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Emily Climbs (New Canadian Library)

L.M. Montgomery

In the second volume of the celebrated Emily trilogy, Lucy Maud Montgomery traces the often stormy course of Emily Starr’s life as she moves from the world of childhood into that of school and adolescence.

Emily Climbs unsentimentally reveals the world of the young as it really is – with its great moments of unalloyed wonder and joy, as well as its cruelty and suffering.

Along with Emily of New Moon and Emily’s Quest, Emily Climbs is a vivid, heartfelt portrait of youth and the road to maturity.
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (New Canadian Library)

Alistair Macleod

The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change.

His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod’s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.
Away (Between the Covers Collection)

Jane Urquhart, Seana McKenna

A young woman embraces a drowning sailor on an isolated beach and changes her own and her family's lives forever. Away was co-winner of the 1993 Trillium Award and spent three years on the Globe and Mail best-seller list.
The Whirlpool

Jane Urquhart

Written in luminous prose, The Whirlpool is a haunting tale set in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in the summer of 1889. This is the season of reckless river stunts, a time when the undertaker’s widow is busy with funerals, her days shadowed by her young son’s curious silence. Across the street in Kick’s Hotel, where Fleda and her husband, David McDougal, have temporary rooms, Fleda dreams of the place above the whirlpool where she first encountered the poet, a man who enters her life and, unwittingly, changes everything. As the summer progresses, the lives of these characters become entangled, and darker, more sinister currents gain momentum.

The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart’s first novel, received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France and marked the brilliant debut of a major voice in Canadian fiction.
The Stone Carvers

Jane Urquhart
A Map of Glass

Jane Urquhart

From the author of the best-selling, award-winning The Stone Carvers and The Underpainter comes a new novel that explores love, loss, and the transitory nature of place. After Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers Andrew Woodman s dead body frozen in the ice, he meets the elderly man s former lover, Sylvia, who is curious about the circumstances surrounding Andrew s death. Together, Jerome and Sylvia uncover both the secrets of their own pasts and the breathtaking story of Andrew s ancestors.
The Underpainter

Jane Urquhart
Storm Glass

Jane Urquhart

`In 1986, Jane Urquhart published her first novel, The Whirlpool, to almost universal critical acclaim. When it met with a negative response, it tended to offend or bemuse because of its imaginative content. In The Whirlpool, Urquhart treated reality with contempt. She was clearly a courageous stylist with a unique vision. Now, with Storm Glass, the courage of the stylist is confirmed and the uniqueness of the vision is expanded.
`Though most of the stories here predate the writing of The Whirlpool, the reader is given the chance, once again, to explore the territory of dreams and memory so vividly established in that book. Clearly, this is a milieu in which Urquhart excels.
`Other times and other places lend their colour to most of the stories in this collection. Windows and glass are also prominent. Some of the characters have no names and all of them are dreamers, though what they dream is hardly the stuff of which good sleep is made. Storm Glass is exhilarating precisely because the dreams of which it tells are so disturbing: disturbingly real and disturbingly familiar. Most readers will recognize the impulse here to wake up and escape the dream, but most will also recognize the tantalizing magic of dreams that keeps us going back for more.' (Timothy Findley Books in Canada )
The Stone Carvers

Jane Urquhart
Changing Heaven: A Novel

Jane Urquhart

Two worlds are intertwined in this hauntingly beautiful story as it moves from Toronto to the English moors and to Venice, Italy. The time frame shifts between present and past, linking the lives of a young Brontë scholar (a woman in the throes of a troubled love affair), a turn-of-the-century female balloonist, and an elusive explorer with the ghost – or the memory – of Emily Brontë. Urquhart reveals something about the act of artistic creation, the ways in which stories enter our lives, and about the cyclical nature of love throughout time. This is a novel of darkness and light, of intense weather and inner calm.
Deep Hollow Creek (New Canadian Library)

Sheila Watson
Pegeen and the Pilgrim

Lyn Cook

Twelve-year-old Pegeen lives in the sleepy town of Stratford. Money is tight since her father’s death, and she must help her mother run a boardinghouse. She even has to share a room with old Mrs. Leonard. Pegeen’s dreams of becoming an actress seem hopeless. Then an extraordinary thing happens – a Shakespearean festival is planned for Stratford. As the festival develops, so does Pegeen. She learns a great deal about Shakespeare, the boarders at home, and her circle of friends, including the mysterious pilgrim, Mr. Brimblecombe.
The Vow

Morley Callaghan

Luke is not yet 12 when his father dies of a heart attack, leaving him an orphan. Small for his age and something of a loner, Luke goes to live with his Uncle Henry and Aunt Helen in Collingwood on Georgian Bay, where Uncle Henry has a saw mill on the edge of town. The practical Uncle Henry sees that the family dog, Dan, is old and lame and no longer useful, and he concludes the dog should be destroyed. Luke, whose sense of dignity and loyalty transcend the practical, fights to save his dog, and in his struggle, he comes to a better understanding not only of Uncle Henry, but of the expedient world of adults.
Pintor Furtivo, El

Jane Urquhart