Mystery / Thrillers / Horror

Gangsters. Yard sales. Politics. A severed foot. Family. How far is one person willing to go to issue a bylaw ticket?

M is a bylaw officer, living with two brothers, in their parents' old house. While investigating a suspicious yard sale, M discovers a red chesterfield sitting in a ditch. Looking closer, M finds a running shoe-and a severed foot.

Now M is involved in a murder investigation. Meanwhile, older brother K's work for a new political party begins to seem suspicious, while younger brother J navigates the complicated world of young-adulthood, and boss Rhonda demands more and more attention, M must navigate a world of Russian gangsters and neglected wives, biker gangs and suspicious coincidences. On top of everything else, M is determined to track down the owner of that red chesterfield and make sure they get a ticket.

The Red Chesterfield is a delightful, unusual novel that upends the tropes and traditions of crime fiction while asking how far one person is willing to go to solve a crime, be it murder or the abandonment of a piece of furniture.

Reviews
"Part crime novel, part fable, part family drama, The Red Chesterfield is a compelling and inventive story which defies category. Arthurson spins a tale with dry wit and a keen descriptive eye. The Red Chesterfield is a major achievement by an important voice." - Sam Wiebe, author of Cut You Down, Invisible Dead and Last of the Independents

"The mark of any great story is when the reader never wants it to end. Wayne Arthurson’s The Red Chesterfield pulled me into an alluring world of magic and mystery, a slow tease of crisp, compelling writing. A ten!" —Peggy Blair, author of the award-winning Inspector Ramirez mysteries

Additional Information
120 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Thumps DreadfulWater has finally found some peace and quiet. His past as a California cop now far behind him, he’s living out his retirement as a fine-arts photographer in the small town of Chinook. His health isn’t great, and he could use a new stove, but as long as he’s got his cat and a halfway decent plate of eggs, life is good.

All that changes when a body turns up on the eve of a major water conference and the understaffed sheriff’s department turns to Thumps for help. Thumps wants none of it, but even he is intrigued when he learns the deceased was developing a new technology that could revolutionize water and oil drilling . . . and that could also lose some very powerful people a lot of money. As strangers begin to pour into Chinook for the conference, Thumps finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into a conflict between secretive players who will kill to get what they want.

In Cold Skies, the sly, wry, reluctant investigator of DreadfulWater and The Red Power Murders returns for another irresistible mystery that only Thomas King could tell.

Reviews
“Whimsical and wry, large-hearted and at times laugh out loud funny, but with an underlying gravitas and significance.” — Quill & Quire

“Even armchair sleuths who can see the solution from a mile away will appreciate GoodWeather’s unerring knack for converting social, racial, and economic conflict into blissful farce.”— Kirkus Reviews

Series Information
This novel is part of the DreadfulWater Mystery series from Thomas King.

Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information
464 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Del's great-aunt, Kitty, has retired from a life of crime and embarked on a new venture, the B-Team. Although Del works at an animal shelter by day, by night she, her great-aunt and their cohorts, Dino and Ritz, use their criminal skills to right wrongs. In this fun book, the modern-day Robin Hoods set out to return a necklace to its rightful owner but along the way discover they've been duped by an imposter who also wants to get her hands on the necklace. The problem is, criminals can't go to the police, even if they are on the side of the good. Del comes up with a new plan, and the B-Team saves the day. Not without a few detours along the way.

Reviews
"The latest entry in the publisher's 'Rapid Reads' series of high-low novels aimed at adults with a third-grade reading level, Campbell's humorous mystery is for readers who enjoy a cast of quirky characters with unusual talents. "— Library Journal, January 2018

"Campbell tells a full force mystery novel in a rapid read package…Her style is plot forward, fuelled by feel-real, snappy dialogue that reveals the sense of place right down to the street corner. The B-Team…[is] delivered with intensity and laughter."— Don Graves, Canadian Mystery Reviews, January 2018

"The B-Team is well written, attention grabbing and fun. Once started, most readers will be hooked and have a hard time putting the book down. "— CM Magazine, March 2018

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Rapid Reads series. Rapid Reads are short novels and nonfiction books for young adults aged 16+ and adult readers. They are intended for a diverse audience, including ESL students, reluctant readers, adults who struggle with literacy and anyone who wants a high-interest quick read.

Additional Information
144 pages | 4.75" x 7.25" 

Louise Erdrich, the bestselling and award-winning author of The Sentence and The Night Watchman, dazzles in this vibrant and heartfelt tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love that explores with empathy, humor, and power the eternal mystery of the human condition.

On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. After being orphaned in a most peculiar way, Mary seeks refuge in the butcher shop of their aunt and her husband, while Karl gets back on the train. So begins an exhilarating forty-year saga brimming with colorful, unforgettable characters: ordinary Mary, who will cause a miracle; seductive Karl, who lacks his sister's gift for survival; Sita, their lovely but disturbed cousin; and the half-Native American Celestine James, who will become Mary’s best friend. Theirs is a story grounded in the tenacity of relationships, the extraordinary magic of natural events, and the unending mystery of the human condition.

Reviews
“A novel rich in movement, beauty, event. Her prose spins and sparkles, and dances right on the heart when it needs to.” — Los Angeles Times

“Written with extraordinary power, compassion, and insight into the human heart....Erdrich has vaulted into the front ranks of American literature.” — Newsday

“A remarkable and luminous novel.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“The dialogue is brilliant from start to finish. And Mary, Karl, Selestine, Sita, and Dot are all original and powerful characters who, like their relatives in Love Medicine, left me exhilarated, somewhat drained, and very grateful to this immensely gifted novelist." — Chicago Sun-Times

“A book of power and precision.” — New York Times Book Review

Additional Information
368 pages | 5.31" x 8.00" | Paperback

Blood Sports is the tough, gritty story of the brutal cat-and-mouse relationship between two cousins — Tom and Jeremy Bauer — set in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.

Tom, a young man, hardly innocent, has been caught up over the years in Jeremy’s world of drugs, extortion, and prostitutes, while Jeremy, vindictive, vicious, either protects Tom or uses him, but always controls him. Added to the mix is Paulie, a junkie two years clean and Tom’s girlfriend, and also the mother of his daughter. This lethal triangle shifts when word gets out Tom has been talking to the police, and men from the past who have a lot to lose reappear. Suddenly Tom and Paulie are pawns in a much larger game, with everything at stake.

With the storytelling skill and engrossing characterizations that have made her previous books so popular, Robinson keeps the tension humming in this riveting novel. This is Eden Robinson at the height of her powers.

Reviews
"Robinson’s sting worked precisely as the trickster in her intended. . . . Like Leonard Cohen, Robinson combines a variety of narrative forms and conflicting styles with such a high degree of technical virtuosity that the very act of reading a cracked and splintered narrative becomes spellbinding, addictive, unstoppable."—Globe and Mail

"Eden Robinson writes with the violent beauty of a seasoned knifefighter. . . . In her hands, language is a weapon that can leave you bleeding, unsure of just how you were cut. Reading Eden Robinson feels dangerous." —National Post

"Blood Sports is a stomach-churning sucker punch of a read for a very talented risk taker."—NOW magazine

"A gripping page-turner of a tale. . . . Blood Sports is a novel of extreme, even diabolical contrasts that explore by the awful and the beautiful faces of Vancouver. . . . Robinson imbues her novel with continual suspense, carnal voyeurism, and of course, hope." —Calgary Herald

"Eden Robinson writes some of the most disturbing fiction that Canadian literature has ever seen."—Quill & Quire

Educator Information
Eden Robinson has referred to this work as a contemporary retelling of Hansel and Gretel.

Additional Information
296 pages | 5.58" x 8.18"

From the bestselling author of The Back of the Turtle and The Inconvenient Indian comes a wry and irreverent mystery.

Thumps DreadfulWater has never liked surprises—even the good ones are annoying. So it’s no shock that a string of seemingly random occurrences is causing Thumps some real discomfort. First Noah Ridge, the Red Power Native activist, arrives in Thumps’ sleepy town of Chinook. Then the body of a retired FBI agent turns up at the local Holiday Inn. In the background hovers the ghostly presence of Lucy Kettle, second-in-charge of the Red Power movement, a tough woman in a tough place until her disappearance years ago. Now the sheriff wants Thumps to trade in his photography gig for a temporary cop beat. And it won’t be over, Thumps soon realizes, until everyone’s dead—or famous.

Hailed by critics in his first appearance, Cherokee ex-cop Thumps DreadfulWater is back in rumpled but razor-sharp form, doing his laconic, comic best to avoid trouble—and catch the bad guys. Bestselling writer Thomas King has penned a second entertaining DreadfulWater mystery, injected with the author’s characteristic dry wit and biting social commentary.

Series Information
This novel is from the DreadfulWater Mystery series from Thomas King.

Books in this series include:
- Dreadful Water
- The Red Power Murders
- Cold Skies
- A Matter of Malice
- The Obsidian Murders
- Deep House 
- Double Eagle
- Black Ice

Additional Information

"A Pipe for February is an extraordinary novel: evocative, riveting, moving. Charles Red Corn illuminates what the Osage people went through during the 1920s, when oil profits had made them fabulously wealthy and when they began to die under mysterious circumstances—systematically targeted for their money. This novel, exquisitely written and filled with revelations, will hold you in its grip and never let you go.”—David Grann, author of New York Times Best Seller Killers of the Flower Moon

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Osage Indians owned Oklahoma’s most valuable oil reserves and became members of the world’s first wealthy oil population. Osage children and grandchildren continued to respect the old customs and ways, but now they also had lives of leisure: purchasing large homes, expensive cars, eating in fancy restaurants, and traveling to faraway places. In the 1920s, they also found themselves immersed in a series of murders. Charles H. Red Corn sets A Pipe for February against this turbulent, exhilarating background.

Tracing the experiences of John Grayeagle, the story’s main character, Red Corn describes the Osage murders from the perspective of a traditonal Osage. Other books on the notorious crimes have focused on the greed of government officials and businessmen to increase their oil wealth. Red Corn focuses on the character of the Osage people, drawing on his own experiences and insights as a member of the Osage Nation.

In the new foreword, director Martin Scorsese reveals how reading A Pipe for February helped him better understand the Osage people and bring Killers of the Flower Moon to the screen.

Reviews
"A Pipe for February is an extraordinary novel: evocative, riveting, moving. Charles Red Corn illuminates what the Osage people went through during the 1920s, when oil profits had made them fabulously wealthy and when they began to die under mysterious circumstances—systematically targeted for their money. This novel, exquisitely written and filled with revelations, will hold you in its grip and never let you go"—David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon—a New York Times #1 bestseller—and award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker

“A Pipe for February subtly weaves together some of the richest themes of contemporary American Indian Literature.” —Robert Warrior, author of Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions

Additional Information
284 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

Against a backdrop of traditional Cree mythology, Johnson's novel creates a tangled murder chronicle and harrowing tale of four Cree brothers, bound to each other through family and tradition, separated from each other by their chosen life paths. As one brother kills, another reinforces the principle of a circle of life, as one capitulates to weakness, another conquers his demons. Driving the action is a manhunt for the killer of conservation officers; but at the heart of the story there is reparation through cultural wisdom and the restoration of traditional beliefs.

Authentic and well-paced, Back Track crosscuts through the cultural ruts, economic conventions, and stereotypes of Cree families living in northern Saskatchewan.

Additional Information