General & literary fiction Books

A single call from his Czech girlfriend catapults Trevor into a serious crisis. Desperate to get his mojo back, he blazes down Highway 99 in a rented Dodge Neon. But soon his journey to California is fraught with peril, and all he has for protection are...

"Lara" is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse based on Bernardine Evaristo's own childhood and family history. The eponymous Lara is a mixed-race girl raised in Woolwich, a white suburb of London, during the 60s and 70s. Her father, Taiwo, is...

The much-loved tales from 'The Thousand and One Nights' first appeared in English translation in the early nineteenth century. The popularity of these ancient and beguiling tales set against the backdrop of Baghdad, a city of wealth and peace, stoked the...

'For three minutes you will turn your eyes inward into the darkness of the mind which I have taught you to make. Then I will give the sign you will look at the paper. There you will see words written, but only for one second. Bend all your powers to...

IT'S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591.On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still...

Can anyone outrun their past?On a mountain road in the Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop and her journalist boyfriend Richard race each other for fun. But when Richard disappears around a bend in the road, Heather cycles after him only to...

Summer, 1522. In a wave of pomp, Henry VIII's court welcomes the Imperial emperor, Charles V. Anthony Blanke, the son of the king's late 'black trumpet', John Blanke, is called to Hampton Court by his former employer, Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal is...

The world's first UNESCO city of literature, Edinburgh is steeped in literary history. It is the birthplace of a beloved cast of fictional characters from Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter. It is the home of the Writer's Museum, where quotes from writers...

When you look at a painting, what do you really see?When eighteenth-century poet Alison Cockburn accepts a light-hearted challenge from her friend Katherine Hume to live as a man, in order to infiltrate Edinburgh's all-male skating club, little do they...

'a wonderfully atmospheric tale ...offers a brief, magical escape to a kinder, simpler time' Roger Cox,The ScotsmanIt's 1968, and the fishermen of Kinloch are preparing to celebrate the old New Year on the twelfth of January. The annual pilgrimage to the...

It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father Henry owner of Pitlochry, a tea...

Twelve-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people's emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father comes...

In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What...

George Mackay Brown was a master of the short story form and produced a steady stream of short fiction collections, starting with A Calendar of Love (1967) and include A Time to Keep (1969) and Hawkfall (1974), as well as his poetry collections and...

You can't change your past. You can only use the experiences you live through to make your future better, wiser. Anna and her best friend George meet every week to remember, to sigh, to laugh, to reminisce about their moments of glory, guilt and mischief...

The endearing and unflappable Dr. Annick Boudreau regularly confronts a myriad of mental health issues in her psychiatric practice at the West Coast Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Clinic. But even Annick is stunned when Sanjay, a young patient who suffers...

These are damnable tales, selected and beautifully illustrated by Richard Wells. This richly illustrated anthology gathers together classic short stories from masters of supernatural fiction including M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen,...

Spring, 1840. In the Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster-a belligerent man with a vicious reputation-is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion. The...

**Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022**Britain is awash, the sea creeps into the land, brambles and forest swamp derelict towns. Food production has moved overseas and people are forced to move to the cities for work. The countryside is...

In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child's blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu...

Clockwork Orange and RuPaul's Drag Race meet Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in this fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and feckless billionaires. Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to...

The official novelisation of the hotly anticipated Uncharted, the new movie featuring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg adapting the bestselling video game series.This is the movie adaptation of the hugely successful video game franchise Uncharted. The film...

After 16 years on the run, would Nolan bury the hatchet with the mob...or would they bury him first? They don't come tougher than Nolan - but even a hardened professional thief can't fight off the entire Chicago mafia. So when an old friend...

The official prequel to Marvel's Avengers from Marvel, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix, with an exclusive adventure that leads into the game itself. The official prequel to the blockbuster action video game Marvel's Avengers,...

Welcome to the world of Blade Runner 2009 and the birth of the BLADE RUNNER DIVISION. LAPD detective Cal Moreaux has teamed up with an escaped experimental Replicant, who has been to investigate. Now they must run and fight a conspiracy hatched in the...

The second volume of the ongoing Horizon Zero Dawn comic series, based on the hit video game by Guerrilla Games! Horizon: a far-future Earth full of epic natural beauty and forgotten ruins, where awe-inspiring, animal-like machines are the dominant...

'All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had.' Ernest HemingwayTo escape from his abusive father, 13-year-old Huckleberry Finn fakes his own death and floats away on a raft down...

Part of the Legend Classics seriesCatherine Earnshaw had no idea that the boy her father took in from the streets of Liverpool would one day become her lover, her soul mate. Nor did she know that her decision to marry someone else would send him down the...

Embargoed to the 6th February 2019The official novelization to the highly anticipated science fiction movie, Alita: Battle Angel. In the twenty-sixth century, a female cyborg is rescued from the scrap heap by a scientist...The official...

The fourth original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon now in paperback! Mal wins an old map in a card game. Ancient and written in impenetrable symbols, the former owner insists it's...

An old flame of Jayne Cobb's, Temperance McCloud, sends a message to Serenity, begging him for help. She lives on the arid, far-flung world of Tethys, and bandits are trying to overturn her town to gain control of their water supply: the only thing...

An all-new case for the World's Greatest DetectiveSherlock Holmes's latest case takes him to the heart of Paris, in pursuit of Marguerite Hardy - a mysterious Frenchwoman who fled her comfortable English home when she received a strange letter.Desperate...

If you tell a story oft enoughSo it become trueAs the nineteenth century draws towards a close, Mary Ann Sate, an elderly maidservant, sets out to write her truth.She writes of the Valleys that she loves, of the poisonous rivalry between her employer's...

From the acclaimed author of Washing the Dead and Bertrand Court comes a satirical and chilling, yet deeply-sensitive, tale that captures the ethos and ruin of children's competitive swimming, where parents must face the haunting spirits of their own...

Antnio Lobo Antunes's twenty-fifth novel, Commission of Tears (2011, Comisso das Lgrimas) is set during the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002). Angola attained official independence on November 11, 1975 and, while the stage was set for transition, a...

Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of...

Seventeen stories traverse borderlines, mythic and real, in the lives of Filipino and Filipino American women and their ancestors.Moving from small Philippine villages of the past to the hurricane-beaten coast of near-future Florida, When the Hibiscus...

CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 202349th SHELF EDITORS' PICK FOR JUNE 2023 When a family is forced to return to the mother's childhood home, she seeks meaning in her ancestral roots and the violent beauty of the natural...

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022AS FEATURED IN TORONTO STAR, ZOOMER MAGAZINE, AND ON CBC'S ONTARIO MORNING AND GLOBAL TVFor readers who love Mark Haddon, Miriam Toews, and Sally RooneyPaisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but in eight weeks,...

Winner of the 2022 ReLit Awards Finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award A Gothic collection of stories featuring carnivorous beavers, art-eaters, and family intrigue, for fans of Alice Munro and Shirley JacksonThe small southern Ontario town known as...

Callie Dressler thought she'd put her past where it belonged - behind her. But when her ex-boyfriend brings their breakup to the big screen, she can no longer deny that their history has been looming over her all along.At thirty-one, Callie Dressler is...

From the author of the highly acclaimed Four by Four and Among the Hedges comes a collection of unsettling, captivating stories.The eleven stories in this collection approach themes of childhood and adolescence, guilt and redemption, power and freedom...

Decades after playing the titular killer in the 80s horror franchise Night of the Reaper, Howard Browning has been reduced to signing autographs for his dwindling fanbase at genre conventions. When the studio announces a series reboot, the aging thespian...

Never trust other people's memories, and watch out for your own He knows he wept, but he cannot recollect a single other detail. Tormented by the tragedy, Sean relives the horror over and over again. As he struggles to recall what really happened, his...

An artist of colour becomes obsessed with a white model in a novel with the glamour of Clarice Lispector and the viscerality of Han Kang.At an otherwise forgettable party in Los Angeles, a queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly...

"Full of memorable images and singing lines of prose."on Donald S. Murray's previous workFrom the author of the multi award-winning Scottish bestsellerAs the Women Lay Dreaming comes the remarkable "unreliable biography" of serial swindler Karl Einarsson...

Oscar Wilde's children's stories explore timeless themes of good and evil, freedom and responsibility, love and death, beauty and self-sacrifice. Featuring princesses, ogres and talking animals, the questions they pose are as pertinent now as they were...

'Everything you ever wanted to know about cats in books. A wonderful idea, beautifully executed.' - Viv GroskopCats have provided the inspiration for an incredible range of fiction, memoir and poetry, from ancient myths and fables to much-loved...