New Releases by Greg Hollingshead

A new collection of short fiction from the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning author and Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Greg Hollingshead. Act Normal is a collection of sharp, new comic stories about sex, art, and the daily risk of having accidents. Highly original, occasionally dark, but always endearing, these stories are filled with characters who are forced to confront strange behaviour in both themselves and others. In “The Amazing Insult,” a blow to the head in a boating accident increases a woman’s intelligence and alters her sexual orientation. A man flees a rural meditation camp in for a highway bar in “The Retreat,” where he does his best to get to know a Haitian stripper. A depressed carpenter has to take a break from building his client’s fence in “Unbounded.” In “Night Dreams of the Wise,” a man sleeping with the wife of the British Defense Secretary learns, after a particularly wild night, to stop doing foolish things. A cleric is haunted by the revenant of a member of his diocese in “Miss Buffet.” Nominated for a National Magazine Award, “The Drug-Friendly House,” is the story of a man who attempts to befriend a woman living in a house that the neighbourhood association has labelled “drug friendly.” Intelligent, insightful, humorous, and occasionally bizarre, Act Normal is a masterful return by Hollingshead to the short story form. Set in the treacherous terrain of the everyday, this collection is about the quest to find love and truth in a broken world.

An extraordinary novel of three people caught up in the turmoil of the late eighteenth century, their lives intertwined in an age of war and revolution Bedlam''s eighteenth-century London is a city teetering between darkness and light, struggling to find its way to a more just and humane future. But in its darkest corners, where noblemen, pickpockets, royalists, and republicans jostle one another for power and where corruption is all in a day''s work, Greg Hollingshead finds humanity, truth, decency, and forgiveness. Conspiracies, plots, and paranoia sweep across England in the aftermath of the French Revolution, landing James Tilly Matthews in Bethlem Hospital, a notorious, crumbling home for the insane. Although he is clearly delusional, Matthews appears to be incarcerated for political reasons. Margaret, his beloved wife, spends years trying to free her often lucid husband, but she is repeatedly blocked by her chief adversary, John Haslam, Bethlem''s apothecary and chief administrator. Haslam, torn between his conscience and a desire to further his career through studying his increasingly famous patient, becomes another puppet in a game governed by shifting rules and shadowy players. Enlivened with wit and intellectual daring and written in prose that resonates with time and place, Bedlam sweeps the reader into a strange yet somehow recognizable world. From the enduring love of Matthews and his wife, to the despair of Bethlem''s inmates, to the moral agonies of John Haslam, Greg Hollingshead''s eye for rendering the human condition has never been finer. This is a novel that pulses with insight and compassion, in which imagination bridges the chasms between fantasy and reality, love and hate, and loss and reconciliation.

The girl appears in the service station one day, sneaking in to steal hubcaps to sell for spare cash. Brash and unapologetic, she isn’t like anyone the boy has encountered before. Within moments, she has turned his world upside down. With a compelling sense of mystery just below the surface, The Roaring Girl’s twelve short stories showcase Greg Hollingshead’s uncanny ability to turn the world on its head and view life from unexpected perspectives. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

Tired of living under his parents’ watchful eyes, Dennis takes off for Australia, leaving his beloved Studebaker in his parents’ care, only to return to unfamiliar faces and the conspicuous absence of his car. With a compelling sense of mystery just below the surface, The Roaring Girl’s twelve short stories showcase Greg Hollingshead’s uncanny ability to turn the world on its head and view life from unexpected perspectives. HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

A collection of early writings by Greg Hollingshead, Carol Shields, Aritha van Herk and Rudy Wiebe.

When recently widowed journalist Tim Wakelin heads north in search of a story about a local healer named Caroline Troyer, he enters a world that is real yet strange. Familiar landmarks disappear and extraordinary events unfold as his life becomes intertwined with hers. Even the landscape itself--the ancient rocks, myriad lakes, and cathedral forests of the Canadian Shield--becomes a source of threat. How can he understand this strange and beautiful woman when he is no longer sure why he has really come or what is happening to him? And Caroline, who is aware that her ability to heal is only part of a mysterious process of transformation that she is undergoing, must break free of the chains of her abusive family. Perhaps Tim can provide the sanctuary she needs, if he has the strength to survive the violent forces unleashed by his arrival. Darkly beautiful, illuminated by flashes of wit and great lyricism, written in a compelling cadence all its own, The Healer is a work of immense power and original sensibility.

A woman undergoes dream deprivation to find the man who has shadowed her life and now her marriage. Spin Dry is a comedy, a satire, an anti-romance, a novel about lost fathers, suburban tract housing, Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Fluff.