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In this new edition of Jack Hodgins’ Governor General–winning novel (for 1979), the reader is taken into the everyday eccentricities of life in Port Annie on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a town that keeps slipping into the ocean and whose people have long been in a continuous slumber. Everything changes, however, when a beautiful sea nymph is washed ashore from a stranded freighter. People begin grasping at new possibilities.

In Jack Hodgins’ new novel, Cadillac Cathedral, he is at his humorous best in describing the eccentric but lovable characters in the little town of Portuguese Creek on Vancouver Island. Arvo is the main figure, a Finn who has worked in logging camps all his life and who now spends his retirement fixing old cars, often ones that he finds discarded in the bush. Along with Arvo there is a collection of friends who meet at Arvo’s garage to discuss the world as it passes by on the highway.

Bick Kidd and his globe-trotting siblings set out to rescue their kidnapped mother from some nasty pirates. Their journey that takes them down the Nile River, where they must navigate everything from Egyptian pyramids to wet-and-wild jungles in order to save the day.

A collection of animal-themed tales from humorist David Sedaris. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life.

Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies--struck by a laundry van--after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. But was it an accident or murder?

Bernadette is a frightfully intelligent wife and mother whose intense allergy to Seattle specifically, and to people in general, has driven her to hire a virtual assistant in India to execute even her most basic tasks. Then her daughter, Bee, insists on a family trip to Antarctica as her reward for getting perfect grades in middle school, and Bernadette is faced with the daunting prospect of actual human interaction.

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer.

It is said that a picture may be worth a thousand words but an old photograph can inspire many more.

For Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz, business isn't just booming--it's skyrocketing. But as her friend Marla is constantly warning her, 'Success can kill you.' Goldy knows she needs to slow down before she breaks down, and she vows she'll do it--right after her next booking: a cocktail party for the Westside Mall's Elite Shoppers Club. It's the event of the shopping season: the Princess Without a Pricetag party for the wealthy shopaholics who drop at least a thousand dollars a week at the mall.

There is the surveyor who dreams of a membership in Muirfield golf club. There is the pushy Stockbridge mother. There is the intellectual lady who sees herself as part of a much larger world. These characters and more confront issues of trust, love, and loss.