These Are the Fireworks, page 1
Contents
Cover
Advance Praise for These are the Fireworks
Dedication and Copyright
Title page
Chapter 1: Petra (Before)
Chapter 2: Nina (Three years later)
Chapter 3: Nina
Chapter 4: Petra (Before)
Chapter 5: Al-Haddad (Three years later)
Chapter 6: Nina
Chapter 7: Petra
Chapter 8: Nina
Chapter 9: Petra
Chapter 10: Nina
Chapter 11: Gord
Chapter 12: Petra
Chapter 13: Al-Haddad
Chapter 14: Nina
Chapter 15: Nina
Chapter 16: Nina
Chapter 17: Petra
Chapter 18: Al-Haddad
Chapter 19: Nina
Chapter 20: Nina
Chapter 21: Gord
Chapter 22: Nina
Chapter 23: Nina
Chapter 24: Petra
Chapter 25: Al-Haddad
Chapter 26: Nina
Chapter 27: Nina
Chapter 28: Gord
Chapter 29: Nina
Chapter 30: Nina
Chapter 31: Nina
Chapter 32: Gord
Chapter 33: Nina
Chapter 34: Nina
Chapter 35: Nina
Chapter 36: Petra
Chapter 37: Nina
Chapter 38: Nina
Chapter 39: Petra
Chapter 40: Nina
Chapter 41: Petra
Chapter 42: Nina
Chapter 43: Al-Haddad
Chapter 44: Petra
Chapter 45: Nina
Chapter 46: Gord
Chapter 47: Nina
Chapter 48: Gord
Chapter 49: Nina
Chapter 50: Nina
Chapter 51: Al-Haddad
Chapter 52: Nina
Chapter 53: Nina
Chapter 54: Nina
Chapter 55: Petra
Chapter 56: Nina
Chapter 57: Nina
Chapter 58: Petra
Chapter 59: Nina
Chapter 60: Petra
Chapter 61: Nina
Chapter 62: Nina
Chapter 63: Al-Haddad
Chapter 64: Nina
Chapter 65: Al-Haddad
Chapter 66: Nina
Chapter 67: Nina
Chapter 68: Al-Haddad
Chapter 69: Nina
Chapter 70: Petra
Chapter 71: Nina
Chapter 72: Gord
Chapter 73: Nina
Chapter 74: Petra
Chapter 75: Gord
Chapter 76: Nina
Chapter 77: Gord
Chapter 78: Nina
Chapter 79: Gord
Chapter 80: Nina
Chapter 81: Nina
Chapter 82: Nina
Chapter 83: Nina
Chapter 84: Nina
Chapter 85: Osterlich Found Guilty (By staff)
Chapter 86: Nina (Two years later)
Chapter 87: Petra (The night Gord died)
Chapter 88: Petra
Acknowledgements
About the Author
List of Pages
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Landmarks
Cover
Title-Page
Advance praise for These Are the Fireworks
Start of Content
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Advance Praise for These Are the Fireworks
“If you’ve ever looked at your family and thought, ‘who are these people?’ then Vicki Grant’s delightful new novel is for you. These Are the Fireworks is a twisty, funny, and ultimately warm-hearted mystery.”
Elizabeth Renzetti,
co-author of Bury the Lead
“Sharply plotted, tender, tense, and hilarious, These Are the Fireworks turns the fallout from one man’s apparently accidental death into an irresistibly readable tangle of lies, loyalties, and long-buried truths. Readers who love Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng will devour this.”
Tom Ryan,
bestselling author of We Had a Hunch
* * *
Praise For Vicki Grant
“One of the funniest writers working today.”
Vancouver Sun
“Quirky, fully fleshed characters and a tender third-person narration accompany themes of grieving, making amends, and living a full life in this winning novel.”
Publishers Weekly, on A Green Velvet Secret
“There’s heart and hope in this slightly zany book that sensitively deals with death and grief.”
Kirkus, on A Green Velvet Secret
This book is dedicated to whoever coined the term
“spousal death fantasy.”
VG
Copyright © Vicki Grant, 2026
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Vagrant Press is an imprint of Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill Street, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9 | (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Nimbus Publishing is based in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki, the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be used in the training of generative artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
NB1839
Editor: Whitney Moran
Design: Bee Stanton
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: These are the fireworks : a mystery / Vicki Grant.
Names: Grant, Vicki, author
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20250320177 | Canadiana (ebook) 20250320185 | ISBN 9781774715109 (softcover) | ISBN 9781774715116 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS8613.R367 T54 2026 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
Petra
Before
Petra Fforde’s husband was doing the dishes. She wanted to kill him.
Kill him, she thought, leaning hard into the k.
She closed her book over a finger so she wouldn’t lose her place and stared past the tiny sparks stippling her vision. No use trying to read when she was like this. When he was like this. That’s what she really meant. She couldn’t even look at the man.
Although, of course, she did. Malcolm was as grimly irresistible as a three-car pileup. She took a quick peek over her shoulder. Her stomach lurched.
He was so infuriating. Even the way he was standing—chest out, shoulders back, Rockports ergonomically planted a manly three feet apart. Honest to God—who stood like that? Who stood like that to do the dishes? He looked like some sorry excuse for an action figure.
G. I. Schmo.
That just came to her. She was amazed she hadn’t thought of it before. Malcolm to a goddamn tee. Poseable limbs, yes, but a hollow core and no genitalia whatsoever. She’d have laughed if it wasn’t so sad.
She remembered as a kid, holding a magnifying glass over a plastic soldier until the sun melted its face. For a brief moment before succumbing, its mouth had twisted up into a smile as if she’d done it a favour by putting it out of its misery. She wondered how long it would take for Malcolm’s face to melt.
Enough.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She relaxed her shoulders, teeter-tottered her neck from side to side and gave herself a little talking-to.
Malcolm was just being Malcolm. Nothing had changed, would change, so suck it up, buttercup. She had a very good life, all things considered. Three beautiful daughters, money in the bank, and of course, this gorgeous house.
Petra let her eyes drift across the sunroom. Her lovely, calming sunroom. There wasn’t a thing she’d do differently: the wide-plank floors, the clean-lined furniture, the fireplace she’d refaced in a vintage tile she’d spent months scouring the internet for. The glaze was exquisite—a muddy greenish grey with a slightly bubbly texture that reminded her of fudge on the simmer. A small part of the overall design, but it made the room, it really did.
She felt briefly righteous, but then she thought, No. She was being unfair. Malcolm wasn’t totally inert. At least he didn’t whistle anymore. She’d asked him to stop, and he had—graciously, too, even though he’d clearly enjoyed it and was, she had to admit, pretty good at it.
But so what?
A good whistler was even more annoying than a bad whistler. All those trills and crescendos. The bird sounds. What was she supposed to do? Clap? Sing along? Smash her face against the wall in time?
Petra let out a small snort of derision. Malcolm may very well have stopped whistling, but he was still—absolutely, utterly, and to the very core of his hogtied little soul—the type of person who whistled.
Stop.
She was being terrible. She adjusted the shade of her mid-century copper reading lamp. Here she was, comfortably ensconced with the latest bestseller and a steaming hot cup of oolong tea, while the poor man did the dishes. She really had nothing to complain about.
Petra looked at her husband again in what she hoped was a kinder light. She was pretty sure by now he’d have moved on to the terracotta dish she’d baked the cannelloni in. He’d have saved it to last. It was going to take some work. He’d probably been looking forward to it.
Who wouldn’t want to kill a man like that?
Her vision went blurry. Everything became clear.
She’d stab him with the four-hundred-dollar Japanese chef’s knife he’d just patted dry, hold his head under water until the bubbles stopped breaking through the grease, then feed him—bit by quivering bit—into their new ultra-quiet garbage disposal unit.
She pressed her nails into her palms and let that idea play out.
She’d need lye, she realized. The new garburator was good, but not that good. Even German engineering wasn’t up to disposing of 178 pounds of bone and sinew, not to mention those clamshell-thick toenails of his.
Plastic sheeting, too, because things would get messy. Petra remembered the first time she’d cut into a living body. The gore. The pulsing. She’d had to struggle to stay conscious, but she’d gotten used to it. Come to like it, in fact.
Bleach—bottles of it. There’d be a lot to do. Walls, ceiling, counters—the knife, too, of course. (How often in one of her detective books had a cop identified the murder weapon after noticing a knife missing from a set? She wouldn’t make that mistake.)
Gloves. Her first thought was to use Malcolm’s dish gloves, but no. The squeak they made just about drove her up the wall. Disposable latex would be better. She could pick some up at the pharmacy. Everyone used them these days. No one would bat an eye.
And, of course, a power saw of some type. Malcolm had one in his workshop. She’d just tell him she had a little project to do. A home improvement project. Not untrue, she thought with a smile.
Malcolm gave the casserole dish a quick rinse, then whipped a linen tea towel off his shoulder to dry it. He scratched at something still stuck to the inside lip and frowned gravely. Churchill reading the dispatches.
