Best Selling Books by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Spanning five generations and moving from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, to the bleak landscape of World War I, and to the emerging jazz scene in New York City, this epic tale tells the story of four sisters

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.

“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 INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year • A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love, and identity •“Engrossing, gorgeous, funny.” —The Globe and Mail • “Magnificent.” —Montreal Review of Books • “A reinvention for the bestselling author. . . . MacDonald’s fourth novel is a paean to the act of storytelling and a triumph that challenges the constructs of gender.” —Quill & Quire (starred review) 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.

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

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.

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.

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

Ultimi anni dell''Ottocento, sull''isola di Cape Breton, al largo della Nuova Scozia: un luogo livido, aspro, battuto dal vento gelido dell''oceano. È qui che un giovane accordatore di pianoforti, James Piper, e una adolescente di origine libanese, Materia Mahmoud, si conoscono e si innamorano. Pur di vivere il loro amore, sono disposti a tutto; ma la loro passione, intensa quanto folgorante, segnerà per sempre il destino delle loro figlie e di tutti i loro discendenti. Una saga familiare fatta di inconfessabili segreti, terribili bugie, colpe atroci e ineludibili legami di sangue. Ma anche di santità e redenzione. Un romanzo ipnotico, intenso, acclamato in tutto il mondo, che ha rivelato il talento di Ann-Marie MacDonald.

« Un monde fascinant d’où l’on a peine à s’arracher. » Danielle Laurin, L’actualité 1962. Les McCarthy forment une famille exemplaire. Jack, le père, est officier de carrière et Mimi, la mère, est une Acadienne resplendissante. Madeleine, 8 ans, croit encore que l’école est un endroit sûr et considère son grand frère Mike comme un héros. Mais la vie à la base militaire ne tarde pas à faire craquer ce vernis. Un meurtre inconcevable secoue la communauté. Jack est aux prises avec un dilemme moral insurmontable : au nom des intérêts de son pays en pleine guerre froide doit-il protéger un criminel de guerre et laisser enfermer un innocent ? Quant à Madeleine, peut-elle mentir pour faire éclater la vérité ? La lumière ne se fera que beaucoup plus tard, lorsque cette dernière, jeune femme brisée et indomptable, ira enfin jusqu’au fond des choses. En attendant, seuls les corbeaux ont vu le meurtre.