After experiencing the disintegration of their parents' marriage, Claudine and Janine Beaulieu's lives are further complicated when their mother Odette remarries to an Anglophone and they are forced to "turn English." Now, years later, Claudine has made a career out of documentary filmmaking, focusing on the painful lives of other women; Janine, a wife and mother, questions her feelings for her sister's boyfriend; and Odette succumbs to her Valium and rum addiction in a luxury retirement villa in Jamaica. Shifting from Duplessis's Montreal of the fifties to Toronto in the eighties, Voice-Over chronicles the lives of a mother and daughters struggling to find their voice in a bilingual country.

Carole Corbeil was born and raised in Montreal, where she attended French and English schools before taking degrees at Atlantic College in Wales and York University in Toronto. She was an art critic and covered theatre, books, dance, and visual arts for The Globe and Mail in the eighties. Voice-Over was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1992, and was co-winner of the Toronto Book Award in 1993. Corbeil died of cancer in 2000

The landscape of 1970s South Africa lives and breathes in these stories. This debut collection is populated by a wide and surprising range of unforgettable characters: an artist who finds his power in the dusty earth; a mother who waits for a letter; a collector of cacti who seeks her own kind of freedom; a shopkeeper in trouble in an outpost country town …

Dawn Promislow was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. She left South Africa with her family in 1977 and lived in London, England, before returning to study English and French literature at the University of Cape Town. She has lived in Toronto since 1987, where she works in magazine journalism.

Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions. As Anton's carefully constructed life begins to disintegrate around him, he's forced to choose between loyalty to his family and his desires for a different kind of life. When everyone is willing to use someone else to escape the past, it is up to Anton, on the island of Ischia, to face the ghosts that travel close behind him.

Emily St. John Mandel was born on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1979. She studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. She is also the author of the widely acclaimed previous novel, Last Night in Montreal.

A seventeen-year-old boy, bullied and heartbroken, hangs himself. And, although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him. His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend's girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student's name, that she could care more about her students than her ex's new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counsellor, Walter, feels guilty—maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the very Catholic school. And Walter, who's been secretly in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that's a little callous. He's also tired of Max's obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster. And then Max meets a drag queen named Crêpe Suzette. And everything changes.

Monoceros is a masterpiece of the tragicomic; by exploring the effects of a suicide on characters outside the immediate circle, Mayr offers a dazzlingly original look at the ripple effects—both poignant and funny—of a tragedy. A tender, bold work.

Suzette Mayr was born and raised in Calgary, where she graduated from the University of Calgary with an honors degree in English. After completing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Alberta, she returned to Calgary where she now teaches at the Alberta College of Art.

Alex was in harmony with the water. He taught himself to swim, and liked working the sea off Prince Edward Island as his fisherman father did, but he always yearned for something more. His brother Reggie despised it all—the water that brought death, the seasickness, and he needed to breathe the air of farms. Reggie yearned for escape. Mercy Coles lived on the same island as Alex and Reggie, but lived in Charlottetown's society and yearned for experience.All three would get their wish, but coincidence would shape those wishes in profound ways. Alex would find himself on a circus trapeze fated to meet the Niagara Falls tightrope artist, Farini. Alex would join the farmers' protests against the tax collectors, and battle the demons of guilt in the supposed death of his brother. Mercy would find herself landlocked on John A. Mcdonald's hard-drinking and dancing campaign to sell confederation statutes, attracted to his power while thinking him the ugliest man in Canada.

Anne MacDonald weaves a series of spells that pull this beautifully written novel through a tightly woven script. Rich in tone and texture for a very rewarding reading experience, To the Edge of the Sea combines great storytelling with polished literary control.