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"Ranging from an island holiday gone wrong to a dive bar on the upswing to a yuppie mother in a pricey subdivision seeing her worst fears come true, these deftly written stories are populated by barkeeps, good men down on their luck, rebellious teens, lonely immigrants, dreamers and realists, fools and quiet heroes. In author Kerry-Lee Powells skillful hands, each character, no matter what their choices, is deeply human in their search for connection.

Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall shifts between and ties together stories about pairs joined in surprising ways. A woman learns that she may not be the biological mother of her own son despite having given birth to him; a brother and sister unite, as their mother dies, to search for their long-lost father; two young sisters take a detour home, unaware of the tragedy that awaits; and a political couple—when the husband accedes to power in a post-apocalyptic future state—is shaken by the revelation of their own shared, if equally unknown, history.

A collection of short stories looking at the bizarre, the tragi-comic and the unbelievable elements that run through our lives. An aging academic becomes convinced that he is haunted by his double. Each story examines, from a different angle, the difficult business of love, loyalty and memory. These are dark stories in which light finds a foothold, and in which connections, frequently missed or mislaid, offer redemption.

Among these nine stories: A teenage boy breaks out of the strict confines of his family, his bid for independence leads him in over his head. He learns about life in short order and there is no turning back. An actor's penchant for hiding behind a role, on and off stage, is tested to the limits and what he comes to discover finally places him face to face with the truth. With his mother hospitalized for a nervous condition and his father away on long work stints, a boy is sent to another family for his meals.

Blaise croyait qu'il avait laissé derrière lui la misère de son enfance. Que, malgré les stigmates de son passé, il deviendrait un artiste accompli. Mais, en l'an de grâce 1539, la Renaissance a beau étendre ses lumières sur l'Europe, elle éclaire difficilement ceux qui, comme lui, sont issus de la fange des ruelles.

Samuel Archibald’s stories come from over there: way, way over there.  They live in the woods, hunting for creatures that may or may not exist, and they sometimes go surging down the highway at reckless speeds.

From "The Robot Baby," in which we discover what happens when a robot feels emotion for the very first time, to "Heaven," about a grandfather who died for a few minutes when he was nine and visited the pearly gates, to "The Little Wolf-Boy of Northern Quebec," in which untamed children run wild through the streets of Paris, to "Dolls," in which a little girl's forgotten dolls tell their own stories of woe and neglect, we are immersed in utterly unique worlds.