Grant Buday's new novel is an eccentric coming-of-age story that captures the late-Victorian fascination with ancient Egypt, auras, and the afterlife.Smart, stubborn, and forthright Pearl Greyland-Smith is nine years old when we first meet her, in 1882. She lives with her widowed mother, Florence, in Victoria's James Bay neighbourhood. Pearl's father was a Hussar who died in Afghanistan, or that's what Florence has always told Pearl. But when an Irish woman named Cassidy arrives at their door and addresses Florence as Sinead, Pearl begins to realize she may not know very much about her origins at all.An avid reader with a rich inner life, as Pearl grows up she nonetheless confronts the scarcity of choices available to women. Yet while lacking in certain amenities, Pearl and Florence's days are anything but dull, populated by characters easily at home in a Dickens novel: the earnest and enigmatic amateur scientist Charles Gloster, their bawdy,...

"Monday Night Man" is a back alley view of East Vancouver netherworlds. Horst Nunn, Ray Bunce, and Boyle Rupp are a trio of middle-aged, underemployed, intelligent &quote;plungers&quote; striving for redemption through humour and long shots at the track.

Vancouver, summer 1962. Cyril Andrachuk and Connie Chow are seventeen and in love.Cyril is the only Canadian-born member of the Andrachuk family, his parents and older brother having survived Stalin's systematic starving of the Ukraine. His brother's brittle bones are not the only legacy of Stalin. Cyril's famine-free childhood has built up a distance between him and the rest of the household.His family's past charges Cyril's present with bitter overtones he barely understands and Cyril's love of art is beyond his family's comprehension; Cyril is destined to be a working man, not a working artist.In this house built on the edge of a cemetery, where his mother reviews the burials over her morning tea, creativity and joy are suspect. Mourning the early death of his father, Cyril finds solace in lovingly drawing his father's metal-working tools and in his happiness with Connie. But his family's resentment sows the seeds of betrayal, and Cyril must find a way to live with...