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A NOW MAGAZINE MUST-READ BOOK FOR FALL 2019
Nearing thirty, with an abandoned degree and half-hearted dreams of becoming a writer, Bonnie Falls finally moves out of her parents’ home and into a shabby flat. When her enigmatic landlady takes an interest in her—and one of her unfinished stories—Bonnie’s aspirations are rekindled, and she’s quickly persuaded by the older woman’s suggestion that they go on holiday to a seaside town like the one in the story. A tense exploration of power and vulnerability, obsession and manipulation, Death and the Seaside is a masterpiece of form and gripping psychological novel about the stories that we tell ourselves.
“Halifax lawyer Anne Emery’s terrific series featuring lawyer Monty Collins and priest Brennan Burke gets better with every book.” — Globe and Mail
There’s a killer on the premises of Christy Burke’s pub in Dublin, according to graffiti spray-painted on the wall. Father Brennan Burke, Christy’s grandson, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Brennan has been tending the bar a bit himself and is not all that keen on probing into the lives of his clientele. But he has little choice once a body is found and the property investigation becomes a murder inquiry.
The pub’s current owner, issuing orders from his cell in Mountjoy Prison, wants the problem solved, and for reasons of his own does not want the police anywhere near the building. Brennan enlists the help of his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O’Flaherty, and the three of them uncover dark secrets in the lives of the pub regulars, secrets some might kill for.
For Brennan, the murder investigation is overshadowed by even more ominous events in Belfast, events that may be coming home to roost in Christy Burke’s. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces or to anyone else. Brennan is compelled to take a hard look at Irish history and his family’s place in it, and Michael’s sunny optimism about his ancestral home is about to be sorely tested, when an act of violence in Northern Ireland sends out shock waves that reverberate all the way to Dublin.
About the Collins-Burke Mysteries
This multi-award-winning series is centred around two main characters who have been described as endearingly flawed: Monty Collins, a criminal defence lawyer who has seen and heard it all, and Father Brennan Burke, a worldly, hard-drinking Irish-born priest. The priest and the lawyer solve mysteries together, but sometimes find themselves at cross-purposes, with secrets they cannot share: secrets of the confessional, and matters covered by solicitor-client confidentiality. The books are notable for their wit and humour, and their depiction of the darker side of human nature ? characteristics that are sometimes combined in the same person, be it a lawyer, a witness on the stand, or an Irish ballad singer who doubles as a guerrilla fighter in the Troubles in war-torn Belfast. In addition to their memorable characters, the books have been credited with a strong sense of place and culture, meticulous research, crisp and authentic dialogue, and intriguing plots. The novels are set in Nova Scotia, Ireland, England, Italy, New York, and Germany. The series begins with Sign of the Cross (2006) and continues to the most recent installment, Postmark Berlin (2020).
“Halifax lawyer Anne Emery’s terrific series featuring lawyer Monty Collins and priest Brennan Burke gets better with every book.” — Globe and Mail
There’s a killer on the premises of Christy Burke’s pub in Dublin, according to graffiti spray-painted on the wall. Father Brennan Burke, Christy’s grandson, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Brennan has been tending the bar a bit himself and is not all that keen on probing into the lives of his clientele. But he has little choice once a body is found and the property investigation becomes a murder inquiry.
The pub’s current owner, issuing orders from his cell in Mountjoy Prison, wants the problem solved, and for reasons of his own does not want the police anywhere near the building. Brennan enlists the help of his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O’Flaherty, and the three of them uncover dark secrets in the lives of the pub regulars, secrets some might kill for.
For Brennan, the murder investigation is overshadowed by even more ominous events in Belfast, events that may be coming home to roost in Christy Burke’s. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces or to anyone else. Brennan is compelled to take a hard look at Irish history and his family’s place in it, and Michael’s sunny optimism about his ancestral home is about to be sorely tested, when an act of violence in Northern Ireland sends out shock waves that reverberate all the way to Dublin.
About the Collins-Burke Mysteries
This multi-award-winning series is centred around two main characters who have been described as endearingly flawed: Monty Collins, a criminal defence lawyer who has seen and heard it all, and Father Brennan Burke, a worldly, hard-drinking Irish-born priest. The priest and the lawyer solve mysteries together, but sometimes find themselves at cross-purposes, with secrets they cannot share: secrets of the confessional, and matters covered by solicitor-client confidentiality. The books are notable for their wit and humour, and their depiction of the darker side of human nature ? characteristics that are sometimes combined in the same person, be it a lawyer, a witness on the stand, or an Irish ballad singer who doubles as a guerrilla fighter in the Troubles in war-torn Belfast. In addition to their memorable characters, the books have been credited with a strong sense of place and culture, meticulous research, crisp and authentic dialogue, and intriguing plots. The novels are set in Nova Scotia, Ireland, England, Italy, New York, and Germany. The series begins with Sign of the Cross (2006) and continues to the most recent installment, Postmark Berlin (2020).
Newspaper reporter Leo Fabian doesn’t think of himself as an opportunist. But when the object of his desire, Stevie Lord, loses the object of her desire to murder, he finds a whole new way to penetrate a woman’s heart.
Who would want to kill Michael Rossiter anyway? Scion of an old Winnipeg newspaper family, he may have been rich, but he didn’t really seem to have enemies. But as Leo delves deeper into the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death, he learns some surprising things about his friend that quite possibly led to his demise. Michael’s brutal fate mires Leo in a case that comes to embroil his fellow reporters at the Winnipeg Citizen, including troubled feature writer Liz Elliot, volatile lifestyle editor Guy Clark, and Michael’s narcissistic sister Merritt Parrish, whom Michael has tried to help get back on the straight and narrow. One of his oldest friends, Axel Werner, also becomes involved and, of course, Stevie, the woman Leo loves.
The past intrudes in new and disturbing ways. Old scandals cast long shadows and long-ago deaths take on frightening implications. From old-money Crescentwood to a new-money mall, from the Citizen’s dilapidated newsroom to a peaceful prairie retreat, Leo follows a complex trail of clues, until he not only knows, but knows he has only moments to thwart another brutal murder.
Bradford Fairfax, special agent, has a romantic New Year’s Eve in store for his boyfriend Zach: a stay at a luxury resort in Key West. But their plans are turned upside down when the pair run into an improbable “heiress” to one of the world’s great fortunes — someone who is desperate to convince anyone that his father wants him dead. But how much of a grasp on reality can a drug-abusing mega-wealthy man who thinks he’s Maria Callas really have? And who or what is this mysterious “Baby” that he pines for? Does the transvestite ghost, Rosie, hold the answers to these and other troubling questions? Join Brad and his sidekick Zach for this second instalment in the Bradford Fairfax mystery series, a madcap and raunchy romp through the original gay Shangri-La.
Garry Thomas Morse deploys his prodigious classical repertoire to compose the edgy new voices that reflect the cultural simultaneity of our everyday—a transnational, ahistoric cosmopolitanism: an idealized Helen is confounded by Molly Bloom’s monologue from Joyce’s Ulysses; a Dostoyevskian character parodies the libidinal excesses of William Burroughs with “the stone that drives men mad” from Pauline Johnson’s Tales of Stanley Park; an incident from The Book of Judges answers one of Gogol’s riddles; an acidic response to the recent fascination with “speculative fiction” introduces a punch card system from the year 2088 in which future language facilitates only business transactions in a completely monetized world; and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s alcoholism hits rock bottom in the unfulfilled desires of a dry pub crawl.
All of these stories seem to sketch the details of immediately recognizable places, but reveal a luminous interiority we never dreamed might be (re)discovered there. Transparently rooted in the work of other authors, including Garry Thomas Morse’s contemporaries, they nevertheless defy critical terms such as “intertextuality” and “authenticity.” Since his mother’s people (the Kwakwaka’wakw) became disconnected from their traditions there has been a great deal of forgetfulness of the “dream-time” that used to exist in our everyday lives—this forgotten “theatrical madness” of the human condition is what Morse seeks to re-present.
The title story of this brilliant collection of avant-garde fiction, loosely based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, and the film Death in Venice inverts the post-modern textual convention that only the author’s voice can be considered authentic. Its main character—the artist Padam, who is no more “fictional” than the author—constantly interrogates the accuracy of his representations, whereas we know almost nothing about the narrator, who exists merely as the “subject” of the Padam’s portrait and an “object” of his reflection.
Three years into the second millennium, Majestic, Alberta is a farm town dealing with depressed crop prices, international borders closing to Canadian beef, and a severe drought. Older farmers worry about their way of life changing while young people concoct ways to escape: drugs, partying, moving away. Even the church is on the brink of closing.
When local woman Annie Gallagher is struck by lightning while divining water for a well, stories of the town’s past, including that of Annie and the grandmother who taught her water witching, slowly pour forth as everyone gathers for her funeral.
Told through the varied voices of the townspeople and Annie herself, The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning reveals Majestic to be a complex character in its own right, both haunted and haunting. Here, Audrey J. Whitson has written a novel of hard choices and magical necessity.
“Neil Bishop has … revived this novel, Death of the Spider, in the true light of its prophecy (be it but dreamed), in the bright light too of its modernism, for this novel is both a poetic indictment of our contemporary society and a forerunner of the feminist novel—while admirably avoiding the traps of theory and rigidity. The author draws us into our very depths, our own submissiveness, our own hereditary sheep-like docility, she shuts us in with her main character, staring at the spider on the ceiling, in that secret bedroom of rebellion where this nameless heroine has withdrawn to think about her fate which is also ours and where she and we are left, alone with the shameful images of our own condition, our own, often willing, bondage.” – from the preface by Marie-Claire Blais
For decades, distinct professional wrestling territories thrived across North America. Each regionally based promotion operated individually and offered a brand of localized wrestling that greatly appealed to area fans. Promoters routinely coordinated with associates in surrounding regions, and the cooperation displayed by members of the National Wrestling Alliance made it easy for wrestlers to traverse the landscape with the utmost freedom.
Dozens of territories flourished between the 1950s and late ’70s. But by the early 1980s, the growth of cable television had put new outside pressures on promoters. An enterprising third-generation entrepreneur who believed cable was his opportunity to take his promotion national soon capitalized on the situation.
A host of novel ideas and the will to take chances gave Vincent Kennedy McMahon an incredible advantage. McMahon waged war on the territories and raided the NWA and AWA of their top talent. By creating WrestleMania, jumping into the pay-per-view field, and expanding across North America, McMahon changed professional wrestling forever.
Providing never-before-revealed information, Death of the Territories is a must-read for fans yearning to understand how McMahon outlasted his rivals and established the industry’s first national promotion. At the same time, it offers a comprehensive look at the promoters who opposed McMahon, focusing on their noteworthy power plays and embarrassing mistakes.
In 1997, World Championship Wrestling was on top. It was the number-one pro wrestling company in the world, and the highest-rated show on cable television. Each week, fans tuned in to Monday Nitro, flocked to sold-out arenas, and carried home truckloads of WCW merchandise. It seemed the company could do no wrong.
But by 2001, however, everything had bottomed out. The company — having lost a whopping 95% of its audience — was sold for next to nothing to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment. WCW was laid to rest.
What went wrong? This expanded and updated version of the bestselling Death of WCW takes readers through a detailed dissection of WCW’s downfall, including even more commentary from the men who were there and serves as an object lesson — and dire warning — as WWE and TNA hurtle toward the 15th anniversary of WCW’s demise.
Someone’s making a killing at a major poker tournament — one dead player at a time — in this mystery featuring a young female undercover cop
“[Death Plays Poker] is a book that grabs you like a gambling addiction and doesn’t let go.” — Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Every year, the Canadian Classic Poker Tour attracts TV cameras, scores of fans, and some of the most exciting players from the world of professional gambling. This year it has also attracted a serial killer. Players have been turning up strangled in their hotel rooms, and the Poker Choker’s latest victim was an undercover cop sent in to catch the killer. But nothing stops the Poker Classic from playing on — no matter who folds.
Now young cop Clare Vengel is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s last hope for bringing the killer to justice. Going undercover as a trust-fund princess who thinks gambling is a better idea than college, her flashy new wardrobe helps her infiltrate the elite circle of professional liars. But with her handlers doubting her every move, Clare starts to wonder if they’re right: Should she pack it up and go home to a dull life as a beat cop? As more victims lose their lives, Clare will have to go all in against a killer who doesn’t bluff.
World class poker players are being strangled in their hotel rooms, and Clare is given her second big assignment: to pose as a poker player in a major televised tournament, befriend the suspects, and find the killer in their midst.
Her cover role? A trust fund princess named Tiffany who thinks the poker tour is a better idea than college.
Though Clare would prefer to wear jeans and get her hands dirty, posing as Tiffany helps her infiltrate the inner circle quickly. And her flashy new wardrobe attracts the attentions of Noah — a dark stranger who’s at the game for hidden reasons of his own. Rumors surface about a cheating ring that could be connected to the murders.
Clare loves the job and the game, but soon learns that there’s no one she can trust. Her handlers doubt her every move — she has to fight to keep her job — and everyone she meets lies for a living.
As more victims lose their lives to the cunning Poker Choker, and her cover role’s legitimacy comes under attack from two directions, Clare wonders if her handlers are right: Should she pack it in and go home to a dull life as a beat cop? Or will she find the killer, prove her worth?
Death Spiral is the story of three successful businesses and their self-made CEOs who would rise to national prominence and then see their work destroyed. Ron Weinberg and Micheline Charest would build Cinar Films into a world power of children’s television programming. John Xanthoudakis, the CEO of Montreal’s Norshield Financial Group (an emerging and successful alternative investment company) and Weinberg’s paths would cross as Weinberg began to invest large sums of money in a Bahamian Hedge Fund called Globe-X. Over a span of two years, $108 million of Cinar’s money would be invested in Globe-X. Across town his longtime friend and sometimes business partner, Lino Matteo, was building a public company called Mount Real. In March of 2000 Weinberg’s Board was fed up with surprises and revelations surrounding tax scams and personal abuse of corporate funds, and declared the money invested by Cinar in the Bahamas as ?missing.” Weinberg, Charest, and Hasanain Punju were then fired from the company. John’s life would be fixated on how to keep the ?Cinar fire” from destroying the other parts of his successful business. Over the next five years he would fence with Cinar’s new management, bankruptcy receivers, Cinar’s new owners, and the unprecedented litigation machine of the ?CCE,” a high-bred organization funded by the 2004 Cinar asset sale. The CCE would eventually spend millions of dollars pursuing Xanthoudakis, Matteo, Weinberg, Panju, and Charest for money. By May of 2005 Norshield Financial Group, the largest Hedge Fund in Canada, would be put out of business; by November Mount Real, a TSX listed entity, would be closed, and Weinberg’s assets seized or under court control. In all, over $2,500,000,000 in investment capital would be lost by investors between the three debacles. Death Spiral reveals the character and structural flaws of the complex business world in which we live.
Nominated for the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award and shortlisted for the 2011 Evergreen Award. This complex, multi-layered thriller opens with a hero’s welcome for the wounded Wilf McLauchlin, a celebrated WWII Canadian Spitfire fighter pilot. Almost immediately after his homecoming, a series of bizarre murders erupt in his hometown. Wilf finds himself trying to solve them and wondering if he is somehow causing them. Wilf follows his own trail back to when he was shot down over Germany in the last days of the war and makes the shattering connection.
In Ayaz Pirani?s debut collection of stories, Death to America, he doesn?t try to straighten a dog?s tail. His stories are the frays on Empire?s fringe, and his colored characters navigate a perennially perfidious Albion.
In the first story, ?Battle of Waterloo,? Danju is obliged to choose sides in the struggle between disco and rock and roll, and in the last story, ?Brief Survey of Coloreds in the Rift Valley,? Nunu?s feeble crush on his grade-school librarian spins out a second post-colonial yarn. The youngster Aqbal, in ?The Lyric,? is rescued by racism, and in ?They?ve Forgotten That I?m Not There,? the small-time fence, Mohan, observes the narrow path. And sometimes you get to start over, as Gently discovers in ?Kitchener, née Berlin.? Other characters include Arf, Fruq, Eerfal, Salty, the East African dandies Sur and Nur, and the sparring teenagers Umed and Frenni.
With economy and a taste for the oddball?s angle, Ayaz Pirani makes the peculiar quotidian. He draws from Ismaili ginans and granths, and the Indo-Pak heritage of story-telling, oral poetry, and old-fashioned one-liners.
Love is complicated. It’s 2006 and Vivienne Pink, a photojournalist with an eye for war, is flying to Las Vegas to capture images of servicemen deploying for combat in Iraq. Together with her novelist husband and their housemate, an intelligence operative, Vivienne plans a side trip to Death Valley to confront an old enemy, but her scheme is soon complicated by a handsome young soldier on his way to war and a retired counterterrorism agent wearing a bird suit. Together they begin an atomic road trip through empty canyons, old film locations and the Nevada desert’s nuclear test site, where reality shifts like sand beneath their feet. This is Death Valley, and the fallout is hilarious and harrowing.