Quattro Books: 75 books

The Sandbar is a collection of vignettes from The Sandbar, a small-town watering hole in Northern Michigan owned by an eccentric couple with a penchant for stiff drinks. At an early age, their nephew gains an appreciation for exotic cocktails and for the quirky intricacies of family relations. The...

After the rupture of her most recent relationship, Chloé begins a new life by taking a job as an advertising rep for an upscale fashion magazine in Montréal. Her reconnection with her French Canadian soul is initially exhilarating, but soon turns out to be disastrous. She loses her footing and enters...

This collection offers five answers to the question its title implies: within us, in wild things, in change over time, in teething, and in being left behind. Beginning in the prairies and moving both in time and direction, the poems navigate the terrors in the territories of love, faith, birth and...

Set in the early 17th century, Tobacco Wars follows the mythical and rollicking adventures of Pocahontas and playwright Ben Jonson, from the inns, alleyways and royal courts of London to pirates, perilous crossings and hostile warriors in the New World. And as worlds are turned upside down and irrevocably...

The Girl Before, the Girl After is the story of a man who would rather remain anonymous. The boutique where he used to work has been condemned, and so has the house where he rented a room, torn down to make way for a luxury hotel. His demanding boss vows her love for him; then she fires him. The woman...

Set in a decade before Twitter and Facebook, Terminal Grill introduces a woman to her perfect stranger. Looks, style and wit make him irresistible and hopping into a cab with him – inevitable. However, first impressions are never what they seem, and she soon finds herself courting darkness, danger,...

Amir Radi hates washing dishes. When he left Beirut, with a tightly grasped suitcase, he hadn’t expected he’d end up at a Middle-Eastern restaurant with old cooks and dirty dishes. Amir knows his immigrant dream has somehow drowned in foamy dishwater. But one night, he meets Rami and begins to...

In the tradition of short story writers Alice Munro and Carol Shields, Binnie Brennan examines the minutiae of ordinary life. During a tipsy night out escaping the frustrations of daily routines, two middle-aged school teachers try their luck at scoring a joint. A long-haul trucker drives an injured...

A diplomat is captured by supposed insurgents and is waiting in a room for his execution. Texas is a provocative story of death against the backdrop of ugly and uncompromising politics. It is also a meditation on empire, imperialism and American hegemony. The writing borrows heavily from philosophy and poetry.

“If you could photograph the exact moment between innocence and experience, what would it look like?” Why is desire so irresistible? This is the question that faces Grace, a rebellious young dreamer who takes a long-awaited leap of faith when she meets a charismatic stranger. Told through the...

Psychic Geographies is a tour de force, an ambitious exploration of the age, its physical and emotional permutations, its tragic contradictions, its joyful transformations. Gregory Betts takes a construct from the Situationists of the last Century as a means of exploring the language and rhetoric...

A Peeping Tom, a child’s disappearance, a fire, a startling decision and a truth learned too late: these are the elements that make upBreak Me, an entertaining and sinister little book. The story is superbly constructed and the narration is addictive. Break Me leaves the reader stranded at the border between madness and sanity.

The Escape Artist is the story of Nisha, a nine-year-old Indian-Canadian girl whose vivid imagination keeps her entertained in the loneliness she experiences as an only child and one of the few children in her neighbourhood. After her grandmother dies, her aunt Neela comes to live with Nisha and her...

Hold the Note is a wide-ranging collection unified by a jazzy, syncopated writing style – dynamic, sometimes experimental, often playful, yet always passionately engaged, sensual and visceral. Themes include the author’s Italo-Canadian heritage, from both broad historical and intimately personal...