Adult
The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships
From the jacket…
A prison escape, a bear on the loose, botched lyrics. What more could go wrong with Crow Valley’s most anticipated night of the year?
A year after forest fires ravage the town of Crow Valley and claim the life of Dale Jepson—karaoke legend, local prison guard, and “all around good guy”—the community hosts a high-stakes karaoke competition. But when a convicted arsonist escapes from nearby Crow Valley Correctional, residents discover there’s more on the line than local (perhaps even national) karaoke fame. Marriages are put at stake, sobrieties are threatened, and jobs teeter on the edge of risk as misfortune fuses the community together once again.
Told from alternating points of view, The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships is a rip-roaring romp through small town Canada about the fires we all fight in life, from the smoldering embers to the blazing infernos.
Released July 25, 2023
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 hardcover
304 pages
ISBN 9781250863430
$36.99 CDN/$27.99 US
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Coq: A Novel
From the jacket…
From Leacock finalist Ali Bryan, a witty and immensely fun dramedy about a family’s memorial trip to the City of Love, where chaos ensues at every turn.
It’s been ten years since Claudia’s mother died after a tragic collision with a banana boat. Her kids are now teenagers, her brother’s wife has left him, and her ex has had a spiritual awakening that has him hinting at reconciliation — all things she can handle.
But when her septuagenarian father decides to remarry after a brief courtship with a woman who is decidedly different than their mother, the entire family is thrown off course, and plans a long overdue memorial trip to the only place their mother ever dreamed of going: Paris. However, minutes after take-off, the trip takes an unpredictable turn and sets off a chain of events that threatens to derail the closure the family desperately seeks.
Chance meetings, poolside confessions, run-ins with mimes, climate protests, and a man with a death wish force Claudia to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, both the familial and the romantic, the tragic and the sublime. How well do we really know those closest to us? And how well do we really know ourselves? In this follow-up to her award-winning novel Roost, Ali Bryan explores thorny family dynamics with her trademark offbeat humour and insight. Coq is a darkly comedic contemporary family drama that explores grief, identity, and second chances in the one-and-only City of Love.
Released May 1, 2023
5.5 x 8.5 paperback
288 pages
ISBN 9781990601255
$23.95 CDN
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The Figgs
From the jacket…
June Figg looks forward to a quiet retirement – if only she can get her three adult children to finally move out of the house. But one thing or another seems to get in the way, and the house is getting more crowded by the minute. The Figgs is an immensely fun novel about an unruly family at their worst – and their best.
Released May 1, 2018
5.5 x 8.5 paperback
300 pages
ISBN 9781988298252/ 1988298253
$21.95 CDN/US
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Roost
From the jacket…
Claudia, a thirtysomething single mom of two young kids, pines for the normalcy of her past independent life – but instead she’s finding bananas in her daughter’s sock drawer and cigarettes taped to her son’s wrestling figures. Then Claudia’s mother passes away unexpectedly. Suddenly, Claudia is the unlikely—and reluctant—glue holding the family together.
Shared through the hilarious, honest and often poignant perspective of a single mother, Roost is the story of a woman learning about motherhood and family while grieving the loss of her own mother. And as she begins to mend, she’s learning that she might even be able to accept her life and her home – just the way it is.
Released April 1, 2013
5.5 x 8.5 paperback
256 pages
ISBN 9781554811373
$21.95 CDN/US
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Young Adult
Takedown
Available now!
From the jacket…
Sixteen-year-old star wrestler Rowan Harper’s biggest fan is her father.
But he has ALS, and his symptoms are getting worse. Saving his life will cost more money than the family has, but Rowan finds a solution. Will she risk her chances at a scholarship by competing in a lucrative, but illegal, underground MMA fight?
Takedown is a high-intensity coming-of-age story about family illness and competitive combat, with lots of heart, hope, and headlocks.
Released May 11, 2024
5.25 x 8 paperback
301 pages
ISBN 9781770867406
$16.95 CDN/US
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The Hill
From the jacket…
Set in a dark near-future where overconsumption and the climate crisis have come to a chaotic head, Ali Bryan’s young adult novel The Hill tells the story of Wren, the newly chosen leader of a secret clan of girls taught to survive by their own wits. Their home? A reclaimed garbage dump in the middle of the ocean called the Hill. Their bible? The Manual, which tells the girls everything they need to know about the world—or so they think. The gospel? Men and boys are dangerous.
When Wren makes the fateful decision to leave the Hill in search of a missing girl, she encounters boys for the first time in her life. What’s worse, they’ve been living on the other side of the island this whole time. Is it a coincidence, then, that the Hill is attacked while she’s gone?
As it turns out, they’re not the only ones under attack. Forced to question everything she’s ever been taught, Wren must sort fact from fiction, ally from enemy, and opportunity from threat in order to survive and lead the girls to safety—even if safety is an illusion.
In a pulse-racing story, The Hill explores gender, power, and access to truth in a world defined by scarcity and distrust. The book outlines the consequences of consumerism and environmental neglect, while reminding us just what it takes to be a girl in this world.
Released March, 2021
5 x 7 softcover
293 pages
ISBN 9781948340328
$16.95 USD
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