GOOSE LANE EDITIONS

Rights Catalogue 2016

Goose Lane Editions T. 506.450.4251 | F. 506.459.4991 Toll Free: 1.888.926.8377 [email protected] www.gooselane.com FORTHCOMING ALOHA WANDERWELL NON-FICTION The Border-Smashing, Record-Setting Life of the Girl Who Stole the World

CHRISTIAN FINK-JENSEN & RANDOLPH EUSTACE-WALDEN

In 1922 an eighteen-year-old American woman set out to become the first female to drive around the world. Her name was Aloha Wanderwell.

The project was foolhardy in the extreme. Drivable roads were scarce and the cars themselves — about as powerful as today’s ride-on mowers — were alien in much of the world. To overcome these limitations, the Wanderwell Expedition created a specially modified Model T Ford that featured rubber tires, steel disc wheels, gun scabbards, and a sloped back that could fold out to become a darkroom. Thus equipped, Aloha set out to see the world. All that remained was learning how to drive.

Aloha’s name and adventures became known around the world. Tall, graceful, and beautiful, she was photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower, in the salt caverns of Poland, parked on the back of the Sphinx, firing mortars in China, visiting American fliers in Calcutta, meeting the prince regent of Japan, shaking hands with Mussolini, smiling through a tickertape parade in Detroit. She was an inspiration to thousands.

As it turns out, the famous Aloha Wanderwell was an invention. The American Aloha Wanderwell was, in reality, the Canadian Idris Hall. And her mentor, the dashing filmmaker, lecturer, polyglot, and world traveller Captain Walter Wanderwell, was an invention himself.

Aloha’s story is epic, both heart-stopping and heart-breaking. She was by turns a hero, a victim, a superstar, and a forgotten face. Her story crosses international, moral, and gender boundaries, taking readers on a journey of experimentation and adventure.

CHRISTIAN FINK-JENSEN is a widely published writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and journals, including the Toronto Star, Philadelphia Inquirer, Rights held: Canada New York Quarterly, Rosebud, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, (French and English) Georgia Straight, and many others. He is currently at work on a novel and another work of non- Biography fiction. Fall 2017

RANDOLPH EUSTACE-WALDEN began reviewing movies at fifteen. His regular film review column in a local entertainment magazine became widely syndicated and led to him writing, producing, and hosting his own movie-based television series. Over the ensuing four decades, his diverse media-based career has crossed and intersected all disciplines, including publishing, television, film, radio, and online as writer, author, journalist, editor, forensic researcher, critic, television producer, director, documentarian, web developer, and teacher. He wrote Entreé to Asia: A Culinary Adventure and wrote and produced the eponymous series for PBS.

[email protected] 2016 FORTHCOMING THE GIRL IN THE GREEN DRESS NON-FICTION Reading, Writing, and Resistance in Palestine

MARCELLO DI CINTIO

In 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. During a brief lull in the bombing, photos emerged of a young Gazan girl in a green dress sifting through the rubble of what remained of her home. She was looking for her books.

The Girl in the Green Dress examines the Palestinian experience from an uncommon viewpoint, the writer’s pen, and reveals the role of literature in the lives of those engaged in a constant Rights held: North America struggle. (English and French) Social History MARCELLO Di CINTIO is the author of three books of travelogue, including Walls: Travels along Fall 2017 the Barricades. Walls won the 2013 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Non-fiction, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the B.C. National Award for Non-Fiction. Di Cintio also wrote a “Hazlitt Original” about Palestinian literary culture titled Song of the Caged Bird: Words as Resistance in Palestine. Di Cintio’s magazine writing can be found in publications such as The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, The International New York Times, Condé Nast Traveller, and Afar. He is a former writer-in-residence with the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program and the Palestine Writing Workshop, and will be featured instructor at the 2015 Iceland Writers Workshop.

Also by MARCELLO DI CINTIO WALLS: Travels Along the Barricades

In this ambitious blend of travel and reportage, Marcello Di Cintio travels to the world’s most disputed edges to meet the people who live alongside the razor wire and answer the question: What does it mean to live against the walls?

From Native American reservations on the US-Mexico border and the “Great Wall of Montreal” to Cyprus’s divided capital and the Peace Lines of Belfast, Di Cintio seeks to understand what these structures say about those who build them and how they influence the cultures that they surround. WINNER Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for “Di Cintio is very good — honest, sharp, nuanced, and vivid . . . the descriptions of landscape and Political Writing Wilfrid Eggleston Award for townscape are acute.” — Owen Hatherley, New Statesman Non-fiction City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book “This is a remarkable book, and Di Cintio is a thoroughly engaged — and engaging — traveller Prize and wordsmith.” — Will Ferguson, Globe and Mail LONGLIST Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Alberta Readers’ Choice Award

Rights held: North America x US (English and French) Social History [email protected] 2016 FORTHCOMING FICTION ALL THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND

RIEL NASON

A sensational new novel by the author of the award-winning novel The Town That Drowned.

At 17, Violet is left by her parents to manage their antique business for the summer. Her restless older brother, Bliss, has disappeared, leaving home without warning.

photo: Shane Nason photo: Violet is haunted by her brother’s absence and irritated with her responsibilities. Between Rights held: North America visiting a local hermit, who makes twig furniture for the shop and finding a way to land the (English and French) contents of the mysterious Vaughan estate, Violet sneaks out with her summer boyfriend. But Literary Fiction what really keeps her up at night are thoughts of Bliss and sightings of a white deer, which only Fall 2016 she has seen.

All the Things We Leave Behind is about remembrance and attachment, about what we collect and what we leave behind. In this highly affecting novel about absence and adolescence, Nason explores the permeability of memory and the sometimes confusing bonds of human emotion.

RIEL NASON’s stories have appeared in The Malahat Review, Grain, The Antigonish Review, Grain, and The Dalhousie Review. In 2005, she was awarded the David Adams Richards Prize from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. The Town That Drowned was her sensational debut novel.

Also by RIEL NASON THE TOWN THAT DROWNED

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast. What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater.

Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason’s keen insights into human nature and the depth of human WINNER attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow. Commonwealth Book Prize (Canada and Europe) “[R]aises thoughtful questions about the meaning of home and the nature of progress.” Margaret and John Savage — Shawn Syms, The National Post First Book Award SHORTLIST CLA Young Adult Book Award Red “Goose Lane Editions is gaining a reputation for spotting good writers early. . . . This is an Maple Award impressive first novel.” — Victor Enns, The Winnipeg Review LONGLIST IMPAC Dublin Award

Rights held: World x Commonwealth Literary Fiction

[email protected] 2016 FORTHCOMING FICTION THIS MARLOWE

MICHELLE BUTLER HALLETT

1593. Queen Elizabeth reigns from the throne while two rival spymasters — Sir Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex — plot from the shadows. Their goal? To control succession upon the aged queen’s death. The man on which their schemes depend? Christopher Marlowe, a cob- bler’s son from Canterbury who has defied expectations and become an accomplished poet and playwright. Now that the plague has closed theatres, Marlowe must resume the work for which he was originally recruited: intelligence and espionage.

Fighting to stay one step ahead in a dizzying game that threatens the lives of those he holds most dear, Marlowe comes to question his allegiances and nearly everything he once believed. As tensions mount, he is tossed into an impossible bind. He must shoose betwen paths that lead either to wretched guilt and miserable death or to love and honour.

An historical novel with a contemporary edge, This Marlowe measures the weight of the body politic, the torment of the flesh, and the state of the soul.

One of Canada’s most courageous and original literary voices, MICHELLE BUTLER HALLETT is the author of the critically acclaimed novels deluded your sailors (Killick Press, 2011), Sky Waves (Killick Press, 2008), and Double-blind (Killick Press, 2007), and the short-story collection The shadow side of grace (Killick Press, 2006). Her short stories are widely anthologized, appearing in Hard Ol’ Spot (Killick Press), The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction (Vagrant Press), Everything is So Political (Fernwood Publishing), and Running the Whale’s Back (Goose Lane Editions). Her story, “Bush-hammer finish,” first published in the autumn 2013 issue of The Fiddlehead, appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Butler Hallett says she wants to write axe- books “for the frozen sea insides us,” and she refuses to apologize for defying gender and genre boundaries. She lives in St. John’s.

Rights held: World Literary Fiction Spring 2016

[email protected] 2016 FORTHCOMING FICTION THE ANGEL’S JIG

DANIEL POLIQUIN Translated by WAYNE GRADY

Facing the dwindling years of his life, an old man waits for his turn on the auction block, hoping to be sold to a family as decent as the one he is leaving. It is not the first time he has been here, and it may not be the last.

Mute in life but loquacious on the page, the old man tells the colourful story of his rootless life. Abandoned by his family and first auctioned off at the age of seven — “Ladies and gentlemen, this boy may not be a rare gem, but he is certainly worth a look” — he moves from one farm to another, taking comfort from the people around him.

Daniel Poliquin’s picaresque novel revisits an all-but-forgotten era, when orphaned children and the elderly poor were auctioned into a form of indentured servitude. Narrated through the eyes and ears of an unforgettable protagonist, The Angel’s Jig is a joyous meditation on identity and the unpredictable voyage of existence.

A French language finalist for the 2015 Trillium Book Award, Le Vol de l’ange now appears in this lyrical translation by award-winning translator Wayne Grady.

DANIEL POLIQUIN is one of Canada’s leading French writers. His novels and translations have won or been shortlisted for several major awards, including the Governor General’s Award, the Grand prix du Journal de Montréal, the Prix littéraire Le Droit, the Trillium Book Award, and the Giller Prize. He is also a Chevalier de l’Ordre des arts et lettres and a member of the Order of Canada. He lives in Ottawa.

Rights held: World (English) Literary Fiction Spring 2016

[email protected] 2016 FORTHCOMING FICTION LIFE ON MARS

LORI McNULTY

Life on Mars is a story collection that captures lives on the verge of crisis, transformation, euphoria, and despair — sometimes all of these things at once. McNulty’s fiction hits the high notes of some of our favourite short story writers such as Zsuzsi Gartner, Cary Fagan, Lynn Coady, and Douglas Glover. Some of the stories include:

A heart-transplant recipient abandons his everyday world, developing an intimate relationship with his donated heart. Two brothers find, in their rotting family tree, the tangled roots of a dark childhood memory.

A young woman determined to alter her life travels to Thailand to re- connect body and soul, returning to Toronto to face the wrath of her estranged mother.

A man transformed into a powerful but reluctant three-eyed god tries to conquer global unrest but first must do battle with his own human failings.

In a blend of aesthetic styles that range from vivid realism to magic real- ism, these stories fight — sharp toothed and bloodied claw — to create a space for the imagination within our mutual quest for meaning. These are strange, compassionate stories for our disconnected contemporary times. photo: Tamea Burd Tamea photo: LORI McNULTY is a Vancouver-based digital storyteller and traveller. Rights held: World McNulty was shortlisted for the 2014 Journey Prize and finalist for the CBC Canada Writes Literary Fiction Awards in both 2012 and 2013. McNulty’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Spring 2017 Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, PRISM International, Dalhousie Review, Descant, and the Globe and Mail. McNulty holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MA from McGill University.

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION THE DIPLOMAT Pearson and the Suez Crisis ANTONY ANDERSON

On November 4, 1956, Lester Pearson faced the United Nations assembly to read a proposal shaped by caution and hope to try and stop a conflict in Egypt from becoming a world war fought throughout the Middle East. In doing so, he carved out a razor’s edge of common ground to bring together angry allies and bitter enemies.

Antony Anderson’s gripping history takes the measure of Lester B. Pearson, the career diplomat who would become Canada’s fourteenth prime minister, from his boyhood in York, Ontario, to the seminal crisis of his career. As Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, Pearson used the tools of the United Nations to bring a peaceful resolution to the Suez Canal Crisis, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.

Five decades later, the Suez Crisis is still Canada’s greatest moment on the international stage. And yet until now, no one has told the full story of how a Canadian diplomat carved a path back to temporary peace and sanity. Drawing from diplomatic cables, memoirs, diaries, anecdotes, official transcripts, and detailed interviews with some of the principal actors, this book offers new insights and strips away some of the myths that have gathered around Pearson, revealing the means by which the man convinced belligerent nations to give peace another chance.

“Antony Anderson describes a moment when Canada mattered internationally. Lester Pearson’s extraordinary diplomatic skills, which were demonstrated fully during the Suez Crisis of 1956, won the respect of his colleagues at the United Nations and increased the pride of Canadians in their nation’s role in the world. In a clearly written and often gripping account, Anthony Anderson describes how Pearson’s experience and Canada’s reputation as a fair interlocutor placed him in a position to make a significant contribution to international peace.” — John English, CM, FRSC, author of The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and The Life of Lester Pearson

“Anderson delivers a brisk, gripping yarn making excellent use of his research, including multiple interviews with surviving actors in the drama. Meanwhile Pearson . . . is front and centre throughout. That Anderson captures him so well is a tribute to his metier as a storyteller.” — Literary Review of Canada Rights held: World History, Politics ANTONY ANDERSON has written and produced programs for virtually all the major Canadian broadcasters. His work has aired throughout the world on the Discovery Channel. He’s also produced documentaries for Global Television, TVOntario, Canadian Learning Television, Book Television, and Stornaway Productions. His freelance articles have appeared in the Dorchester Review, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Hamilton Spectator, the Vancouver Province, and Flair magazine. He has blogged for the Dominion Institute.

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION BACK TO THE WELL Rethinking the Future of Water MARQ DE VILLIERS

Droughts, floods, and contamination of fresh water in the American Southwest, in the Great Lakes region, in Australia, in northern China, in the Middle East, and in India have brought the critical issue of water supply to the forefront of public consciousness. In dozens of countries, ordinary citizens have cause to worry about what (or how much) will come out of their taps — if they even have taps — and who will make sure it is available, affordable, and safe.

In this refreshing examination of the fate and future of water, Marq de Villiers takes on some of the biggest questions and shibboleths of the century. Who owns water? Is access to water a human right? Who is responsible for keeping water clean and ensuring it gets to the people who need it most? Is privatization of ownership and supply networks an evil or an extension of the public trust?

Fifteen years after the publication of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, his influencial Governor General’s Award-winning book on the water crisis, de Villiers returns with a clear-eyed assessment of the politics of water — from the personal and commercial uses of water to the impact of climate change and global conflicts. Examining how political ideologies often obscure the underlying issues, de Villiers makes the controversial suggestion that there is no global water crisis, but that water problems are fundamentally local and regional and can most effectively be addressed through local, rather than global, action.

“Marq de Villiers’s latest book on water, Back to the Well, is an impressive survey from the brink of water wars, failures, and crises, culminating in a forceful prescription for a sustainable water future. The soft path of demand-side management, at the heart of Green strategies, is a hopeful and practical direction.” — Elizabeth May, OC, MP, Leader of the Green Party of Canada

“This book will ruffle some feathers as well as open some minds, but for anyone who cares about the earth’s most precious resource, it is worth the read.” — Publisher’s Weekly

Rights held: Canada MARQ DE VILLIERS is an award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of fifteen books, (English and French) including Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource; Sahara: The Life of the Great Desert; Nature, Politics, Science Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather; and Sable Island: The Curious Story of a Dune Adrift in the Atlantic. In 2010, he was appointed to the Order of Canada. He lives in Eagle Head, on Nova Scotia’s south shore.

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION THE SCIENCE OF SHAKESPEARE A New Look at the Playwright’s Universe DAN FALK

William Shakespeare lived at a time when the medieval world — a world of magic, astrology, witchcraft, and superstition of all kinds — was beginning to give way to more modern ways of thinking. The methodical Galileo, the skeptical Montaigne, the daring Copernicus: these and other bold thinkers were putting forth new ideas about the human body, the earth, and the universe at large — ideas that would soon transform Western thought. Shakespeare was not a scientist but a handful of scholars are now examining his interest in the scientific discoveries of his time and how he incorporated that knowledge into his work.

Fascinated by science and intrigued by history, Dan Falk explores the connections between Shakespeare’s plays and the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution and how, together, they changed the world forever. While Shakespeare was not the Carl Sagan of the Elizabethan Age, his plays reveal that he was conscious of the changing conception of the cosmos and that his observations of human nature were as revolutionary as those of the astronomers who studied the night sky.

“This book is accessible, with clear explanations of potentially challenging concepts in the history of early modern science. It is an enjoyable read . . . The work is well- informed, enthusiastic, and recommended to anyone seeking a new take on the oft-studied Bard.” — Chemistry World

DAN FALK is a science journalist, author, and broadcaster. His books include In Search of Time and Universe on a T-Shirt, winner of the 2002 Science in Society Journalism Award. He has written for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Walrus, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, and New Scientist; he has also been a regular contributor to CBC Radio’s Ideas. Falk completed a prestigious Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT, where he undertook much of the research for this book.

Rights held: Canada (English), World (French) Science, Literature

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION HUMANS 3.0 The Future of the Species PETER NOWAK

Life for early humans wasn’t easy. They may have been able to walk on two feet and create tools 4 million years ago, but they couldn’t remember or communicate. Fortunately, people got smarter and shared valuable information. Clubs became swords, caves became huts, and fires became ovens. Collectively these new tools became technology.

As the 21st century unfolds, the pace of innovation is accelerating exponentially. Break- throughs appear almost on a daily basis. Although we used to create technology to change the world around us, we’re now using it to change ourselves. With vaccinations, in-vitro fertiliz- ation, and individual genetic therapy, we’re entering a new epoch, a faster and more dramatic step than the shift from Australopithicines to Homo Sapiens. The technology that set us apart from our earliest selves is becoming part of the evolutionary process. Advancements in com- puting, robotics, nanotechnology, neurology, and genetics mean that our wildest imaginings could soon become commonplace.

Peter Nowak deftly presents the potential outcomes of key, rapidly advancing technologies and adroitly explores both the ramifications of adopting them and what doing so will reveal about the future of our species. We’ve come a long way in 4 million years. Welcome to Human 3.0.

“An optimistic, wide-ranging look at how we have co-evolved with our technologies. A great read for those who want to get up to speed on the challenges and opportunities in our technological future.” — Nora Young, host and creator, Spark, CBC Radio

“Where most of us see amusing gadgets, Toronto journalist Peter Nowak sees profound human progress.” — Winnipeg Free Press

PETER NOWAK is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and syndicated blogger. He has been an editor and writer for the Globe and Mail, and a corres- pondent for newspapers in Canada, the United States, and China. He is now a syndicated blogger for Maclean’s, Canadian Business, and a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail, the Huffington Post, MSN, CBC, and the New Scientist. His first book, Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology as We Know It, was a national bestseller. Humans 3.0 was released simultaneously in Rights held: Canada (English and French) Canada by Goose Lane Editions and in the US by Lyons Press. Technology

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION THE BASTARD OF FORT STIKINE The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Murder of John McLoughlin, Jr. DEBRA KOMAR

Is it possible to reach back in time and solve an unsolved murder, more than 170 years after it was committed?

Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, jr. — the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Stikine, in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia — was shot to death by his own men. They claimed it was an act of self- defence, their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader. Sir George Simpson, the HBC’s Overseas Governor, took the men of Stikine at their word, and the Company closed the book on the matter. The case never saw the inside of a courtroom, and no one was ever charged or punished for the crime. To this day, the killing remains the Honourable Company’s dirtiest unaired laundry and one of the darkest pages in the annals of our nation’s history. Now, exhaustive archival research and modern forensic science — including ballistics, virtual autopsy, and crime scene reconstruction — unlock the mystery of what really happened the night McLoughlin died.

Using her formidable talents as a writer, researcher, and forensic scientist, Debra Komar weaves a tale that could almost be fiction, with larger-than-life characters and dramatic tension. In telling the story of John McLoughlin, Jr., Komar also tells the story of Canada’s north and its connection to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

“By laying out the facts and exploring them with relentless logic, Debra Komar does solve the mystery of who murdered John McLoughlin — or at least makes a completely convincing case. Not only that: she does so with panache.” — Literary Review of Canada

“Thoroughly researched and in dramatic, evocative prose, Komar gives McLoughlin and HBC the trial they so justly deserved.” — The Globe and Mail

DEBRA KOMAR is the author of The Ballad of Jacob Peck and The Lynching of Peter Wheeler, which use forensic methods to re-investigate historical crimes. A Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a practising forensic anthropologist for over twenty years, she has investigated human rights violations for the United Nations and Physicians for Human Rights, and has testified as an expert witness in The Hague and across North America. She is also the author of many scholarly articles and a textbook, Forensic Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Practice. Rights: World True Crime, Biography, History

[email protected] 2016 NEW NON-FICTION THE LAST HOCKEY GAME BRUCE McDOUGALL

On May 2, 1967, the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadians to win the Stanley Cup in the sixth game of a seven-game series. Not only would this be the Leafs last Stanley Cup victory to date, but it was also the last game played in the National Hockey League of the “Original Six” teams. The following year would see the league expand to twelve teams, and in subsequent years that number would double and nearly triple. This was “the last hockey game” in many other respects.

McDougall anchors and structures his story around an on-the-ice, play-by-play narration of that game, but reaches out far beyond the confines of those two-and-a-half hours to bring the reader into the lives of the players, the coaches, the trainers, doctors, team owners, referees, Zamboni drivers, and fans to illuminate a pivotal moment not only in the world of professional hockey, but in society at large. This was still a world where players had no job security and team owners treated their players as indentured servants. The players would form an association that summer to start collective bargaining. Salaries would skyrocket and hockey would become big business.

The Last Hockey Game is a panoramic snapshot of a moment in time where the past and future illuminate each other through the intimate portraits of the people who participated, one way or another, in this momentous game.

BRUCE McDOUGALL has written for major business publications in Canada and has also written or co-written sixteen books, including biographies of Ted Rogers and Edgar Bronfman Jr. An honours graduate of Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he attended the University of Toronto Law School before becoming a full-time writer. At Harvard, he played freshman and junior varsity hockey and was an editor of the Harvard Lampoon and the Harvard Advocate.

Rights held: World Sports History

[email protected] 2016 NEW FICTION THE HUNTER AND THE WILD GIRL PAULINE HOLDSTOCK

Award-winning author Pauline Holdstock returns with an engrossing and suspenseful novel of ideas, about trust and betrayal, companionship versus aloneness, and the fundamental urge to be alive and free.

In 19th-century France, a feral girl roams the dense garrigue, avoiding human contact. But in Freyzus she is seen and chased by the alarmed townspeople to the edge of a deep gorge. She jumps, and disappears.

Pierre Rouff is a taxidermist living in self-imposed exile in an abandoned estate near Freyzus after killing his son in a hunting accident. He lives a delicate balance of forgetting and meditation and focuses on the taxidermic dioramas he creates as if to capture life — and to keep his thoughts from wandering too close to the day he lost everything.

When Pierre encounters the wild girl, they forge a deep bond, helping each other find their way back to the world. But when the wider world learns of the girl’s presence at the estate, Pierre is forced make a choice — continue his life of isolation or reengage with society and recognize the value of human contact, while learning to embrace the memory of a life, rather than grieve its loss. The Hunter and the Wild Girl affirms the persistence of life, its consolations, and the deep rewards of human connection.

“A turbulent, headlong, exhilarating rush will sweep you into this fairy tale of a lost girl breaching the self-exile of a haunted man — a hunter who cannot hunt, who is both ogre and hero. In exquisitely beautiful prose, with echoes from both Charles Perrault and Gormenghast, Holdstock spins austere enchantment.” — Marina Endicott, author of Close to Hugh

PAULINE HOLDSTOCK is a novelist and writer of short fiction. Her personal journalism has been published in national newspapers and aired on the CBC. Into the Heart of the Country, longlisted for the 2012 Giller Prize, is her most recent novel. Her novel Beyond Measure was a finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and won the Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction in 2005. Pauline has taught at the Victoria School of Writing, the University of Victoria, and the Banff Centre. Rights: Canada (English and French) Literary Fiction

[email protected] 2016 NEW FICTION KNIFE PARTY AT THE HOTEL EUROPA MARK ANTHONY JARMAN

One of Canada’s literary treasures, Mark Anthony Jarman returns with a book of moving and often funny tales of a man’s quest for himself. In Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, Jarman writes about losing and finding love, marriage and melancholy, the dislocation and redemptive power of travel in Italy’s sensual summer.

A man arrives in Italy to escape the memory of love lost and a marriage ended. He moves through the languid heat trying to shake the ghosts of loneliness, while pursuing pleasure and meaning in food, drink, new love, and the peculiar stories of those he meets. He passes through sun-drenched landscapes, while the corpses of refugees wash up on the beach; he parties with the young Italians he meets on the train while a man bleeds to death in the hallway. A teenage thief prowls the roof of the tourist hotel at night; holy statues come alive to roam in a gang stealing used restaurant grease.

He suffers the acute loneliness of one who has abandoned and been abandoned, and in this exquisite suffering, he finds how beautiful this life can be. In vivid, sensuous prose, Jarman’s stories circle and overlap in surprising, weird, and wonderful ways. Tangents turn out to be crucial, allusions are powerful.

“The writing is extraordinary, the stories are gripping, it is something new.” — A.S. Byatt

“Jarman’s stories are exquisite and powerful, finding beauty even within pain. They demand to be read again and again.” — Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

MARK ANTHONY JARMAN’s writings run the gamut from fiction to poetry to travel writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Prize and has won the Gold National Magazine Award in nonfiction, the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award (twice), and the Jack Hodgins Fiction Prize. He is the author of 19 Knives, New Orleans is Sinking, Salvage King Ya!, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. He teaches at the University of New Brunswick and is the fiction editor of The Fiddlehead.

Rights held: World Literary Fiction

[email protected] 2016 NEW FICTION WILL STARLING IAN WEIR

A rollicking, boisterously ingenious mystery, Will Starling brings the streets of 19th-century London to life like few others have.

In 1816, the great city of London is charged with the thrill of scientific discovery. Seizing upon this opportunity are Doomsday Men: grave robbers, supplying surgeons with cadavers for dissection. Wild rumours float about of experiments on corpses not quite dead, of a ghoul stalking the metropolis and feasting on human flesh, of a woman brought back to life and thirsting for revenge. It’s an exciting time to be a doctor.

Based on meticulous research, steeped in scientific lore, laden with cameos by Byron, Keats, and Elizabeth Fry, Will Starling is an unusual tale of love, death, obsession, and un-anaesthetized surgery.

“[A] 19th-century-style potboiler in both form and content. It’s also a remarkably subversive novel, a dense inner heart of darkness lurking under the surface hijinks and hungry decade. . . . Weir’s deft play with the characters and the narrative serves to unsettle and disturb, resulting in a novel that is at once rewarding and heartbreaking, satisfying on both intellectual and emotional levels.” — Robert Wiersema, The Globe and Mail

“It’s a rollicking good yarn with many twists and turns. It’s a mystery solved. It’s moonlit graveyards and surgeon’s tables, primitive instruments and strange experiments. . . . It’s a lot of fun and a tale well told.” — Steven Brown, Vancouver Sun

IAN WEIR is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His debut novel Daniel O’Thunder was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the CAA Award for Fiction. Weir was the creator and executive producer of the CBC series Arctic Air and has won two Gemini Awards, four Leos, a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award, and a Jessie.

Rights held: Canada (English), World (French) Literary Fiction

[email protected] 2016 NEW FICTION MR. JONES MARGARET SWEATMAN

A piercing investigation into the perils of betrayal.

It is the McCarthy era, a time when governments alleged there was a Communist under every bed and a traitor in every friend. With the conspiratorial grace of Le Carré and Greene, Mr. Jones examines the illusions that sustain a nation; the idealism (or is it self-deception?) of individual men and women. Offering a stunning portrait of a man addicted to a brilliant ideal and who risks everything in pursuit of it, Mr Jones is spy novel, love story, and psychological study all in one.

“Emmett Jones is a fascinating new protagonist on the Canadian literary scene.” — Linda Diebel, Toronto Star

“Mr. Jones is suspenseful, evocative, and astonishing in scope.” — Lisa Moore, author of February and Caught

A playwright and lyricist, MARGARET SWEATMAN is the author of three novels. Together they’ve won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, the John Hirsch Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Margaret Laurence Award, the Sunburst Award, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. Margaret Sweatman performs with the Broken Songs Band. WINNER Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction SHORTLIST Also by MARGARET SWEATMAN ReLit Award THE PLAYERS Rights held: World Literary Fiction Two French explorers arrive in Court to charm two ships from the English King. The rest, as they say, is history. A tale of beginnings and of invention, this remarkable novel takes on the 17th century with a contemporary sensibility. Here, the ability to perform — in Court, on stage, in private quarters, and in the brutal cold of James Bay — might save your life . . . and Lilly Cole must play along with the best of them.

Sly, provocative, and ingeniously funny, Sweatman’s prose explores the deep well of human motivation, how instinct trumps reason when survival is in question.

“Margaret Sweatman’s fiction is as dark as it is funny, both eerily insightful and wickedly entertaining. . . . A great read and a terrific book.” — Michael Crummey, author of River Thieves

“Sweatman seems to reach for more than just a good story. She wants to explore the power gap between men and women, the clash of cultures, the greed and curiosity behind the business venture that led to the Hudson Bay Company.” — Ron Robinson, Winnipeg Free Press

Globe and Mail top 100 book for 2009

Rights held: World (English and French) Literary Fiction [email protected] 2016 RECENT NON-FICTION THE IDEAS SERIES “The Ideas series has become essential to Canadian intellectual life. And here in print are gathered some of the best of the best. This is a volume to read and to cherish.” — David Frum

IDEAS: Brilliant Thinkers Speak their Minds Edited by BERNIE LUCHT

Exploring geopolitics writ large, Ideas is a symposium of prominent thinkers who have shaped the culture of our times. On topics such as peace and conflict, ideology and the nation-state, and secularism and religion, voices from the past and present resonate together. Tariq Ali and Roméo Dallaire share dedication to personal responsibility. Northrop Frye’s views on the Bible complement Bernard Lewis’s assessment of Islam after 9/11. Noam Chomsky and Hannah Arendt’s opinions on violence foreshadow James Orbinski’s exposure of false humanitarianism.

Rights held: World Politics, Social Sciences

Rights held: World Politics, Social Sciences IDEAS FOR A NEW CENTURY Edited by BERNIE LUCHT

In these remarkable dialogues, some of the great intellectuals of our time reflect, interject, and project on the course of human civilization; addressing topics such as social engineering and human rights; the directions of science and technology; the influence of art, music, and literature; and the quest for truth.

Rights held: World Compiled and edited by Bernie Lucht, this volume explores the ideas of eighteen inspiring Science, Social Sciences thinkers, including Louise Arbour, David Schindler, Jerome Kagan, John Gray, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Leonore Tieffer, Nat Hentoff , Theodore Dalrymple, Mark Lilla, and many others.

Rights held: World Politics, Social Sciences

IDEAS ON THE NATURE OF SCIENCE Edited by DAVID CAYLEY

Science has long been considered the very definition of modernity, the source of the empiricism and skepticism, openness and civility that distinguishes modern societies from previous social orders. Lately this view of science has come under intense scrutiny, as historians, philosophers, and scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about the institution of science.

In this collection of invigorating interviews, David Cayley talks to some of the world’s most provocative thinkers about the nature of scientific knowledge. Touching upon a rich array of subjects, he probes how our understanding of science has begun to shift and alter our view of the world. Contributors include David Abram, Ulrich Beck, Wendell Berry, Ian Hacking, Ruth Hubbard, Bruno Latour, Richard Lewontin, James Lovelock, Andrew Pickering, Simon Schaffer, Lee Smolin, Arthur Zajonc, and many others.

Rights held: World Science, Social Sciences

[email protected] 2016 RECENT NON-FICTION CURES FOR HUNGER DENI Y. BÉCHARD

Growing up in rural British Columbia, Deni Béchard believes his charismatic father is infallible. Wild, unpredictable, even dangerous, André is worshipped by his young son, who believes that his father can do no wrong. When the boy discovers his father’s true identity — and the crime sprees and prison sentences attached to it — his imagination is set on fire.

Cures for Hunger is a gripping memoir of a young man’s quest to understand the hunger that burns for the unattainable, the story of the heart of a boy looking for the soul of a man and the darkness that he finds within.

“In men there is something that is not well understood or accepted by the more gentle aspects of modern society. Few writers have captured the full-bodied compulsive pull of it as well as Deni Béchard does in Cures for Hunger.” — Shawn Lawrence Otto, The Huffington Post

DENI BÉCHARD‘s first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. His articles, stories, and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers. He has done freelance reporting from northern Iraq and Afghanistan, and he Rights held: Canada (English), World (French) x Canada has lived in over 30 countries. When he’s not travelling, he divides his time between Montreal, Memoir Québec, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ADÈLE HUGO LA MISÉRABLE LESLEY SMITH DOW

When Victor Hugo died in 1885, the world was shocked to discover that he had a lone survivor: his daughter Adèle, incarcerated in an asylum for insane gentlewomen. At twenty-four, she fell desperately in love with an English soldier, Albert Andrew Pinson, who quickly lost interest in everything about her except her money. Her obsession with him proved her undoing.

Leslie Smith Dow recounts Adèle’s nine-year pursuit of her unwilling lover from Guernsey to Halifax to Barbados, her return to her father’s sphere by a former slave, and the progressive schizophrenia that finally incapacitated her, resulting in a true, but stranger-than-fiction story.

Ottawa writer LESLIE SMITH DOW bases Adèle Hugo’s sad yet exciting life story on Adèle’s own diaries, the Hugos’ voluminous correspondence, and recollections written by friends of this WINNER strange family. Adèle Hugo: La Misérable, her second biography, follows the highly acclaimed Dartmouth Book Award Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond the King and I. FINALIST Trillium Award Ottawa Citizen Literary Award Ottawa-Carleton Literary Award

Rights held: World Biography French manuscript available

[email protected] 2016 RECENT NON-FICTION THE LEGACY OF TIANANMEN SQUARE MICHEL CORMIER Translated by JONATHAN KAPLANSKY

More than 20 years after the Tiananmen Square uprising, Michel Cormier, CBC Television’s former China correspondent, examines the stillborn legacy of the Tiananmen Square student protests in the spring of 1989.

With the unprecedented loosening of the restrictions on the Chinese economy in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of the middle class, many observers thought that Western-style democracy would soon follow. Instead, China has adopted its own version, allowing for a market-driven economy but strictly forbidding actions that might call into question the decisions of the governing party.

In this fascinating account, Cormier tells the story of numerous failed attempts to bring democracy to China in the last century, ending with the student uprising of 1989, the peak of a century’s struggle for democracy.

Using historical research (including surprising transcripts from Party meetings) and candid Rights held: World (English) interviews with many of the dissidents, Cormier tells the very human story of real people Politics struggling for human rights and freedoms.

“Cormier tells the story of the twisted and tortured path of Chinese-style democracy with purpose and clarity.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Read this book if you want to understand why the Tiananmen Square crackdown still matters almost twenty-five years later and why the struggle for democracy continues.” — Mark McKinnon, Beijing bureau chief, The Globe and Mail, author of The New Cold War

MICHEL CORMIER was the CBC and Radio-Canada television correspondent in China from 2006 to 2010. Now back in Canada, he was appointed executive director of news and current affairs for Radio-Canada. Before his posting in Beijing, Cormier reported extensively from Europe, the Middle East, and Russia. He is the author of several books, including La Russie de mes illusions, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 2007. Originally published in French as Les héritiers de Tiananmen, this updated edition was translated by Jonathan Kaplansky.

[email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION SAVAGE LOVE DOUGLAS GLOVER

Peopled with forensic archaeologists, members of ancient tribes, horoscope writers, dental hygienists, butchers — Glover’s stories are of our time yet timeless; spectacular fables that stand in any era, any civilization. Slyly holding forth with subversive wit, Glover skewers every conventional notion we’ve ever held about that cultural/emotional institution of love we are instructed to hold dear.

Absurd, comic, dream-like, deeply affecting (on the molecular level): these stories revel in inventiveness yet preserve a strict adherence to the real. Glover directs his focus to moments when things seem too incredible to be supported, pointing us to truths that exhibit human nature in contexts we all recognize.

“Savage Love is an accomplished, funny, and inventive book that readers should rejoice in.” — Quill & Quire

“Glover’s collection is bracing, angry, violent and funny. It is, regardless of genre, one of the best books you will read this year.” — National Post

Globe and Mail Top 100 Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013 DOUGLAS GLOVER was recipient of the 2006 Writers’ Trust of Canada Timothy Findley Award for Quill & Quire Best Book of 2013 his body of work. His bestselling novel Elle won the Governor-General’s Award and was a finalist LONGLIST for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. A Guide to Animal Behaviour was a finalist Frank O’Connor International for the 1991 Governor-General’s Award, and 16 Categories of Desire was shortlisted for the 2000 Short Story Award Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Award. Rights held: North America (English), World (French) Literary Fiction

ELLE DOUGLAS GLOVER

A 16th-century belle turned Robinson Crusoe, a female Don Quixote with an Inuit Sancho Panza, Elle is a lusty, subversive riff on the discovery of the New World, the moment of first contact. On the surface, Elle chronicles the ordeals and adventures of a young French woman marooned on the desolate Isle of Demons during Jacques Cartier’s ill-fated third and last attempt to colonize Canada. But Glover’s scatological realism, exuberant violence, and dark, unsettling humour give this unique version of history a thoroughly modern chill.

“A magnificent hail Mary of pure imagination. Glover’s prose is a rich blend of elegance and punch, raw affect, and slippery allusion.” — The Globe and Mail

“[A] bawdy, outrageously modern historical novel.” — Michael Winter WINNER Governor General’s Award for Fiction SHORTLIST IMPAC Dublin Award Commonwealth Writers Prize

Rights held: World x French Literary Fiction [email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION THE DOUGLAS NOTEBOOKS: A Fable CHRISTINE EDDIE Translated by SHEILA FISCHMAN

Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Romain leaves his family for a home in the forest at 18, learning to live off the land. Élena flees a house of blood and thunder, taking refuge in a monastery and later in the rustic village of Rivière-aux-Oies. One day, while walking in the woods, Élena comes across Romain, who calls himself Starling and whom Élena later renames Douglas, for the strongest of trees. Later a child named Rose is born.

As the years pass, the story broadens to capture others in its elegant web — a doctor with a bruised heart, a pharmacist who may be a witch, and a teacher with dark secrets and an unpronounceable last name. Their struggle to preserve what eventually becomes a family of singular character transforms Eddie’s tale into an ode to friendship and family, a sonnet on our relationship with nature, and an elegy to love and passion.

“[A] timeless love story . . . In a slim volume of sparse, poetic prose, Eddie deftly and movingly covers vast territory.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“[T]he imagery is so crisp, and the travails of the forest and its inhabitants so heartbreaking, that what is on the page is hard to forget.” — Liz Worth, Quill & Quire Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013

Rights held: World (English) CHRISTINE EDDIE was born in France, grew up in New Brunswick, and now lives in Québec. Literary Fiction The Douglas Notebooks, her first novel, won the 2008 Prix France-Québec, the 2009 Prix Senghor du Premier Roman francophone, and the 2010 Prix du Club des Irrésistibles.

PRAIRIE OSTRICH TAMAI KOBAYASHI

The Murakami family is not happy. But in the hands of Tamai Kobayashi, their story becomes a drama of rare insight and virtuosity. Since her brother’s death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Big sister Kathy tells stories to Egg so that the world might not seem so awful.

“Prairie Ostrich’s evocative, poetic language, and resonant, dynamic characters make it an urgent and memorable, thought-provoking work.” — National Post

“Egg may be small but her sassiness and steadfastness make her huge and indomitable. I loved this novel.” — Kyo Maclear, author of Stray Love and The Letter Opener WINNER Dayne Ogilvie Prize Born in Japan, raised in Canada, TAMAI KOBAYASHI is a writer, song-writer, and videographer. Rights held: World She is the author of two story collections, Exile and the Heart and Quixotic Erotic, whose vivid, Literary Fiction electric prose has garnered considerable critical acclaim. Prairie Ostrich is her first novel.

[email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION THE IRON BRIDGE ANTON PIATIGORSKY

In a bold, brilliant collection of stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky delivers a superbly inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century’s most notorious tyrants.

We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.

“Piatigorsky solves historical fiction’s dilemmas with enviable skill and originality.” — The National Post

“An astonishing collection of intricate and rigorous character studies. Thrilling, brazen, brilliant, and deeply felt. The most compelling stories I’ve read in years.” — Sarah Polley, writer-director, Away from Her SHORLIST Danutla Gleed Literary Award ANTON PIATIGORSKY is one of the most celebrated young playwrights in the country. He has received the Siminovitch Protégé Prize in Playwriting and twice won the Dora Mavor Moore Rights held: World (English) x US Award. His work has been produced in Canada, the US, Australia, and Italy. The Iron Bridge is his Literary Fiction first book-length work of fiction.

UNDER BUDAPEST AILSA KAY

Ailsa Kay lays out the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle in Under Budapest, bringing into stark relief the triumphs, calamities, and desperation of two North American Hungarian families and those whose lives they’ve touched.

Through riveting narratives that spring back and forth through time, Under Budapest captures the drama and ravages of the Hungarian Revolution and the eras that followed. A dark ode to memory, Kay’s intimate spectacle demonstrates that actions have consequences, that all events can carry the possibility of repercussion.

“[A]n ambitious, multi-faceted plot, and a fast-paced ride through the dark side of Hungary that will leave you hungry for more of Kay’s work.” — Chad Pelley, Globe and Mail LONGLIST IMPAC Dublin Award AILSA KAY fell in love with Budapest on a 2004 visit and has since lived there off and on. Rights held: World She has taught writing at college and university. Kay’s short fiction has appeared in literary Literary Fiction journals such as Exile and The New Quarterly. After twenty years in Toronto, she returned to her hometown of Fergus, Ontario. Under Budapest is her first novel.

[email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION SONG OF KOSOVO CHRIS GUDGEON

Some days, it doesn’t pay to be a lapsed pretend Buddhist . . . particularly when you’re charged with a lengthy list of war crimes. Vida Zanković has done many things to stay alive. A wily young man caught in the insanity of the Balkan wars, Vida has dealt drugs, been forced to join the army, and then deserted. Being accused of genocide, however, forces Vida into a whole new level of surrealism.

In Song of Kosovo, Chris Gudgeon exposes the universal human experience like never before, fashioning a satirical world where one earns a following as a levitating holy man while the US Air Force drops “bombs” of condoms, candy, and Ikea pillows to subvert the populace.

“Half galloping Bildungsroman, half treatise on the fraught interplay of truth, lies, and myth in what we end up calling history.” — Jim Bartley, Quill & Quire

CHRIS GUDGEON is an author, screenwriter, and the creator/producer of the television series Ghost Trackers. He has contributed to dozens of publications ranging from MAD and The National Lampoon to Today’s Parent and written numerous books, including the critically Rights held: World acclaimed Greetings from the Vodka Sea and the popular history The Naked Truth. He has also Literary Fiction worked for Mattel Interactive, Disney, HBO, and Nickelodeon.

THE REST IS SILENCE SCOTT FOTHERINGHAM

Backwoods Nova Scotia: The body of a hermit is found dead in the woods, with skates on. New York: While working in a lab, Benny Mosher secretly engineers a bacterium that will dissolve plastic. Montreal: Leroy receives Benny’s journals in the mail from a woman he has never met.

Writing about a time beyond our own, Scott Fotheringham masterfully handles a complex story that never slips into the territory of disbelief or the contrived. This imaginative, poignantly written novel about the collision of nature and humanity offers trenchant observations about the intricacies of science and the complexities of human desire.

“Dystopian CanLit at its finest.” — Brett Alexander Savory, The Globe and Mail

“A diorama of life on the edge wrapped in beautifully evocative prose.” — Andrew Armitage, WINNER The Owen Sound Sun Times H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize SHORTLIST SCOTT FOTHERINGHAM worked as a research scientist in Manhattan. He left a life in science Amazon.ca First Novel Award to live in the country. He now lives and writes near Ottawa, after a sojourn near Halifax. Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction The Rest is Silence is his first novel. Ottawa Book Award

Rights held: World Literary Fiction/Speculative Fiction

[email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION READING BY LIGHTNING JOAN THOMAS

For Lily Piper, life on the prairie is spare, austere, and tucked in. She is restless — not the daughter she feels her mother wants. When puberty hits, an abrupt shift in fate has Lily on her way to England to care for her aging grandmother. There, she experiences life in all its ambiguity, until she is called home to face a future she thought she had escaped.

Reading by Lightning, Joan Thomas’s debut novel, took readers by storm. Intimate, elegant, and devastatingly funny, her engrossing story of Lily Piper tells us something about how we make sense of the future when the future is something we can hardly imagine.

“Most first-time novelists strain for the gold ring; Joan Thomas grabs it effortlessly in this wonderful book.” — Quill & Quire, starred review

“A stunning prairie novel.” — Winnipeg Free Press

JOAN THOMAS has been a regular book reviewer for the Globe and Mail for more than a decade. Her essays, stories, and articles have been published in numerous journals and WINNER magazines including Prairie Fire, Books in Canada, and the Winnipeg Free Press. Amazon.ca First Novel Award Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book SHORTLIST THE NETTLE SPINNER McNally Robinson Book of the Year Margaret Laurence Award for KATHRYN KUITENBROUWER Fiction Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book The Nettle Spinner is a gritty, sensuous debut that portrays sex with startling clarity, and Rights: World Literary Fiction violence with peculiar tenderness. Alma, Kuitenbrouwer’s tough-minded heroine, has come home to northern Ontario to help reforest the ravaged landscape with a gang of filthy ex- hippies and idealistic students. Baking by day in the hot sun and tormented by mosquitoes and blackflies, Alma and her fellow planters relieve their backbreaking toil at night with sex, dope, and alcohol. But her brief passionate affair with a charismatic newcomer raises the ire of Karl (whose amorous attentions she has deflected in the past), and he viciously rapes her.

Pregnant and alone, Alma flees to an abandoned mining camp. There, with the help of the camp’s single weird inhabitant, she constructs for herself and her unwanted baby an increasingly ominous new life. Weaving together Alma’s story with an ancient Flemish folktale about a peasant girl’s magical hold over a lustful count, Kuitenbrouwer links the power of narrative with the passion for self-realization.

“Unconventional, dense, provocative prose.” — Globe and Mail

KATHRYN KUITENBROUWER is the former fiction editor of The Literary Review of Canada, and has also worked as a tree-planter, a lumberjack, and a baker. Her reviews have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Toronto Star, and the National Post. Rights: World (English) She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto, and is the Magazine Editor for Literary Fiction Bookninja.com.

[email protected] 2016 RECENT FICTION ENGLISH LESSONS and Other Stories SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN

Shauna Singh Baldwin’s passionate stories dramatize the lives of Indian women from 1919 to today, from India to Canada to the US. Through the eyes of these women adjusting to change, we see a world whose familiar rhythms mask dissonance and discordance. More overt is the ongoing struggle for the Sikh women to keep their identity and assert it. More subtle is the cost of integration into the new world, how colonialism survives in the minds of the colonized, and how these women confront the twin fear of freedom and fear of “the other.”

“Baldwin threads her stories with ravishing glints of colour that explode against the pallid landscape.” — Toronto Star

SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN is the author of several works of fiction. English Lessons and Other Stories won the Friends of American Writers Award. What the Body Remembers won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean). The Tiger Claw was a finalist for the Giller Prize.

WINNER Friends of American Writers Book Award WE ARE NOT IN PAKISTAN SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN Rights held: World x Italy and India Literary Fiction

An outstanding collection of ten stories. Migrating from Central America to the American South, from Metro Toronto to the Ukraine, this book features an unforgettable cast of characters. In the title story, 16-year-old Megan hates her Pakistani grandmother — until Grandma disappears. In the enchanting magical realism of “Naina,” an Indo-Canadian woman is pregnant with a baby girl who refuses to be born. “The View from the Mountain” introduces Wilson Gonzales, who makes friends with his new American boss, the aptly named Ted Grand. But following 9/11, Ted’s suspicions cloud his judgment and threaten his friendship with Wilson.

Each containing an entire world, these stories are marked by indelible images and unforgettable turns of phrase — hallmarks of Baldwin’s fictional world.

“Shakes up the prettiness of much of the CanLit landscape. It wants to be global and it succeeds.” — The Globe and Mail

“A riveting collection.” — Montreal Gazette

“Shauna Singh Baldwin’s writing is, quite simply, brilliant.” — Atlantic Books Today Quill & Quire’s Books of the Year

Rights held: World x India Literary Fiction

[email protected] 2016