Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada’s National Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badge follows the Murray family as they struggle with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After the death of her stepmother, Frances “Frankie” Murray returns to Calgary to help her father, Jimmy, and her sister, Bernadette, pay the mortgage on the family home. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest old ten...

In 1982 Calgary, the Murray family struggles with grief as they totter on the brink of financial ruin in the wake of Canada’s disastrous National Energy Program. Returning home to help their dad pay down the mortgage after the death of their stepmother, sisters Frances and Bernadette find themselves continuously at odds. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest, old tensions are enflamed and the Murrays risk becoming alienated from one another.Part family saga, par...

**Long shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit Award for Novel****Shortlisted for the Fred Kerner Book Award****Shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award**Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada's National Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badge follows the Murray family as they struggle with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After t...

Character-driven fiction of broad literary appeal, with gay and lesbian subthemes. While a number of figures struggle or have struggled with their sexuality in these stories, they struggle equally with being poor, young, with bad relationships, etc.; the stories are not "about" gay identity per se.A number involve quirky portraits of fringe evangelical typesMany stories about gay life in small-town America follow the Matthew-Shepard-Angels-in-America line, are often about g...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenesTHE NEW YORK TIMES’S BEST THRILLER OF THE CENTURY • ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ...

Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond that could only have been shaped by the most unusual of childhoods — and by shared tragedy. Orphaned as teenagers, they have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal's Hasidic community of Mile End. Together, they try to make sense of the rich, confusing brew of values, rituals, and beliefs that form their inheritance. Yet as they grow towards adulthood, their paths begin to diverge. Beena cat...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZEA young, enigmatic woman—Lily Azerov—arrives in post-war Montreal expecting to meet her betrothed, Sol Kramer. When Sol sees Lily at the train station, however, he turns her down. His brother, Nathan, sees Lily and instantly decides to marry her.But Lily is not who she claims to be, and her attempt to live a quiet life as Nathan Kramer’s wife shatters when she disappears, leaving her baby daughter with ...

#1 National Bestseller and New York Times BestsellerParis, 1878. Following her father’s sudden death, Marie van Goethem is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant wage she is trained to enter the famous Ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work—and the love of a dangerous young man—as an extra on the stage. Marie is soon modeling in the studio of renowned artist Edgar Degas, who will immortalize her image forever, while Antoinette must make...

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this “extraordinary” and beloved novel that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review), named a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a weal...

Selected as one of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2013Spanning five turbulent decades in Iranian history, from before the 1979 revolution, through the Islamic Republic, and up to the present, The Book of Fate is a powerful story of friendship and passion, fear and hope.A teenager in pre-revolutionary Tehran, Massoumeh is an average girl, passionate about learning. On her way to school she meets a local man and falls in...

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...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon**, Jeannette Walls’s gripping coming-of-age novel about two sisters “transports us with her powerful storytelling...contemplates the extraordinary bravery needed to confront real-life demons in a world where the hardest thing to do may be to not run away” (O, T...