Fiction Books

Another knockout domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont.

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.

But this morning all of that will change.

Because Diana Brewer isn't lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.

How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.

And one innocent question could be deadly.

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Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times (London) bestsellers. Her books have been sold in thirty-eight territories around the world. She lives in Toronto

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Jamie Chai Yun Liew is the recipient of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop. She is a lawyer and law professor specializing in immigration, refugee, and citizenship law and the creator of the podcast Migration Conversations. Dandelion is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa with her family.

A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration.

It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator.

All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s quite good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives–marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets.

Following international acclaim for Niko (2011) and The Bleeds (2018), Dimitri Nasrallah has written a vivid elegy to the 1980s, the years he first moved to Canada, bringing the era’s systemic challenges into the current moment through this deeply endearing portrait of struggle, perseverance, and bonding.

Awards: Longlist - 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Canada Reads Selection 2023

Praise:

From New York Times Bestselling Author Louise Penny

A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery Novel, Book 1 of 18

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team of investigators are called to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods on Thanksgiving morning. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season...

Louise Penny is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Gamache series, including Still Life, which won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2006. Recipient of virtually every existing award for crime fiction, Louise was also granted the Order of Canada in 2014 and received an honorary doctorate of literature from Carleton University and the Ordre Nationale du Québec in 2017. She lives in a small village south of Montreal.

USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday concludes her beloved royal Christmas series with an unforgettable romance about a confident American woman and the strait-laced royal advisor who falls hopelessly in love with her.

Matteo Benz has spent his life serving at the pleasure of the Eldovian crown. His work is his life and his life, well...he doesn’t have much of one. When he is tasked to aid a management consultant who has been flown in to help straighten out the king’s affairs, he is instantly disturbed by her brash American manner—as well by an inconvenient attraction to the brainy beauty.

Cara Delaney is in Eldovia to help clean up the king’s financial affairs, but soon finds herself at odds with the very proper Mr. Benz. As intrigued by his good looks as she is annoyed by his dedication to tradition for its own sake, she slowly begins to see the real man behind the royal throne.

As they work together to return Eldovia to its former glory during the country’s magical Christmas season, Matteo discovers he is falling hopelessly in love with the unconventional American. But a man who has devoted his life to tradition doesn’t change easily. Can he become the man Cara needs, or will their love be another sacrifice to the crown?

Critical Praise

"Witty banter and sizzling love scenes played out against the backdrop of a dazzling winter wonderland make Holiday’s latest sparkle. Series fans are sure to be charmed." — Publishers Weekly

"With So This Is Christmas, Holiday delivers a holiday delight full of banter and wintry magic." — Popsugar

"Fans of Holiday’s A Princess for Christmas series will enjoy being whisked back to Eldovia in this latest. The book stands on its own, with appearances by characters from earlier installments." — Library Journal

"It is refreshing to see two successful people admiring each other’s competence in Holiday's slowly evolving, gentle romance." — Booklist

"Holiday’s knack for writing witty banter is on full display here, with Dani and Max's escalating text messages and phone conversations showing a deepening friendship between them... This slow-burn romance will appeal to readers who enjoy the friends-to-lovers trope. The novel carefully builds trust and a deepening emotional attachment between Dani and Max." — Kirkus Reviews on Duke, Actually

"Holiday’s follow-up to A Princess for Christmas hits all the right notes as the heir to a dukedom discovers love during the holidays...Holiday cleverly draws parallels to Love, Actually throughout this witty, emotionally charged holiday tale. Readers will delight in the strong heroine seeking love on her own terms." — Publishers Weekly on Duke, Actually

"RITA-nominated Holiday follows A Princess for Christmas with another splendidly entertaining romance that offers just the right dash of holiday cheer and delectably droll wit." — Booklist on Duke, Actually

“A Princess for Christmas is a confection of a holiday plot with more steam than a perfect cup of hot cocoa. Given her surname, Holiday was virtually obligated to write a book like this—and she delivers with a sexy, sugary delight full of her signature delectable banter.” — Entertainment Weekly

“A modern fairy tale that’s perfect for reading with a warm cup of cocoa.” — USA Today Yes Shopper on A Princess for Christmas

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Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, and Not a Happy Family, which have all been New York Times and The Sunday Times (London) bestsellers. Her books have been sold in thirty-eight territories around the world. She lives in Toronto

A new deluxe edition of the international bestseller by Heather O’Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, featuring an original foreword from the author, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the coming-of-age story that People describes as “a vivid portrait of life on skid row.”

Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father Jules is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that “chocolate milk” is Jules’ slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance.

Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul—and what the johns don’t take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her—which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm—but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention.

Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O’Neill’s heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it was first published ten years ago. Now in a new deluxe package it is sure to capture its next decade of readers as Baby picks her pathway along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption, and of love.

Critical Praise

“A vivid portrait of life on skid row.” - People

“A nuanced, endearing coming-of-age novel you won’t want to miss.” - Quill & Quire (Canada)

“Vivid and poignant.... A deeply moving and troubling novel.” - Independent (London)

“A beautiful book, all the more remarkable because its harrowing tale is (virtuosically) told without a trace of self-pity or bathos. There are phrases in here that will make you laugh out loud, and others that will stop your heart. A definite triumph.” - David Rakoff, author of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

“O’Neill is a tragicomedienne par excellence…. You will not want to miss this tender depiction of some very mean streets.” - Montreal Review of Books

“A poignant tale…. O’Neill brings the setting to life.” - OK!, five stars

“O’Neill somehow infuses her troubling story with a kind of heartbreaking innocence…. She is a wonderful stylist and the voice she has created for Baby is original and altogether captivating.” - Booklist

“A winsome debut novel.” - Kirkus

“Baby’s precocious introspection feels pitch perfect.... Tear-jerkingly effective.” - Publishers Weekly

“Dreamy prose.... Baby’s unique voice and the glimmer of hope provided by her intelligence and imaginative spirit live on in the mind long after you have closed the book.” - Waterstones Books Quarterly (London)

“A disturbing, heartbreaking novel… redeemed by a powerful voice, vivid characters and gritty realism. This is a stunning book from a first-time author.” - RebelHousewife.com

Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in “the land of trees,” where his descendents became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, exile, and of the blood ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came.

From the bestselling author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel, a spellbinding story about two young women whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the course of history

Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she's the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood.

Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie's obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly.

Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father's sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city's gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more.

From the beloved Giller Prize-shortlisted author who writes “like a sort of demented angel with an uncanny knack for metaphor" (Toronto Star), When We Lost Our Heads is a page-turning novel that explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying strength of the human heart when it can't let someone go.

Now a Netflix Original Series!

The original award-winning creative team and the postapocalyptic sci-fi world of Sweet Tooth is back in Sweet Tooth: The Return!

Acclaimed author Jeff Lemire and colorist José Villarrubia, who first brought you the strange adventures of Gus, the human-deer hybrid boy, dive back into the strange, dark world of their creation. This haunting tale is both new and familiar, as we return to a planet long past the point of devastation. Are Gus's dreams leading him to forge a better future for himself and the other hybrid children? Or are they the dreams of a mind as lost and wandering as its dreamer?

About The Author
Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire is the creator of the acclaimed monthly comic book series SWEET TOOTH, published by DC/Vertigo, and the award-winning graphic novel Essex County, published by Top Shelf. Now one of DC Comics' cornerstone writers, Jeff was prominent in the publisher's recent "New 52" line-wide relaunch as the writer of ANIMAL MAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK, and FRANKENSTEIN- AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E. He has also written the monthly adventures of SUPERBOY, THE ATOM and CONSTANTINE. In 2008 Jeff won the Schuster Award for Best Canadian Cartoonist and the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent. He also won the American Library Association's prestigious Alex Award, recognizing books for adults with specific teen appeal. He has also been nominated for five Eisner awards and five Harvey Awards. In 2010 Essex County was named as one of the five Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade. He currently lives and works in Toronto with his wife and son.

A dazzling, original novel of slavery and freedom, from the author of the international bestseller Half-Blood Blues

When two English brothers arrive at a Barbados sugar plantation, they bring with them a darkness beyond what the slaves have already known. Washington Black – an eleven year-old field slave – is horrified to find himself chosen to live in the quarters of one of these men. But the man is not as Washington expects him to be. His new master is the eccentric Christopher Wilde – naturalist, explorer, inventor and abolitionist – whose obsession to perfect a winged flying machine disturbs all who know him. Washington is initiated into a world of wonder: a world where the night sea is set alight with fields of jellyfish, where a simple cloth canopy can propel a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning – and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.

But when a man is killed one fateful night, Washington is left to the mercy of his new masters. Christopher Wilde must choose between family ties and young Washington's life. What follows is a flight along the eastern coast of America, as the men attempt to elude the bounty that has been placed on Washington's head. Their journey opens them up to the extraordinary: to a dark encounter with a necropsicist, a scholar of the flesh; to a voyage aboard a vessel captained by a hunter of a different kind; to a glimpse through an unexpected portal into the Underground Railroad. This is a novel of fraught bonds and betrayal. What brings Wilde and Washington together ultimately tears them apart, leaving Washington to seek his true self in a world that denies his very existence.

From the blistering cane fields of Barbados to the icy plains of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-drowned streets of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black teems with all the strangeness of life. This inventive, electrifying novel asks, What is Freedom? And can a life salvaged from the ashes ever be made whole?

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

A wedding. A heist. A secret.

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. She is now the esteemed Head Maid & Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, and two good things are just around the corner—a taping of the hit antiquities TV show Hidden Treasures and, even more exciting, her wedding to Juan Manuel.

When Molly brings in some old trinkets to be appraised on the show, one item is revealed to be a rare and coveted artifact worth millions. Molly becomes a rags-to-riches sensation, and a media frenzy swirls as she prepares to sell her priceless treasure. Then, on auction day, the treasure suddenly vanishes, and Molly and her friends find themselves at the center of the boldest art heist in recent memory.

But the key to this mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s Gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about her grandmother’s secrets: how she was born into a wealthy family and fell head-over-heels in love with a young man her parents deemed below her. As fate would have it, Gran’s greatest love was someone Molly knows quite well…

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spell-binding whodunnit that will capture your heart.

WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE