The Law of Dreams
Winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction. Peter Behrens's bestselling novel is gorgeously written, Homeric in scope, and haunting in its depiction of a young man's perilous journey from innocence to experience.
The Law of Dreams follows Fergus O'Brien from Ireland to Liverpool and Wales during the Great Potato Famine of 1847, and then beyo …
Nothing for You Here, Young Man
In the latest installment in her award-winning series, Marie-Claire Blais reintroduces us to Petites Cendres, familiar from other books in the cycle, and lets us into the lives of two other unforgettable characters. She shows us, once again, how creativity and hope and suffering and exclusion intersect.
There is the writer who is stranded in an airp …
The Immaculate Conception
East-end Montreal in the mid-1920s. A popular restaurant is razed by an arsonist. Seventy-five people perish in the inferno. While strolling with his wheelchair-ridden father, a man furtively salvages a charred icon from the ruins. He is Remouald Tremblay, a self-effacing bank clerk whose pocket holds a treasured rabbit's foot and whose memory cont …
Caught
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book and for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.
"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read."—Patric …
Mai at the Predators' Ball
Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award: Translation. Shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.
In Mai at the Predators' Ball, Marie-Claire Blais, literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, offers a mesmerizing and unforgettable portrait of imaginary beings who seem to embrace …
The Best Kind of People
A finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a national bestseller, Zoe Whittall’s The Best Kind of People is a stunning tour de force about the unravelling of an all-American family.
George Woodbury, an affable teacher and beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual impropriety at a prestigious prep school. His wife, Joan, vaults betwee …
How Should a Person Be?
A brilliant portrayal of finding a beautiful life by one of Canada's most exciting literary talents, now available as an Anansi Book Club edition featuring discussion questions.
How Should a Person Be? is an unabashedly honest and hilarious tour through the unknowable pieces of one woman’s heart and mind, an irresistible torn-from-life book about …
Five Legs
First published by Anansi in 1969, Five Legs was a breakthrough for Canadian experimental fiction, selling 1,000 copies in its first week. At the time Scott Symons wrote that "Five Legs has more potent writing in it, page for page, than any other young Canadian novel that I can think of." Or indeed any young American novel — including Pynchon and …
Carry Me
Set during the decades between the First and Second World Wars, Carry Me is a devastating historical saga about war, love, and escape, from the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author of The Law of Dreams and The O’Briens.
Carry Me begins in 1909 on the Isle of Wight, England, and follows Billy Lange, the son of the skipper of a racin …
Vaudeville!
New York, at the end of the 1920s. Xavier X. Mortanse, a seventeen-year-old apprentice demolition man, who claims to be an immigrant from Hungary, falls into a hole -- the beginning of myriad bizarre humiliations he suffers, only to be shown mercy by a hairdresser named Peggy Sue who will later suffer a grotesque fate.
When Xavier loses his job, he …
Signs and Wonders
A New York Times Editors' Choice and an Oprah's Book Club Summer Reading Pick
In this brilliant new collection, Scotiabank Giller Prize and Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize nominee Alix Ohlin skillfully displays the full range of human emotions through the subtly powerful dramas of everyday life.
In "You Are What You Like" a young couple finds the …
The Tracey Fragments
Naked under a tattered shower curtain, fifteen-year old Tracey Berkowitz has been sitting in the back of a bus for two days, looking for her brother, Sonny, who thinks he is a dog. Tracey's stories begin to twist and intertwine truth with lies, absorbing the reader into the games and delusions she uses to escape her despair.
The Tracey Fragments is …
Undermajordomo Minor
On the The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2015 Longlist
A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners.
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for begetting brutish giants. Then …
Cockroach
Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage's bestselling and critically acclaimed first book, De Niro's Game.
The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described thief has just tried but failed to commit suicide. Rescued against his will, the narrato …
People Park
Shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book
It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to de …
Bone and Bread
Winner of the Quebec Writers' Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction
Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond that could only have been shaped by the most unusual of childhoods — and by shared tragedy. Orphaned as teenagers, they have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal' …
Carnival
Winner of the Quebec Writers' Federation Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
In the Carnival city there are two types of taxi drivers -- the spiders and the flies. The spiders patiently sit in their cars and wait for the calls to come. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looki …
The Honeyman Festival
First published in 1970, The Honeyman Festival chronicles one night in the life of Minn Burge, a woman in her mid-thirties who is torn between affection for her family and the need for a life in which impulse and intelligence can once again find play.
Pregnant with her fourth child, and unable to take refuge in facile resolutions, Minn interrogates …
Today I Learned It Was You
Longlisted for Canada Reads 2017
When a retired actor who frequents a city park is purported to be transitioning from man to deer, municipal authorities in St. John’s, Newfoundland, find themselves confronted by an exasperatingly difficult problem.
Complications mount as advocates, bureaucrats, police, and local politicians try to corral the situat …
Inside
Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and selected as an Oprah's Book Club Summer Reading Pick, an Amazon.ca Best Book, and an iTunes Store Best Book
When Grace, a highly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man in the snowy woods who has failed to hang himself, her instinc …
Ana Historic
A classic of Canadian literature, here is the A List edition of Daphne Marlatt’s utterly original novel about rescuing a forgotten woman from obscurity. Featuring a new introduced by celebrated author Lynn Crosbie.
Ana Historic is the story of Mrs. Richards, a woman of no history, who appears briefly in 1873 in the civic archives of Vancouver. It …
Atonement
Atonement is Sheila Fischman's translation of Gaetan Soucy's brilliant novel, originally published in French as L'Acquittement.
Twenty years after leaving the tiny village of Saint Aldor, Louis Bapaume has come home to make amends. During that one blustery winter solstice day, between the railway station and the church where a funeral mass is underw …
In Bed with the Word
While reading is a deeply personal activity, paradoxically, it is also fundamentally social and outward-looking. Daniel Coleman, a lifelong reader and professor of literature, combines story with meditation to reveal this paradox and illustrate why, more than ever, we need this special brand of "quiet time" in our lives. In Bed with the Word sparks …
A Bird's Eye
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book.
With all the wonder of a small-scale The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay comes this moving and unforgettable novel about childhood, love, and magic.
Growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood in the 1930s, young Benjamin Kleeman falls in love, first wit …
Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit
Longlisted for the ReLit Award
Best Fiction 2006, Ottawa Xpress
Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is a singularly Canadian novel featuring crime, culture, and sports. Written in the vein of John Kennedy Toole (Confederacy of Dunces) and JP Donleavy, Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is set in Vancouver during an early 80s Grey Cup weekend. Tourists and sport …
This Godforsaken Place
The year is 1885 and Abigail Peacock is resisting what seems to be an inevitable future—a sensible career as a teacher and marriage to the earnestly attentive local storeowner.
But then she buys a rifle, and everything changes.
This Godforsaken Place is the absorbing tale of one tenacious woman’s journey set against the dramatic backdrop of the …
Flying Time
In 1939, Kay Jeynes, a lively, ambitious young working-class woman, goes to work for the only Japanese businessman in town, the elderly, wealthy, Oxford-educated Mr. Miyashita. Despite differences in their age, race, and class, a friendship develops between them in the peaceful vacuum of Mr. Miyashita’s office. But outside, on the city streets, a …
The Pull of the Moon
Winner of the 2015 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize
A Globe and Mail top 100 pick for 2014
Winner of a 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal
Twelve short stories that examine what happens in the lives of characters who discover shocking truths about the people they thought they knew best.
Whether set in a cottage or a Montreal market, …
When is a Man
Paul Rasmussen is a young ethnographer and academic recovering from prostate cancer. Broken, he retreats to the remote forests and towns of the Immitoin Valley. As an outsider, he discovers how difficult it is to know a place, let alone become a part of it. Then, a drowned man and a series of encounters with the locals force him to confront the val …
The Cuckoo's Child
In her forties, Livvy Alvarsson hopes to be a bone marrow donor for her much-loved younger brother, Stephen. Instead, she discovers she has no idea who she is. This is the second great loss she has suffered, for eleven years earlier her four-year-old son, Daniel, disappeared. Armed with a few clues from wartime England, she embarks on a search for …
English Lessons and Other Stories
Winner, CBC Canadian Literary Award and Friends of American Writers Award
The new reader's guide edition of Shauna Singh Baldwin's literary debut features the fifteen stories from the original collection, an interview with the author, an original afterword, and her suggested reading list. When Shauna Singh Baldwin's debut collection was first publis …
The Douglas Notebooks
An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013
Romain was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. At 18, he leaves his family for a home in the forest, learning to live off the land rather than his family's wealth. Éléna flees a house of blood and mayhem, taking refuge in a monastery and later in the rustic village of Rivière-aux-Oies. One day, while walking in t …
Strange Heaven
Winner, Atlantic Independent Booksellers Choice Award, Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award, Dartmouth Book Award, and Thomas Head Raddall Award
Shortlisted, Governor General's Award for Fiction
She's depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the psych ward a …
Mr. Jones
Winner, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Shortlisted, McNally Robinson Book of the Year and Relit Award (Novel)
Award-winning author Margaret Sweatman has proven herself a virtuoso writer of historical fiction. Yet nothing she has written can prepare you for Mr. Jones.
Emmett Jones is adrift. Having firebombed civilians as a pilot during World War …
The Republic of Nothing
Winner, Dartmouth Book Award
Shortlisted, Atlantic Booksellers Choice Award
A small Canadian island declares its independence to the world and benign anarchy reigns. A god-like ocean deposits many a thing, yet it also takes away. The 1960s blaze off shore and draw the island's inhabitants into politics, the Vietnam War, and the peace movement.
Sound …
Elle
Winner, Governor General's Award for Fiction
Shortlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Commonwealth Writers' Prize
A 16th-century belle turned Robinson Crusoe, a female Don Quixote with an Inuit Sancho Panza — this is the heroine of the novel that won the 2003 Governor General's Award. Elle is a lusty, subversive riff on the discovery of the Ne …
Do You Think This Is Strange?
Shortlisted for the 2016 Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Longlisted for the 2016 Leacock Medal for Humour Writing
Winner of an Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY)
Freddy has problems. Some of them are because he's autistic. Most of them are because he's a teenager.
When he’s seven years old, Freddy's mother walks him to the train station, sits hi …
Surface Rights
An unexpected conflict forces Verna to re-examine her life.
What was it Donald used to say? "When it comes to children, you pay now or pay later. You never don’t pay."
Middle-aged Verna Macoun Woodcock returns to the family cottage for the first time in 38 years to scatter the ashes of her husband, father, and twin sister. At first she is alone …
John Buchan
Soldier, spy, politician, bestselling thriller writer, and governor general of Canada — John Buchan was a man of many seasons and talents.
An accomplished Scottish journalist, soldier, head of intelligence, and Member of Parliament, John Buchan (1875-1940) is best known for penning thrillers such as The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, as Canada’s 1 …
The Regiment
The story of an astonishing band of Canadian soldiers and their part in the Allied victory in Italy.
The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (the Hasty Ps) was Canada’s most decorated regiment in the Second World War, winning thirty-one battle honours. Famed for their role in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the conquest of Italy, for six years t …
Five Roses
2017 Evergreen Award, Forest of Reading — Nominated
A sister. A baby. A man who watches from the trees.
Fara and her husband buy a house with a disturbing history that reawakens memories of her own family tragedy. Maddy still lives in the house, once a hippie commune, where her daughter was kidnapped twenty-seven years ago. Rose grew up isolated wi …
Festival Man
Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival.
Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out.
At turns funny and strangely sobering, …
On the Rim
How do you cope when your husband of more than 30 years announces he’s leaving — and you didn’t see it coming?
Ellen is blindsided by her husband’s request for a divorce and the news that everything she thought they jointly owned is in his name.
Depressed and defeated, her life spirals out of control, until she impulsively decides to buy a …
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 restricti …
Becoming Lin
It's 1965. Twenty-two-year-old Linda Wise despairs of escaping her overprotective parents and her hometown, where far too many know she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Deliverance arrives in the form of marriage to the charismatic, twenty-six-year-old Ronald Brunson, a newly ordained Methodist minister who ignites her passion for social justi …
This Marlowe
Longlisted, 2018 International DUBLIN Literary Award
Long-shortlisted, 2017 ReLit Awards
1593. Queen Elizabeth reigns from the throne while two rival spymasters — Sir Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex — plot from the shadows. Their goal? To control succession upon the aged queen's death. The man on which their schemes depend? Christopher Marlow …
The Sicilian Wife
Both a literary novel and a mystery, The Siciian Wife is about two strong women. Fulvia, the Mafia Princess, must be a dutiful daughter or the family will be dishonoured. And Marisa is the police chief in Sicily investigating the death of Fulvia's husband.
Shallow Enough to Walk Through
“Three weeks it’s been raining, but no puddles…”
Author Sara Pierce is slowly drowning in Windsor, a city where water will seemingly not stay put long enough to form puddles. While living with her germophobic best friend Angie and dealing with her online gaming-addicted boyfriend Dan, Sara finds herself obsessively writing and rewriting her …
Fifteen Dogs
An utterly convincing and moving look at the beauty and perils of consciousness.
WINNER OF CANADA READS 2017
WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2015 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2015 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS
— I wonder, said Hermes, what it would be like if animals had human intelligence.
—I'll wager a year's servitude, …
Sons and Fathers
When an early-morning phone call from a former childhood friend threatens to derail the political fortunes of a popular PM, his director of communications must dig deep into the past to salvage the present. Part political and literary coming-of-age story, part lyrical meditation on friendship, family, and mortality, Sons and Fathers traces the fort …