From some accidents of love and weather we never quite recover. At the worst of the Prairie dust bowl of the 1930s, a young man appears out of a blizzard and forever alters the lives of two sisters. There is the beautiful, fastidious Lucinda, and the tricky and tenacious Norma Joyce, at first a strange, self-possessed child, later a woman who learns something of self-forgiveness and of the redemptive nature of art. Their rivalry sets the stage for all that follows in a narrative spanning o...

Winner of the Ottawa Book AwardFinalist for the Governor General's Literary AwardA Globe and Mail Notable Book of the YearA Quill & Quire Top Five Canadian Fiction Book of the YearA Maclean’s Top Ten Book of the YearElizabeth Hay’s runaway national bestseller is a funny, sad-eyed, deliciously entertaining novel about a woman caught in a tug of war between real life and the films of the past. Inflamed by the mov...

Against a backdrop of peach orchards and languid summer afternoons, Dori Sanders spins a wise, sweet tale of crossing racial barriers in the South Carolina countryside. It was unthinkable that Gaten Hill, a successful black man, would marry Sara Kate, an uppercrust white woman. It was unbelievable that hours after his wedding, he would be killed in a devastating accident. Left to grieve together, Gaten's 10-year-old daughter, Clover, and her white stepmother forge a warm friendship which g...

“An excellent novel. A lovely and moving portrait of society’s outcasts…affirms the essential humanity of its poor and stubborn residents, for whom each day of survival is a victory” (The New York Times Book Review).Set on the high ground at the heart of Cape Ann in the early 1800s, the village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and “witches.”Among the inhabitants of this hamlet are Black Ruth, w...

Anita Diamant, whose rich portrayal of the biblical world of women illuminated her acclaimed international bestseller The Red Tent, now crafts a moving novel of contemporary female friendship.Good Harbor is the long stretch of Cape Ann beach where two women friends walk and talk, sharing their personal histories and learning life's lessons from each other. Kathleen Levine, a longtime resident of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is maternal and steady, a devoted ...

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...

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, a highly ambitious and stylish literary debut that combines the atmosphere and period detail of Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility with the emotional depth and drama of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a talented but troubled singer, her precocious ten-year-old daughter, and their heartbreaking relationship.It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is a city of uneasy tensions—segregation, sexual experimentat...

Quintessential Tyler, yet full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes gently, heartbreakingly with our times.With the humour and poignancy of her classic The Accidental Tourist (though with a protagonist who doesn't venture far from home) Anne Tyler's new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he's just be...

"Bloom where you're planted," is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It's a world she's begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is c...

When Gap Creek was published in 1999, it became an instant national bestseller, attracting hundreds of thousands of readers to the story of a marriage begun with love and hope at the turn of the twentieth century. Set in the Appalachian South, it followed Julie and Hank Richards as they struggled through the first year and a half of their union. But what of the years following? What did the future hold for these memorable characters?The Road to Gap Creek answers t...

Florida, 1935, and the residents of Heron Key are preparing for the 4th July barbecue, little realising how much their world is about to change.Domestic helps Missy and Selma are dismembering the alligator that tried to snatch the baby Missy was watching, before they can get ready for the party. Henry, a returned soldier from WW1, is hoping that his comrades in his construction team will not disgrace themselves in front of an already fiercely judgemental community. Hilda Kincaid, i...

From the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, an exciting new novel that uses the life and sudden death of Harry Houdini to weave a tale of magic, intrigue, and illusion.What is real and what is an illusion? Can you trust your memory to provide an accurate record of what has happened in your life?The Confabulist is a clever , entertaining, and suspenseful narrative that weaves together the rise and fall of world-famous Harry Houdini with the...