Watermark, by Christy Ann Conlin

Genre: Short stories

Publisher: House of Anansi Press

What It's About

From Christy Ann Conlin, the critically acclaimed and award winning author of Heave, comes a breathtaking and unforgettable collection about how the briefest moment can shape us forever.

In these evocative and startling stories, we meet people navigating the elemental forces of love, life, and death. An insomniac on Halifax’s moonlit streets. A runaway bride. A young woman accused of a brutal murder. A man who must live in exile if he is to live at all. A woman coming to terms with her eccentric childhood in a cult on the Bay of Fundy shore.

A master of North Atlantic Gothic, Christy Ann Conlin expertly navigates our conflicting self-perceptions, especially in moments of crisis. She illuminates the personality of land and ocean, charts the pull of the past on the present, and reveals the wildness inside each of us. These stories offer a gallery of both gritty and lyrical portraits, each unmasking the myth and mystery of the everyday.

What People Say

"A sometimes-mystical Gothic in which the horror arises from those closest to us … Watermark is taut, sharp writing."—Globe and Mail

"These stories are deliciously discomfiting … Suspenseful excavations of family secrets, as smart as they are creepy."—Kirkus Reviews

**

Book of Sands, by Karim Alrawi

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Fiction

What It's About

The inaugural winner of the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction

This powerful, lyrical novel of the endurance of love is set amid the upheaval of the Arab Spring and the brutal repression of a totalitarian regime. Tarek, a young father, watches as the city he lives in is mired in protests, hemmed in by barricades and strangely inundated by great flocks of birds. Facing the threat of police arrest, he flees with his nine-year-old daughter, Neda. He is forced to leave behind his pregnant wife, Mona, under the watchful eye of Omar, her deeply troubled and religious brother. Compounding the difficulties of these times, babies refuse to be born and mothers stop giving birth.

As Tarek and Nada journey through villages razed by conflict towards a mountain refuge, they meet with fellow travellers from Tarek’s past and his time as a political prisoner. The reunion reveals secrets that Tarek must come to terms with for his own and Neda’s sake. Ultimately, he must decide where this journey will take them and if he will ever be able to return home again.

In the tradition of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children and Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, debut novelist Karim Alrawi deftly weaves an atmospheric, multi-layered story of intimate lives, informed by recent events and heightened by touches of magic realism, set against the wider canvas of historic events.

What People Say

“Absorbing. . . .Alrawi’s writing is lyrical and intricate; the evocation of a grimy Arab city suffocated by pollution and corruption very real.” —Toronto Star

"Book of Sands powerfully captures the Arab Spring experience of 2011 with grit and heart ... Through incredible storytelling, Karim Alrawi walks us through the human experience of tumultuous change." —Winnipeg Free Press

**

Coconut Dreams, by Derek Mascarenhas

Genre: Short stories

Publisher: Book*Hug Press

What It's About

Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India in the 1950s, the collection weaves through various timelines and perspectives to focus on two children, Aiden and Ally Pinto. These siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures.

In these stories, Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada, as a daughter questions her father's love at an IKEA grand opening; an aunt remembers a safari-gone-wrong in Kenya; an uncle's unrequited love is confronted at a Goan Association picnic; a boy tests his faith amidst a school-yard brawl; and a childhood love letter is exchanged during the building of a backyard deck. Singularly and collectively, these stories will move the reader with their engaging narratives and authentic voices.

What People Say

"This charming collection of stories resides between a suburban childhood in Canada and inherited, often mythic, tales from Goa that belong to the elders. Characters decide on love with rings lost at sea and soothe babies with stories of elephants in mountains. The voices in these stories are from people who seem far away and yet are inside us. Prepare to be delighted." —Kim Echlin, author of Under the Visible Life

"In this evocative collection, Derek Mascarenhas takes up the fictional Pinto family and turns it gently in his hands, revealing new truths—and new questions—with every shift in point of view. A moving, multifaceted debut." —Alissa York, author of The Naturalist

**

Be Ready for the Lightning, by Grace O'Connell

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Random House of Canada

What It's About

From acclaimed New Face of Fiction alumna Grace O'Connell, a suspenseful, poignant and provocative tale about violence, sibling love, friendship, heroism—all told through the lens of a young woman trapped in a hijacked bus.

On the surface, Veda's life in Vancouver seems to be going just fine—at nearly thirty, she has a good job, lifelong friends, and a close bond with her brother, Conrad. But Conrad's violent behaviour, a problem since he was a teen, is getting more and more serious, and Veda's ongoing commitment to watch out for him is pushing her to a breaking point.

When Veda is injured as a bystander during one of Conrad's many fights, she knows it's time to leave Vancouver for a fresh start. She heads to New York, staying in the Manhattan apartment of old friends Al and Marie. Exploring the city, she swings between feeling hopeful and lost—until one day the bus she's on is hijacked by a sweet-faced gun-toting man named Peter. He instructs Veda and the other passengers to spray paint the bus windows black, and what ensues is a gripping and unpredictable hostage situation, the outcome of which will make Veda question everything she knows about herself and the nature of fear.

Told with powerful immediacy and warmth, at once unsettling and engrossing, Be Ready for the Lightning is a story of violence, its attractions and repulsions; of love, loyalty and friendship; and of a young woman finding an unexpected kind of bravery.

What People Say

“Gripping, twisty novel! Killer ‘Peter Pan,’ hijacked bus, complex loves, more!” —Margaret Atwood

“Be Ready for the Lightning is gripping, tense and full of fear, but also generous, true and full of heart. By holding a crackling tension between the two, O’Connell takes us on a captivating exploration around the boundaries of family love.” —Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal

**

The Waking Comes Late, by Steven Heighton

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: House of Anansi Press

What It's About

2016 Governor General's Literary Award Winner

2017 Raymond Souster Award Finalist

Governor General’s Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton returns with a collection of laments and celebrations that reflect on our struggle to believe in the future of a world that continues to disappoint us. The poet challenges the boundaries of sleep and even death in these meditations on what lies just beneath the surface of contemporary life. These are poems that trouble over the idea of failure even as they continually recommit to the present moment. This is fierce music performed in a minor key.

What People Say

 "Heighton is an experienced adventurer in literary form . . . a sense of boldness and risk-taking infuses [his work]" —The New York Times

"Deservedly won a Governor General's Award... Richly rewarding on repeated reading... The poems are by turns angry, elegiac, or simply intoxicated with wordplay and the intricacy of assonance... It's a mature poet's work, its heft a growing feeling of assurance that's intimated in the loose, confident translations he includes of works by other poets. ” —Globe and Mail

**

Malagash, by Joey Comeau

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: ECW Press

What It's About

A precisely crafted, darkly humorous portrait of a family in mourning.

Sunday’s father is dying of cancer. They’ve come home to Malagash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia, so he can die where he grew up. Her mother and her brother are both devastated. But devastated isn’t good enough. Devastated doesn’t fix anything. Sunday has a plan.

She’s started recording everything her father says. His boring stories. His stupid jokes. Everything. She’s recording every single “I love you” right alongside every “Could we turn the heat up in here?” It’s all important.

Because Sunday is writing a computer virus. A computer virus that will live secretly on the hard drives of millions of people all over the world. A computer virus that will think her father’s thoughts and say her father’s words. She has thousands of lines of code to write. Cryptography to understand. Exploits to test. She doesn’t have time to be sad. Her father is going to live forever.

What People Say

“Known primarily for darkly comic novels and the webcomic A Softer World, Comeau effortlessly switches gears to expose the trauma, heartbreak, and humour in loss…an immensely touching tribute to a very human struggle with mortality.” —Publishers Weekly

“Graceful images, scenes and dialogue blossom, meaning Malagash rings with authentic emotion…Comeau gives readers a spare novel that feels real when it counts.” —Toronto Star