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C.P. Boyko (Blackouts, 2009) has been nominated for the Journey Prize and published in The Walrus, PRISM International, and The New Quarterly. Psychology and Other Stories, his second collection, was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2013. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Boyko received degrees in English and Psychology from the University of Calgary. He lives in Victoria.

An Indo-American Canterbury Tales, 'The Meagre Tarmac' explores the places where tradition, innovation, culture, and power meet with explosive force. It begins with Vivek Waldekar, who refused to attend his father's funeral because he was trying to please an American girl who thought starting a fire in his father's body too gross a sacrilege to contemplate.

Two runners race a cargo train through the darkness of a rat-infested tunnel beneath the Detroit River. A drugstore bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life and a young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she's caught in far more dangerous currents. An auto worker who loses his family in a car accident is forced to reconsider his relationship with the internal combustion engine. Alexander MacLeod is a writer of 'ferocious intelligence' and 'ferocious physicality' (CTV).

A soldier's wife struggles to reconnect with her daughter after her husband is killed overseas. A baby abandoned at the rectory door inflames a town with gossip. A dog is shot. A heart attack survivor perplexes his family with a newfound sense of religious euphoria, while a nursing home volunteer struggles with the bad behaviour of one of her veteran patients. Compassionate, clear-eyed, probing grief and insularity, Colette Maitland's short fiction debut shows us the price of keeping the peace in a small town.

David Constantine's short fiction is a revelation. Gorgeous and primally resonant, it belongs alongside the best of the last century, including the works of Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, and Thomas Mann. Already regarded as one of the greatest living short story writers in the United Kingdom, where his work has won critical praise and numerous prizes including the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award Constantine has remained virtually unknown in North America. Until now.

Norman Levine was a permanent outsider, by temperament and by choice as Polish born immigrant, as resident alien, as writer, as Jew and he observed life from the margins with an unsentimental eye. Raised in Ottawa after immigrating, Levine served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World war. He then lived an itinerant life for a time before settling down in the community of St. Ives in England, becoming close friends with painters such as Francis Bacon and Patrick Heron.

Hitting the Charts brings back into print stories that go as far back as 1980, offering up the full range of Leon Rooke's voice and accomplishment. These are stories as improvisations, as performances, stories which push the boundaries of form and function, as free from constraint as a Monk solo and as disquieting and resonant as a southern Baptist preacher at a big-tent revival. A new sort of literary riff, then, a dazzling display of language and sensibility, deserving of its own unique adjective: Rookian.

This startlingly original collection was shortlisted for the inaugural Metcalf-Rooke Award. Set in locales and time periods as varied as nineteenth century England, contemporary Spain, and postwar Alberta, these five stories and two novellas introduce us to characters whose obsessions occupy the borderlands between fantasy and reality. In the title story, the half-black grand-daughter of slaves becomes an exotic dancer in New York during the First World War -- and also develops a passion for goldfish.

Meet Xavier Boland, the untouchable cross-dresser, who walks loose and carefree as an old Broadway tune. Meet Miss Penrice, a lost old woman forced by wartime to parent a child for the first time. Meet a Zamboni mechanic turned funeral porteur, Madame Poirer's lapdog (and its chastity belt), a congregation of hard-singing, sex-obsessed Pentecostals, and more.

Cynthia Flood's The English Stories offers a series of twelve linked fictions detailing the story of Amanda Ellis, a young Canadian girl who goes with her parents to England 'for a year that stretched into two,' and her life at St. Mildred's school. Flood's suite is not limited to first person narration by the heroine; rather, the author chooses to spice this collection with a wide range of perspectives and voices.