“The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke.”England. A century ago, give or take a few years.An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen ...

Mid-summer, 1948. Two strangers, Anna Beer and young Robert Seidel, meet on a train as they return to Vienna, where life is just resuming after the upheavals of war. Men who were conscripted into the German army are filtering back home, including Anna’s estranged husband, Dr. Anton Beer, who was held prisoner in a brutal Russian camp. But when Anna returns to their old apartment, she finds another man living there and her husband missing.At his own house, Robert is greeted by a you...

“The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke.”England. A century ago, give or take a few years.An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen ...

Vienna under the Nazis. A string of murders throws the city into a state of anxiety. Anton Beer, a young doctor who has made a study of forensic psychology, is asked by the retired Professor Speckstein to investigate the slaughter of his dog, which may or may not be related to the murders. It is an unwelcome request: Speckstein’s job is to spy on the building’s residents for the Party, and Doctor Beer has his own reasons for keeping his private life hidden from public scrutiny. Beer’s life...

Set during the winter of 1946-47, one of the coldest on record, Pavel & I unfolds against the tattered social fabric of postwar Berlin. Pavel Richter, a decommissioned GI, finds himself at odds with a rogue colonel in the British Armed Forces and a Soviet general when an American friend deposits a dead Russian spy in his frozen apartment. The race to take possession of the dead spy's quarry soon begins threatening Pavel's friendship with a street orphan named Anders and his buddin...

The electrifying sequel to the national bestseller Smoke—bringing readers back to a world Entertainment Weekly called “part Dickens, part dystopia and totally immersive.”The year is 1909. It has been ten years since Thomas Argyle, Charlie Cooper and Livia Naylor set off a revolution by releasing Smoke upon the world. They were raised to think Smoke was a sign of sin manifest, but later learned that its suppression was really a means of controlling...

Graham Greene meets Dostoevsky in a thrilling and atmospheric story of guilt and restitution set in postwar Vienna.Vienna, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amid the rubble.Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier after discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerlan...

***Shortlisted for 2013 Giller Prize*** After two acclaimed historical novels, one of Canada' s most celebrated young writers now gives us the vibrant, contemporary story of a man studying the suddenly confusing shape his life has taken, and why, and what his responsibilities-- as a husband, a father, a brother, and an uncle-- truly are. Charlie Bellerose leads a seminomadic existence, traveling widely to manage the language academies he has established in different countries. After separa...

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."—Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters BrothersInternationally acclaimed author Lisa Moore offers us a...

A novel about what happens when we view our neighbours as “The Other” and the transformative power of unlikely friendships, Our Daily Bread is inspired by the true story of the Goler Clan of Nova Scotia.The Erskine Clan, long shunned by the people of Gideon, live in secrecy and isolation on North Mountain. For generations, the clan’s children have suffered unspeakable acts of abuse, incest and psychological torture. The intolerant, self-righteous Gideonites decline to inte...

In this provocative and starkly beautiful historical novel, a Quaker family moves from Pennsylvania to the Virginia frontier, where slaves are the only available workers and where the family' s values and beliefs are sorely tested. In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, recently widowed and shunned by his fellow Quakers when he marries his young servant girl to help with his five small children, moves his shaken family down the Wilderness Road to the Virginia/Kentucky border. Although determined to ho...

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor’s Children, a masterly new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed and betrayed by a desire for a world beyond her own.Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long ago compromised her dream to be a successful artist, mother and lover. She has instead become the “woman upstairs,” a reliable friend and neighbor always on the fringe of others’ achieveme...