Longlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award

A masterful and gripping novel from “an undeniably talented writer” (Globe and Mail)

On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother’s belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery — two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother’s chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng — troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver’s Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away.

As Jessica learns more about Casey, Jamie, and their troubled immigrant Chinese parents, she also unearths dark stories about Donna, whom she had always thought of as the perfect mother. The complicated truths she uncovers force her to take stock of own life.

Moving between present and past, this riveting novel unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism and traces the often-hidden fractures that divide our diverse cities.

At thirteen, bookish Veronica Reid lives in a world inside her head, even if she isn't entirely successful at resisting the intrusions of the world outside. It's bad enough that she has to wear awful new glasses; it's downright disastrous that she'll have to spend the summer at Laughing Willows Trailer Park with her obnoxious younger brothers and unhappy mother. She can't imagine anything worse. Lonely and bored, she begins to observe the activities of the local crows, even as she gradually finds a community among the odd denizens of Laughing Willows, makes a friend in seventeen-year-old Charlotte, and falls in love. When she is sexually assaulted, she finds unexpected strength both inside herself and in the people--and the crows--around her.

Easter is a devout Pentecostal, while Anneth is headstrong and restless. The two live in the heart of coal mining country, surrounded by the ghosts of their loved ones. One night, Easter meets El, the man that will become her husband. But their marriage drives a wedge between the sisters and soon Anneth heads to Nashville with a new husband of her own. As time passes, the two sisters struggle to forgive past transgressions, and love one another despite their differences.

Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes. Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls ... With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia. As the tumultuous '60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she's severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin. Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father's legacy and her mother's addictions - testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses. The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families - the one she's born in to and the one she creates.

The cinder path from the Northumberland farmhouse symbolised defeat for Charlie Macfell. People saw him as a born loser, who always got the dirty end of the stick. At the root of it were boyhood humiliations by his brutal father, but was that all there was to Charlie? Then an opportunity emerged for him to display his inner strengths and integrity and to give the lie to those who thought him of no account. 1993.

When Christmas Eve comes to Elm Creek Manor, the tenor of the holiday is far from certain. Sylvia Bergstrom Compson, the Master Quilter, has her own reasons for preferring a quiet, even subdued, Christmas. Her young friend Sarah McClure, however, takes the opposite view and decides to deck the halls brightly. As she explores the trunks packed with Bergstrom family decorations that haven't been touched in more than fifty years, Sarah discovers a curious Christmas quilt. Begun in seasonal fabrics and patterns, the quilt remains unfinished. Sylvia reveals that the handiwork spans several generations and a quartet of Bergstrom quilters -- her great aunt, her mother, her sister, and herself. As she examines the array of quilt blocks each family member contributed but never completed, memories of Christmases past emerge. At Elm Creek Manor, Christmas began as a celebration of simple virtues -- joy and hope buoyed by the spirit of giving. As each successive generation of Bergstroms lived through its unique trials -- the antebellum era, the Great Depression, World War II -- tradition offered sustenance even during the most difficult times. For Sylvia, who is coping with the modern problem of family dispersed, estranged, or even forgotten, reconciliation with her personal history may prove as elusive as piecing the Christmas Quilt. Elm Creek Manor is full of secrets, from a Christmas tree with unusual properties to the sublime Bergstrom strudel recipe. Sylvia's tales at first seem to inform her family legacy but ultimately illuminate far more, from the importance of women's art to its place in commemorating our shared experience, at Christmastime and in every season.

"Sublime...Colgan infuses her latest book with humor, wit, suspense and a perfectly cast love triangle."-USA Today. Perfect for the holidays! A brand-new heartwarming Christmas novel from the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Bookshop on the Corner and Christmas at the Island Hotel. Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia, in Sofia's perfect house with her perfect children and her perfectly ordered yuppie life does not appeal. Frankly, Sofia doesn't exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there either. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs help revitalizing his shabby old bookshop. So Carmen moves in and takes the job. Thrown rather suddenly into the inner workings of Mr. McCredie's ancient bookshop on the picturesque streets of historic Edinburgh, Carmen is intrigued despite herself. The store is dusty and disorganized but undeniably charming. Can she breathe some new life into it in time for Christmas shopping? What will happen when a famous and charismatic author takes a sudden interest in the bookshop-and Carmen? And will the Christmas spirit be enough to help heal her fractured family?

’The novelist manages to skillfully alternate his narrative between the reflections of an adult and the musings of a child, resulting in a very entertaining back-and-forth. ‘The Child Who Dreamt of Becoming a Tree’ offers a wonderful glimpse inside the imagination of a sensitive little boy whom we, as readers, quickly grow attached to. Hats off to the author!’ (Jean-Denis Côté, ‘Québec français’.) In the weeks following the end of World War II, we follow the adventures of a five-year-old boy as he lives secluded in his home, shut off from the rest of the world by his mother, who’s developed an irrepressible fear of him getting hurt should she ever let him go outside and play with other children. Helped along by his wheelchair-bound grandfather, a man who’s lost the use of his voice after a stroke and who never stops encouraging him to dream, the cloistered Julien is nonetheless determined to discover all of the secrets life has to offer. Peering through the doorway of his wardrobe, his favorite hiding place, Julien observes the adults evolving all around him, using the power of his imagination to try and understand their odd behavior. Spending long moments sitting in front of the window, he longs for freedom, dreaming of what it would be like to be tree, as his mother would always know that he’s never far from home and that he’s always safe. But over the course of his young life, Julien will become an involuntary witness to family dramas that will shake him to his very foundations for years to come.

Antoinette and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel set out with a determination to prove themselves. Their journey propels them out of poverty and into extravagance. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.