Book Clubs

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents, a dark, enthralling novel about love and its limitations, the corruption of power and the power of corruption. In an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the shore when the Widow Caines arrives to throw the wedding and Abe's plans into chaos. That ruthless act of sabotage is the opening salvo in a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar's largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world. As their unshakeable animosity spirals further each year into vendettas and violence, the community is increasingly divided and even the innocents in Mockbeggar find themselves forced to take sides, with devastating consequences. Through merciless seasons of uncertainty and want, through predatory storms and pandemics and marauding privateers, it is the human heart that reveals itself to be the most formidable and unpredictable adversary for each person drawn, inevitably and helplessly, into that endless feud.

Thriving business? Check. Sexual exploits with a rockstar? Check. Complete independence? Check. Elsie Walsh had it all. Or so she thought. Until Scottish hunk Campbell Scott showed up on the doorstep of her bed and breakfast. He’s making it pretty hard for her to stand by her one rule: No sleeping with the guests. She’s denied some of the world’s hottest actors, musicians, and even royals... but how can she keep Cam out of her bed, when he’s invaded her head and her heart? Campbell Scott went to the wilds of Newfoundland with one thing on his mind: sketch some birds, and then get back to his playboy lifestyle in London. But one look at his sexy hostess and there’s a whole lot more in the air than sea birds. Rejection isn’t part of his vocabulary, and Cam sets out to not only convince Elsie that he belongs in her bed, but by her side at the Heart’s Ease Inn.

Like Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends and Eileen Myles's Chelsea Girls, All I Ask by the award-winning and highly acclaimed author Eva Crocker is a defining novel of a generation. A little before seven in the morning, Stacey wakes to the police pounding on her door. They search her home and seize her computer and her phone, telling her they're looking for "illegal digital material." Left to unravel what's happened, Stacey must find a way to take back the privacy and freedom she feels she has lost. Luckily, she has her friends. Smart and tough and almost terrifyingly open, Stacey and her circle are uncommonly free of biases and boundaries, but this incident reveals how they are still susceptible to society's traps. Navigating her way through friendship, love, and sex, Stacey strives to restore her self-confidence and to actualize the most authentic way to live her life -- one that acknowledges both her power and her vulnerability, her joy and her fear. All I Ask is a bold and bracing exploration of what it's like to be young in a time when everything and nothing seems possible. With a playwright's ear for dialogue and a wry, delicate confidence, Eva Crocker writes with a compassionate but unsentimental eye on human nature that perfectly captures the pitfalls of relying on the people you love.

The story moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in contemporary St. John's, Newfoundland's—a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O’Connor country. Its denizens jostle each other in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, lust, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Meet Madeleine, the driven aging filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies; Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers; Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters; and Colleen, at seventeen a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

When Ananias Case boards a ship in Fowey, England in 1826 bound for Carbonear, Newfoundland, he’s not looking for adventure; he’s a man on the run. The structures of class division are left in the wake, while a fractured society in the throes of rapid evolution awaits beyond the sea. An historical novel based on real events, Ananias is the story of a man seeking a new life while struggling with the ghosts of his past. This sweeping adventure of discovery, connection and heartache is also a moving tribute to a rugged island place and its people.

Born a boy and a girl but raised as a boy, Wayne or "Annabel" struggles with his identity growing up in a small Canadian town and seeks freedom by moving to the city. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub kit-to-go.

Joan Clark's An Audience of Chairs opens with Moranna MacKenzie living alone in her ancestral Cape Breton farmhouse, waging a war with the symptoms of bipolar disorder and grieving the loss of her two daughters, taken from her over thirty years previously. There are few people remaining in her life, as Moranna cannot help but tax the patience of nearly everyone she encounters. Her long-suffering brother Murdoch has her best interests at heart, though he is fatigued by her enormous needs and pressured by his ambitious wife to invest less time in her. Pastor Andy politely sloughs off the peculiarly intelligent yet unpalatable sermons Moranna pens for him. Her neighbour Lottie knows what it is to be an eccentric and can be counted on to come through in a pinch. The local RCMP constabulary smooths over her legal scrapes. And her lover Bun, who lives with her when not working on the ferries between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, knows how to give her a wide berth on her "foul weather days". Thanks to the assistance of these sometimes reluctant guardian angels, as well as to the carefully planned inheritance left by her father (not to mention her own sheer ingenuity), Moranna has managed to get by all these years despite small-town gossips and tormenting youths. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn more about the devastating effects of Moranna's mental illness on her life and that of her family. But An Audience of Chairs also gives us a glimpse into the mind of a true iconoclast and wild spirit, who has managed despite overwhelming odds to keep hope alive. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

Brothers Owen and Alex Collins are brought together when mental illness claims their father and sets off a chain reaction of unrelated, heart-breaking events. Both tender and bold in its delivery, Away from Everywhere cuts no corners in telling the story of their crushing childhood, the reasons the brothers become different men, and the unthinkable act of love that tears them apart. Part warped love story, part family tragedy, Away from Everywhere is a heart-stomping page turner. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub kit-to-go.

Barry Squires, Full Tilt takes readers on a romp through the streets of St. John's and into the Squires household, a place where tragedy strikes but love prevails. Derry Girls meets Billy Elliot with an East coast twist. It's 1995. When the Full Tilt Dancers give an inspiring performance at the opening of the new bingo hall, twelve-year-old Finbar (Barry) Squires wants desperately to join the troupe. Led by Father O'Flaherty, the Full Tilt Irish Step Dancers are the most sought-after act in St. John's, Newfoundland (closely followed by popular bagpiper, Alfie Bragg and his Agony Bag). Having watched Riverdance twice, Barry figures he'll nail the audition. And good thing too -- it'd be nice to be known for something other than the port wine stain on his cheek. With questionable talent and an unpredictable temper, Barry's journey to stardom is jeopardized by his parents' refusal to take his dreams seriously. Thankfully, Barry has the support of a lively cast of characters: his ever-present grandmother, Nanny Squires; his adorable baby brother, Gord; an old British rocker named Uneven Steven; a group of geriatrics from the One Step Closer to God Nursing Home; and Saibal, a friend with whom Barry gets up to no good. Told with humor and a healthy dose of irreverence, Barry Squires, Full Tilt is the latest novel by Heather Smith, the award-winning author of The Agony of Bun O'Keefe and Chicken Girl.

In the late nineteenth century, after disease and circumstance have left her alone in the world, Mary Rourke believes she is predestined to spinsterhood in her small community in Newfoundland. When a series of dramatic events brings a strange man to her door, Mary emerges from the comfortable isolation that she knows to follow her dreams in Boston. Those desires do not come without sacrifice and hard choices. When her past comes back to haunt her, Mary must decide whether there is room for both her aspirations and her heart—or if she must surrender one to have the other.

Kent vows to be faithful to his wife, to live close to the sea, and document, through paintings and woodcuts, a picturesque land and society. But he also desires everything, including the young woman who cares for their children. Also available as an eBook, an eAudiobook, an audiobook on cds, and as a Bookclub kit-to-go.

For readers of Khaled Hosseini and Chris Cleave, The Boat People is an extraordinary novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage only to face the threat of deportation amid accusations of terrorism When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum. Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him, The Boat People is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis.

RCMP Sergeant Winston Windflower is at a crossroads as career opportunities intrude on his near-perfect life in the blustery paradise of Grand Bank, Newfoundland. Just as the pandemic ends, the little oceanside communities are rocked by the murders of prominent figures, an RCMP Staff Sergeant in St. John's and a minister in Grand Bank, and it's implied that there are national security implications to at least one crime. There's also a sinister new character hanging around doing the parish's dirty work. Windflower finds himself a primary investigator, balancing work, potential major changes, and life with a young family while seeking guidance from his ancestral teachings and dreams. Are the crimes connected, and can Windflower and his team find the killer before they strike again? As the police work becomes more complicated and even dangerous, Sgt. Windflower finds time to enjoy his family, his friends and always some great food. Come back to Grand Bank for another great adventure in Sgt. Windflower Mysteries.

In the 1920s, Jim, Bert and Rose Evans all move from Newfoundland to Brooklyn, New York, in search of work and a better life, leaving their sister Annie back home in St. John’s. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind. By the Rivers of Brooklyn transforms into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York – and the experience of Newfoundlanders throughout history who have gone away to find work and prosperity but never stopped dreaming of home. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

This was the line between here and there. No landwash, no vague intertidal zone, no undecided. She stood at the edge, a mass of instincts and yearnings and despair, while the dawn painted itself in around her, shade by delicate shade. The kids call her Lighthouse: no lights on up there. In a small town, everyone knows when you can't read. But Cathy is just distracted by the light, lines, and artistry of everyday life. She is a talented artist growing up in tiny Mariners Cove and yearns for acceptance. She dreams of enrolling in art school, but getting there will be a struggle. Hutch Parsons is everything Cathy is not: charismatic, popular, smart. Overflowing with energy, he is confident in his plans for the future. But one icy evening his world is upended and those plans are swept away. Dancing between points of view, Catching the Light explores the ordinary lives of two extraordinary people. With gorgeously lyrical language and a strong sense of place, this tender novel announces a bright new voice in Atlantic fiction. Winner of the 2014 Percy Janes First Novel Award for an unpublished manuscript.

David Slaney has escaped from prison, and now he must make good on the heist that went wrong and win back the woman he loves. Here are bravado and betrayal, bad weather and seas, love, undercover agents, the collusion of governments, unbridled ambition, innocence and the loss thereof, and many, many bales of marijuana. Here, too, is the seeming invincibility of youth and all the folly that it allows. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

From the author of the award-winning Sgt. Windflower Mysteries comes "Christmas in Newfoundland: Memories and Mysteries," a welcome addition to the Sgt. Windflower family of books. Christmas in Newfoundland is a special time. In the depths of long winter nights memories are made and stories are told. Of Christmas by candlelight and horse and buggy rides to church. Of shopping on Water Street in St. John's before malls and the Internet. In later years, Sgt. Windflower came to work and then to stay in the quiet town of Grand Bank by the Atlantic Ocean where the salt air froze in the wind and the Mounties were welcomed to warm themselves by every fire. Come and warm yourself by the fire and hear their stories. Some memories and some mysteries. Enjoy some holiday time with Sgt. Windflower and all the familiar characters that you'd come to know and love. Good food, good friends and always another chair at the table.

Masterful, engrossing story of the last surviving Beothuk, a World War II deserter and a recently widowed English woman at the end of the twentieth century. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

Audrey Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she learns that her father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Preparing to fly home, Audrey leaves Winnifred with unreliable friends. This will be her first mistake; the second will be disarming an Air Marshal en route to St. John's. Audrey, you see, is IQ-challenged. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

This dramatic conclusion to a trilogy foregrounds the experiences of women settlers in North America as they grapple with notions of homeland, colonization, and sense of belonging. A Company of Rogues completes the Cupids trilogy, moving the action back to the New Found Land seven years after John Guy’s colonists first settled Cupids Cove. After their wanderings across the ocean, Ned and Nancy are united—but will the shores of New Found Land provide a permanent home? Kathryn and Nicholas Guy join the effort to found a second colony at Bristol’s Hope, but their work is threatened by a shadowy enemy who holds a dangerous power over Kathryn. And a newcomer to the colony, the Wampanoag traveller Tisquantum, settles among the English colonists, challenging their beliefs about the New World they have come to settle and the people who call it home.

In the waning days of World War II, Sheilagh Fielding makes her way to a deserted island off the coast of Newfoundland. But she soon comes to suspect another presence: that of a man known only as her Provider, who has shadowed her for twenty years. Against the backdrop of Newfoundland's history and landscape, Fielding is a compelling figure. Taller than most men and striking in spite of her crippled leg, she is both eloquent and subversively funny. Her newspaper columns exposing the foibles and hypocrisies of her native city, St. John's, have made many powerful enemies for her, chief among them the man who fathered her children—twins—when she was fourteen. Only her Provider, however, knows all of Fielding's secrets

Based on a true story, Dancing in a Jar elaborates on the real-life love affair of a young couple who leave New York City to live in the outport community of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, during the Great Depression when the husband, Don Poynter, accepts a management position in the town’s fluorspar mine. In a series of letters, some fictional and some real, Adele Poynter weaves a remarkable romantic tale through the life of a small mining town—capturing the sorrow and joyousness, the hardship and perseverance—to ultimately reveal how the loves of our lives are inherently united with our love of a landscape.

Gunshots shatter the stillness of a rainy night in an upscale neighbourhood in St. John's, Newfoundland. Harrison Rose, a businessman and war veteran, lies dead. To find the killer, Inspector Eric Stride confronts the darker side of post-World War II St. John's: a lady of the evening who appears on his doorstep, a hard-scrabble labourer who shovels coal for a living, a prosperous businessman with a secret. Along the way, Stride confronts treachery and betrayal. He also encounters opposition from inside government, when officials attempt to stymie his investigation. As Stride unravels the mystery, he also confronts his own sense of justice in a world where violence has become a way of life. Also available as a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

In the vein of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and A.S.A. Harrison's The Silent Wife, The Devil You Know is a thrilling debut about a rookie reporter, whose memories of the murder of her childhood best friend bring danger--and a stalker--right to her doorstep. The year is 1993. Rookie crime beat reporter Evie Jones is haunted by the unsolved murder of her best friend Lianne Gagnon who was killed in 1982, back when both girls were eleven. The suspected killer, a repeat offender named Robert Cameron, was never arrested, leaving Lianne's case cold. Now twenty-one and living alone for the first time, Evie is obsessively drawn to finding out what really happened to Lianne. She leans on another childhood friend, David Patton, for help--but every clue they uncover seems to lead to an unimaginable conclusion. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, Evie becomes convinced that the killer is still at large--and that he's coming back for her. From critically acclaimed author Elisabeth de Mariaffi comes a spine-tingling debut about secrets long buried and obsession that cannot be controlled. Also available as an eBook, and audiobook on CDs and as a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

In this beloved, bestselling novel which has been unavailable for some time, young Draper Doyle Ryan tries to come to terms with the mysterious death of his father as he struggles, in touching, comic fashion, with budding adolescence and the strange demands of his proudly eccentric family. When first published in 1990, The Divine Ryans received unanimous critical praise and won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award; Wayne Johnston himself was hailed as one of Canada's most distinctive comic talents.

Steeped in jazz and big-band music, spanning pre- and post-war Windsor-Detroit, St. John's, Newfoundland, and 1950s Toronto, this is a novel about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice, race relations and a time in our history when the world was on the cusp of momentous change. With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It's WWII, and while stationed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled, romantic Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock and is desperate to see the world. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

In The End of Music, Jamie Fitzpatrick’s two mesmerizing, interwoven narratives circle the lives of Joyce, a modern young woman navigating the fraught social mores of a small town in its post-war heyday, and her son, Carter, more than fifty years later, whose days as an aspiring rock star are over. As Joyce’s memories of the past begin to escape her, her son’s past returns to haunt him. Brilliantly and unflinchingly revealing the inner lives of his characters, Fitzpatrick offers an extraordinary novel, with two startling twists, about women, men, and reckoning with the past.

Two women, a world apart. A secret waiting to be discovered. VE Day 1945: As victory bells ring out across the country, war bride Ellie Burgess' happiness is overshadowed by grief. Her charismatic Newfoundlander husband Thomas is still missing in action. Until a letter arrives explaining Thomas is back at home on the other side of the Atlantic recovering from his injuries. Travelling to a distant country to live with a man she barely knows is the bravest thing Ellie has ever had to do. But nothing can prepare her for the harsh realities of her new home. September 11th 2001: Sophie Parry is on a plane to New York on the most tragic day in the city's history. While the world watches the news in horror, Sophie's flight is rerouted to a tiny town in Newfoundland and she is forced to seek refuge with her estranged aunt Ellie. Determined to discover what it was that forced her family apart all those years ago, newfound secrets may change her life forever.

Daisy's job is to be as unobtrusive as possible. But when her father suddenly leaves and her mother breaks down, Daisy's old life disappears, and she is set free in the rift created between her parents. Susie Taylor's sharp, quick-witted prose carries Daisy through a family cataclysm, relationships with boys, and her increasingly confusing feelings towards girls, especially Wanda. A refreshingly perceptive and honest debut, Even Weirder Than Before explores the nature of family, friendships, and sexual awakenings -- and introduces one of Newfoundland's most exciting new writers.

ICohen Davies' life is shaped by the butterfly effect of a bad decision gone desperately wrong. After a shocking family tragedy, Cohen is wracked with guilt and sorrow, and feeling numb to everything but the allure of his enigmatic new neighbor, Allie Crosbie. 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 irrevocable events that starts with one man's untimely death, and ends in Cohen's incarceration. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub kit-to-go.

When Cleo Best and her boyfriend Jamie decide to try for a baby, one of them wants to give nature a nudge in the right direction. Tension plagues their relationship as they try to conceive, without success, and Cleo discovers that sometimes, the thing you're running away from is the thing you can't stop running toward.

Follows the life of Helen O’Mara, widowed by the accident, as she continuously spirals from the present day back to that devastating and transformative winter. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

Sixteen-year-old Flannery Malone has it bad. She’s been in love with Tyrone O’Rourke since the days she still believed in Santa Claus. But Tyrone has grown from a dorky kid into an outlaw graffiti artist, the rebel-with-a-cause of Flannery’s dreams, literally too cool for school. Which is a problem, since he and Flannery are partners for the entrepreneurship class that she needs to graduate. And Tyrone’s vanishing act may have darker causes than she realizes. Tyrone isn’t Flannery’s only problem. Her mother, Miranda, can’t pay the heating bills, let alone buy Flannery’s biology book. Her little brother, Felix, is careening out of control. And her best-friend-since-forever, Amber, has fallen for a guy who is making her forget all about the things she’s always cared most about -- Flannery included -- leading Amber down a dark and dangerous path of her own. When Flannery decides to make a love potion for her entrepreneurship project, rumors that it actually works go viral, and she suddenly has a hot commodity on her hands. But a series of shattering events makes her realize that real-life love is far more potent -- and potentially damaging -- than any fairy-tale prescription. Written in Lisa Moore’s exuberant and inimitable style, Flannery is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, empowering and harrowing -- often all on the same page. It is a novel whose spell no reader will be able to resist. Also available as en eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

Betsy Elliott is a match for the cold northeast winds that rattle windows and carry Newfoundland sailors away to their deaths. Forced into service after her father's death, married at eighteen to a much older man, she's become as hard as the rocks that line the shores of her island home. Talented, brilliant, and hard-working, she will do anything to make things go her way in the life she's been forced to live.One November day in 1933, Edmund Taylor stumbles into their lives when he is invited by John Elliott to board with them to write a book on the Commission of Government and finish his final papers for his graduation from Harvard Law School. During the harshest winter in decades, disaster and despair rock the Elliott home and their entire community, and events lead Edmund, overcome with guilt, to want to flee. In love with the formidable Betsy, he invites her to run away with him to Boston.Should Betsy stay in a place where children die of curable diseases and life has a deadening sameness, or go to Boston, the city of her dreams, where adventure and opportunity await? Betsy must choose between duty and the dreams she thought were impossible. But time is running out. Edmund will leave as soon as navigation opens up. Will Betsy be on the boat with him, or will she stay, chained forever to the life she thought she was destined to live?

When Sebastian and Mae arrive at a fabric shop, they discover the owner in a back room, lying in a pool of blood, having been stabbed with a pair of antique quilting scissors. This propels the couple along a sequence of occasionally bizarre investigative paths to track down the killer. Sebastian has more than murder to deal with. A family get-together involving his son and ex-wife (and her partner, Frederick, a police officer) goes awry as Frederick inserts himself into the investigation. Mae on occasion outsmarts Sebastian on the investigative trails, but our private eye is rarely without his trademark sense of humour.

Every family has its secrets.In 1935, Hannah Parsons left her home in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, at the age of seventeen to work in service for Charles and Virginia Sinclair, a wealthy St. John's family. While working for them, Hannah catches the eye of the patriarch of the household, and her life takes an unexpected turn.Now, sixty years later, Charles Sinclair has passed, and his last living will and testament is about to throw his family into turmoil. His children and grandchildren learn that no family is as perfect as it seems, and that some secrets refuse to stay buried forever.From a Good Home is a novel of family legacy among the St. John's aristocracy. It is Trudi Johnson's first book. Also available as an eBook and a Booclub-kit-to-go.

A family saga and love story set in the improbable medievalesque world that was rural Newfoundland. Remote and isolated, exposed to extremes of climate and fate, the people of Paradise Deep persist in a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is hard to distinguish. Also available as an eBook, an audiobook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

When retiree Keith O'Reilly witnesses the murder of his neighbour - an architect and "come-from-away" named Dennis Conners - by a pizza delivery man one night during a snowstorm, a unique series of stories begins to unfold. As the narrative weaves from neighbour to neighbour, house to house, family secrets and personal struggles are quietly disclosed to the reader. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub kit-to-go.

Set in and around St. John's, Newfoundland, in the late 1960s, The Good Thief is the story of eighteen-year-old Sonny McCluskey, the son of an eccentric father, a man on a mission. Like his hero, Robin Hood, Charlie McCluskey is hell-bent on justice for the poor, one day at a time. Sonny's father dies, leaving him the family business, a small auto repair shop, and a long-standing family secret, with a summary of his unique philosophy on how to make money and do good. Sonny promises to uphold the family tradition, but the more he discovers about his father's checkered past, the more difficult it becomes to keep his promise. Despite his good intentions, Sonny is drawn further and further into a dangerous underworld, forcing him to face some life-changing challenges he could never have foreseen.

An unforgettable, life-affirming novel about a woman living on her own terms at last and reclaiming the friendship of a lifetime, for readers of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye and Me Before You Frances Delaney is staring down the last days of her life. Looking back over her fifty-eight years with wit and no small amount of regret, she sees not the life she wanted but the one that happened. An idyllic childhood in the small Newfoundland fishing town of Safe Harbour was darkened by the loss of her father at sea, an unwanted pregnancy and a betrayal by her closest friend, Annie Malone. Frances and Annie were inseparable, and this rupture rocked Frances to the core. In the aftermath, she fled to St. John's and a solitary life nothing like what she and Annie had dreamed of as their grand escape. Now, with the help of her young, optimistic friend Edie, Frances begins a journey toward resolution and back to Annie and Safe Harbour. With these good women in her corner, Frances can at last chart her course to living on her own terms, right to the very end. A powerfully touching celebration of friendship and forgiveness, The Good Women of Safe Harbour is about a woman who finally gives herself a chance to love and be loved. It's a story that is impossible to read with dry eyes.

Wanda Jaynes is about to lose her job amidst a mountain of bills, and she suspects her musician boyfriend might be romantically interested in her friend, Trish. But Wanda’s life changes radically on a routine trip to the grocery store when a gunman enters the supermarket and opens fire. When Wanda comes face to face with the shooter, she instinctively hurls a can of coconut milk at his head and knocks him unconscious. In the ensuing media storm, she’s hailed as a hero and miracle worker. But in the aftermath of so much attention, she receives strange emails and believes she’s being followed. As her fear and paranoia grow, both her private and professional lives hang in the balance. And it takes another act of bravery before she’ll learn who she really is.

Snowblower / Michelle Porter -- Past tenses / Carrie-Jane Williams -- Sugar / Allison Graves -- Ten frames forever / Elizabeth Hicks -- Twilight airs, iron, water / Tzu-Hao Hsu -- Starecase / Benjamin C. Dugdale -- Eight months to a year / Xaiver Michael Campbell -- The Flat freshie blue-star test / Heidi Wicks -- Effie / Olivia Robinson -- Lord Gushue's reign of terror / William Ping -- You-Cee / Sobia Shaheen Shaikh -- The City wears thin / Matthew Hollett -- Ēkatra / Prajwala Dixit -- The Years the locusts have eaten / Bridget Canning -- What kind of dog is he? / Terry Doyle -- Remains of conception / Carmella Gray-Cosgrove -- Lost villages / Jim McEwen.

The hilarious and heartbreaking story of two William Pings in Newfoundland -- the lost millennial and the grandfather he knows nothing about. William Ping’s millennial life revolves around eating at restaurants, posting online about eating at restaurants, then overanalyzing it. This changes unexpectedly when a dinner with his Chinese girlfriend’s family goes sideways and his insecurity about his biracial identity and his ignorance of his own Chinese heritage overflow like lava. During a much-needed break from the dinner table, Will is visited in the men’s room by a sarcastic, bullying spirit named Mo. The spirit whisks him into the past to learn about the life of his grandfather, the first William Ping, who emigrated from China to Newfoundland in 1931 to work in a laundry. Based on a true story, Hollow Bamboo recounts with humour and sympathy the often-brutal struggles, and occasional successes, faced by some of the first Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland. It is a journey of heartbreak, sacrifice, brotherhood and family ties. But most of all, it is about love and survival on the Rock. Drawing on elements of magical realism, autofiction and satire, as well as deep historical research, Hollow Bamboo is a fresh and original portrayal of our past and our present, and the debut of an extraordinary new author.

Heike Lerner's life looks perfect from the outside: she's settled into an easy routine of caring for her young son, Daniel, and spends her days wandering the woods near their summer house, while her nights are filled with clinking glasses and charming conversation. It all helps to keep her mind at ease--or at least that's what her husband, Eric, tells her. But lately, Heike's noticed there are some things out of place: a mysterious cabin set back in the trees and a strange little girl who surfaces alone at the pond one day, then disappears--while at home Eric is becoming increasingly more controlling. Something sinister that Heike cannot quite put her finger on is lingering just beneath the surface of this idyllic life. It's possible Heike's worries are all in her head, but when the unthinkable happens--Daniel vanishes while she and Eric are at a party one night--she can no longer deny that something is very wrong. Desperate to find her son, Heike will try anything, but Eric insists on a calm that feels so cold she wonders if she can trust him at all. Could Eric be involved in Daniel's disappearance? Or has some darker thing taken him? The closer Heike gets to the truth, the faster it slips away. But she will not rest until she finds her son.

When her mother decides to remarry, Edie’s calm and orderly life is knocked off kilter. The groom’s son, Harlow, is a joyful adventurer who shows up for the wedding and quickly recruits Edie as his sidekick. Just when she thinks she’s figured him out, Harlow reveals a depth and darkness she didn’t see coming. Edie and Harlow—and their new unwieldy family—do an elaborate dance all summer, trying to discover what they are to one another. By Labour Day, they’ve created connections, tested boundaries, and found they’ve come together and apart in unexpected ways. Edie and Harlow navigate the world in disguise, creating personas that they believe hide their pain and vulnerability. The characters struggle to define themselves and others, to make sense of how they feel and act, to understand what they value and need. As they try to form connections with one another, they realize that labels can both create clarity and impose limits. Their families have been shaken by death, trauma, addiction, secrecy, and infidelity, which leaves them all feeling unsteady as they try to form a new blended family.

A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them. As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. This novel is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

Found by a fisherman on an ice floe as an infant, Aurora is believed to be a changeling by the superstitious residents of Newfoundland, and it is not until she is an old woman that the truth of her origins is revealed.

Ledger of the Open Hand looks at the intimate power of money and emotional debt through the eyes of a woman trying to grab hold of her own life. Beholden to a shrewd friend and burdened by family obligations and guilt, Meriel-Claire (MC) finally stumbles into what she’s been missing. She falls in love and finds her calling as a debt counsellor in the midst of a national financial crisis. But balancing the books for strangers is easier than reconciling her own complicated relationships. Regrets and deficits accumulate until MC must decide what she owes to those she loves. With humour and insight, Ledger explores giving, taking, and our tendency to treat love as a balance sheet. Also available an an eBook and a Bookclub kit-to-go.

Warm, funny, and stylistically savvy, these stories follow an interlocking set of characters and the people they love. Characters weave their way in and out of The Love Olympics, a collection of short fiction set in St. John's. The book is about various forms of love -- the ways love grips us, shakes us, releases and envelops us. The stories are smart, witty, funny, warm, and surprising; they capture the preoccupations of character from different generations who are closely or only tangentially connected to one another. This collection explores people's aspirations, fear, and vulnerabilities; their generosity and desire for connection; their willingness to see past flaws and appreciate other human beings in all their complexity.

When the tides in Damson Bay turn phosphorescent, a team of researchers from a nearby university establish a makeshift lab in an abandoned fishing storehouse to study the strange phenomenon. And while collecting samples of local marine life, Vivienne, a young research assistant, accidentally captures a creature seemingly risen from myth and previously unknown to science. The project's lead researchers quickly assume control of the discovery, and as their invasive scientific testing becomes more and more inhumane, Vivienne finds herself increasingly exploited and vulnerable to harm. With the creature wasting away in secrecy, Vivienne must find a way to release it from history and back into the sea.

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 debut is a novel about overcoming personal fears in a world wracked by private loss and public anxiety, and about finding friendship in the most unlikely places. Also available an eBook and a Bookclb kit-to-go.

When self-described mid-list Newfoundland author James Nightingale makes a brief sojourn to his St. John’s home for the re-release of his seminal novel, he’s forced to confront his failings, both familial and artistic. Imbued with the language of literature and the imagery of a Newfoundland in flux, Mister Nightingale is at once diatribe on the writing life, and a keen and poignant exploration of one man’s coming to terms with la vie quotidienne.

$aFor decades, the Holloways have operated a convenience store in the working-class neighborhood of Rabbittown in St. John’s, and every customer has a story. In a vibrant, contemporary family saga, filled with idiosyncratic characters, Trudy Morgan-Cole tells the tale of three generations of Holloway women—Ellen, Audrey, and Rachel—their loves and their livelihood in times of great change. Most Anything You Please captures the spirit of a community and the women who hold it together, revealing the bonds that break and the ties that bind. Also available as an eBook.

In 1822, William Epps Cormack sought the expertise of a guide who could lead him across Newfoundland in search of the last remaining Beothuk camps on the island.

Devlin Stead grows up a lonely orphan in late 19th century Newfoundland. When he begins receiving letters from the esteemed but mysterious explorer Dr. Frederick Cook, they entirely change his understanding of who he is and what he might become. Invited by Dr. Cook to become his apprentice, Dev eagerly heads for New York City, where he is introduced into society and joins his mentor in epic attempts to reach the North Pole before Cook’s archrival Robert Edwin Peary. When Dev is thrust into international controversy, he must master a series of revelations about his family that will determine his fate. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit--to-go.

Following a car accident in 2005, St. John's freelance writer, Luke Delaney develops an addiction to prescription narcotics and after a decade is looking for a way out. Angéline LeBlanc is Luke's strength, but she's coming to grips with her own demons. Enter Liliana Sánchez, Cuban exile and pharmacologist who seems to have all the answers. New Found Land is a modern-day story of snake oil and belief and Big Pharma is part of the problem. The real fix is in the unconscious mind. Of everyone. The story touches down in New Orleans, and Havana, but it’s St John’s, Newfoundland (The City of Dreams) where it takes root. As Hopkins says, “The city is a character, like an old friend, a handsome one at that.”

The Night Season is the story of Will, a disillusioned English professor experiencing an emotional and spirtual crisis. It is winter during the mid-1980s. Will has left his job, having almost ruined his love for literature by teaching it for a living, his marriage has disintegrated and he has left his home and young daughter.

Tam, an English woman in her thirties, has been living in this harshly beautiful region since shortly after the war, in which she served as an auxiliary pilot. She is now leaving her lover, Niall, who, like his father before him, is a meteorologist. The airliner she is travelling on becomes grounded by fog at Gander Airport, Newfoundland. As she waits, she regards an enigmatic mural, and revisits not only the circumstances that brought her to Ireland but her intense relationship with Niall and his growing despondency over his younger brother Kieran's disappearance years before. Also available as an eBook, an audiobook on CDs, and as a Bookclub kit-go-to.

No One Knows about Us is a collection of short fiction about how we find connection in a disconnected world. Relationships exist under the wire, and conversations and revelations occur in secret pockets, both literally and physically. The characters conduct secret acts of vengeance, kindness, and vigilantism motivated by their hidden yearnings, grudges, losses, fears, and fixations.

Sebastian Synard doesn't want any more trouble than he alread has. He's scuttled his teaching career, he's starting his own touring business, his relationship with his ex-wife is deteriorating, and his son is struggling with the transition. All Sebastian really wants is some peace and a good glass of Scotch. But when he leads a group of tourists along a cliff-side path that winds above St. John's Harbour, one of the entourage ends up dead, his head smashed on the rocks below. An accident? Or is there a heartless murderer in Sebastian's tour group? When a local police investigator enlists him to help flush out the perpetrator, the mystery deepens, and Sebastian finds himself on the edge.

The Freemasons' Most Worshipful Grand Master has been murdered. His body has been laid out in the ritualistic Chamber of Reflection at the Masonic Temple, surrounded by centuries of secrets. Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Insp. Nicholas Myra and Cst. Donna Whiffen dig through thousands of years of history, secrets, scandals, and symbols in a hunt for the killer. The search leads them back to the Temple of Solomon and the first Masonic murder. Rumours abound of hidden tunnels under churches and buildings in the centre of old St. John’s which lead to an unbelievable treasure at the heart of an Ecclesiastic Circle—a treasure that many would kill for. This is the historical backdrop to Helen C. Escott’s engrossing and well-researched novel Operation Masonic. This thriller is exceedingly clever and compellingly truthful. The killer is always the one who is not getting what they want. Who must have what they can’t have,” Insp. Myra informs his team of investigators.

RCMP Corporal Gail McNaughton has just transferred into the Major Crime Unit. As its newest investigator, she is given a stack of missing and murder files dating back to the 1950's. These crimes prove to be a challenge to investigate: most of the witnesses have died or have aged, memories have faded, scenes were not secured to today's standards, and DNA testing was not available at the time. Corporal McNaughton befriends Larry morgan, an expert on Newfoundland and Labrador history who is also the son of one of the murdered women. Together they put together a list of suspects and begin to dig up ghosts from the past. McNaughton discovers that the files may be linked, and she sets out to prove her theory that a serial killer had been operating in rural Newfoundland when these crimes were committed.

An elderly man is carried into the emergency department of the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, setting off a chain of events that leaves doctors mystified. He is the first of many victims suffering from severe nosebleeds and excruciating pain. Dr. Luke Gillespie and Nurse Agatha Catania investigate their symptoms but are unable to diagnose them. The only thing they have in common is Sgt. Nicholas Myra, an investigator with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Dr. Gillespie and Sgt. Myra join forces to solve this twisted mystery. But the story takes a critical turn when Sister Pius, a nun from Mercy Convent, informs them about Wormwood: a disease she believes is created by God to kill perpetrators of the most heinous crimes. Wormwood becomes an international media storm when parish priest Father Peter Cooke holds a news conference on the steps of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist and announces that God has unleashed a plague upon the earth. Is God truly punishing these criminals, or is a serial killer targeting.

An elderly man is carried into the emergency department of the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, setting off a chain of events that leaves doctors mystified. He is the first of many victims suffering from severe nosebleeds and excruciating pain. Dr. Luke Gillespie and Nurse Agatha Catania investigate their symptoms but are unable to diagnose them. The only thing they have in common is Sgt. Nicholas Myra, an investigator with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Dr. Gillespie and Sgt. Myra join forces to solve this twisted mystery. But the story takes a critical turn when Sister Pius, a nun from Mercy Convent, informs them about Wormwood: a disease she believes is created by God to kill perpetrators of the most heinous crimes. Wormwood becomes an international media storm when parish priest Father Peter Cooke holds a news conference on the steps of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist and announces that God has unleashed a plague upon the earth. Is God truly punishing these criminals, or is a serial killer targeting.

An extraordinary literary fiction debut from an award-winning writer and activist, set in the remote Labrador Innu community of Utshimassits, exploring grief, trauma, unlearning, and healing. One cold February morning in 1992, Anna receives a phone call, a request to work with the Utshimassiu Innu in Labrador to organize a people's inquiry, a self-examination into a house fire that killed six children. Eager to escape a complicated relationship and afraid to face the grief of losing her father, Anna accepts the invitation. She catches a plane, painfully aware that she doesn't have a clue what a people's inquiry might look like, and heads for Nitassinan. This world, with its own language and spirits, is where she's told children die because people do not care for the caribou bones. It is a world where an inquiry becomes a gathering of voices. As the community tells its story -- elders, men, women, and children -- Anna learns to listen deeply to their words, to the land, to the past and the present. Memories knit together to find meaning in a pain that cannot be named. She immerses herself and leans into her own grief. As she bears witness to the fiercely close community and the unexpected, tender, and courageous way they look after each other and carry on, she learns something about our collective need to imagine a future together, no matter how fragile and imperfect. Inspired by true events, and the Gathering Voices report, of which Fouillard served as editor, Precious Little is a unique enmeshing of the imagination with memories and experiences spanning decades of working and living with the Innu. At its core, it is a journey toward unlearning and unknowing. By turns harrowing and empowering, provocative and enlightening, this novel is a powerful act of reconciliation and resistance in the face of trauma, infused with love, humility, humour and joy.

North Harbour, Newfoundland, 1894. Ophaned at a young age, Erith Lock has a cruel upbringing at the hands of a harsh stepmother. At the tender age of sixteen, a ruthless act leaves her shattered and struggling for survival. When all she has is her word, she makes a solemn vow to three small children. But circumstances drastically change, and the promise could take years to fulfill. She fears it might be better broken. When her past must be confronted, Erith finds herself facing unbearable choices that might cost her everything. Enduring self-doubt pushes Erith to her breaking point. Will she allow hope and kindness to guide her, or will it be safer to remain captive in the grip of her unfortunate past?

National Bestseller At once the intimate tale of one man's quest to discover the truth of his birth and a riveting account of a real-life Newfoundland tragedy from 1914, brilliantly and sensitively imagined by one of Canada's most beloved and bestselling authors. When a deathbed confession uncovers secrets about his birth, twenty-year-old Roan--who has always believed himself an orphan, with no last name--sets off on a quest to discover the truth of his origins. His journey takes him across the snow-covered landscape of Newfoundland from the remote Northern Peninsula to St. John's and then onto the Newfoundland, one of the rickety and poorly equipped ships heading out to the sealing grounds for the spring hunt. Between his farewell to Dr. Grenfell, the man who raised, educated, and cared for Roan since his toddlerhood, and the final discovery that will alter his life forever, Roan is tossed both emotionally and physically into harrowing situations that he could never have imagined. The people Roan meets along his journey are vivid and unforgettable, from young Ila, isolated and desperate as her mother coughs her life away in a frigid cabin, to the hulking, volcanic, unknowable Ashur Genge, whose own heartbreaking secret may hold the key to Roan's deepest desire. As Roan's personal story entwines with the historical tale of the Newfoundland disaster, it is "the b'ys"--the simple men who risk their lives year after year on the ice--their brotherhood, their resilience, their heart, and their humour that carry him through tragedy and beyond. Rage the Night showcases Donna Morrissey's extraordinary empathy, her remarkable characters, and her unique literary voice; it is a masterwork from one of our finest storytellers.

Forced to flee England, the Andrews family books passage to a fresh start in a distant country, only to discover a barren, inhospitable land at the end of their crossing. To seventeen-year-old Lavinia, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land. It is a saga of families and of individuals; of acquisitive Mary Bundle; of charming Ned Andrews, whose thievery has turned his family into exiles; of mad Ida; of Thomas Hutchings, who might be an aristocrat, a holy man, or a murderer; and of Lavinia - who wrote down the truth and lies about them all. Random Passage has been adapted into a CBC miniseries and is now a national bestseller.

In her house at the back end of Woods Road, fourteen-year-old Laurel does something unimaginable. She commits an act of violence that fractures her family and forces them from their home. They move to a housing unit in the nearby town of Stephenville, where they find themselves trapped in a system of poverty, generational neglect, and trauma. For Laurel, education is her ticket out. But years later, in university, her violent past catches up with her. This time she has to save herself and she can't do it alone.

The highly anticipated debut work of adult fiction from award-winning author of crossover novel Catching the Light, following three generations of Newfoundland women. 49th Shelf Most Anticipated Fall 2022 Releases Some memories are treasured, re-read like a favourite book. Some are traumatic and won't stay buried. But memories can be unreliable, can fade and mutate. They affect our actions and choices. Memories of a happy marriage comfort Liz through widowhood, while flashbacks to a devastating sexual assault overwhelm her youngest daughter, Eve. Her middle daughter, Carlie, is building a new life in another country but longing for home is pulling her back, while Ginny, the eldest, takes on everyone?s problems as her own. Eve's daughter, Rosie, remembers nothing of her absent father and yearns to track him down against her family's wishes. Then Liz is diagnosed with dementia, and the family's resilience is tested as the matriarch begins to falter. If life is all memory, what is left when it's gone? Memory is at the core of all these women's lives: elusive, intrusive, helpful or misleading. What's revealed is a story about the struggle to maintain a sense of family, home, and self, amidst all life can throw at you.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, British naval officer David Buchan arrives in Newfoundland to establish contact with the Beothuk Indians, who are facing extinction. Approaching the area's most influential white settlers, the Peytons, for advice, Buchan learns of their allegiances, deep grudges and family tensions. As his peace missions go awry, and a murder occurs, the delicate web of allegiance, obligation and debt that holds together the Peyton household and the community slowly begins to unravel. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go,

In 1610, John Guy established a small colony in Cupids, Newfoundland, on the very edge of a world unknown to Europeans. Two years later, he brought a shipment of supplies to his all-male settlement: 70 goats, 10 heifers, 2 bulls, and 16 women. A Roll of the Bones tells the story of some of these nameless women by tracing the journeys of three young people--Ned Perry, Nancy Ellis, and Kathryn Gale--who leave Bristol, England, for a life in the struggling community. Ned dreams of altering his fate with the promise of a New World. Kathryn only wishes to follow her husband--little dreaming she might find romance outside her marriage. And Nancy, the servant girl, has no desire to leave Bristol, but her fealty will ultimately test her ability to survive. A vivid reimagining of settler life in the early seventeenth century, A Roll of the Bones is the first in a trilogy of novels wrestling with the realities of colonization. Here, Trudy J. Morgan-Cole presents an array of unforgettable characters inhabiting the space where two worlds will collide, where the limits of love and loyalty will be tried in a harsh and unforgiving landscape

"Felix, you are a dreamer. I used to be, too, but there's no payoff in it."Felix Ryan, from Curlew, Conception Bay, has been in love with the enigmatic Ellen Monteau ever since the day he met her in school at Smallwood High. Friends and family try to warn him that she is nothing but trouble, but she is Helen of Troy and he longs to be her King Menelaus . . . or Prince Paris. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing at home, as Felix's father erects an enormous sign on his house condemning Premier Joey Smallwood--much to the chagrin of his family and their Liberal neighbours in the early days after Confederation.This is the uproariously funny and at times heartbreaking tale of a young man's rough ride into adulthood. Felix Ryan is on a journey to discover who he is and where he is headed. He moves from rural Newfoundland to the hectic life of Memorial University in the late 1960s. It is a world of music, girls, and new experiences. Felix's world is changing as the Joey Smallwood era comes to an end. But Ellen Monteau never strays far from his mind. Ultimately, he must choose between continuing his education on the mainland of Canada, or putting down roots at home in Newfoundland.The Sign on My Father's House marks Tom Moore's triumphant and long-anticipated return to literary fiction. It is a story about finding your voice and putting up your own sign about who you are and what you believe.

#1 National Bestseller Finalist, CBC Canada Reads Finalist, Scotiabank Giller Prize By turns savage, biting, funny, poetic, and heartbreaking, Megan Gail Coles's debut novel rips into the inner lives of a wicked cast of characters, exposing class, gender, and racial tensions over the course of one Valentine's Day in the dead of a winter storm. Valentine's Day, the longest day of the year. A fierce blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off the city, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and discover that resilience proves most enduring in the dead of this winter's tale.

Imogene Tubbs has never met her father, and raised by her grandmother, she only sees her mother sporadically. But as she grows older, she learns that many people in her small, rural town believe her father is Cecil Jesso, the local drug dealer--a man both feared and ridiculed. Weaving through a maze of gossip, community, and the complications of family, Some People's Children is a revealing and liberating novel about the way others look at us and the power of self-discovery.

Winner, Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Winner, Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction Longlisted, Scotiabank Giller Prize "Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid, and beautiful. She has a great gift." -- Anne Enright, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Gathering Internationally celebrated as one of literature's most gifted stylists, Lisa Moore returns with her second story collection, a soaring chorus of voices, dreams, loves, and lives. Taking us from the Fjord of Eternity to the streets of St. John's and the swamps of Orlando, these stories show us the timeless, the tragic, and the miraculous hidden in the underbelly of our everyday lives. A missing rock god may have jumped a cruise ship -- in the Arctic. A grieving young woman may live next to a serial rapist. A man's last day on Earth replays in the minds of others in a furiously sensual, heartrending fugue. Something for Everyone is Moore at the peak of her prowess -- she seems bent on nothing less than rewiring the circuitry of the short story itself.

Percy Joyce is afflicted from birth with a congenital disfigurement but a regular boy on the cusp of teenage-hood, filled with yearning, wild with hormones, longing for what he can't have, for wanting to be let in...and let out; and his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Every man in St. John's lusts after her, including her sister-in-law Medina, her paying border, Pops MacDougall, with whom she carries on an affair of convenience - and Percy.

A Royal Newfoundland Regiment Love Story. In the summer of 1914, Daniel Beresford's innocent love affair with the merchant's daughter is discovered, forcing him to make an impossible decision to save his family from financial ruin. When news of the First World War reaches Middle Tickle, Daniel, who is torn between his love for Emma Tavenor and his responsibility to his family, enlists in the Newfoundland Regiment and departs for training.When Emma learns her father is to blame for Daniel's unexplained departure, she follows him to England, hoping they'll be reunited. Yet on the voyage, she discovers the regiment has been called up and is already engaged in battle. She realizes her only hope of finding Daniel is to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment and make her way to the Western Front. In 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, Emma and Daniel are reunited for a single, impassioned night near Beaumont-Hamel. Can the love they share survive the barriers of class and the horrors of battle? Or are their lives fated to join what would later be called a lost generation? Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

Darlene Carter was always a strong woman. But after suddenly losing her mother to a deadly virus, she is left anchorless while struggling to navigate the pandemic with her teenaged daughter. Isolated, and alone in grief, Darlene reluctantly takes on her mother’s pursuit to find familial connections. As restrictions lift, the two travel to Newfoundland to follow a DNA trail in search of answers. The family holds more than Darlene is prepared for. As she delves into a series of century-old journals that hold tales of her ancestors Doctors Peter and Mary Nolan, she begins to feel an unlikely kinship with Peter. Journey with Darlene, through Peter and Mary’s lives, as she links clues from yesteryear to modern-day DNA evidence, weaving them into the family tapestry of her Nolan roots. But when she is about to uncover the final threads, she fears her ancestors may have taken them to their graves. Can she unlock the secrets of the past? Battling to remain neutral in the chaos of post-pandemic Newfoundland, will Darlene embrace the true meaning of belonging and family like Peter and Mary write about, or is proof the only remedy for her fractured heart?

St. John's archivist Michael Lowe's life is turned on its head when a Dutch acquaintance, Anton Aalders, arrives on his doorstep in 1995. Anton is searching for a father he never met, ostensibly a Newfoundland soldier who was part of the Allied forces that liberated the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War. Anton's visit stretches from a few days to a few months, reluctant as he is to go in search of his father, and keen to learn as much as he can about Newfoundland, its history, and its people. Rabble-rouser and ardent Newfoundland patriot Brendan "Miles" Harnett, Michael's friend and sometime bugbear, is obsessed with his own search for the lost "fatherland" of Newfoundland, which relinquished its political independence in 1934. Miles is only too eager to teach Anton--and Michael--the shameful, forgotten history (as he sees it) of the lost country of Newfoundland. The Strangers' Gallery is a finely crafted, at times humorous, novel about the painful search for identity--both political and personal. This book is available as an ebook and as a Bookclub-Kit-To-Go.

Such Miracles and Mischiefs, the second book in the Cupids trilogy, adventures across the first three English colonies in the Americas—Newfoundland, Virginia, and Bermuda—and highlights women’s colonial experience. After pirates attack the Guy family’s plantation near Cupids, Nancy Ellis needs all her ingenuity to survive in the hands of lawless men. Ned Perry crosses the ocean to find her, while Nancy’s employer and friend, Kathryn Guy, must rebuild a home on the harsh shores of the New Found Land.

In My Indian, Sylvester was hired by William Cormack in 1822 to guide him across Newfoundland in search of Beothuk encampments. In fact, he followed the advice of his Elders and guided Cormack away from the Beothuk. In this sequel, having parted ways with Cormack at St. George’s Bay, Sylvester decides to go out on his own, in search of the winter camp of the last of the remaining Beothuk. Written as fiction, by two Mi’kmaq authors, Suliewey: The Sequel to My Indian supports Mi’kmaq oral history of friendly relationships with the Beothuk. The novel reclaims the settler narrative that the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq of Newfoundland were enemies and represents an existing kinship between the Mi’kmaq and the Beothuk. Rich in oral history, the descriptions of traditional ceremonies and sacred medicines, the use of Mi’kmaw language, and the teachings of two-spirit place readers on the land and embed them in the strong relationships described throughout the book.

It was just a run-of-the-mill, garden-variety trip to the supermarket. But everything changes when middle-aged, luck-starved Henry Puddester finds a baby in his shopping cart. Naturally, he panics and bolts, preferring the fire to the frying pan, which leads to an odyssey strewn with wild scenes and wacky characters.

A deeply suspenseful story about one man's struggles against the forces of nature and the ruins of memory. For 12 generations, when the fish were plentiful and when they all-but disappeared, the inhabitants of this remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement, and each has been offered a generous compensation package to leave. But the money is offered with a proviso: everyone has to go; the government won't be responsible for one crazy coot who chooses to stay alone on an island. Also available as an eBook, an eAudiobook, audiobook on CDS and as a Bookclub-kit-to-go.

The time is the 1950s, and the place is Canada's Atlantic coast at the edge of the great Newfoundland fishing banks. Sylvanus Now is a young fisherman of great charm and strength. His youthful desires are simple: he wants a suit to lure a girl--the fine-boned beauty Adelaide--and he knows exactly how much fish he has to catch to pay for it. Adelaide, however, has other dreams. She longs to escape the sea, the fish, and the stultifying community, but her need of refuge from her own troubled family leads her to Sylvanus and life in the neighbouring outport. Set against the love story of Addie and Sylvanus is the sea, the Great Mother that is on the cusp of cataclysmic change. Caught between his desire to please his wife and his strongly independent nature, Sylvanus must decide what path his future will take. Also available as an eBook and a Bookclub kit--to-go.

From the celebrated author of February and Caught comes an exhilarating new novel that asks: What makes a family? How does it shape us? And can we ever really choose who we love?  As the snowstorm of the century rages, twenty-one-year-old Xavier is beaten and stabbed in a vicious attack. His mother, Jules, must fight her way through the shuttered streets of St. John's to reach the hospital where Xavier lies unconscious. When a video of the attack surfaces, Jules struggles to make sense of what she sees in the footage -- and of what she can't quite make out.  While Xavier's story unfolds, so, too, do the stories that brought him there. Here, across families and generations, are stories of mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers; of children cared for, neglected, lost, and re-found; of selfless generosity and reluctant debt. Above all, Moore, in the inimitable largesse of her art, paints a shimmering portrait of the sacrifice, pain, and wild joy of loving.  A tour de force of storytelling and craft, This Is How We Love brings us a cast of characters so rich and true they could only have been written by Lisa Moore. 

I never imagined I would die this way. Young, surrounded by thousands, yet alone and far away from home. I thought I would be afraid, but I'm not. The pain in my chest has dulled to a mild ache. Maybe if I close my eyes I'll see my home, see Mom one last time. She'll be upset if I don't say goodbye. Dad will understand the sacrifice I made for king and country. And little Joanie. She'll miss me the most, I think. I open my eyes and my breath comes out as a shudder. Can I still be here among the dead and dying in this barren place? This no man's land? - Private Ronald Marrie, Beaumont Hamel, July 1, 1916Ron Marrie of St. John's enlisted with the Newfoundland Regiment in 1914 to join those who were fighting overseas in war-torn Europe. The Tin Triangle follows him through recruitment, training, and his first deadly clash with the enemy at Gallipoli. But that battle would pale in comparison to the fateful morning of July 1, 1916, when Ron and his comrades went over the top to engage the enemy at Beaumont Hamel.Ron's story, inspired by the author's grandfather, is a tribute to the hundreds of Newfoundlanders who paid the ultimate price on foreign shores during World War I. The Tin Triangle is Linda Abbott's third book and a storytelling masterpiece.

They say Dor's family is cursed. The house her great-great grandfather built on the south side of St. John's has never been at peace; the old people think it lies on a fairy path. Ever since electricity came to the island, things have worsened, and experiments in the brand-new technology of radio put her family in real peril. In December 1901, Marconi arrives in Newfoundland with a secret mission: to receive the first wireless trans-Atlantic radio signal. Disguised as a boy, Dor joins his team. Then the Little Strangers kidnap her mother. Must Dor sabotage Marconi's experiments to save her?

A twentieth-century descendant of the Lavinia of Random Passage, Lav rediscovers the power of her heritage and a courage she didn't know she possessed. Waiting for Time, the sequel to inte ational best-selling novel Random Passage by Be ice Morgan, continues the saga of the inhabitants of Cape Random. It also tells the story of today's Newfoundland - a place where the past overshadows the present and shapes the future. This is the story of lonely, unplanned jou eys, of courage and pride, of loss that must be endured again and again until we understand the nature of the path we have taken and the place at which we arrived.

Award-winning author Terry Doyle offers heartbreaking and humorous insights into constructions of masculinity in this gripping family drama.The Wards are a working-class Newfoundland family on the cusp of upheaval. The children are becoming adults, the adults are growing old, and the new dog was probably stolen. When a sudden illness forces the Wards together, can they finally learn to be close-knit? This unsettling, at times hilarious novel explores the instability of nuclear families and the depths of dysfunction. Family is family - you don't get to choose. So what, exactly, do you get to choose?

Scrappy tough guy and three-time loser Johnny Keough is going a little stir-crazy awaiting trial for an alleged assault charge involving his girlfriend, Madonna, and a teapot. Facing three to five years in a maximum-security prison, Johnny knows this might just be the end of the road. But when Madonna doesn’t show up for court due to a fatal accident, shell-shocked Johnny seizes his unexpected “clean slate” as a sign from above and embarks on an epic hitchhiking journey across Canada to deliver her ashes to a fabled beach on the outskirts of Vancouver. Johnny’s wanderings see him propelled in and out of the driver’s seat of stolen cars, knocking heads with cagey cops, nearly decapitated by a moose, coming face-to-face with his incarcerated biological father in a Kingston jail, and finding surprising connections with strangers on the lonely road west. But most of all, he revisits the choices and mistakes of his past—his relationships with his adoptive father and a cousin who meant the world to him, and his first real chance at love with the woman who is now lost to him. We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night is the story of one man’s kicking-and-screaming attempt to recuperate from a life of petty crime and shattered relationships, and somehow accept and maybe even like the new man emerging from within, the one he so desperately needs to become.

Longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlisted for the 2021 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Concordia University First Book Prize Le Grand Prix du livre de Montreal: 2021 Jury Selection A remarkable debut about intergenerational female relationships and resistance found in the unlikeliest of places, We, Jane explores the precarity of rural existence and the essential nature of abortion. Searching for meaning in her Montreal life, Marthe begins an intense friendship with an older woman, also from Newfoundland, who tells her a story about purpose, about a duty to fulfill. It's back home, and it goes by the name of Jane. Marthe travels back to a small community on the island with the older woman to continue the work of an underground movement in 60s Chicago: abortion services performed by women, always referred to as Jane. She commits to learning how to continue this legacy and protect such essential knowledge. But the nobility of her task and the reality of small-town life compete, and personal fractures within their group begin to grow. We, Jane probes the importance of care work by women for women, underscores the complexity of relationships in close circles, and beautifully captures the inevitable heartache of understanding home.

In 1977, a young woman swipes a duffel bag of drug money and flees her bad-news boyfriend, hitching a ride with a long-haul trucker who points out satellites and enthuses about the future of space cargo. Building a life disconnected from her past, she assumes a new identity as Dawn Taylor, but thirty years later, running a roadside motel on a remote highway, Dawn will host a group of disparate individuals -- all desperate to rewrite their own stories. Brody seeks escape from those intent on repeating the narrative ofhis childhood trauma. Cheryl, whose career as a filmmaker is being dismantled on social media, rushes to rescue her daughter from a vicious cycle. And Spencer, an ex-con with easy access to his criminal past, chases an elusive redemption after seeing a picture of Dawn on a tourism website.

Matthew Molloy, bright and educated, longs to leave behind his miserable existence on a small farm in Ireland. He yields to pressure and sets aside his dream until one day, he walks away, leaving his wife and small son to fend for themselves. In the summer of 1971, his granddaughter Nora finds herself in Shoal Cove, Newfoundland, where Peg Barry reveals the secrets of Matthew's reclusive life. The story slips back and forth between Ireland in the early 1900s, a country struggling to rediscover its identity and restore its nationhood, and Newfoundland in the 1940s, a country about to relinquish its nationhood and join Canada.

On the coast of rural Newfoundland, Hannah Fitzgerald's mother has lived her life in near total isolation. When Hannah returns to the lonely saltbox house to prepare her mother for the transition into assisted living, her childhood home is anything but welcoming. Dilapidated from years of hoarding and neglect, the walls are crumbling, leaving Hannah's wellness crumbling along with them. While packing her mother's things, Hannah discovers a trap door to the house's attic, the one she believed for most of her life had been permanently sealed shut. Blinded by curiosity, Hannah enters the attic and finds a mysterious bedroom riddled with dark secrets. Desperate to know more, Hannah begins to scramble for answers, combing the house for clues that may lead her to the truth. Hannah must navigate through the violent outbursts of her senile mother, the prying questions of a nosy hospice nurse, and the rage of the coastal wind that threatens the structure of the house. Piece by piece, she assembles a picture of her mother's not-so-distant past—a twisted tangle of infatuation, lies, and maybe even murder. The Woman in the Attic is a claustrophobic psychological thriller wrought with suspense. This novel will put you on the edge of your seat . . . and make you wary of the unused spaces collecting dust in your home.

Fifty years after a young Protestant girl has an affair with an a Catholic in a remote Newfoundland village, she returns home with her daughter to scatter her American husband's ashes. Also available as eBook and a Bookclub-kit-to-go.