Showing results by narrator "Erin Moon" in All Categories

Halifax, 1917. Clare Holmes, a flaw checker at the local glassworks, is saving up for passage to England, to work for the Red Cross and be near her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. But one normal Thursday morning, a deadly explosion in the Halifax harbour shatters the city - and Clare is caught up in the blast. As Clare struggles to recover from her injuries, she stumbles upon the School of Art, where she finds solace in drawing, and a mentor who encourages Clare’s burgeoning artistic ambitions. But how can one be an artist when the whole world has gone mad?

When poker players at a major, televised tournament begin turning up strangled in their hotel rooms, cop Clare Vengel must once again go undercover to befriend the suspects and find the killer in their midst. Though Clare hates her shallow cover character Tiffany, a trust-fund princess who thinks the poker tour is a better idea than college, posing helps her infiltrate the inner circle quickly.

Mission Safe Zone, September 1st 2012, the Essential Supplies Warehouse. Alexander Corrone reported for work early. His shift began at seven thirty in the morning, but he was there by seven. He was the boss of one of the two warehouse crews for Essential Supplies, the day shift, and he ran his crew efficiently and well. He was lean and dark haired, just slightly greying. His features were blunt and forgettable, and he blended into a crowd easily, unless he spoke. His age could have been anything from thirty to fifty.

For five years Edie has worked for the Elysian Society, a secretive organisation that provides a very specialised service: its clients come to reconnect with their dead loved ones by channelling them through living 'Bodies'. Edie is one such Body, perhaps the best in the team, renowned for her professionalism and discretion. But everything changes when Patrick, a distraught husband, comes to look for traces of his drowned wife in Edie....

Molly Snow arrives in the coastal town of Surfbreak to research its past. It was here that one brave explorer ventured long ago - and here that he died. Molly wants to know what happened to Alfred Aowl... and why the maps he drew of the region depict places that don't exist. But her interest in Aowl and his feud with the Indians resurrects dark forces only a shaman could understand.

Alternating between a woman's childhood in a small town and as an adult in the city, this novel traces a Jehovah Witness family's splintering belief system, their isolation, and the erosion of their relationships. As Emily becomes closer to her closeted Uncle Tyler, she begins to challenge her upbringing. Her questions about the Jehovah's Witnesses' insular lifestyle, rigid codes of conduct, and tenets of their faith haunt her older sister Lenora too.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.

Until recently, McClelland and Stewart had been known as 'The Canadian Publisher', the country's longest-lived and best independent press. Its dynamic leader, Jack McClelland, worked with successive provincial and federal governments to help draft policies in the 1960s and '70s which ensured that Canadian stories would, for the first time in the nation's history, be told and published by Canadians. M&S introduced Canadians to themselves while championing the nation's literature.

Vicky Bauer's life is already complicated. Her brief career as a film scholar has been replaced by difficult stints as a substitute teacher. Vicky's husband is in a semicoma and her estranged father has suddenly become dependent on her. In the midst of this decidedly troubled existence a series of unrelated events further complicate Vicky's life. For some reason people who have caused Vicky difficulties are now the subjects of acts of violence. Moreover, Vicky has a new neighbour to whom she is extremely attracted.

While trying to save her marriage and stay sober, Vicky Bauer witnesses a murder, and when no one, not even her husband, believes her, Vicky must figure out what is going on before she too is killed.

When the mayor keels overdead in the middle of a speech, a clandestine student society immediately takes credit for his demise. Their mission is to create a perfect political system by any means at their disposal. Clare Vengel, a rookie officer fresh from the police academy and beyond bored with her routine as a beat cop, volunteers to go undercover as a student to infiltrate the secretive organization.

Vicky Bauer is a woman who unwittingly gets involved in other people's business. Sometimes this gets her into serious trouble. Take Rachel for instance. When Vicky witnesses Rachel's abuse at the hands of her husband, Vicky offers Rachel refuge in her home. Weeks later, Rachel is found dead. Vicky is compelled to make sense of this young woman's story and to track down her killer.

The recipient of the Journey Prize and Edna Staebler Award, Heather Birrell made a splash in the literary world with her first collection, I Know You Are But What Am I? In Mad Hope, Birrell employs her keen insight into the human condition to present tales featuring a complex array of characters, including a gay man caring for a friend and a science teacher faced with a shocking request.

 There are many ways to be kind. Follow one girl as she expresses gratitude through kind deeds all her own—a smile or encouraging word or even shared snacks—and discovers one act of kindness inspires another. In this heartwarming lyrical text, twelve acts of everyday kindness are set to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” This joyous listen celebrates how small acts of kindness can be practiced at any age. 

In 1914, Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian on his way to tend horses in World War I, followed his heart and rescued a baby bear. He named her Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg, and he took the bear to war. Harry Colebourn's real-life great-granddaughter tells the true story of a remarkable friendship and an even more remarkable journey - from the fields of Canada to a convoy across the ocean to an army base in England...and finally to the London Zoo, where Winnie made another new friend: a real boy named Christopher Robin.

A Mariner's Guide to Self Sabotage is populated by the lonely and alienated, holders of secrets, members (or would-be members) of shadowy organizations, screw-ups, joyriders, and runaways. Architects of their own destruction, Gaston's characters provoke an almost mythic response of simultaneous disbelief and recognition, as they painfully, deliberately, stubbornly carve a path for themselves, questioning every turn. Yet somehow, in spite of themselves, they sometimes manage to stumble into peace and even wisdom.

Bill Gaston's characteristic keen insight and wit dazzle in this new collection. Here, we see the world through the prism of unfamiliar perspectives: a bank executive whose excellent sex life might in fact be killing her, an amorous tree surgeon better attuned to the values of his "patients" than to other people, a vacationing schizophrenic wary of his housemates, a pizza-delivery boy convinced he's witnessed magic - all struggling with the world as they see it.

Forty thousand years in the past, the last family of Neanderthals roams the earth. After a crushingly hard winter, their numbers are low, but Girl, the oldest daughter, is just coming of age and her family is determined to travel to the annual meeting place and find her a mate. But the unforgiving landscape takes its toll, and Girl is left alone to care for Runt, a foundling of unknown origin. In the modern day, archaeologist Rosamund Gale works well into her pregnancy, racing to excavate newly found Neanderthal artifacts before her baby comes.

A small boy and his grandmother set sail for China in the mud of her backyard; a supermarket car park becomes a graveyard of strewn blueberries; migratory birds fly over a marshland ringing with the sound of wooden spoons on kitchen pots; and the breaking of a silence between two roommates leads to disquieting revelations. Eliza Robertson's delicate and startling stories tell of the adventure of the ordinary and the magic within the everyday.

BriannaSusannaAlana is named for the three sisters who tell the story. Brianna is the youngest, six years old; Susanna is 10; and Alana is nearly 13. When a murder is committed in the apartment block nearby, the three sisters are forced to consider their world in a new way. Each sister tells her story of the day the murder, each story weaves through her sisters, touching down on remembrances and imaginings.