One of Reader's Digest Best Summer Reads (US).

Set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war, Ru Freeman’s epic novel explores the lives of the diverse families that live on Sal Mal Lane and the heartbreaking ways this once harmonious community turns on one another with the country on the brink of war.

On the day the Herath family moves in, …

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and selected as a New York Times Notable Book, Swimming Home is a sexy psychological thriller from a highly acclaimed writer.

Poet Joe and his war-correspondent wife Isabel arrive with their daughter and another couple to a rented villa in the south of France to discover a body floating face down in the swimming …

A vivid and powerful novel set in post-WWII Japan, Fireflies chronicles the lives of four interweaving characters navigating the war-torn streets of Tokyo during the American occupation.

August 1945. Japan has been defeated in the Second World War. The country lies in ruins.

Satsuko Takara and her teenage brother, Hiroshi, have lost their parents, an …

Twenty-five-year-old Holocaust survivor Miklós is being shipped from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Gotland, Sweden, to receive treatment at the Larbro Hospital. Here he is sentenced to death again: he is diagnosed with tuberculosis and his doctors inform him that he has six months to live. But Miklós decides to wage war on his own fate: …

On the surface, the Paul family are living the liberal, middle-class Scandinavian dream. Max Paul is a renowned sociologist and his wife Katriina has a well-paid job in the public sector. They live in an airy apartment in the centre of Helsinki. But look closer and the cracks start to show.

As he approaches his sixtieth birthday, the certainties of …

Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant wi …

Anne Jaccob is coming of age in late eighteenth-century London, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. When she is taken advantage of by her tutor — a great friend of her father’s — and is set up to marry a squeamish snob named Simeon Onions, she begins to realize just how powerless she is in Victorian society. Anne is watchful, cunning, and bor …

How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.
Globe-trotting photojournalist Angela Thomas has spent all thirty-two years of her life dreaming of far-off places. Nothing that has happened to her thus far -- the dysfunction of her family, the failure of her marriage -- can convince her that "home" is where she belongs. Though she won?t admit it, …

Julia is in limbo. Her mother has just died and her married lover, Nicholas, has gone missing in Morocco. Thirsting for love, for sex, for connection, she grasps at the trailing threads of those who have left her behind: a birth certificate, issued two years before she was born and kept secret from her; and memories of Nicholas, his touch, his scen …

From one of Denmark’s rising stars, a powerful and profound novel about a young boy and his father who live at the margins of society, until one day their adventure takes an unpredictable turn.

1986. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme has been assassinated, and a young boy and his father are on the move again.Travelling from Sweden to the outskirts …

A Guardian Book of the Year and Chapters/Indigo Best Book

A bestseller in Scandinavia -- Doppler is the enchanting, subversive, and very unusual story about one man and his moose.

This beguiling modern fable tells the story of a man who, after the death of his father, abandons his home, his family, his career, and the trappings of civilization for a …

Through the braided narratives of three spirited characters, this novel bears witness to the infamous “American” crime that metastasized uber-civilized Montreal. Everyone wants a Marin at her party. Bohemian and beautiful, this engineering student is as passionate about constructing sets for theater and opera as she is about Trey, the one man s …

Claude Tremblay works as a political analyst at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. But when the Congolese warlord Kabanga, accused of crimes against humanity, is released from trial due to a procedural error, Claude resigns his post and follows the accused back to his home country in search of justice. In The World, the Lizard, and Me, …

Shunned as an outsider and mistreated due to an undiagnosed learning disability, the young and imaginative Mari-Jen Delene retreats into silence. Around her, the fictional community of Ste. Noire, Cape Breton, hosts a vividly drawn cast of characters: the uncompromising and bitter Mother Superior; the dangerous Uncle Jule; the kind-hearted holocaus …

At the end of the Second World War nearly 50,000 women emigrated to Canada from Britain and the continent, scarred from the bomb-rutted fields of Europe. For them that Atlantic crossing marked the beginning of a great adventure: a new country, a new life and a new husband. For many children of these unions came a dual heritage, a cultural divide th …

Patrick Wiseman moved his wife and son back to Newfoundland to start a new Pentecostal church, but when his wife Anne leaves him for a man she meets on Facebook and his son Hab moves in with his girlfriend Natalie—a burgeoning alcoholic with a fiery past—Patrick takes a suicidal leap of faith that brings him face to face with his estranged fath …

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 …

All We Want is Everything, Andrew F. Sullivan’s exceptional debut collection of short stories, finds the misused and forgotten, the places in between, the borderlands on the edge of town where dead fields alternate with empty warehouses—places where men and women clutch tightly at whatever fragments remain. Motels are packed with human cargo, w …

Glorifying consumerism as the de facto religion of our time, Shopping Cart Pantheism offers a preposterous yet challenging invitation to participate in commodity worship. As our narrator meanders the Las Vegas Strip, its sites and monuments become examples of Christian sainthood, miracles, worship, and dogma now transformed into icons of consumeris …

A new collection of short fiction from the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning author and Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Greg Hollingshead.

Act Normal is a collection of sharp, new comic stories about sex, art, and the daily risk of having accidents. Highly original, occasionally dark, but always endearing, these stories are filled with ch …

The long-awaited follow up to Annabel and Kathleen Winter’s first work of narrative nonfiction.

In 2010, bestselling author Kathleen Winter took a journey across the storied Northwest Passage, among marine scientists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and curious passengers. From Greenland to Baffin Island and all along the passage, Win …

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once.

Only three people are privy to the secret — t …

A lost feminist classic — and winner of the Toronto Book Award — reissued to coincide with the 35th anniversary of publication.

In her yearning, elusive search for a lover, Shirley Kaszenbowski sheds her drab “basic black” existence together with torturous memories of guilt and loss as a Jewish immigrant in Toronto.

Shirley Kaszenbowski, née …

Three men race against time to take possession of a sacred 5,000-year-old Buddhist sculpture: Khalid, a leading Pakistani antiquities dealer, arranges for the illegal importation of the statue from neighbouring Afghanistan. Ghalib, a wealthy art collector with political aspirations, has purchased the statue for his private collection. Adeel, a high …

After You’ve Gone vibrates with authenticity: two eras, two young women caught up in the giddy thrall of love and music and feckless men. — Lee Kvern, author of The Matter of Sylvie and Seven Ways to Sunday After You’ve Gone is a thoughtful, offbeat story about two guitarists from two different generations. Through the linked lives of Lita an …

This Ramshackle Tabernacle is a collection of short stories set in and around the fictional villages of St. Lola and St. Olga in northeastern Ontario. Whether reflecting on the broken lives of others in the community or mourning the death of a friend who drowned in a freak fishing accident, the characters in this collection face tragedy with grace, …

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� …

Young readers may be amazed to learn that Canada's bestselling author (30 million books so far) started off in Pennsylvania and struggled in school. A solitary daydreamer, raised in a large, boisterous family, he found solace in books at an early age. Considered a slow learner by the nuns who taught him, his creative gifts were eventually recognize …

In 1913 Dr. Louis Thomas and his family settle on the French islands of St. Pierre and Michelon. Enchanted by how this French land navigates the harsh climate of the Atlantic Ocean, he immerses himself in his passion for photography and captures the soul of the place. Yet despite his love for St. Pierre and its people, he leaves one day, abandoning …

Winner of Canada Reads 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twe …

Amity provides a window to the wreckage caused by war and conflict that leave behind destruction, displacement, pain and struggle resulting in life-long and irreparable psychological disorders. It is a story about the lives of various people who are dealing with the devastation of war and conflict, here specifically within the contexts of Yugoslavi …

There is an epidemic of violence against women in Canada and the world. For many women physical and sexual assault, or the threat of such violence, is a daily reality. Walk Myself Home is an anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and oral interviews on the subject of violence against women including contributions by Kate Braid, Yasuko Thahn and S …

Cally is a twenty-five year old business graduate. Her mother, who was born in Crete but has always refused to talk about it, has died, leaving one instruction: before starting her first job, Cally should visit Crete. There she meets Oliver, a reticent, very attractive US Army deserter. A night of love awakens in Cally feelings she has never known. …

Just three months after his wife’s death to breast cancer, Jon packs up his infant son, Myles, and they set off on a six-week “Healing Tour” through Canada and the United States. Their journey, set to the soundtrack of the music Jon loves, sees them negotiating rolling mid-western hills, exploring a cave, losing confidence in the prairies, an …

A man, nameless, wakes up in Manhattan in a stranger's apartment with few memories of who he is. He remembers a life in California and the love of a girl named Sarah—memories that don’t match the life he now finds himself in.

Losing hold of what he can say for certain about his life, he turns to a doctor who claims he can help recover more memor …

Shortly after the first referendum on Quebec separation, four people in their forties encounter each other in Ile d’Or, the town where all of them grew up. The novel is about gold and greed and renewal and hope. About people who emerge from a frontier existence into the society of the late twentieth century with the need to discover how their con …

Pilgrims in Love involves a re-visioning of the Canterbury Tales, told from the point of view of Alison, Wife of Bath, and Eglentyne, Prioress. Both undertake the pilgrimage to Canterbury because of personal crises that they face as they approach middle age. In the course of their journey they grow out of the straight-jackets that have been imposed …

Embedded in Canadian and world history, and set in downtown Toronto between 1947 and the turn of the century, The House on Lippincott is a Jewish family saga which weaves together family caring, Holocaust trauma, abuse, aging, betrayal, anti-Semitism, resistance, and celebration, while introducing vital new characters to the Canadian landscape. The …

Stony Point tells the story of a woman who succeeds in doing things at a time when custom restricts her from doing anything. In 1903, shortly after the Frank slide, a newspaper reporter vanishes from a mining town in the Crowsnest Pass. Lucille travels to Stony Point in search of her sister's husband. She finds a town under the heel of a ruthless m …

Silent Girl explores the experiences of unforgettable characters as they follow trajectories unimagined by Shakespeare, including a young girl who is unwittingly sold to traffickers after losing her mother in the 2004 tsunami in the title story; an ambitious, proud student in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan who finds her dreams taken hostage in Kesh Kumay; …

The Long March Home tells the story of three generations of women. Agnes, a young Canadian goes to China as a missionary, and falls in love with a Chinese medical student. Growing anti-western sentiment forces her to return home to Nova Scotia, where she discovers she is pregnant. Meihua, their American-born daughter, travels to China in search of …

Who is the mysterious woman in the Matisse drawing, Woman in a Blouse, Dreaming? What secrets is she hiding? Chloe Rea grew up with the Matisse sketch and believes the woman in the famous Rumanian blouse is her grandmother. But the sketch now belongs to Adam Jensen, who inherited it after his brother’s sudden death in the south of France. Now Chl …

Manfred Weiszl who lies dying of cancer in an upper room of a grand old Toronto house. The action of the novel is precipitated when Manfred wishes to see Rupert his son before he dies and Rupert refuses to cooperate. However, Moments of Joy, is a novel of character rather than plot. The intrigue and narrative is around how these characters, and in …

Over Our Heads is a novel that weaves together the histories of two very different half-sisters who return home to deal with the aftermath that occurs when the grandmother who raised them dies. Emma, a punk band singer and poet turned pet psychic, and Rachel, an actuary with an interest in astronomy, both carry the remnants of childhoods overshadow …

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 disappear …

When Joss finds herself having to make mortgage payments without help from her depressed, stoner boyfriend who has just moved out, and the company she works for folds leaving her suddenly unemployed, she is forced to sell her house, on which she takes a financial loss, and decides to camp out in a vacant complex of school buildings to give herself …

Rimana Sen, a young Indian woman, is thrilled to be recruited by a company in Canada and pleased to escape her mother’s expectations of marriage. On the flight to Canada she meets Jug Ducati, a young Canadian. By the time their flight arrives in Toronto, they are well on their way to falling in love. At the airport, Rimana is whisked away by a co …

A mesmerizing novel of betrayal, loss, and multiple identities, this is the story of Licia Giganteschi, for whom it takes half a lifetime to go back home, to a place she loves and hates at the same time. Licia grows up in the beautiful wilderness of a mountain village in Calabria, Italy. Born of terroni with aspirations for their children, she is r …

Three women, three countries, three stories—the destinies of a Thai in prison for murdering her husband, a Cambodian longing for a child, and a Laotian Hmong refugee are threaded together by the tears leftover from the Vietnam War. Each of the women have been marked in some way by the atrocities of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the Secret War in Laos, an …

WINNER OF THE 2011 IPPY BRONZE MEDAL FOR REGIONAL FICTION

"Maura Hanrahan writes powerfully of the pain and joy of motherhood and ultimately delivers a mighty portrait of women’s lives writ large across the blue of sea and sky. I read it in great gulps. ”—Erica Eisdorfer, author of The Wet Nurse’s Tale

On the cusp of the Depression, Sheilagh …