nursing Home, “borrow” a car, and spend their hastily planned vacation time driving to destinations west, they aren’t fully aware of the challenges they will face. All they know is that the warm days of August call to them, and the need to escape the daily routines and humiliations of nursing home life has become overwhelming. But their trip is almost over before it begins, until they meet up with the unsuspecting Rayne, ...