New Releases by Ann-Marie MacDonald

A new edition of Ann-Marie MacDonald's Hamlet-911, an incisive and satirical play in which a famous actor about to perform Hamlet at the Stratford Festival suddenly finds himself in the Underworld.

THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF CBC’S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022 A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity. In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died soon afterwards at the age of two. When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter “as you would my son, had I one.” But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.

Una novela intimista y profunda sobre la familia, la memoria, el amor, la necesidad del perdón y los nuevos modelos familiares. Hay semanas que resumen una vida entera y nos cuentan de nosotros más de lo que querríamos saber. Un mal secreto arranca un lunes cualquiera, mientras Mary Rose MacKinnon está sentada en la mesa del desayuno de su casa, y acabará en domingo, pero en estos siete días el caos del día a día y los recuerdos de infancia se irán trenzando para dar la imagen de un mundo donde caben la comedia y el drama. Bien mirado, Mary Rose algo de responsabilidad tiene en todo eso; es ella quien ha decidido dejar de lado su carrera para dedicarse a sus hijos, Maggie y Matthew, dos criaturas que tendrá que cuidar sola mientras su compañera Hilary está de viaje por trabajo. En general, todo parece dispuesto para lo mejor, pero hay detalles que duelen: ¿nadie se ha fijado en la abolladura de la nevera?, ¿cómo es posible que Maggie aparezca de repente con unas tijeras en la mano?, ¿dónde está el maldito mando del coche...? La voz cansada y lejana de Hilary que llama por la noche no basta para recobrar el equilibrio y la presencia de sus padres, que invaden la casa con tiernas extravagancias, devuelven a Mary Rose a un momento del pasado, a una oscura enfermedad y un mal secreto que la familia decidió borrar de su historia. Lunes, martes, miércoles... la vida transcurre y la espléndida prosa de Anne-Marie MacDonald cose los retales del presente y del pasado perdido con el talento de una maestra. « Mirar la vida como si estuviera cortada a cachos es muy difícil, pero tiene una ventaja: no te hace falta saber cuánto pesa la mochila que llevas cargando en la espalda.» Ann-Marie Macdonald Críticas: «Grande, perturbadora y valiente novela.» New York Times Book Review «Cautivadora... La robusta narrative de MacDonald construye un fascinante análisis de la soledad y la impotencia a menudo absurda de ser padre en solitario.» Publishers Weekly

L'AIR ADULTE est une œuvre puissante sur la maternité, les forces sombres qui déchirent et réunissent les familles, le pouvoir et les tensions de l’amour.

- Sur la liste des incontournables de Radio-Canada : « 100 livres d’ici à lire une fois dans sa vie » - Choix du Oprah's Book Club - Prix du Gouverneur général pour la traduction de Lori Saint-Martin et Paul Gagné - « Un roman envoûtant. » Monique Roy, Châtelaine - « Le roman de MacDonald allie remarquablement bien le mélodrame et un rythme endiablé à une profondeur de recherche historique. Ici, on a affaire pas seulement à une conteuse habile, mais à une romancière qui sait utiliser le passé. » David Homel, La Presse - « Un roman qui m’a laissé une impression de coup de cœur et de coup de poing. » Sophie-Andrée Blondin, Radio-Canada, La liste des 100 livres d’ici incontournables Une famille hors du commun : mère morte trop jeune, ne laissant derrière elle qu’un tenace parfum de cèdre, père conduit aux pires excès par un amour débordant et quatre enfants, de la sainte nitouche à la fille perdue, liées entre elles par des secrets qui se dévoileront un à un. Ce roman est aussi le portrait inoubliable de l’île du Cap-Breton, en Nouvelle-Écosse, durant les premières décennies du XXe siècle. Comédienne et dramaturge à succès, Ann-Marie MacDonald possède à fond l’art des dialogues qui sonnent juste et des rebondissements spectaculaires. Son roman renferme la vie tout entière, de l’horreur à la douceur, de l’humour à la poésie, de l’opéra au jazz. Tantôt endiablée, tantôt lyrique, son écriture nous étonne et nous émeut sans fin. Saga familiale, chronique sociale, ode à la passion et à tous les autres visages qu’emprunte l’amour, Un parfum de cèdre a valu à son auteur de nombreuses récompenses et a recueilli un concert d’éloges. Dès les premières phrases, on comprend pourquoi. Les traducteurs, LORI SAINT-MARTIN et PAUL GAGNÉ

From the internationally bestselling author of Fall on Your Knees comes a story about the joy and agony of motherhood, the dark undercurrents that break and hold families together, and the transformative power of forgiveness. Mary Rose MacKinnon is a successful author of YA fiction doing a tour of duty as stay-at-home mom while her partner, Hilary, takes a turn focusing on her career. She tries valiantly to balance the (mostly) solo parenting of two young children with the relentless needs of her aging parents. But amid the hilarities of full-on domesticity arises a sense of dread. Do other people notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How long will it take Mary Rose to realize that the car alarm that has been going off all morning is hers, and how on earth did the sharpest pair of scissors in the house wind up in her toddler’s hands? As frustrations mount, she experiences a flare-up of forgotten symptoms of a childhood illness that compel her to rethink her own upbringing, her own family history. Over the course of one outwardly ordinary week, Mary Rose’s world threatens to unravel, and the specter of violence raises its head with dangerous implications for her and her children. Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken. Ann-Marie MacDonald has crafted a searing, terrifying, yet ultimately uplifting story.

“The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolor. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.” The Way the Crow Flies, the second novel by bestselling, award-winning author Ann-Marie MacDonald, is set on the Royal Canadian Air Force station of Centralia during the early sixties. It is a time of optimism--infused with the excitement of the space race but overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War--filtered through the rich imagination and quick humour of eight-year-old Madeleine McCarthy and the idealism of her father, Jack, a career officer. Ann-Marie MacDonald said in a discussion with Oprah Winfrey about her first book, “a happy ending is when someone can walk out of the rubble and tell the story.” Madeleine achieves her childhood dream of becoming a comedian, yet twenty years later she realises she cannot rest until she has renewed the quest for the truth, and confirmed how and why the child was murdered.. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called The Way the Crow Flies “absorbing, psychologically rich…a chronicle of innocence betrayed”. With compassion and intelligence, and an unerring eye for the absurd as well as the confusions of childhood, , MacDonald evokes the confusion of being human and the necessity of coming to terms with our imperfections.

The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives -- even destroy them. Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and redemption.

Premiered at the Shaw Festival one of the largest classical repertory theatres

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada’s Queen’s University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered “spinster” academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn. Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises… Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy.