Our 2020 Summer Reading List
By 49thShelf
The Ghost in the House
What if a ghost were haunting your house? What if you were the ghost?
Everything in Fay's life is perfect--living in the house she dreamed of as a child, married to a man she loves, and planning her life as an artist. Her life seems full of possibility. Then, late one night, Fay realizes that something has gone wrong.
Things have altered in the house and somehow time, and Fay's husband, Alec, seem to have gone on without her. Fay--who thought her life was on the verge of beginning--finds …

All I Ask
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 s …

Swimmers in Winter
Certain Women meets The Mars Room in this debut collection featuring three pairs of stories.
Sharp and stylistic, the trifecta of diptychs that is Swimmers in Winter swirls between real and imagined pasts and futures to delve into our present cultural moment: conflicts between queer people and the police; the impact of homophobia, bullying, and PTSD; the dynamics of women’s friendships; life for queer women in Toronto during WWII and after; the intersections between class identities and queer i …

Some People's Children
***BMO WINTERSET AWARD FINALIST***
***BRONZE, THE MIRAMICHI READER'S THE VERY BEST! FICTION AWARD***
? ***49TH SHELF EDITOR'S PICK***
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 Peopl …

The Library of Legends
From the author of Three Souls and Dragon Springs Road comes a captivating historical novel in which a convoy of student refugees travel across China, fleeing the hostilities of a brutal war with Japan
“Myths are the darkest and brightest incarnations of who we are . . .”
China, 1937. When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of students, faculty and staff must walk 1,000 …

The Last High
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this riveting novel from international bestselling author Daniel Kalla, a Vancouver doctor and a detective face the deadly consequences of the opioid crisis as they track down the supplier of fentanyl that landed a group of teens in the ER with critical overdoses.
Deliberately or not, they must’ve been poisoned…And if it happened to them…
There will be others.
Dr. Julie Rees, a toxicologist and ER doctor, is stunned when her emergency room is flooded with tee …

Dominoes at the Crossroads
In Dominoes at the Crossroads Kaie Kellough maps an alternate nation—one populated by Caribbean Canadians who hopscotch across the country. The characters navigate race, class, and coming-of-age. Seeking opportunity, some fade into the world around them, even as their minds hitchhike, dream, and soar. Some appear in different times and hemispheres, whether as student radicals, secret agents, historians, fugitive slaves, or jazz musicians.
From the cobblestones of Montreal’s Old Port through …

Little Secrets
"Unflinching and unforgettable.Little Secrets has everything you want in a thriller" —Riley Sager,New York Times bestselling author ofLock Every Door
Overwhelmed by tragedy, a woman desperately tries to save her marriage in award-winning author Jennifer Hillier'sLittle Secrets, a riveting novel of psychological suspense.
All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...
Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs …