FICTION

August 30, 2022 by

A professional criminologist, Rosalind works with a cranky private investigator named McBride—a long-time association that has led her from one sordid foray to another in the world of crime. Her passionate escape is theatre and her latest venture is with a company of out-of-work actors putting on an independent production of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s language is a fabulous distraction until the uncanny parallels between life and art begin to unnerve her. Peter King, a respected environmental lawyer working tirelessly to keep water in the public domain, dies suddenly. Is it murder? His son Daniel thinks so. And as Roz and McBride delve deeper into the case, it becomes all too clear that there are those who will stop at nothing to ensure their foul deeds stay buried.

September 27, 2022 by

Four for Fogo Island

September 27, 2022 by

Award recognition for Two for the Tablelands: ***THE HOWARD ENGEL AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL SET IN CANADA 2021 – SHORTLIST*** ***ATLANTIC BOOKS TODAY STAFF PICK 2021 […]

August 30, 2022 by

Glace Bay Miner’s Museum

August 30, 2022 by

In a colliery town, sirens from the mine can mean cave-ins, explosions, or, as in the Westray disaster, sudden death.
Sheldon Currie, author of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum was born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, and judging by the headlong intensity of this novel, he still hears those sirens.
The story begins as shy, awkward Margaret MacNeil meets a strapping miner named Neil Currie. She’s already had her father and a brother die in the coalpits, but she hopes that Neil will be more lucky.

August 30, 2022 by

Glass Voices

August 30, 2022 by

Surviving the Halifax Explosion is one thing, but how do Lucy Caines and her wayward husband, Harry, a couple who lose everything to the event’s horrors, make peace with their grief? Rebuilding on the rustic shores of Halifax’s Northwest Arm, steps from where the shaft of the Mont Blanc’s anchor lands that fateful day in 1917. But coping with the disappearance on that day of their infant daughter, they descend into an isolating denial: Lucy through guilt and reticence, and Harry through drinking and gambling. Despite the birth of a treasured son, each faces a future clouded by fear and apprehension. Then, fifty-two years after the catastrophe, Harry suffers a stroke. Lucy confronts the miracle of their survival and their debilitating loss, re-examining the past and her role in its making, and struggling to become the author of her own happiness.

August 30, 2022 by

Going Fast

August 30, 2022 by

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 dye — touches gloves […]

October 13, 2020 by

Good Mothers Don’t

October 13, 2020 by

It’s 1960 and Elizabeth is slowly coming apart. Her reality is splintering and she wants to harm her children. Fifteen years later, Elizabeth is desperately trying to fill in the gaps electric shock therapy has left in her memory. She longs to find her children and explain that she never meant to leave for so long. A moving exploration of illness, memory, and how we fight for who we love.

October 8, 2020 by

Great Cape Breton Storytelling

October 8, 2020 by

From a lifetime of collecting, Ron Caplan offers tales from the rare complex of Cape Breton Island. From a grim sealing trek to a mother’s courage in a windstorm, to memories of drunken hens, to a shark attack. Mackerel fishermen bag a huge tuna, and an itinerant butcher chases a wild cow. The book includes fables from the island’s Czech, Pakistani, and Lebanese heritage in among stories from the Gaelic, French and Mi’kmaq traditions. Good solid reading in one lasting collection!

April 19, 2021 by

Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles

April 19, 2021 by

Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles, J. J. Steinfeld’s twentieth book and thirteenth short story collection, is an eclectic and thought-provoking mix of 45 speculative fictions written between 1983 […]

August 30, 2022 by

Grey Eyes

August 30, 2022 by

“With his novel Grey Eyes, Frank Busch taps into the traditional in a way I’ve not seen before. At once historical and fantastical, Grey Eyes reclaims some of our most powerful stories with authenticity and with heart and with that bit of magic that brings all of it to such beautiful life. Busch is amongst the new generation of voices so vital to our country.” — Joseph Boyden, author of The Orenda, Winner of CBC Canada Reads 2014

September 14, 2023 by

Growing Up Next to The Mental

September 14, 2023 by

Wish Mooney’s earliest memory in life is finding a corpse in the Waterford River. Jarring stuff for a four-year-old, yet far from the most shocking or bizarre event he would witness growing up in west-end St. John’s, next door to the Waterford Hospital. Or as it was unabashedly labelled before the advent of political correctness: The Mental. An unfortunate moniker by today’s stigma standards, but one legitimately derived from the original name of the place—The Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases—when it opened in 1854. Not until 1972 would it be renamed after the river that runs by it. But in Mooney’s world, which revolves mostly in and around the asylum’s drab, depressing confines, it was colloquially The Mental just as its largely despondent inhabitants were the mental patients. Of course, they were called a lot of other things, too. Such terms and corresponding attitudes were still very much par for the course in the mid-1970s, as the bullied Mooney and co-horts traipsed all over The Mental, and its adjacent field, with reckless abandon and little regard for the consequences of what they did or, maybe more importantly, what they said. Even less consideration was given to any risk in all that, since run-ins with patients—for whom the field was allegedly put there—were usually harmless and sometimes honestly comical. Thus was the oft-surreal environment that unavoidably enveloped Wish and the rest of his strictly Irish-Catholic eight-member Mooney clan, including the quietly acknowledged other realities of the place—the sad, the tragic, the maniacal. Little did Wish ever consider that any or all of that would come full circle later in life when, as the court reporter for the Daily News, he is thrust into the middle of his own life story, replete with shocking conclusion.

February 8, 2022 by

Gunsmith’s Daughter

February 8, 2022 by

1971. Lilac Welsh lives an isolated life with her parents at Rough Rock on the Winnipeg River. Her father, Kal, stern and controlling, has built his wealth by designing powerful […]

September 28, 2020 by

Halifax Nocturne

September 28, 2020 by

December 1954: the old city in winter wears its two hundred years of grime and vice without any shame. The paint peels from ramshackle homes, and the streets congeal with snow and mud. Weary pedestrians trudge through the bleakness with chins tucked below the collars of threadbare coats. Nothing comes easy to the old city, and nothing ever changes — too many tangled secrets and too many unspoken debts. And yet a new suspension bridge, being built out over the harbour to Dartmouth and set to open in the spring, promises a better tomorrow. Such promised are not easy to keep. 
On the street, hard-drinking Halifax police detective Ray Vargas has an unfailing habit for finding trouble, and when a man is found shot to death in the back of a Chevy truck, Vargas finds more trouble than he can handle — the murdered man is his oldest friend and the husband of his lover. 
Frank’s death reminds Ray of an unspoken debt left unpaid. He sets off to find a killer in a city that doesn’t much want a killer to be found. At every turn, he encounters lies and danger. With his partner Artie Brennan and friends Ezekiel Dixon and jazz great Louis Armstrong, Ray tries to make sense of the deepening mystery, but hope is hard to come by — at least until he meets Lee White, Frank’s one-time assistant, who might just be his own bridge to a better tomorrow. 
Nothing in Halifax is what it seems. As the tension builds, and the stakes grow higher, Ray knows that his own future with Lee depends on his solving the mystery. But to do that, he must make a difficult choice: cross a bridge — or burn it.

FICTION

September 28, 2022 by

La colère de l’autre

September 28, 2022 by

Ève n’a jamais ouvert la bouche pour protester. Quand on n’a jamais parlé, par où commencer ? Christophe, pour sa part, préfère ne pas penser, ça lui donne envie de […]

August 30, 2022 by

Last Lullaby

August 30, 2022 by

Set in the fictional town of Paddy’s Arm, Newfoundland, Alice Walsh’s debut mystery novel is at once harrowing and homey, equal parts police procedural and diner gossip. When Claire and Bram’s only child dies suddenly, it at first appears to be a case of crib death. But when the real cause of death indicates homicide and Claire is arrested as the number-one suspect, her friend, lawyer Lauren LaVallee, promises she’ll do everything she can to prove Claire’s innocence.
As Lauren combs Paddy’s Arm for suspects, amid department politics and small-town talk, leads abound. Why are professors Frances and Annabelle being so secretive about their adopted daughter? What’s behind a troubled student’s sudden disappearance? And who is the mysterious platinum blonde observed at the scene of the crime? Meanwhile, Lauren’s own secret—a case that almost cost her her career back in Montreal—and the sudden return of an ex-lover who wants back in her life, threaten to overwhelm the investigation altogether.

August 30, 2022 by

Last Tasmanian

August 30, 2022 by

Winner, Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Shortlisted, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Canada and the CaribbeanThe Last Tasmanian has reaped more national and international recognition than any other novel by Herb Curtis. […]

August 30, 2022 by

Like Rum-Drunk Angels

August 30, 2022 by

Winner, Spur Award for Best Traditional Novel and Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize Longlisted, Leacock Award for HumourFrancis Blackstone is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger with a heart of gold.He’s fallen […]

August 30, 2022 by

Little One

August 30, 2022 by

A moment of compassion in the anthill means that Little One will live — a life of new ideas that will challenge the colony’s traditional world. Beautifully written and difficult to classify, Phil Organ’s novel holds up a rare, compelling mirror to human life. Little One demonstrates integrity and commitment to her colony, but eventually, with extraordinary courage, she dares to live out her own vision. Little One possesses kernels of terror and kernels kernels of exquisite light.

September 14, 2023 by

Maiden from the Sea

September 14, 2023 by

Each day we begin life, not from where we are, but from where we have been. The […]

October 30, 2023 by

Man Included

October 30, 2023 by

Clementine Ellis has always hated the fact that she is named after a long list of dead aunts, despite her father’s reminders that her name means ‘one who is merciful’ […]

October 18, 2022 by

Mary, Mary

October 18, 2022 by

Beloved and bestselling Cape Breton author Lesley Crewe’s novels are now available in bright and bold, smaller-format editions. In a Cape Breton family of black sheep, Mary is pure as […]

April 12, 2023 by

Mercy Gene

April 12, 2023 by

Think Maggie Nelson meets Hannah Gadsby.Told in kaleidoscopic bursts of erratic recollections, daydreams, poetry, and lists, Mercy Gene is the powerful, genre-smashing debut work of auto-fiction by acclaimed writer, playwright, […]

October 22, 2025 by

milktooth

October 22, 2025 by

Sorcha is over the hook-ups and gay haunts of her twenties. At thirty-one what she wants, more than anything, is to have a baby. Then she meets Chris— with her […]

December 17, 2025 by