Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south—whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border.

Herring is a hapless lobster fisher lost in an unexceptional life, bored of thinking the same old thoughts. One December day, following a hunch, he cuts a hole in the living room floor and installs a hoist, altering the course of everything in his life....

Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly....

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of a mysterious poet. Their road trip enters a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches....

Born between the wars on a working-class London street, Harry Miles wins a scholarship and a chance to escape his station, but discovers instead that poetry is what offers him real direction. While searching for more of it he meets Evelyn Hill on the steps of Battersea Library....

Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the summer of 1991....

How can you stand up to tyranny when your own identity is in turmoil....

A bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic....

Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable and Yolandi's a mess, they are fiercely close....

Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, A Beautiful Truth—at times brutal, other times deeply moving—is about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else....

Days after being dumped by her boyfriend Marc in Paris, Hattie hears her sister Min has been checked into a psychiatric hospital, and finds herself flying back to Winnipeg to take care of her niece and nephew....

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa, Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later she forges her way to freedom....

Author Joseph Boyden makes his literary debut with this profound and moving Today’s Book Club pick that contemplates the lasting traumas of war....

The stories in this collection are about women of all ages and circumstances. The runaway of the title story is a young woman who is incapable of leaving her husband....