Reading by Lightning
Winner, Commonwealth Writers Prize, Canada and the Caribbean, Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and On the Same Page, Manitoba Reads
Shortlisted, Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and McNally Robinson Book of the Year
Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Lily Piper and her family live in an ephemeral …
Mnemonic
Shortlisted, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Award
Warm, imaginative, and thoroughly original, this memoir intertwines the mysteries of trees with the defining moments in the life of novelist and essayist Theresa Kishkan. For Kishkan, trees are memory markers of life, and in this book she explores the presence of trees in nature, in culture and in her pers …
We Are Not in Pakistan
A Quill & Quire Book of the Year
Ten years after her stunning debut, Shauna Singh Baldwin returns to Goose Lane with an outstanding new collection of ten stories. Migrating from Central America to the American South, from Metro Toronto to the Ukraine, this book features an unforgettable cast of characters. In the title story, 16-year-old Megan hates …
Precious
Douglas Glover's raucous first novel was a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and sold out its first and only print run in just one month. Now mystery fans and readers of literary fiction alike can once again enjoy this witty post-modern detective tale by the author of Elle. The eponymous central character in Precious is a boozy, bu …
Under Budapest
Ailsa Kay lays out the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle in Under Budapest, bringing into stark relief the triumphs, calamities, and desperation of two North American Hungarian families and those whose lives they've touched. There's Agnes and Tibor, mother and son, travelling to Hungary for reasons they keep to themselves, he to recover from a …
Sisters of Grass
In her vibrant first novel Sisters of Grass, Theresa Kishkan weaves a tapestry of the senses through the touchstones of a young woman's life. Anna is preparing an exhibit of textiles reflecting life in central British Columbia a century ago. In a forgotten corner of a museum, she discovers a dusty cardboard box containing the century-old personal e …
The Hunter and the Wild Girl
Winner, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize
Shortlisted, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
A feral girl roams the dense forests of nineteenth-century France, stealing food from remote farmyards and avoiding human contact. Seen on one of her thieving missions in the village of Freyzus, she is chased by suspicious townspeople to the edge of a deep gorge, wher …
The Push & the Pull
Andrew Day embarks on a bicycle trip from Halifax to Kingston, his childhood home. As he goes, the dual narratives of Andrew's life emerge: the slow, painful death of his father and the disappearance of Betty, who may be lost to him forever. He contemplates, too, the nature of desire. En route, Andrew sloughs off his fears, material goods, and atta …
Where the Nights Are Twice as Long
Under the covers of Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets, David Eso and Jeanette Lynes collect letters and epistolary poems from more than 120 Canadian poets, including Pauline Johnson, Malcolm Lowry, Louis Riel, Alden Nowlan, Anne Szumigalski, Leonard Cohen, John Barton, and Di Brandt, and many others, encompassing th …
The South Will Rise at Noon
Hot on the heels of Douglas Glover's Governor General's Award for fiction for his riotous novel, Elle, Goose Lane brought back into print Glover's hilarious novel, The South Will Rise at Noon, originally published in 1988. At the centre of this story of a modern-day knight errant is Tully Stamper, a bankrupt, a liar, a tippler of corn juice and a d …
Tattycoram
Caricatured by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit as the cantankerous maid of Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, "Tattycoram" tells her own life story in this utterly compelling metafiction by the celebrated author of Isobel Gunn. Throughout her career, Audrey Thomas has repeatedly challenged her readers to follow her into new territory. In Tattycoram, she does i …
six@sixty
To mark Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, the editors at Goose Lane selected six tiny perfect stories for your reading pleasure. Authored by some of Canada's finest writers, they come from the sweep of Goose Lane's publishing history. Each story is part of this collection or they may be purchased individually in eBook singles. Here's what you …
Song of Kosovo
Some days, it doesn't pay to be a lapsed pretend Buddhist . . . particularly when you're charged with a lengthy list of war crimes. Vida Zankovic has done many things to stay alive. A wily young man caught in the insanity of the Balkan wars, Vida has dealt drugs, been forced to join the army, and then deserted when he tried to save a young boy trap …
The Americans Are Coming
An invasion? For teenagers Dryfly Ramsey and Shadrack Nash, poor and ignorant in the world's terms but rich in the lore of the magical Miramichi, the annual influx of American anglers, with their money, fishing gear, and thirst for salmon seems like one, and it sets the stage for action. A cast of quirky, unforgettable characters — Nutbeam, a lar …
A Guide to Animal Behaviour
Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction
A Guide to Animal Behaviour is a stunning collection of stories by an author who is fast becoming one of the great, innovative story writers of his generation. Following on the heels of his widely acclaimed comic novel, The South Will Rise at Noon, Douglas Glover's new collection smashes all t …
The Wanton Troopers
In this new edition of Alden Nowlan's poignant first novel, published posthumously in 1988, a boy growing up in a small Nova Scotia mill town is abandoned by the young mother he adores. Family relationships, sexual confusions, and the pains of love are rendered with deep and authentic feeling. This is an essential book for all readers who have admi …
Jonas in Frames
Jonas in Frames is [choose one]: A) a series of loosely connected narrative fragments written in poetic prose; B) a maze of postcard stories bursting with literary in-jokes; C) a delicate sequence of prose poems interspersed with narrative interludes; or D) haunted by the ghost of Samuel Beckett.
In its esoteric glimpse into the disassociated, Jonas …
What Had Become of Us
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's haunting "What Had Become of Us," is from her 2003 debut book of short fiction, Way Up. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also part of the six@sixty collection.
A Fit Month for Dying
A Fit Month for Dying is the third book in M.T. Dohaney's highly praised trilogy about the women of Newfoundland's outports. Fans of The Corrigan Women and To Scatter Stones will embrace this book, while those reading the author for the first time will discover her characteristic bittersweet humour. Tess Corrigan seems to be living the good life. S …
The Players
Nominated, 2010 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Two French explorers arrive in Court to charm two ships from the English King. The rest, as they say, is history...' Or perhaps not. Set in the libertine era of Restoration England, The Players embarks on a voyage of discovery with compelling characters, …
Inishbream
A wanderer arrives by chance on Inishbream, a rocky dot in the sea just off the west coast of Ireland. A lover of boats and a strong worker, she soon marries the young owner of her stone cottage. For a time, she does her woman's work, fishes with her husband, and walks along the shore, imagining Saint Brendan and the invisible world so real to the …
Greetings from the Vodka Sea
Greetings from the off-kilter world of Chris Gudgeon. In his first-ever book of fiction, the bestselling author of The Naked Truth: The Untold History of Sex in Canada offers postcard glimpses into the quirky private lives of unusually twisted characters. A prim English bride honeymooning near the so-called Vodka Sea learns the hard way why it's be …
Savage Love
An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013
A Globe and Mail Top 100 for 2013
A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2013
Longlisted, Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
Savage Love marks the long-awaited literary return of one of Canada's most lauded and stylistically brilliant authors. Slyly holding forth with subversive wit, Glover skewers every conventional …
The Violin Lover
Set in Jewish London in the 1930s, Susan Glickman's The Violin Lover is written against the backdrop of Hitler's escalating campaign against the Jews. This beautifully written novel tells the story of Clara Weiss and Ned Abraham, "the violin lover," brought together by Clara's 11-year-old son, Jacob. A successful doctor and amateur violinist, Ned i …
Will Starling
Shortlisted, Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic
Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
From the acclaimed author of Daniel O'Thunder comes a rollicking, bawdy, and haunting novel about love and redemption, death and resurrection.
The great metropolis of London swaggers with Regency abandon as nineteen-year-old Will …
Perfecting
With blood on his hands, Curtis Woolf flees his home in New Mexico for Canada, where he starts a religious commune, the Family. There he heals others and preaches pacifism while enduring the torment of this own damaged soul. Then his lover, Martha, finds his gun and goes south to discover the truth, whatever that might be. Curtis sets out to bring …
Knife Party at the Hotel Europa
Shortlisted, Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction, New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction, and Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
One of Canada's literary treasures, Mark Anthony Jarman returns with a book of moving and often funny tales of a man's quest for himself. A.S. Byatt says that his writing is "extraordinary, his stories gripping," and …
Night Street
Winner, Dobbie Literary Award, FAW Barbara Ramsden Award, Sydney Morning Herald's Young Novelist Award, and The Australian/Vogel Literary Award
Night Street is the passionate story of a young painter, Clarice Beckett, who defies society's strict conventions and indifferent art critics alike and leads an intense private and professional life. With he …
The Iron Bridge
Shortlisted, Danuta Gleed Literary Award
In a bold, brilliant collection of stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky delivers a superbly inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants. In The Iron Bridge, he is unafraid to push at the boundaries of the unexpected as he breathes fictionalized life i …
The Time We All Went Marching
Seduced by Slim's stories of the privations of a cross-country trek that ended in the violence of an historic riot and tales of Depression-era work camps, Edie MacDonald has followed him from mine to mine, where he finds work and she cares for their son, Belly, in the thin shelter of canvas tents. Until now. Edie has left Slim behind, passed out in …
If I Could Turn and Meet Myself
At his death in 1985, Alden Nowlan stood in the first rank of Canadian writers. Today, his poetry is beloved by Maritimers and popular across Canada and in the US as well. If I Could Turn and Meet Myself tells his life story, from his birth to a 14-year-old mother in 1933 through his impoverished childhood, his disturbed adolescence, his newspaper …
A Boy's Life of Napoleon
Alden Nowlan's "A Boy's Life of Napoleon" is a brilliant piece of short fiction adapted from Nowlan's first novel, The Wanton Troopers, written in 1960 but published posthumously in 1988. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also available as part of the six@sixty collection.
The Wind Seller
In her highly anticipated second novel, Rachael Preston tells a vibrant, compelling story of 20th century piracy. Exploring the complex struggle for freedom against a backdrop of passion and repression, The Wind Seller is the story of two vulnerable, shellshocked people and the "wind seller" who captivates them both. Life in 1924 Kenomee, Nova Scot …
Prairie Ostrich
Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers
Not every story has a happy ending.
Since her brother's death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Mama Murakami has curled up inside a bottle, and Papa has exiled himself to t …
The Nettle Spinner
In her early twenties, Alma met a tree-planter and fell in love — not with the man but with his strangely romantic work. Now, after several seasons of planting trees out west, the tough-minded hero of Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's visceral first novel has come home to northern Ontario to help reforest the ravaged landscape with a gang of filthy ex-hipp …
Knife Party
The extraordinary "Knife Party" is from a new collection of stories by Mark Anthony Jarman titled Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, published in the spring of 2015. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also part of the six@sixty collection.
The Town That Drowned
Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and Europe, Frye Academy Award, and Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Shortlisted, CLA Young Adult Book Award, Red Maple Award, and University of Canberra Book of the Year
Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin Award
Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through t …
The Life and Times of Captain N.
Douglas Glover's acclaimed novel The Life and Times of Captain N. is now available in a GLE Library edition. Originally published by McClelland & Stewart, the novel was acclaimed by the most respected critics in Canada and the US, and compelled The Toronto Star's Philip Marchand to call Glover "one of the most important Canadian writers of his gene …
The Rest is Silence
Winner, H.R. (Bill) Percy Novel Prize
Finalist, Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Finalist, Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award
Finalist, Ottawa Book Award
In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man has decided to withdraw from the world and live off the land. Meanwhile, news reports begin to trickle in of a global catastrophe. Someone has released a genetically …
Rupert's Land
At the height of the Great Depression, two Prairie children struggle with poverty and uncertainty. Surrounded by religion, law, and her authoritarian father, Cora Wagoner daydreams about what it would be like to abandon society altogether and join one of the Indian tribes she's read so much about. Saddened by struggles with Indian Agent restriction …
Too Much on the Inside
Too Much on the Inside explores the depths of coincidence and human connection, as they collide with the impossible task of forgetting the past. Three immigrants, and one Canadian from rural Nova Scotia , all in their twenties, are soon to discover their interconnected fates. They are world travellers, escapists and dreamers, at a crossroads on Tor …
The Wild Rose Anthology of Alberta Prose
The first multi-genre historical anthology of Alberta writing since 1979, The Wild Rose Anthology of Alberta Prose collects twentieth-century short fiction, excerpts from novels, and non-fiction. This anthology explores what writers-past and present-can tell us about what it means to be Albertan-and Canadian. Each piece is preceded by an introducti …
Insistent Garden, The
Winner of the 2014 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction at the Manitoba Book Prizes!
Finalist for Best Book Cover / Jacket Design at the 2014 Alberta Book Design Awards!
Edith Stoker's father is building a wall in their backyard. A very, very high wall-a brick bulwark in his obsessive war against their hated neighbour Edward Black.
It is 1969, and far …
Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013
In Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013, the world's leading Munro scholar offers a critical overview of Alice Munro and her writing spanning forty years. Beginning with a newly written overarching introduction, featuring directive interleaved commentaries addressing chronology and contexts, ending with encompassing afterword, this collection provides a …
Costume and Bone
Set in the downtown Toronto of the 1980s, these two stories are told with an intricacy which powerfully evokes both sense and dream. An anorexic who embraces poverty after a childhood of privilege attends a small dinner party where she confronts secrets and lies of the past and present. Dominant in his relationships with an Ojibwe wife and a ballet …
Diamond Grill
Winner of the 1997 Howard O’Hagan Short Fiction Award!
“In the Diamond, at the end of a long green vinyl aisle between two booths of chrome, Naugahyde, and Formica, are two large swinging wooden doors, each with a round hatch of face-sized window. Those kitchen doors can be kicked with such a slap they’re heard all the way up to the soda fount …
Niko
Winner, 2011 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2016
Swiftly paced, poignantly moving, and beautifully imagined, Niko is the powerful epic story of what it takes to survive after war, of what to hold dear and what to leave behind in a world that won’t …
Entropic
Winner of the 2016 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award at the East Coast Literary Awards!
Shortlisted for the Book Design Award at the 2016 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
Shortlisted for the 2015 New Brunswick Book Awards!
In this collection of stories, author and filmmaker R. W. Gray (Crisp) finds the place where the beautiful, the strange, and …
Dating
Jenkins never dreamed he'd live long enough to be dating again. Two years after his wife's death, he's testing the waters and realizing he's still no wiser than a schoolboy. When Jenkins hears his recently widowed high-school sweetheart is in town, he sees a chance to rekindle an old flame. But when her son greets him at the door with a list of rul …