National Network for Equitable Library Service

In Something About the Animal, Cathy Stonehouse's first collection of short fiction, the world keeps coming apart at the seams: these are stories of imminent and often destructive crisis, which in their form and structure capture the hysterical edge of hallucinatory madness in a way few writers have ever managed. These are stories about the search for meaning, of fragile, haunted understanding, real life horror stories, stories bleakly, blackly humorous, but also imbued with real hope, generosity and beauty; stories simply not reducible to cover copy.

Women. Young women, old women. The hair-obsessed, the politically driven, the sure-footed, the bonybutted, the awkward and compulsive and alone. Sleep-deprived and testy. Exhausted and accepting. Among the innumerable wives, husbands, sisters, and in-laws vexed by short temper and insecurity throughout the collection, Cynthia Flood's protagonists stand out as masters of a reality that the rest of the world will only partially understand.

In the world of The Reasonable Ogre, magic is nothing if not paradoxical. Ogres can indeed be reasonable, prisons may prove porous, gifts often come disguised as curses, and springs gone dry are only waiting to resurface. At once comic and moving, troubling and restorative, Mike Barnes's original stories are here to remind us that fairy tales aren't about the happily-ever-after: they're about the strange detours we take trying to get there. With seventy drawings from the striking brush of Segbingway.

Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, these first short stories from Terry Griggs herald one of the most original voices to appear out of Canada in the last several decades. The stories in Quickening are eccentric, wildly inventive, whimsical and fantastic. Her narrative energy sweeps us along, though the real delight of these stories is the gorgeousness of the writing.

Psychologists are people we love to hate. At best, they're compassionate detectives of the human soul, healers and diagnosticians, assessing the internal machinations that structure our lives and behavior. At worst, however, they're smug, hyper-educated, bombastic, yappy, socially deaf, thrice-divorced and twice-separated spouse-swapping cat-torturing perverts. Plus, they're all in this book. And so are their patients. C.P. Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories is a brilliant study of mental illness, mental health, and the people who try to tell them apart.

The rubble of an ancient civilization. A village in a valley from which no one comes or goes. A forest of mother-trees, whispering to each other through their roots; a lakeside lighthouse where a girl slips into human skin as lightly as an otter into water; a desert settlement where there was no conflict, before she came; or the town of Wantwick, ruled by a soothsayer, where tourists lose everything they have. These are the places where things begin.

Rebecca Rosenblum's Once is a fiercely original and assured debut, a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings'students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers'who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies.

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).