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Winner, Commonwealth Book Prize, Canada and the Caribbean, Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and Frye Academy AwardShortlisted, CLA Young Adult Book Award, Red Maple Award, and University of Canberra Book of the YearLonglisted, Canada ReadsLiving with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast.

An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013Roman was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. At 18, he leaves his family for a home in the forest, learning to live off the land rather than his family’s wealth. Éléna flees a house of blood and mayhem, taking refuge in a monastery and later in the rustic village of Rivière-aux-Oies. One day, while walking in the woods, Éléna hears the melody of a clarinet and comes across Roman, who calls himself Starling and whom Éléna later renames Douglas, for the strongest and most spectacular of trees. Later a child named Rose is born. Fade to black.

Two French explorers arrive in Court to charm two ships from the English King. The rest, as they say, is history . . . Or perhaps not. Set in the libertine era of Restoration England, The Players embarks on a voyage of discovery with compelling characters, a magical plot, and stunning imagery. A tale of beginnings and of invention, this remarkable novel takes on the 17th century with a contemporary sensibility. Here, the ability to perform -- in Court, on stage, in private quarters, and in the brutal cold of James Bay -- might save your life . . .

Andrew Day embarks on a bicycle trip from Halifax to Kingston, his childhood home. As he goes, the dual narratives of Andrew's life emerge: the slow, painful death of his father and the disappearance of Betty, who may be lost to him forever. He contemplates, too, the nature of desire. En route, Andrew sloughs off his fears, material goods, and attachments. In episodes of intensifying violence, he leaves the highway and rides the back roads under the cover of night. By the time he arrives home, an epiphany greets him.

Winner, Commonwealth Writers Prize, Canada and the Caribbean, Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and On the Same Page, Manitoba ReadsShortlisted, Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and McNally Robinson Book of the YearLonglisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Lily Piper and her family live in an ephemeral world, due to collapse any moment when the Lord comes to pluck His faithful from the drought-ravaged Prairie. Lily tries to be ready, but she is restless, not the daughter she feels her mother wants.

Shortlisted, Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the FantasticLonglisted, IMPAC Dublin International Literary AwardFrom the acclaimed author of Daniel O'Thunder comes a rollicking, bawdy, and haunting novel about love and redemption, death and resurrection. The great metropolis of London swaggers with Regency abandon as nineteen-year-old Will Starling returns from the Napoleonic Wars having spent five years assisting a military surgeon. Charming, brash, and damaged, Will is helping his mentor build a medical practice — and a life — in the rough Cripplegate area.

Shortlisted, Thomas Head Raddall AwardWhen Stella disappears, leaving her toddler and husband behind, her mother Sonia, a widowed farm wife and former lighthouse keeper, struggles to face the possibility that her daughter may not have slipped through the ice. She may have been pushed. >p?In a intensely memorable narrative with the deceptive pull of an undertow, Sonia’s past, a flotsam of lost dreams, bruised hopes, buried love, wells up to meet her.

Shortlisted, George Bugnet Award for FictionKalila chronicles the lives of Maggie and Brodie, whose joy collides with devastation when their daughter’s birth also heralds the news of her congenital heart condition. In this startlingly inventive novel, Rosemary Nixon braids light and darkness into a narrative chain pulled exquisitely taut. Through Maggie and Brodie’s shifting viewpoints, the isolating impenetrability of hospital life, the mediation of physics, music, and family, Nixon propels the reader into unmapped emotional terrain where a shell-shocked family grapples with the horror, jo

With blood on his hands, Curtis Woolf flees his home in New Mexico for Canada, where he starts a religious commune, the Family. There he heals others and preaches pacifism while enduring the torment of this own damaged soul. Then his lover, Martha, finds his gun and goes south to discover the truth, whatever that might be. Curtis sets out to bring her back, lest the Family fall apart. In the half-light of a nursing home sits Hollis, dragon lord of a lost Mormon line, who has anointed Curtis, damned him, and now awaits his return.

In this punchy, uproarious romp of a novel, the Halifax boxing world — peopled with has-beens, wannabes, and posers dressed in spandex, leopard prints, and tie-die — touches gloves with the colourful world of sports reporting. Both groups need something hot with speedy delivery. Enter a cast of misfits. There’s Turmoil Davies, an enigmatic Trinidadian heavyweight poised to storm the Halifax boxing world. There’s Ownie Flanagan, an old-school trainer who scans the obituaries for odd names and trains men with more ambition than talent.