New Releases by Richard B. Wright

Previously published: Toronto: Phyllis Bruce Editions, 2016.

Complete with new beginnings and the promise of satisfying endings, The Look Book sampler offers the best in fiction from across the Simon & Schuster Canada Spring 2016 list. This array of debut authors and perennial favourites will allow you to step back in time with our historical fiction, time travel with our fantasy writers, fall in love with our inspirational romance, marvel at our literary stylists, and be enthralled by our dark thrillers. If you would like to learn more about any of our authors or the titles featured, please visit us at SimonandSchuster.ca, follow us on Twitter at @simonschusterCA, or like us at Facebook.com/SimonandSchusterCanada. With chapter excerpts from the following Spring 2016 new releases: Dark Territory, by Susan Philpott He Will Be My Ruin, by K.A. Tucker Owl and the City of Angels, by Kristi Charish Black Apple, by Joan Crate Still Mine, by Amy Stuart Glory Over Everything, by Kathleen Grissom The Rivals of Versailles, by Sally Christie Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, by Ann Y.K. Choi Nightfall, by Richard B. Wright Mannheim Rex, by Rob Pobi Umbrella Man, by Peggy Blair I’m Thinking of Ending Things, by Iain Reid

A portrait of the writing life and memoir that reads like a novel.

In a quiet manor house in Oxfordshire, an ailing housekeeper by the name of Aerlene Ward feels the time has come to confess the great secret that has shaped her life-she is the illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, England's most famous playwright. With a brilliant eye and ear for this rich period of history, Richard B. Wright brings to life the teeming streets of Elizabethan London and the seasonal rhythms of rural life in Oliver Cromwell's England as he interweaves the intriguing stories of the lovely Elizabeth, who allows herself to be seduced by a struggling young writer from Stratford, and her plain but clever daughter, who must live with the consequences. As their lives unfold, secrets are revealed, love is found and lost, and futures are forever changed. Readers will be fascinated by glimpses of the young Will as an actor with the Queen's Men and, fifteen years later, as a world-weary but increasingly wealthy playwright -- who may have had an unexpected daughter. An engaging blend of invention and historical detail, and echoing the unmistakable style of the Bard himself, MR. SHAKESPEARE'S BASTARD confirms Wright as one of our finest storytellers. This unforgettable novel will delight the senses and touch the heart.

In a small town in Canada, Clara Callan reluctantly takes leave of her sister, Nora, who is bound for New York. It's a time when the growing threat of fascism in Europe is a constant worry, and people escape from reality through radio and the movies. Meanwhile, the two sisters -- vastly different in personality, yet inextricably linked by a shared past -- try to find their places within the complex web of social expectations for young women in the 1930s. While Nora embarks on a glamorous career as a radio-soap opera star, Clara, a strong and independent-minded woman, struggles to observe the traditional boundaries of a small and tight-knit community without relinquishing her dreams of love, freedom, and adventure. However, things aren't as simple as they appear -- Nora's letters eventually reveal life in the big city is less exotic than it seems, and the tranquil solitude of Clara's life is shattered by a series of unforeseeable events. These twists of fate require all of Clara's courage and strength, and finally put the seemingly unbreakable bond between the sisters to the test.

In England to see his gravely ill daughter, James Hillyer, a retired professor of Victorian literature, meets by chance a man he once knew as a boy, Gabriel Fontaine, and is asked by Gabriel to accompany him on a final, unthinkable journey.

Richard Wright’s bestselling follow-upto Clara Callan is a quietly brilliant story of infidelity andforgiveness. Daniel Fielding has it all: a charmingwife and daughter, the respect of his co-workers, a nice house in a desirableneighbourhood. What, then, drives him to succumb to the charms of a pretty,young colleague at an overseas book fair? When a passionate indiscretionexplodes into violence, Fielding must confront the ever-widening aftershocks ofhis actions, an uncertain future and his own inner demons. Adultery uncoversthe many shadings of infidelity and the intricacies of emotion that lie justbeneath the surface of ordinary life. Subtle but powerful, it proves once againthat Richard B. Wright is a master storyteller and one of our finest writers.

With the publication of Clara Callan and its sweep of the awards and bestseller lists, Richard B. Wright has become a household name. But as many fiction lovers are just now discovering, Wright has been dazzling critics, writers, and his loyal audience for years, with stories that grab hold and don't let go. Final Things is one such book, a story as shockingly timely now as it was when it was first published in 1980. Jonathan Farris, 12, leaves his father's apartment one Saturday afternoon and never returns. The next day police discover that Jonathan was brutally raped and murdered, his trip to the convenience store cut short by an unknown killer. Charlie, Jonathan's father, already on a down-ward slide from a nasty divorce, a stalled writing career, and a creeping alcohol addiction, struggles to cope with the most devastating loss a parent can ever endure. When an anonymous phone call offers him information about his son's killer, Charlie is galvanized into action, channeling his grief, his guilt, and his rage into one of the most powerful confrontations since James Dickey's Deliverance.

Een rustige lerares van in de dertig maakt na de dood van haar vader tussen 1935 en 1938 een ontwikkeling door die ze zelf nooit verwacht heeft.

Farthing's Fortunes is a rollicking,picaresque tale that follows the fortunes of Bill Farthing as he travelsthroughout North America at the turn of the 20th century.Seduced at 15 by his amorous guardian, Mrs. Fletcher, and fleeing ruralCanada for a life of adventure, Farthing joins up with an irrepressiblecompanion, Cass Findlater, perhaps one of the last great Americanentrepreneurs. Farthing's journey is also a quest, a devoted search for the love ofhis life--a red-headed music hall beauty, the incomparable Sally Butters.It is a search that takes him to the bustling, immigrant-filled New YorkCity of the 1890s; to the Klondike Gold Rush; to Europe, where he runsinto the "war to end all wars"; and to the rail yards and hobojungles of the Great Depression. Whether they are riding in a Pierce-Arrowor on a box car, Farthing and Findlater are always in the company of anassortment of characters: bootleggers and poets, aristocrats and tramps,confidence men and chorus girls. Wright casts a splendidly irreverent eye on a colourful period andcreates a coming-of-age tale that is a triumph of comic imagination.

It is one of those rare novels that readers describe as having "changed my life." First published in the early 1970s, The Weekend Man immediately established Richard B. Wright as a fresh and powerful new voice in North American fiction. Now, with his 1995 double nomination for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for The Age of Longing, Richard B. Wright continues to connect strongly with his audience. A textbook publishing salesman whose life seems poised continually on the verge of free-fall, 30-year-old Wes Wakeham waffles between fighting the sad nostalgia of his past and the certain failure of his future. Shot through with the ironies of urban life, love and lust. The Weekend Man is as relevant in the '90s as it was in the '70s.

Par un auteur canadien-anglais, une oeuvre romanesque remarquable, selon Réginald Martel. Avec virulence et discrétion, c'est-à-dire avec un humour très anglo-saxon, l'auteur décrit l'ennui et la vie monotone des habitants de banlieue, dans une ville nord-américaine, en l'occurence Toronto. Le héros a pour ainsi dire renoncé à manifester sa personnalité, afin de ne pas déranger un semblant d'harmonie dans les gris, de ne pas troubler un petit monde presque dénué d'imagination et de fantaisie. Pourtant, il arrive que la monstruosité fasse irruption dans les vies les plus banales et qu'il faille retoucher le bilan d'une tranquille faillite.