"With this book, Lee Kvern gives us a thrilling ride, a delicious noir, both lush and intense. Each chapter is vividly wrought with a tension so palpable, the pages turn themselves. Spanning decades and continents, and with an epic scope and ensemble of characters, every reader is in for a vibrant experience!" — Bradley Somer, award-winning author of Fishbowl and ExtinctionIn 1983, Elle is a blackjack dealer at an Alberta casino...

At a dinner party, Beth — thirty-six, single, and working as much overtime as she can get her hands on — impulsively announces that she's going to spend a night on Vancouver's mean streets in commiseration of the homeless. Unexpectedly, her hosts' son Mason — nine years old, small for his age, intense, intellectual and so shy he can't speak in company — whispers in his mother's ear that he wants to go with her. Mason's parents, good limousine liberals that they are, reluctantly allow him t...

Marta is a human resources employee at a grocery store chain. She moves through life passively, always taking the path of least resistance. That is, until one day at work, when she is confronted by an ethical dilemma: A hijab-wearing woman. A strict no-hats policy. And then a cultural opportunity: a seminar on the Sunshine Coast, “Ethnicity and Religion in the World Workplace.” With brutal frankness and keen insight, This Is a Love Crime explores the nature of oppression in its ma...

FPQ Complete Collection 1 contains sixteen exceptional stories that were hand-picked by the Found Press staff and originally published in FPQ volumes 1-4. With a stunning range of voices, the unforgettable narratives included in this anthology will take you on a journey around the world, and pull you from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. Featuring stories by Caroline Adderson, Meghan Rose Allen, Jack Bootle, Julie Dupuis, Cynthia Flood, Andrew Forbes, Danny...

Betty is the sudden gust of wind that unknowingly knocks the sleepy town of Arbford to the ground in Grace O'Connell's Mike Mike Mike Mike. Set against the backdrop of vibrant Addis Ababa nightlife, The Expansiveness of My Sound by Andrew Forbes is an evocative account of the political discord in Ethiopia and the individuals caught in the tumult. In Lee Kvern's This Is a Love Crime, a human resources employee at a grocery store chain is confronted by an ethical d...

Coming out of an unhappy relationship and a stint at an artist colony, Charlotte, a writer, takes a job teaching at a private ESL college. There she befriends Renata—audacious, sexy, and as changeable as Proteus. “I have a story for you,” Renata says to her one day over lunch. She doesn’t elaborate further, but Charlotte soon discovers that she has found in Renata an unexpectedly passionate and compelling subject.“Caroline Adderson is such a graceful and intelligent writer that the...

Charlotte is on the cusp of adolescence, and her world is being turned upside down. Unable to turn to her distant mother or absent father, she searches for guidance on the streets of downtown Toronto—and discovers God (or some version of Him) in the gutter.“The Last Judgment is a story that penetrates into the heart of childhood sadness. Charlotte is without tools to fix what is broken, except for the incredible force of her will. The connections she makes between religion...

Having lived a long, eventful life, Charlie Weinheimer’s only regret is that he has no one to carry on after him. After a near-death experience, he resolves to find out whether a secret buried in his past is proof he has a legacy after all.“Margoshes gives us the life of Charlie Weinheimer: quadruple bypass patient, widower whose children all die tragically young, but not a whiner. In his hospital bed at age seventy-seven, he’s seen it all, right? Well, maybe not. Watch as Margoshe...

What Endures is a story of powerful love. It is a story that will break your heart. Inspired by true events, it tells of the incredible bond between a mother and daughter, and with gut-wrenching poignancy reminds us of the little things that make life worth living.“Holdstock’s writing manages to be both heartbreakingly poetic and densely detailed … sad passages, ghostlike recollections, written almost from the vantage point of the present, establish the book as a great wor...

Father Michael, in his final assignment, has been asked by his Order to help facilitate recovery of an Asian country blighted by war. On the long odyssey into the interior, his driver and translator Trang tells him a story set in a once-famed traveller’s refuge known as the Inn of Tender Embraces. What starts as a simple tale of ill-fated lovers becomes, for Father Michael, a familiar beacon that guides him through the mists of an exotic landscape.“Don McLellan is the kind of wise,...

The sleepy town of Arbford is a house of cards, and Betty is the sudden gust of wind that unknowingly knocks it to the ground. In this insightful tale, where each of the men is called Mike, and each of their wives have a different name, Betty discovers that finding somewhere to call home isn’t easy. Fun, emotional, and intelligent, Mike Mike Mike Mike is a modern-day fable with a bit of Desperate Housewives thrown in for good measure.“In this cautionary suburban fairy tale...

On an isolated English beach a man looks back on his school days, recalling the joy and torment of a secret love affair with a boy full of strange ideas, a boy obsessed with the language of the King James Bible. Moments from their relationship return to him: the hidden meetings on the beach, the first attempts at sex, the boredom of a school assembly in summertime, the cruelty of a young English teacher. But most of all he remembers the boy’s words. They’re words that, years later, will ha...