Esplanade Books imprint: 15 books

When Gabriel Rivages recounts the life of Olympic gold medalist and silver-screen heart-throb Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), he brings to life a vibrant patchwork of America’s 20th century, from its athletic exploits to its literary underground, from its cinematic glory to its obscure failures....

Winner, 2015 Archambault Prize The year is 1996, and small-town life for 14-year-old Catherine is made up of punk rock, skaters, shoplifting, drugs, and the ghost of Kurt Cobain. Her parents are too busy divorcing to pay her headful of unspent angst much attention. But after she tries a PCP...

A visceral tale of obsession and creativity, unrequited passions and the power of music. A love story in which art is a foil to companionship, and the intellect an interlocutor of the heart. In the utterly unique All that Sang, the second fiction by Lambda Literary Award-finalist Lydia Perović, a...

A bold and explicit debut novel by one of the most visceral new voices in gay fiction. Breathing Lessons is the story of Henry Moss, a homosexual everyman whose life knows none of the limitations or abuses his predecessors experienced. When a teenaged Henry came out to his mother, she worried only...

Andrew Hood's debut collection heralds a young talent with an irresistible style and merciless eye. These unapologetic stories deal with an assortment of foolish self-destructive small town anti-heroes. They are unlikely odes and elegies for human shabbiness.A newly-wed conjures a ghost in an attempt...

Wanted: One man of average height, well-muscled but not ironclad, neither overly or underly handsome, with more body hair than a baby's behind but less than a gorilla, hefty penis, charge not too easily discharged, good mind, good sense of humour and humo

A novel about the gig economy. Twenty-nine-year-old Daniel is an under-employed internet artist who's struggling as much with money and inspiration as he is in his relationship with Grace. Against a backdrop of a digital economy that rewards online platforms instead of content creators, with...

Set in Montreal, New Tab spans a year in the life of a twenty-six year old videogame designer as he attempts to reset his life, in the process chronicling with humor disillusion, boredom, self-destruction, Facebook chats, Concordia University, bilingualism, good parties, bad parties, a backyard cinema,...

The Love Monster is the tall tale of one woman’s struggle with mid-life issues. The main character, Margaret H. Atwood, has psoriasis, a boring job and a bad attitude. Her cheating husband has left her. And none of her pants fit any more. Marston takes the reader on a hilarious journey of recovery....

An unsettling secret joins husband and wife as they sift through layers of recollection in a quest to find comfort, philosophical acceptance, and ultimately forgiveness.Set on a family farm in Sundre, Alberta during the late 1960s, at a time of transition when farming was shifting away from tradition,...

Swing in the House paints an utterly contemporary portrait of Canadian families in their most private moments. Anand pulls back the curtains to reveal the unspoken complexities within the modern home, from sibling rivalries to fracturing marriages, casual racism to damaged egos, hidden homosexuality...

The women in the stories in Out of Cleveland face their challenges with an uncommon blend of intelligence, scepticism, and hope. Each story shows the entanglement of cause and effect, creating a memorable collection of unique voices. In "Ninety East" a t

Birth, death and all the big moments in between. Shortlisted for the 2012 Danuta Gleed Literary Award These stories about artists, lovers, brothers and strangers acutely probe love and loss, men and women together, and the family ties that bind. A father renews an old artistic rivalry with his dying...

Shifting across three countries, The Deserters explores themes of trust, isolation, abandonment, and emotional disconnection in a world dramatically altered by the experience of war. Eugenie is trying—and mostly failing—to restore an inherited old farm in New Brunswick while her husband,...