National Network for Equitable Library Service

'In this singular story dedicated to the mother, the narrator creates an avatar to counter her pain of living. Karoline Georges manages to combine the real and the virtual around the complexity of family ties. The author approaches loneliness and representation of the body with astonishing lucidity. The Imago Stage transcends genres in an intelligent and powerful prose.' - Governor General's Literary Award Jury.

A young gymnast crushes on an older, more talented teammate while contending with her overworked mother. A newly queer twenty-something juggles two intimate relationships—with a slippery anarchist lover and an idiosyncratic meals-on-wheels recipient. A queer metal band's summer tour unravels amid the sticky heat of the Northeastern US. A codependent listicle writer becomes obsessed with a Japanese ASMR channel. The stories in PERSONAL ATTENTION ROLEPLAY are propelled by queer loneliness, mixed-race confusion, late capitalist despondency, and the pitfalls of intimacy.

A poverty-stricken, nineteenth-century guitar virtuoso navigates the tricky political landscape of Parisian society as he comes out of retirement for one final concert. A sessional instructor competing for the prestigious Interdisciplinary Chair in Aretha Franklin studies gets sidetracked by her obsession with a mysterious student in a yellow hat. A dying doo-wop DJ and his wife try to bridge the estrangement wrought by illness as they travel in search of the horns, drums, and vocals of highlife.

One Friday, Vancouver lawyer Paul Brenner has dinner with his son, Daniel. They talk about work, health, money, and music, and part ways. The following evening, Paul receives the phone call that is every parent's worst nightmare: Daniel has been killed in Stanley Park. 'Hold Me Now' is an unflinching portrayal of a father's grief, as Paul learns how very different the new world -- a world without his son -- will be for him. The investigation of Daniel's murder, the trial, and the sentencing of the killer test Paul's faith in the legal system.

Universal Disorder is about a young boy growing up on the Canadian Prairies in the 1970s and 1980s; he has developmental disorders -- is on the autism spectrum and has OCD -- and finds solace in the world of numbers. Years later, he's a failed astrophysicist living in Montreal, and he sees a number on his call display that he hasn't seen in ten years, belonging to a woman he assumed dead. On the verge of another breakdown, he searches the streets of Montreal for a lost love -- forced to face a past that he had desperately tried to forget.

Explores the notion of disappearance and the anxieties associated with things gone missing--family, friendship, sanity, love.

Keen, intense, darkly comic, and accident-prone, the short fictions of David Whitton are full of sullen underdogs: his characters clean up real nice, but can’t help but unravel back to their original fallen and fascinating selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions trample through these stories, twisting out intricate surprises at each turn.

Watershed is a contemporary dystopian novel set in a near-future southern Alberta, which has been ravaged by desert-like conditions, as opposed to the northern part of the province, which is warm as well as green and lush thanks to a water pipeline from the ocean. The province's former oil and gas pipelines are being converted to carry desalinated sea water, and the north and south are at odds because of it. The protagonist, Wilma, is desperately trying to hold onto her dying family farm, while her son, Daniel, takes a job for the enemy: the big water pipeline corporation.

Agnes, Murderess is a graphic novel about the bloody folk legend of Agnes McVee, a roadhouse owner, madam, and serial killer in the Cariboo region of British Columbia during the gold rush.

Meet Sylvie -- funny, sly, sensual and flawed. She can't always count on herself to make good choices. She may or may not recognize a life-or-death moment, may or may not cancel her own wedding with a day to spare, might just try to walk past store security with a little something in her pocket. Like all of us, Sylvie must make decisions that have reverberations for years to come. Unlike the rest of us, Sylvie gets to live more than one life.