Most Popular Books by Lisa Moore

The acclaimed author of February "combin[es] the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller" ( National Post). Lisa Moore, a "Canada Reads" winner and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year author, introduces a dangerously appealing new protagonist unlike any she''s imagined before: a modern Billy the Kid . . . Caught begins with a prison break. Twenty-five-year-old David Slaney, locked up on charges of marijuana possession, escapes his cell and sprints to the highway. There, he is picked up by a friend of his sister''s and transported to a strip bar where he survives his first night on the run. But evading the cops isn''t his only objective; Slaney intends to track down his old partner, Hearn, and get back into the drug business. Along the way, Slaney''s fugitive journey across Canada rushes vibrantly to life as he visits an old flame and adopts numerous guises to outpace authorities: hitchhiker, houseguest, student, lover. When he finally reunites with Hearn just steps ahead of a detective hell-bent on making a high-profile arrest, their scheme sends Slaney to Mexico, Colombia, and back again on an epic quest fueled by luck, charm, and unbending conviction. In Caught, "Moore combines the propulsive storytelling of a beach-book thriller with the skilled use of language and penetrating insights of literary fiction. She pulls it off seamlessly, creating a vivid, compulsively readable tale" ( Penthouse). "Propulsive, adrenalin-drenched."— The Globe and Mail "Exhilarating . . . a memorably oddball and alluring novel that''s simultaneously breezy, taut, funny, and insightful."— The Vancouver Sun

Winner of Canada Reads 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine''s Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O''Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns on the rig. It begins in the present-day, more than twenty-five years later, but spirals back again and again to the "February" that persists in Helen''s mind and heart. Writing at the peak of her form, her steadfast refusal to sentimentalize coupled with an almost shocking ability to render the precise details of her characters'' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore gives us her strongest work yet. Here is a novel about complex love and cauterizing grief, about past and present and how memory knits them together, about a fiercely close community and its universal struggles, and finally about our need to imagine a future, no matter how fragile, before we truly come home. This is a profound, gorgeous, heart-stopping work from one of our best writers.

Lisa Moore''s Open makes you believe three things unequivocally: that St. John''s is the centre of the universe, that these stories are about absolutely everything, that the only certainty in life comes from the accumulation of moments which refuse to be contained. Love, mistakes, loss -- the fear of all of these, the joy of all of these. The interconnectedness of a bus ride in Nepal and a wedding on the shore of Quidi Vidi Lake; of the tension between a husband and wife when their infant cries before dawn (who will go to him?) and the husband''s memory of an early, piercing love affair; of two friends, one who suffers early in life and the other midway through. In Open Lisa Moore splices moments and images together so adroitly, so vividly, you''ll swear you''ve lived them yourself. That there is a writer like Lisa Moore threading a live wire through everything she sees, showing it to us, warming us with it. These stories are a gathering in. An offering. They ache and bristle. They are shared riches. Open.

WINNER OF THE 2024 BMO WINTERSET AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE 2024 HILARY WESTON WRITERS'' TRUST PRIZE • One of The Globe and Mail''s Best Books of 2024 • One of CBC’s Best Canadian Non-Fiction Books of 2024 Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love. Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John’s, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing—and Jack''s case is part of a lawsuit currently before the courts. The story has parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and with the many horrific stories about residential schools—all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and a larger society looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes vividly real every moment and character in these pages.

From debut author Lisa Moore Ramée comes this funny and big-hearted debut middle grade novel about friendship, family, and standing up for what’s right, perfect for fans of Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give and the novels of Renée Watson and Jason Reynolds. Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. (Oh, and she’d also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead.) But in junior high, it’s like all the rules have changed. Now she’s suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she’s not black enough. Wait, what? Shay’s sister, Hana, is involved in Black Lives Matter, but Shay doesn''t think that''s for her. After experiencing a powerful protest, though, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking. She starts wearing an armband to school in support of the Black Lives movement. Soon everyone is taking sides. And she is given an ultimatum. Shay is scared to do the wrong thing (and even more scared to do the right thing), but if she doesn''t face her fear, she''ll be forever tripping over the next hurdle. Now that’s trouble, for real. "Tensions are high over the trial of a police officer who shot an unarmed Black man. When the officer is set free, and Shay goes with her family to a silent protest, she starts to see that some trouble is worth making." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children''s and YA Reading List")

In Degrees of Nakedness, Lisa Moore''s first story collection, the joys and distresses of love course through modern-day Newfoundland like an electric current. Lisa Moore''s stories are bright, emotionally engaging, tangible. She marks out the precious moments of her characters'' lives against deceptively commonplace backdrops -- a St. John''s hospital cafeteria lit only by the lights in the snack machines; a half-built house "like a rib cage around a lungful of sky" -- and the results linger long in the memory. In Degrees of Nakedness Lisa Moore shows us that love, alongside desire, can sometimes come as a surprise, sometimes an ambush.

Lisa Moore''s Alligator gives dramatic birth to a new kind of fiction: North Atlantic Gothic. The story moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in contemporary St. John''s, Newfoundland-- a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O''Connor country. Its denizens jostle each other in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, lust, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Meet Madeleine, the driven aging filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies; Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers; Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters; and Colleen, at seventeen a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. In these pages humanity is a bizarre combination of the reptilian and the saintly. Listen to its heartbeat, and be moved -- and delighted.

This study first examines the marginal repertoire in two well-known manuscripts, the Psalter of Guy de Dampierre and an Arthurian Romance, within their material and codicological contexts. This repertoire then provides a template for an extended study of the marginal motifs that appear in eighteen related manuscripts, which range from a Bible to illustrated versions of the encyclopedias of Vincent de Beauvais and Brunetto Latini. Considering the manuscript as a whole work of art, the marginalia’s physical relationship to nearby texts and images can shed light on the reception of these illuminated books by their medieval viewers.

Lisa Moore''s stories are bright, emotionally engaging, tangible. She marks out the precious moments of her characters'' lives against deceptively commonplace backdrops — a St. John''s hospital cafeteria lit only by the lights in the snack machines; a half-built house "like a rib cage around a lungful of sky" -- and the results linger long in the memory. The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore shows us that love, alongside desire, can sometimes come as a surprise, sometimes an ambush. She splices moments and images together so adroitly, so vividly, you''ll swear you''ve lived them yourself. This new volume, bringing together Lisa Moore’s first two books of stories, Open and Degrees of Nakedness, is the very best way to encounter one of the finest short-story writers in the country. This edition features a brilliant new introduction by Jane Urquhart on the importance of Moore’s work.

A spellbinding story about chasing love, fighting family, losing friends and starting all over again, from the internationally acclaimed Lisa Moore. Sixteen-year-old Flannery Malone has it bad. She’s been in love with Tyrone O’Rourke since the days she still believed in Santa Claus. But Tyrone has grown from a dorky kid into an outlaw graffiti artist, the rebel-with-a-cause of Flannery’s dreams, literally too cool for school. Which is a problem, since he and Flannery are partners for the entrepreneurship class that she needs to graduate. And Tyrone’s vanishing act may have darker causes than she realizes. Tyrone isn’t Flannery’s only problem. Her mother, Miranda, can’t pay the heating bills, let alone buy Flannery’s biology book. Her little brother, Felix, is careening out of control. And her best-friend-since-forever, Amber, has fallen for a guy who is making her forget all about the things she’s always cared most about — Flannery included — leading Amber down a dark and dangerous path of her own. When Flannery decides to make a love potion for her entrepreneurship project, rumors that it actually works go viral, and she suddenly has a hot commodity on her hands. But a series of shattering events makes her realize that real-life love is far more potent — and potentially damaging — than any fairy-tale prescription. Written in Lisa Moore’s exuberant and inimitable style, Flannery is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, empowering and harrowing — often all on the same page. It is a novel whose spell no reader will be able to resist.

From the author of A Good Kind of Trouble, a Walter Dean Myers Honor Book, comes another unforgettable story about finding your voice—and finding your people. Perfect for fans of Sharon Draper, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds. Eleven-year-old Jenae doesn’t have any friends—and she’s just fine with that. She’s so good at being invisible in school, it’s almost like she has a superpower, like her idol, Astrid Dane. At home, Jenae has plenty of company, like her no-nonsense mama; her older brother, Malcolm, who is home from college after a basketball injury; and her beloved grandpa, Gee. Then a new student shows up at school—a boy named Aubrey with fiery red hair and a smile that won’t quit. Jenae can’t figure out why he keeps popping up everywhere she goes. The more she tries to push him away, the more he seems determined to be her friend. Despite herself, Jenae starts getting used to having him around. But when the two are paired up for a class debate about the proposed name change for their school, Jenae knows this new friendship has an expiration date. Aubrey is desperate to win and earn a coveted spot on the debate team. There’s just one problem: Jenae would do almost anything to avoid speaking up in front of an audience—including risking the first real friendship she’s ever had.

Follows Princess Bubblegum and Marceline''s paranormal rock band''s tour of Ooo as they confront scenesters, beasts born of self-doubt, and other challenges, in a tale with other stories about the same characters interspersed among the episodes.