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.
July 2023
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 hardcover
304 pages
ISBN 9781250863430
$36.99 CDN/$27.99 US
Available in print and mobile formats:
Please consider purchasing from your local independent bookstore.
This book has it all — it’s hilarious, moving, bawdy, empathetic, and packed with beauty and insight. Readers will be cheering for every one of these characters, and this book is a reminder that there’s always more than one kind of victory. ~ J Ryan Stradal, Author of the New York Times bestselling novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Ali Bryan is a comedic genius—the kind of writer who makes you laugh until your guts hurt, and then turns around and sucker punches you with a truth so powerful it breaks your heart. The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships is a wise, hilarious, big-hearted novel that made me want to move to Crow Valley, practice up on my singing, and hang out with this motley crew of characters in all their quirky, messy, charming, relatable glory. Strap yourself in, this is one wild ride. ~ Amy Jones, Bestselling author of We’re All in This Together
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.
May 1, 2023
5.5 x 8.5 paperback
288 pages
ISBN
CDN/US
Available in print and mobile formats:
Please consider purchasing from your local independent bookstore.
“Coq is a transcendentally, astonishingly funny book about family, grief, and love and Ali Bryan is, without question, one of the most talented humour writers working in Canada today.” ~ Susan Juby, Author of the Leacock winning novel, Republic of Dirt
When I read Ali Bryan’s Roost, I didn’t want it to end. With Coq, we get a chance to re-enter Ali’s warm, hilarious, awkwardly familiar world of characters who feel as close as our own family members, this time in a place we all love to be – Paris. This is a difficult and harrowing time to be alive. Coq is true, smart, and enormously fun.~ Todd Babiak, Award-winning Author
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
Available in print and mobile formats:
Please consider purchasing from your local independent bookstore.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, human on the best level. ~ Bradley Somer
Full confession: I want to be one of The Figgs. Ali Bryan’s eponymous family is chaotic, messy, imperfect, and a little out of control – but they are also big-hearted and quirky, hilarious and real. You can count on the Figgs (the family) to be there for one another, and you can count on The Figgs (the novel) to delight you. ~ Amy Jones
In The Figgs, Ali Bryan takes us to bedlam and back in a story that grips you from the start and never lets go. With equal parts humour and heart, a masterful storyteller explores the meaning of love and family in complicated and challenging times. Extraordinary. ~ Terry Fallis
Modern mayhem at its finest…Tackling enablement, empowerment, and the sticky bonds of love, this is a soaring read with both sarcasm and soul. ~ Cassie Stocks
Like Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Ali Bryan sometimes pushes the humour right up against the sadness, and that makes for a very meaningful ride for the reader. ~ Terry Fallis
The author ably creates nuanced characters that induce laughter. Don’t be surprised if this gets a Stephen Leacock nomination. ~ Jay Smith, Alberta Views
God this was a funny book…absolutely hilarious. ~ Ann Logan, I’ve Read This
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
Available in print and mobile formats:
Please consider purchasing from your local independent bookstore.
Ali Bryan works in that magical space between hilarity and humiliation. Roost is about the family tragedies we all face, with courage and cowardice and warmth and malice. This novel is marvelous, terrible fun. ~ Todd Babiak
Does every family need a daughter to do the emotional heavy-lifting? Irreverent and dead-on about the absurdities of motherhood and family, Claudia seems an unlikely fit for the role and fights it every messy inch of the way. Ali Bryan writes the tenderness and pathos of family life with the wise-cracking finesse of stand-up comedienne. Roost is laugh-out-loud funny – a refreshing debut. ~ Betty Jane Hegerat
Roost is hilarious. Ali Bryan is a master of deadpan delivery and is a seemingly endless source of deft one-liners. ~ Sue Sinclair, The National Post
…she has a standup’s knack for candid detail and dialogue, leading you to expect the expected, only to deliver the timely left hook that shatters it. ~ Carol Bruneau, The Chronicle Herald
As funny as it is smart. ~ Toronto Star
Bryan’s dialogue and character interaction are so spot on, and the rare occasion where she does take the chance and delves beneath the super funny surface of asshole-dom, she is dazzling. ~ Lee Kvern, The Winnipeg Review
