Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

A Magpie’s Smile

By Eugene Meese

There is a good – possibly great – crime novel to be written about Calgary’s economic boom in the 1970s, when newcomers with dollar signs dancing in their eyes clashed with local residents resisting gentrification, ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Factory Voice

By Jeanette Lynes

Jeanette Lynes’ debut novel, The Factory Voice, is an entertaining and engaging story set in an airplane factory in Fort William, Ontario, during the Second World War. Lynes, a professor at St. Francis Xavier University, ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Thought You Were Dead

By Terry Griggs

The increasing corporatization of Canadian publishing has left more than a few authors and cultural commentators grumbling about a bottom-line, cookie-cutter approach to everything from manuscript acquisition to cover design. This perceived homogenization and its ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The English Stories

By Cynthia Flood

The increasing corporatization of Canadian publishing has left more than a few authors and cultural commentators grumbling about a bottom-line, cookie-cutter approach to everything from manuscript acquisition to cover design. This perceived homogenization and its ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Breaking Lorca

By Giles Blunt

Current popular culture has an almost unholy fascination with torture, from the singleminded Jack Bauer on 24 to the seemingly innumerable Saw films. Award-winning crime writer Giles Blunt contributes to this canon in Breaking Lorca, ... Read More »

April 22, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Heaven Is Small

By Emily Schultz

According to Emily Schultz, Heaven is located somewhere in North Toronto – among packing houses and printing plants in a mirrored, 70-storey behemoth. This isn’t the prototypical hereafter with the pearly gates and cherubs. This ... Read More »

April 22, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Amphibian

By Carla Gunn

Phin Walsh, the nine-year-old narrator of Carla Gunn’s debut novel, is the kind of kid who could only be described as “sensitive.” Hours spent watching documentaries on the Green Channel have left him better informed ... Read More »

March 30, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels