|
|
|
Death and Life of Strother Purcell
by Ian Weir
Strother Purcell had attained notoriety in his own time, but his fame - or infamy - had largely died with him. A gunman whose prowess echoed through the American frontier and whose blood-feud with his own half-brother was nearly biblical in proportion, little remains of the saga of one of America's most notorious gunslingers. That is, until a long-lost foundational epic, tucked between the pages of a misfiled library book, is discovered nearly a century later: The Purcelliad. What unfolds is an archetypal saga of obsession, treachery, lost love, murder and revenge-and that's just the academic research -told in Ian Weir's trademark funny, fast, wickedly intelligent style. A deadpan revisionist Western and a tale of academic skullduggery, The Death and Life of Strother Purcell is a novel about the power of the past... and the lengths we'll go to in order to invent it.Book Annotation
|
|
|
Dear Evelyn
by Kathy Page
Raised on a working-class London street in the wake of World War I, Harry Miles wins a scholarship and grows into a sensitive poetry-loving man. Meanwhile, the magnetic and demanding Evelyn Hill grows up with a layabout alcoholic father and dreams of a better life. When the two fall in love amid the outbreak of World War II, their capacity to care for each other becomes increasingly tested.
|
|
|
Machine Without Horses
by Helen Humphreys
A seasoned writer stumbles across an obituary and imagination is sparked. The brief words of memoriam describe a woman who was both extraordinary--eccentric, revered in her field, a renowned expert--but also utterly ordinary. How does a writer, intrigued by all that isn't said, create a story? Capture an unknowable woman and all the secret passions, choices and compromises that make up a life?
|
|
Feature on Quebecois Authors
|
|
|
Beirut Hellfire Society
by Rawi Hage
Our protagonist, Pavlov, is the twenty-something son of an undertaker and as such has watched funeral processions pass below his window throughout his childhood. When his father dies, Pavlov is summoned by his former teacher, Mr. Tarraff, and tasked with providing burials that, for a variety of reasons--because the deceased is homosexual, or an outcast, or abandoned by their family, or an atheist--must happen in secret. The society that arranges such burials is a hidden anti-religious sect called the Beirut Hellfire Society. Pavlov accepts this assignment, and over the course of the novel acts as a survivor-chronicler of his torn and fading community, bearing witness to both its enduring rituals and its inevitable decline.
|
|
|
Songs for the Cold of Heart
by Eric Dupont
Nuns that appear out of thin air, a dinner party at the Goebbels', Quebec's very own Margaret Thatcher, a grandma that just won't die (not until the archangel comes back)... Songs For The Cold Of Heart is a yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivire-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome, and beyond. This is the novel of a century--long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs, and unforgettable characters--with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca.
|
|
|
Zolitude : Stories
by Paige Cooper
Paige Cooper's short stories catalogue moments in love. These are stories about women who built time machines when they were nine, or who predict cataclysm, or who think their dreams are reality. They include police horses with talons and giant eagles and weredeer. At the center of it all is love. And if love is the problem, what is the solution? Being closer? Or being alone?
|
|
|
|
|
|