Canadian Authors' Book List

"For the Chambers family of Stonebrook, Ontario, the year 1949 is filled with promise. The post-war boom and hope for the future color every facet of life: for Bill, a hardware store manager, his wife, Sylvia, and their three young children, Patrick, Paul and Daphne, possibilities seem limitless.". "In the fifty years that follow, these possibilities narrow into lives etched by character, fate and circumstance - beginning with Sylvia's untimely death, which marks her family indelibly. Daphne unabashedly follows an unconventional path and embraces the consequences, while older son Patrick discovers that for him happiness requires a series of compromises. Paul finds the perfect marriage but it yields an imperfect child, and Bill confronts the onset of old age less gracefully than anticipated. Throughout, his second wife, Margaret, remains, surprisingly, the family stronghold. As the generations intertwine, pull apart and come together again, family members spread out from their small town into the larger world, and the bonds deepen and widen, sometimes fraying. Loyalties are tested by time and chance, people resort to necessary, self-preserving lies, and love creates its own snares."--BOOK JACKET.

A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril has returned to the noble household he once served as page, and is named, to his great surprise, secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule. It is as assignment Cazaril dreads, for it must ultimately lead him to the place he most fears: the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies who once placed him in chains now occupy lofty positions. but it is more than the traitorous intrigues of villains that threaten Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle here, for a sinister curse hangs like a sword over the entire blighted House of Chalion and all who stand in their circle. And only by employing the darkest, most forbidden of magics can Cazaril hope to protect his royal charge -- an act that will mark the loyal, damaged servant as a tool of the miraculous ... and trap him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death.

In this powerful and mesmerizing debut, Joseph Boyden reinvents the tradition of Great War epics like All Quiet on the Western Front and Birdsong. It is 1919 and Niska, an Oji- Cree medicine woman, has left her home in the bush of northern Ontario to retrieve Xavier Bird, her only relation, who has returned from the trenches of Europe. Gravely wounded and addicted to morphine, Xavier recounts how he and his best friend, Elijah Whiskeyjack, prowled the battlefields as snipers of enormous skill—and how the circumstances of their deadly craft led them to very different fates. Told with unblinking focus, this is a stunning tale of brutality, survival, and rebirth that marks the arrival of a prodigious new talent.

Burning Water is the first book featuring Diana Tregarde and Guardians. Dallas Police Detective Mark Valdez isn't just any cop - he's a psychic who knows that the cattle mutilations and torture murders he's been investigating are somehow tied together. He also knows that his meager psychic abilities aren't enough to identify the killers, much less stop them. Luckily, Mark has an ace up his sleeve: an attractive young romance novelist who happens to be a practicing witch. And not just any witch, either - Diana Tregarde is a Guardian, charged with protecting the Earth and all its creatures. Using modern science and ancient magics, Diana and Mark discover that they are tailing no ordinary serial killer but the awakened avatar of an Aztec god. Tezcatlipoca and his four beautiful hand-maidens are preparing for a great sacrifice that will transform North America into a new Aztec realm. Diana isn't sure her powers are strong enough to take on those of a risen Aztec god, but she has no choice. As a Guardian, she is sworn to protect mankind, even at the cost of her own life. Luckily, she does not stand alone. Mark Valdez is more than just a cop. And Tezcatlipoca is not the only Aztec god walking in the world. The Bedlam Bards series, the SERRAted Edge series, and the Diana Tregard books are all set in the same universe and feature elves, magic, and modern life. This series has recently been re-issued by Tor. Novels featuring Diana Tregarde in time order Burning Water Children of the Night Jinx High

When a prisoner is shot to death in the exercise yard of a Saskatchewan penitentiary, Joanne Kilbourn finds herself haunted by a part of her past she wished had never happened. The dead prisoner is Kevin Tarpley, the man who six years earlier had brutally killed her politician husband, Ian, in a seemingly senseless act alongside the TransCanada Highway.

The haunting takes on a more menacing cast several days later when Tarpley's sinister wife, Maureen, is discovered dead in a snow-swept Regina parking lot. A brightly coloured scarf is found wound tightly around her neck, a scarf that belongs to none other than Joanne Kilbourn. Soon this single mother, author, university professor, and TV-show panelist is deemed the “number one” suspect in Maureen Tarpley's demise.

Joanne knows there has to be a connection between these two murders. But what is it? A cryptic letter sent to Joanne by Kevin Tarpley just days before his death intimates that Ian Kilbourn's killing may not have been as senseless as first assumed. In fact, there are hints that some of Ian's political colleagues may have been involved. But how deeply and in what way?

Then there's the faded photograph of a pretty young woman and her baby that Joanne finds tucked in the wallet of her dead husband. Does it offer any clue to Ian's murder, or to the deaths of the Tarpleys? Warily, Joanne Kilbourn is forced to follow a tangled trail deep into a heartbreaking past she never knew existed.

A Colder Kind of Death is the fourth novel featuring Gail Bowen's “reluctant sleuth,” Joanne Kilbourn. With its deft mix of wry humour and mayhem, closely observed family scenes and gripping suspense, warm characterization and betrayal, it confirms Gail Bowen's stature as one of the greats of mystery fiction.


From the Hardcover edition.

"A scientist stealing across the Pyrenees into Spain, then smuggled into America... A young woman quarantined on a ship wandering the Atlantic, her family stranded in Austria... A girl playing on a riverbank as a solitary airplane appears on the horizon... Lives already in motion, unsettled by war, and about to change beyond reckoning - their pasts blurred and their destinies at once defined and distorted by an inconceivable event. For that man was bound for the desert of Los Alamos, the woman unexpectedly en route to a refugee camp, the girl at Ground Zero and that plane the Enola Gay. In August of 1945, in a blinding flash, Hiroshima sees the dawning of the modern age."--BOOK JACKET.

…there is nothing more still than a dead body, and no mistaking it for anything else. This one was naked, covered with a glaze of ice. Even the long black hair that fell in tendrils across her face was encased in ice. It was as if she were under a spell–the victim of a jealous wizard, a wicked witch. [The Delicate Storm, page 164]

Algonquin Bay is wrapped in a thick blanket of fog; an eerie prophecy of weather on its way, or perhaps something more ominous. When a local man discovers a dismembered arm in his front yard, it seems that the long fingers of fog that strangle the city are also hiding a grisly secret. While at first the discovery is thought to be the work of ravenous bears, woken early from their long winter hibernation, the coroner later confirms that the victim was actually sawn into pieces rather torn. The case becomes even murkier when a local trapper confesses to cutting up the body and scattering the remains but claims to be innocent of committing the murder.

Detectives John Cardinal and Lise Delorme have their work cut out for them. After identifying the victim as Howard Matlock, New York city resident, a new player enters the ring: the RCMP. In any case involving an American, the RCMP shares jurisdiction with the Algonquin Bay Police Department and that means Corporal Malcolm Musgrave. A blustering wall of self-importance and attitude, Musgrave has Cardinal bristling, and he reminds Delorme of a betrayal she'd rather forget. To add insult to injury, Delorme is pulled off the case and Cardinal ends up in a partnership not only with Musgrave, but with the unbearably obsequious Calvin Squier, an agent of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

When Cardinal makes the surprising discovery that Howard Matlock is alive and well, he begins to suspect that not everyone involved in the case is working towards the same goal. The body parts add up to one Miles Shakeley, a CIA operative in Montreal in 1970, and Cardinal becomes suspicious that CSIS is somehow involved.


Meanwhile, the case of a missing woman in Algonquin Bay is occupying Delorme. When the body of Dr. Winter Cates is uncovered in a glaze of ice, Delorme is convinced that a jealous boyfriend is to blame. But when blood evidence bonds Cardinal and Delorme's cases, they are back together and travelling to Montreal to track down tenuous leads. And it is there that they discover that their cases reach far beyond the town limits of Algonquin Bay. Untangling the secrets of a government in crisis, cover-ups, and the meddling of American intelligence agencies, they are eventually led back to where they started–and to a suspect who is untouchable.


From the Hardcover edition.

Book by Birdsell, Sandra;

From the author of What the Body Remembers, an extraordinary story of love and espionage, cultural tension and displacement, inspired by the life of Noor Inayat Khan (code name “Madeleine”), who worked against the Occupation after the Nazi invasion of France. When Noor Khan’s father, a teacher of mystical Sufism, dies, Noor is forced to bow, along with her mother, sister and brother, to her uncle’s religious literalism and ideas on feminine propriety. While at the Sorbonne, Noor falls in love with Armand, a Jewish musician. Though her uncle forbids her to see him, they continue meeting in secret. When the Germans invade in 1940, Armand persuades Noor to leave him for her own safety. She flees with her family to England, but volunteers to serve in a special intelligence agency. She is trained as a radio operator for the group that, in Churchill’s words, will “set Europe ablaze” with acts of sabotage. She is then sent back to Occupied France. Unwavering courage is what Noor requires for her assignment and her deeply personal mission — to re-unite with Armand. As her talisman, she carries her grandmother’s gift, an heirloom tiger claw encased in gold. The novel opens in December 1943. Noor has been imprisoned. She begins writing in secret, tracing the events that led to her capture. When Germany surrenders in 1945, her brother Kabir begins his search through the chaos of Europe’s Displaced Persons camps to find her. In its portrayal of intolerance, The Tiger Claw eerily mirrors our own times, and progresses with moments of great beauty and white-knuckle tension towards a moving and astonishing denouement.

In 'Alias, Grace, ' bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since 'The Handmaid's Tale.' She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?

An addictive, deeply enjoyable thrill ride on the frontier of the feral and feminine...a debut novel of astonishing imaginative power from the future queen of suspense.Elena Michaels slips out of bed, careful not to wake her boyfriend. He hates it when she disappears in the middle of the night, and can't understand why any normal woman would crave the small hours of the morning, the dark unsafe downtown streets. But Elena's skin is tingling, the pent-up energy feels like it's about to blow her muscles apart — she can't put it off any longer. She loves to run at the edge of the city, but she doesn't have time to get there. She has to slink into an alley, take off her clothes and hide them carefully, and make the Change.Elena's trying hard to be normal. She hates her strength, and her wildness, and her hunger for food, for sex, for running in the night, for the chase and the kill. She wants a husband, children...even a mother-in-law. Or at least that's what she tells herself.And then the inevitable happens. The Pack needs her. The Pack she loves and hates is under siege from a bunch of disreputable and ruthless mutts who are threatening to expose them all, breaking all the rules that have kept them safe. The loyalty of her nature calls her home, and into the fight, which tests just who Elena is: the wild woman or the wistful would-be human.

Gail Anderson-Dargatz's story takes place against the backdrop of daily life on a farm in remote Turtle Valley, British Columbia, during World War II Beth Weeks is fifteen years old and lives with her family. Strange things are happening: a classmate of Beth's is mauled to death; children go missing on a nearby reservation; and Beth herself is being hunted by an unseen predator. The valley is home to a host of eccentric but familiar characters - Nora, an Indian girl in whose friendship Beth takes refuge; Filthy Billy, the hired hand who is thought to be possessed; Nora's mother, who has a man's voice and an extra little finger; and Beth's haunted mother. Her recipes are laced throughout the novel, giving us luscious descriptions of food, gardening, fruit picking and preserving, and remedies, both practical and bizarre ("The Cure for Death by Lightning: Dunk the dead by lightning in a cold water bath for two hours and if still dead, add vinegar"). An index of more than forty remedies and recipes is included.