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Greetings from the off-kilter world of Chris Gudgeon. In his first-ever book of fiction, the bestselling author of The Naked Truth: The Untold History of Sex in Canada offers postcard glimpses into the quirky private lives of unusually twisted characters. A prim English bride honeymooning near the so-called Vodka Sea learns the hard way why it’s better not to drink the water in foreign parts. A chess-playing doctor loses his wife to a charismatic psychologist during a sensuous group sex session masquerading as therapy.

A wanderer arrives by chance on Inishbream, a rocky dot in the sea just off the west coast of Ireland. A lover of boats and a strong worker, she soon marries the young owner of her stone cottage. For a time, she does her woman’s work, fishes with her husband, and walks along the shore, imagining Saint Brendan and the invisible world so real to the islanders. Through the winter, she repays Inishbream storytellers with tales of coastal British Columbia, not so very different, after all, from their own.

An invasion? For teenagers Dryfly Ramsey and Shadrack Nash, poor and ignorant in the world’s terms but rich in the lore of the magical Miramichi, the annual influx of American anglers, with their money, fishing gear, and thirst for salmon seems like one, and it sets the stage for action. A cast of quirky, unforgettable characters — Nutbeam, a large-nosed, floppy-eared hermit; Shirley, Brennan Siding’s toothless postmistress and Ramsey family matriarch; and Buck, who appears once a year to sire another child — conspire to capture the imagination in Herb Curtis’s now classic novel.

Winner, Governor General's Award for FictionShortlisted, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Commonwealth Writers' PrizeA 16th-century belle turned Robinson Crusoe, a female Don Quixote with an Inuit Sancho Panza — this is the heroine of the novel that won the 2003 Governor General's Award. Elle is a lusty, subversive riff on the discovery of the New World, the moment of first contact.

Alden Nowlan's "A Boy's Life of Napoleon" is a brilliant piece of short fiction adapted from Nowlan's first novel, The Wanton Troopers, written in 1960 but published posthumously in 1988. Published on the occasion of Goose Lane Editions's 60th anniversary, it is also available pas part of the six@sixty collection.

Lesley Choyce writes rings around most Canadian authors. Even so, the most recent of his five books of stories came out in 1988, and most are out of print. It's time for a new collection and here it is — Dance the Rocks Ashore or, as one might say, choice Choyce.

A remarkable debut collection, Kelly Cooper's Eyehill provides a multi-hued portrait of a small prairie town. Too small to support a high school or a drugstore, Eyehill is populated by men and women, who have worked for generations to wrest a living from the dry, rolling hills. Like people anywhere else, they hunger for love, understanding, a decent living, and safety and comfort in their homes.

Winner, Atlantic Independent Booksellers Choice Award, Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award, Dartmouth Book Award, and Thomas Head Raddall AwardShortlisted, Governor General's Award for FictionShe's depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the psych ward after giving birth and putting her baby up for adoption, it is a welcome relief — even with the manic ranting of a teen stripper and come-ons of another delusional inmate. But this oasis of relative calm is short-lived.

A collection of stories set in Spain, Africa, California or British Columbia, all featuring family or romantic relationships at the core.

When Ian's parents separate, he moves with his mother to the city, a thousand miles away from the prairie wheat farm he calls home. With no friends and a bleak moonscape of a backyard to play in, Ian has only an old shoe box of objects from his past life to keep him company. But after he peeks through the fence to the lush garden next door, Ian is inspired to start digging his own little plot. And when he meets Mr. Mah, the old man who owns the garden, Ian is surprised to learn they have a lot in common. Also displaced from the original home he misses, Mr.