"Ranging from an island holiday gone wrong to a dive bar on the upswing to a yuppie mother in a pricey subdivision seeing her worst fears come true, these deftly written stories are populated by barkeeps, good men down on their luck, rebellious teens, lonely immigrants, dreamers and realists, fools and quiet heroes. In author Kerry-Lee Powells skillful hands, each character, no matter what their choices, is deeply human in their search for connection. Powell holds us in her grasp, exploring with a black humour themes of belonging, the simmering potential for violence and the meaning of art no matter where it is found, and revealing with each story something essential about the way we see the world."--From publisher.

Shortlisted, Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Longlisted, IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. From the acclaimed author of Daniel O'Thunder comes a rollicking, bawdy, and haunting novel about love and redemption, death and resurrection. The great metropolis of London swaggers with Regency abandon as nineteen-year-old Will Starling returns from the Napoleonic Wars having spent five years assisting a military surgeon. Charming, brash, and damaged, Will is helping his mentor build a medical practice — and a life — in the rough Cripplegate area. To do so requires an alliance with the Doomsday Men: body snatchers that supply surgeons and anatomists with human cadavers. After a grave robbing goes terribly awry and a prostitute is accused of murder, Will becomes convinced of an unholy conspiracy that traces its way back to Dionysus Atherton, the brightest of London's rising surgical stars. Wild rumours begin to spread of experiments upon the living and of uncanny sightings in London's dark streets. Will's obsessive search for the truth twists through alleyways, brothels, and charnel houses, towards a shattering discovery — about Dionysus Atherton and about Will, himself. Steeped in scientific lore, laced with dark humour, Will Starling is historical fiction like none other.

A single mother. An abandoned farmhouse. An epic battle with the northern wilderness. Broke and desperate, Molly Bannister accepts the ironclad condition laid down in her great-aunt’s will: to receive her inheritance, Molly must spend one year in an abandoned, off-the-grid farmhouse in the remote backwoods of northern Alberta. If she does, she will be able to sell the farm and fund her four-year-old daughter’s badly needed medical treatment. With grim determination, Molly teaches herself basic homesteading skills. But her greatest perils come from the brutal wilderness itself, from blizzards to grizzly bears. Will she and her child survive the savage winter? Will she outsmart the idealist young farmer who would thwart her plan to sell the farm? Not only their financial future, but their very lives are at stake. Only the journal written by Molly's courageous great-aunt, the land’s original homesteader, inspires her to struggle on.

Jake, Tommy and Lexie are on a ski trip. In an attempt to squeeze one last run in for the day, the kids head out on their own to ski down Easy Street. But Lexie and Jake convince Tommy to try Wildcat Run instead. Wildcat Run presents the young skiers with more than they expect, including a cougar sighting. When Lexie has a bad fall, the kids are left stranded on the hill in the fading daylight. Will they be rescued or will they have to spend the night alone on the mountain with a cougar?

When Eddie receives an early morning call for help, he catches the next plane to Britain. His friend, Dr. Peter Maurice, a renowned psychologist on a UK book tour with his wife Sylvia, has been accused of multiple, brutal murders and is about to be arrested.

Eddie learns that the deadly intrigue goes further back than the present time – to a two-hundred-year-old manuscript, written by Franz Anton Mesmer, and recently purchased by Dr. Maurice. The manuscript, written in Old Italian, appears to be a catalyst that sparks killing sprees, as history shows that Mesmer’s great-great-granddaughter, who smuggled the manuscript out of East Germany, became the first of many women to die horribly at the hands of a demented serial killer. But what’s the connection?

Eddie arranges to have the manuscript translated, but when he goes to collect it, he discovers the translator dead, her head brutally crushed by a killer who specializes in breaking bones very slowly. Eddie’s investigation unearths gruesome information about England’s notorious Newgate Prison, once frequented by Mesmer but long since burned to the ground.

The paparazzi are all over Eddie and Dr. Maurice’s wife as Eddie works to disprove Scotland Yard’s claim that Dr. Maurice is a monster. Eddie is determined to help the good Doctor and prove the police wrong. But are they?

Eleven-year-old Danny Ryan and 19-year-old Wendy Marshall think their friendship is only about looking after two baby raccoons that Danny has rescued. But when a bank holdup upsets Wendy so much that she can hardly stand to be around people, she leaves her job as a teller, retreats to a farm, and surrounds herself with injured and orphaned wildlife. Danny, neglected at home and considered weird in a town where other boys are into hunting, finds peace on the farm, too, plus excitement, as he and Wendy adopt ever more exotic animals such as llamas, bobcats, a serval, an ocelot, and a blind lynx. Over time the two friends develop a bond that goes beyond care of the animals to caring for each other. As it turns out, Wendy rescues not just wildlife but Danny, as well. What's more, the bank robbers are still at large and still a threat, and Danny, now 14, must act to save Wendy's life.

One has lost a child and paints her house blue, another has found a not-so-handy man she can't get rid of; one perches in a tree and observes the neighbourhood, and yet another goes off into the woods with Jesus. These are some of the "wild pieces" that fill Catherine Hogan Safer's remarkable new book, Wild Pieces - characters as wry and quirky and heart-wrenching as the short stories in which Safer brings them to life. In language, taut and beautifully controlled, perfectly pitched and witty, Safer creates an array of unforgettable people. She finds the humble beauty in the life of a woman who spends each day knitting unmatched socks in the mall, and the pathos of a man who gathers small pieces of his father's life. At once very funny and very sad, here is the dignity of lives lived slightly slant.To enter these stories is to engage the wildness, the deep ache, the possibility of being alive.

In this illustrated early chapter book, a game of trading playing cards gets out of hand at a grade school with big problems.

Clarence and his grandmother pick wild blueberries and meet ant, spider, and fox in a beautiful woodland landscape. Many key words are provided in n-dialect, or Swampy Cree, from the Cumberland House area. Includes pronunciation guide and recipe for wild blueberry jam.