Genrebenders You Just Can't Miss
By kileyturner
Back Roads
In Scotiabank Giller Prize–longlisted author Andrée A. Michaud’s genre-defying, ethereal mystery, a writer encounters her double and must grapple with an undetermined crime — and her own identity.
In the dubious sanctuary of a wintry forest, a writer encounters a woman who she suspects may be her double. So begins a journey of inquiry in which nothing, not even the author’s own identity, is certain. Who is Heather Thorne? Is she a stranger dangerously out of place in the woods, the vic …
Dirty Birds
***LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2021***
***APMA BEST ATLANTIC PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD: WINNER***
***STEPHEN LEACOCK MEADAL FOR HUMOUR: SHORTLIST***
***THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD: SHORTLIST***
***MARGARET AND JOHN SAVAGE FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION: SHORTLIST***
***FOREWORD INDIES HUMOUR AWARD FINALIST***
***THE GLOBE AND MAIL SUMMER'S HOTTEST READS***
***2021 RELIT AWARD: LONG SHORTLIST***
In late 2008, as the world’s economy crumbles and Barack Obama ascends to the White House, the remarkably …
In the Beggarly Style of Imitation
Born on the twin backs of torpidity and obsession, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation is a voyage into the mind of one of the Canadian literary underground’s most unruly writers. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief survey through the illustrious forms and genres of literary expression: epistolary, aphorism, essay, picaresque, romance and satire culminate in a celeb …
The Beguiling
FINALIST FOR THE WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK
The perfect next read for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and George Saunders, an electrifying debut about a woman who is transformed into a real life “flesh-and-blood Wailing Wall” as strangers unburden their sins to her at every turn.
Lucy is a lapsed Catholic whose adolescent pretensions to sainthood are unexpectedly revived following the disturbing deathbed confession of her cousin Zoltán. Afterwards, Lucy becomes a magne …
The Lightning of Possible Storms
Winner of the 2021 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Aleya's world starts to unravel after a café customer leaves behind a collection of short stories. Surprised and disturbed to discover that it has been dedicated to her, Aleya delves into the strange book...
A mad scientist seeks to steal his son's dreams. A struggling writer, skilled only at destruction, finds himself courted by Hollywood. A woman seeks to escape her body and live inside her dreams. Citizens panic when a new city block manif …
The Adventures of Isabel
Book one in a new playful and trope-bending mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective.
“Candas Jane Dorsey’s terrific mysteries are what would happen if Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter collaborated on cozies and the heroine were a pansexual private detective with heart, smarts, and a T-shirt saying MASCARA IS THE NEW NOIR.” — Sarah Smith, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child.
Rescued from torpor and poverty by the need to help a good friend …
“Look, kiddo,” said Denis finally, “you need a job. Hep needs someone who can ask hard questions to people without offending them. Nothing like a registered social worker to do that on an hourly basis. Hep has the money for the hourly basis.”
“When did you two talk this over and decide I was the next Nancy Drew?”
“Before I called you,” Denis said, enough less drunk than we were to still be shamefaced. (We, more simply, were just shitfaced.)
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this then? I’d have stayed home with Bunnywit and eaten flies. Forget it. I’ve got my new career all mapped out. ‘AAAAAlthea. Poetic but lusty. By the minute, hour, or week. Anything you want.’ How’s that sound?”
“It sounds stupid. These days you gotta have a dungeon and six thousand dollars’ worth of video equipment just to turn a trick. And besides, Althea? Really? Why don’t you just use your own . . . shit, no way you’re distracting me. You need a source of income, if only to pay me back the big bucks you owe me. Not that I’d be crass enough to mention that as a way of trying to influence you.”
Hep then named an hourly rate which made even my overinflatedly self-indulgent subconscious blink, and between the emotional blackmail of being reminded how much I owed Denis, the memory of my empty cupboard, evocations of the pitiful dead kid, and greed, I was persuaded — provisionally, with confirmation to be given once I sobered up — to give up my career as a call girl and become a detective.
I Am Ariel Sharon
A bold and innovative novel, I Am Ariel Sharon dives into the tortured mind of the controversial Israeli prime minister as he lies comatose and faces an ultimate reckoning.
Award-winning Palestinian Canadian novelist Yara El-Ghadban imagines the confrontation at death’s door between Ariel Sharon, the “King of Israel,” and the women closest to him — his mother, his wives, and the mysterious nurse Rita. Like latter-day Greek furies, they lament the brutality of his life and maltreatment of …
The Finder
From the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novelist of 419 comes a spellbinding literary adventure novel about precious objects lost and found.
The world is filled with wonders, lost objects—all real—all still out there, waiting to be found:
· the missing Fabergé eggs of the Romanov dynasty, worth millions
· the last reel of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film
· Buddy Holly’s iconic glasses
· Muhammad Ali’s Olympic gold medal
How can such cherished objects simply vanish? Where are they …
