National Network for Equitable Library Service

When heroin-addicted call girl Elizabeth Lucy dies in a fall from a swanky penthouse terrace, homicide detective Henderson is assigned to the case. Was it murder? Suicide? Through his investigation, Henderson uncovers a frightening underworld that is far more dark and dangerous than those of prostitution and the drug trade. But more than anything, this is Elizabeth’s story. Told through flashbacks and those who knew her, revelations unfold, revealing a life that ends with a struggle unlike any other. A masterful debut, The Pyx has earned considerable praise in Canada and abroad.

A novel about the gig economy. Twenty-nine-year-old Daniel is an under-employed internet artist who's struggling as much with money and inspiration as he is in his relationship with Grace. Against a backdrop of a digital economy that rewards online platforms instead of content creators, with climate-change anxiety hanging in the air, the resolutely contemporary Morissette immerses readers into a year of modern love, as Daniel and Grace navigate their aspirations, insecurities and ambitions amidst a culture obsessed with selfies and identity.

Finally, after 58 years The Body on Mount Royal is back in print, starring hard-drinking private dick, Russell Teed. From the back cover of the 1953 edition: Take a brutally beaten body, a lonely spot on Montreal's famous mountain, and a buxum brunette whose embrace brings treachery. Add a large dose of vicious gang warfare and a slice of underworld life. Mix these ingredients well and you have a large helping of spicy, fast-paced adventure.

Taking its title from a story in the collection, this anthology brings together the best prose writing in Quebec—all short pieces—from the winners and finalists of the last three years of the Quebec Writing Competition. Montreal’s CBC Radio and the Quebec Writers’ Federation created the competition in 1999 which resulted in four previous anthologies: Telling Stories, Short Stuff, In Other Words, and Minority Reports. The winning stories are broadcast on CBC Radio and published in Maisonneuve magazine.

That Rafe Jonason’s life didn’t end when he smashed up his car was something of a miracle; on that everyone agreed. However, the devoted husband and pillar of the community emerges from hospital a very different man. Coarse and intolerant, this new Rafe drinks away his days, showing no interest in returning to work. Worst of all, he doesn’t appear to recognize or so much as remember his loving wife Julie. Tension and suspicion within the couple’s Rosedale mansion grow after it is learned that Rafe wasn’t alone in the car that night. Is it that Julie never truly knew her husband?

A visceral tale of obsession and creativity, unrequited passions and the power of music. A love story in which art is a foil to companionship, and the intellect an interlocutor of the heart. In the utterly unique All that Sang, the second fiction by Lambda Literary Award-finalist Lydia Perović, a Toronto opera critic on assignment in Paris falls in love with the subject she’s been sent to interview, France’s leading female conductor. But is the attention evenly matched, is genuine connection even possible? Perović guides us through the panorama that orbits contemporary courtship.

Short story writer, novelist and essayist Josip Novakovich returns with his first collection of stories since being named a finalist for the prestigious 2013 Man Booker International prize. In Ex-Yu, he explores the major themes of war and exile, of religiosity and existentialism, that have defined his fiction and earned him a place among the pantheon of international writers addressing contemporary literature’s most pressing questions.

It descends with a challenge upon the censors, and yet this powerful story had to be told, for it is so much a part of a struggling, impetuous generation of youth in Canada. It is sometimes brazen, sometimes explosive, always face to face with gripping reality, shocking as that may be to those who shy away from life’s more lurid facets. - from the first paperback edition First published in 1946, The Long November enjoyed six different editions in nine years, making it one of the best selling Canadian novels of the post-war period.

"It's been a long time now, nearly two years since we met at that party." "Yeah," Tessie said bitterly, "and nearly five years since I was a clever little girl who thought she'd found a way to make a hundred dollars. There was only going to be one time. I needed the dough. Two months later I didn't have an excuse any more and I was still doing it. Still am." A blindingly blonde woman walks into private detective Mike Garfin’s downtown Montreal office, complaining that she’s being followed by a man.

It was cold; bitterly paralysingly cold. There was a dampness in the air that bit into the marrow of your bones and stayed there. The red in the thermometer was below zero and still dropping steadily, and the weather forecasts offered no immediate hope of a let up. The city lay rigid under the stiffening blanket of snow. The air as you breathed it felt solid. A raw novel of sex and drugs in the years just before rock’n’roll, Hot Freeze moves from the highest Westmount mansion to the lowest Montreal gambling joint and nightclubs.