Alison Lang: 3 books

Raised by wolves, lured to a windswept island, transmogrified into a cat… everyone is trapped or lost or running, whether they’re drinking themselves to death in rural Italy or living under a false identity after a terror attack. Bleak and hopeful by turns, Lang’s stories disturb, provoke and entertain.

Ghosts from the past. Visions of the future. A priest on a doomed mission to a heathen island, a painting hidden from public view for seventy years, and a Fiat Punto full of rotting groceries. Love, loss and loneliness are the themes that unite these eight stories, five of them translated from their original Gaelic by the author.

When 74-year-old Lise Fredette disappeared in November 2014, the only traces found were a house key, her glasses, an earring and some blood in the driveway of her home in Peterborough, Ontario. Shortly after, Andy Watson, an ex-boyfriend, was arrested and charged with her murder and jailed as an untried...