NNELS Upgrade

A sleepy rural town in South Carolina. The end of summer and a baby about to be born. But in the midst of hope and celebration comes unexpected tragedy, and Dylan Styles must come to terms with how much he's lost. Will the music of his heart be stilled forever--or will he choose to dance with life once more, in spite of sorrow and heartbreak? The Dead Don't Dance is a bittersweet yet triumphant love story--a tale of one man's spiritual journey through the darkness of despair and into the light of hope.

Scrappy tough guy and three-time loser Johnny Keough seizes an unexpected "clean slate" opportunity as a sign from above and embarks on an epic hitchhiking journey across Canada to deliver his girlfriend's ashes to a fabled beach on the outskirts of Vancouver. This is the story of one man's kicking-and-screaming attempt to recuperate from a life of petty crime and shattered relationships, and somehow accept and maybe even like the new man emerging from within, the one he so desperately needs to become.

In the wake of family collapse, a writer moves to London with her two young sons. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.

After a thirty-year exile in Toronto, self-described ?mid-listing? Newfoundland author James Nightingale leaves behind a failed marriage to a successful classical musician, who has taken up with an avant-garde composer, and a middling, if critically successful, career to return temporarily to St. John?s to receive an honourary degree from his alma mater.

In the mid-1970s, tensions simmer beneath the surface of a small town in rural Massachusetts. But sixteen-year-old identical twin sisters April and Pilgrim live happily on their parents' farm. Their father recruits a young Bahamian doctor to minister to the town's residents. While racial prejudice keeps patients away, the idle doctor spends much of his time with the family. When the relationship between the girls and the young doctor comes to light, the family is torn apart.

Jodi and Todd are at a bad place in their marriage. Much is at stake, including the affluent life they lead in their beautiful waterfront condo in Chicago, as she, the killer, and he, the victim, rush haplessly toward the main event.

In the town of Leamington, Ontario, a seventeen-year-old boy is suddenly stricken by a schizophrenic episode and wakes up in hospital. The boy’s name is Calvin, and he is plagued by hallucinations. As the hallucinations persist, Calvin comes to believe that the answer lies in performing one grand and incredible gesture. And so he decides to walk across Lake Erie. In January. The temperatures have been below freezing for weeks. The ice should hold...

To the shock of his family and community, George Woodbury, an affable teacher and beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual assault at a prestigious prep school in Connecticut. While he awaits his trial in jail, his family is left to pick up the pieces. His wife, Joan, a trauma nurse, is unable to triage her emotional reactions, and vaults between rage and denial. Daughter Sadie, the consummate overachiever, finds herself paralyzed on her boyfriends couch with a bong, while a local author attempts to exploit her story.

James Hillyer, a retired university professor whose life was evocatively described in Wright's novel October, is now barely existing after the death of his beloved daughter in her forties. On a whim, he tries to locate the woman he fell in love with so many years ago on a summer trip to Quebec and through the magic of the Internet he is able to find her. But Odettes present existence seems to be haunted by ghosts from her own past, in particular, the tough ex-con Raoul, with his long-standing grievances and the beginnings of dementia.