TV/FILM HOT LIST - Transatlantic Agency

TV/FILM HOT LIST
2014 - 2015
OPTIONED PROPERTIES
FICTION
THE SILENT WIFE by A.S.A. Harrison (Viking US) optioned by Blossom Films and Mazur
Kaplan.
THE TIGER CLAW by Shauna Singh Baldwin (Knopf Random House) optioned by Mehernaz
Lentin of Industry Pictures and Lisa Ray of Breaking Through Creations.
BOTTLE ROCKET HEARTS by Zoe Whittall (Cormorant Books) optioned by producers
Michelle Mama, Stephanie Markowitz & Sonia Hosko.
“Throwing Cotton” by Sarah Selecky (Thomas Dunne Books) optioned by Natalie Urquhart
of Same Page Productions.
“This Is How We Grow As Humans” by Sarah Selecky (Thomas Dunne Books) optioned
by David O’Brien of Firefly Pictures.
THE PRAIRIE BRIDESMAID by Daria Salamon (Key Porter) optioned by Eagle Vision.
DOWN TO THIS by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall (Random House) optioned by actor Jeff Lillico.
“How to Keep Your Day Job” by Rebecca Rosenblum (Biblioasis) optioned by Tyler Levine.
*PRODUCED
THE HEART SPECIALIST by Claire Holden Rothman (Cormorant Books) optioned by
producer Randy Duniz.
“Caw” by Sigal Samuel (Room Magazine) optioned by Broken Mirror Films.
INFIDELITY by Stacey May Fowles (ECW Press) optioned by Allison Black and Karen Shaw of
Quarterlife Crisis Productions Inc.
NON-FICTION
TANGLES by Sarah Leavitt (Freehand Books) optioned by Giant Ant.
WHY NOT? by Ray Robertson (Biblioasis) optioned by January Films. *PRODUCED
Table of Contents
Horror, Thrillers & Suspense
Horror
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS IAIN REID .......................................................... 4
Thriller
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW ELISABETH DE MARIAFFI............................................................. 5
SO MUCH LOVE REBECCA ROSENBLUM ........................................................................... 6
WILL STARLING IAN WEIR ............................................................................................ 7
QUIVER HOLLY LUHNING ................................................................................................. 9
GHOSTED SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL ........................................................................... 8
Suspense
ACCUSATION CATHERINE BUSH ...................................................................................... 9
Graphic Novel
SHOPLIFTER
MICHAEL CHO ................................................................................................ 10
Drama
THE BEST KIND OF PEOPLE ZOE WHITTALL ............................................................... 11
HOLDING STILL FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE ZOE WHITTALL ................................. 12
THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES NINA BERKHOUT .................................................... 13
MATING FOR LIFE MARISSA STAPLEY............................................................................. 14
SMOKE RIVER KRISTA FOSS ............................................................................................ 15
WHAT THE BODY REMEMBERS SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN .......................................... 16
THE SEARCH FOR HEINRICH SCHLOGEL MARTHA BAILLIE..................................... 17
BEYOND THE PALE EMILY URQUHART .......................................................................... 18
MY OCTOBER CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN ....................................................................... 19
ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET JOANNE PROULX ...........................................20
Comedy
PUSH DARIA SALAMON ..................................................................................................... 21
Documentary
HUNGOVER
SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL ........................................................................... 22
HORROR
I’M THINKING OF
ENDING THINGS
Iain Reid
Reminiscent of the high concept master Jose Saramago and the
haunting literary atmosphere of Sara Gran’s Come Closer ,
matched with the chilling psychological force of The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby , comes
Iain Reid’s haunting literary thriller, I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS.
Manuscript Available: December 2014
Publication Date: Spring 2016
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Canada
US Film Co-Agent: Dana Spector, Paradigm
Iain Reid’s first book, the critically acclaimed comic memoir, ONE BIRD’S CHOICE , won the CBC
Bookie Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the year and was translated into multiple languages. His most
recent book, TH E TRUTH ABOUT LUCK , was named by The Globe and Mail as one of the best books of
2013. In 2012, Reid was named by The Globe and Mail as a top-5 up-and-coming Canadian author. He writes a
regular column about books and writing for the National Post. Reid is a graduate of Queen’s University
where he studied history, English literature and philosophy. I’M TH INKING O F ENDING TH INGS is
his first novel. He is at work on his next literary horror novel.
Synopsis
At first glance this story appears to be about a young couple in the early throes of a relationship. Amidst some
relationship uncertainty, and questions of her commitment, they’ve set out on their first road trip together, so The
Girlfriend can meet her boyfriend, Jake’s, parents. As they drive through empty country roads discussing the banalities of
life all appears normal.
Then, during the scenic car ride, The Girlfriend is distracted by her buzzing cell phone as disjointed voice messages from
an unknown caller accumulate. Soon a sense of unease permeates as strange memories return to The Girlfriend’s mind.
Arriving at their destination, Jake’s parents’ hobby farm in the country, The Girlfriend is further disturbed by dead animals
left frozen in the snow. Worse, the parental dinner is tense and fraught with weirdness.
On the way back home, Jake takes an impromptu detour. It’s the middle of a snowstorm and he parks the car outside an
abandoned schoolhouse. While making out in the car Jake sees a man in the window of the school watching them.
Infuriated Jake races into the school. He does not return and he has taken the car keys. The Girlfriend is left alone in the
car, in the middle of a harsh winter storm, literally fearing for her life. Forced into the empty schoolhouse by the freezing
cold, The Girlfriend must face the terror awaiting her inside the school, where a strange song she’s been hearing all day is
playing over the loud speakers and a man with chains is locking all the doors behind her…
Inspired by the classic films and novels of the genre, with its own unique twists, I’M THINKING OF ENDING
THINGS is part literary horror, part philosophical musing on the limitations of sanity.
And the full story isn’t unlocked until the very last words are read.
4
THRILLER
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
Elisabeth de Mariaffi
For fans of Zodiac and True Detective , THE DEVIL YOU KNOW is a
riveting thriller about a rookie reporter, whose memories and reopening
investigation into the murder of her childhood best friend bring danger—
and a balcony stalker— right to her doorstep. From a Giller Prize
longlisted author comes a spine-tingling suspense about secrets long
buried and obsession that cannot be controlled.
Manuscript Available: Advance Reader Copies & PDF
Publication Date: January 2015
Publishers: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, US; HarperCollins, Canada; Titan Books, UK. *lead
fiction title, extensive publicity planned
US Film Co-Agent: Dana Spector, Paradigm
Elisabeth de M ariaffi’s debut story collection HOW TO GET
ALONG W ITH W OM EN was a finalist for the 2013 Giller Prize.
TH E DEVIL YOU KNOW , formerly called Speak of the Devil, is de
Mariaffi’s highly anticipated debut novel sold at auction for six figures in
the US and on a pre-empt in Canada. de Mariaffi is at work on her next
thriller.
Synopsis
The year is 1993. Rookie crime beat reporter Evie Jones is haunted by the unsolved murder of her best friend Lianne
Gagnon who was killed in 1982, back when both girls were eleven. The suspected killer, a repeat offender named Robert
Cameron, was never arrested, leaving Lianne’s case cold.
Now twenty-one and living alone for the first time, Evie is obsessively drawn to finding out what really happened to
Lianne. She leans on another childhood friend, David Patton, who soon becomes her boyfriend, for help. But every clue
they uncover seems to lead Evie to the unimaginable conclusion that the killer is David’s father, Graham Patton.
Alone in her bachelor apartment, Evie spots a man on the fire escape outside her kitchen window. Convinced that the
intruder is the same man she has always feared, she calls the police. But after the third occurrence, the police no longer
believe Evie is telling the truth. Night after night, her other-world is inhabited by the threat of this stranger who crouches
on the fire escape, reaches out his fingers to touch the glass. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, Evie becomes
convinced that the killer is still at large—and that he’s coming back for her.
Only a harrowing last visit to see David’s father, Graham Patton, provides the answer Evie has been so desperate to find:
the trail that leads from Patton to Robert Cameron to eleven-year old Lianne Gagnon, and ultimately to Evie herself.
“Take wit of Gone Girl, the horror of Helter Skelter, the twists
of In Cold Blood and the wisdom of Joan Didion's The White
Album and you feel the thrill of reading THE DEVIL YOU
KNOW. Her clear-eyed insight into the kind of fear that
women carry through life resonated deeply with me.” —Claire
Cameron, author of THE BEAR
“A first novel rich with menace and psychological depth,
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW transports in the dangerous way
of a nightmare but remains grounded—even more
dangerously—in the way of a documentary. Elisabeth de
Mariaffi delivers a thriller that thrills in so many ways.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of THE DEMONOLOGIST
5
Rebecca Rosenblum
Laced with the haunting tone of classics such as Silence of the
Lambs and Gone Baby Gone and reminiscent in narrative style to the
Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive Kitteridge , SO M UCH LOVE by
Rebecca Rosenblum searches our cultural fascination with
disappeared women and comes back with a painful treasure in
return, the voice of the victim.
THRILLER
SO MUCH LOVE
Manuscript Available: March 2015
Publication Date: Spring 2016
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, Canada
Rebecca Rosenblum 's fiction has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Award,
and the Danuta Gleed Award. ONCE her first collection of short stories, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and
was one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. Her story “How To Quit Your Day Job” was
turned into an award winning short film. Rosenblum lives, works, and writes in Toronto.
Synopsis
For people who knew Catherine Reindeer, the space she leaves behind becomes a site of mourning. Len Klimstra is
Catherine’s university professor. For Len, Catherine’s disappearance from his class is shocking and tragic, yet he also feels
uncomfortably drawn to writing himself into the drama. His strange obsession with this crime is compounded by his
current academic work, the study of a murdered local poet, Julianna Ohlin. Len’s relationship with his wife, Gretta, is
challenged by his fascination with both these brutalized women.
Across town however, Catherine Reindeer’s husband, Grey, can barely find the strength to hope. He must stay stoic at all
costs, keeping up with his work, mortgage payments and maintaining their home for Catherine to hopefully return to
when she’s found. When the best-case scenario occurs and Catherine is discovered alive, it’s Grey who suffers through
what everyone else believes to be a happy ending.
And there is Catherine Reindeer herself, imprisoned in the basement of a violent psychopath. Her story of strength and
survival, her friendship with a fellow captive, a young man who dies in her arms in the fading light, which inspires her
eventual hard-won escape back into society.
Praise for ONCE
“Rosenblum's work impels us to a fresh experiencing of life.”
—The Globe & Mail
“Rosenblum can also register the aching and melancholic,
but with a remarkable lack of sentimentality… These
young characters’ futures are a sea of uncertainties. But
what we can be certain of is that ONCE is a first by a young
author of singular talent.”
—The Walrus
6
THE RECKONING OF WM. STARLING, ESQ., A FOUNDLING, CONCERNING
MONSTROUS CRIMES AND INFERNAL ASPIRATIONS, WITH PERPETRATORS
NAMED AND SHROUDED INFAMIES DISCLOSED TO LIGHT OF DAY, AS SET DOWN
BY HIS OWN HAND IN THIS YEAR 1816
Ian Weir
THRILLER
WILL STARLING
Like the thriller From Hell and for fans of Penny Dreadful , this gripping
and haunting story will throw you into the streets of 1820s London.
Based on m eticulous research steeped in scientific lore, W ILL STARLING (form erly titled
The Doomsday Man ) is a novel about love and redem ption, death and resurrection
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: September 2014 Can & Spring 2015 US
Publishers: Steerforth Press, US (Spring 2015); Goose Lane Editions (September 2014)
US Film Co-Agent: Dana Spector, Paradigm
North Carolina-born Ian W eir is an award winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He holds
both American and Canadian citizenship. His first historical fiction novel, DANIEL O’THUNDER ,
was named one of the top historical novels of 2011 by Library Journal and was a finalist for four awards:
The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for First Book, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Ethel Wilson
Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. Reid lives near Vancouver and
was writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed CBC miniseries Dragon Boys and is
creator and executive producer of the CBC hit tv series Arctic Air. He has also written more than 150 episodes for
over twenty different series, stage plays, radio plays, and young adult novels.
Synopsis
London, 1816. The Napoleonic War is over, Romanticism is at its high tide, and the great city is charged with the thrill of
scientific discovery and Regency abandon. Into this milieu, the nineteen-year-old foundling Will Starling returns from the
Continent, having spent five years assisting military surgeon Alec Comrie. Cocky, charming and damaged, Will is helping Comrie
build a civilian practice—and a life—in London’s rough Cripplegate area.
This means entering into an uneasy alliance with the Doomsday Men: grave robbers who supply London’s surgeons and
anatomists with cadavers for dissection. When a grave robbing goes terribly wrong, it sets in motion a sequence of events that
leads to the murder of a moneylender and the arrest of a young woman, Meg Nancarrow. As Meg is sentenced to hang, Will
grows convinced that she is the innocent victim of an unholy conspiracy, and that the conspiracy traces itself back to Dionysus
Atherton, an old university friend of Comrie’s and the brightest of London’s emerging surgical stars.
There are wild rumours about Atherton: whispers of experiments on corpses not quite dead—indeed, on corpses wide awake
and wailing—in a bid to unlock the mystery of death itself. Will works obsessively to ferret out the truth, aided by an aspiring
actress and occasional Cyprian named Annie Smollet. The investigation twists and turns through brothels and charnel houses
and the mansions of Mayfair, to a final confrontation and a shocking truth—about Dionysus Atherton, and about Will himself.
“Mighty swinging bollocks, what a book! WILL
STARLING drops you straight into the heart of
London in the year 1816, detailing the sights,
sounds, and smells (oh, the smells!) with an
anatomist's eye for detail. Ian Weir's crackerjack
novel is a lot of fun to read.”
—Craig Davidson, author of Giller Prize shortlisted
CATARACT CITY
“WILL STARLING is a rollicking romp through
the English language, an earthy, bawdy, brain-bending
delight.” —Annabel Lyon, author of Giller Prize
shortlisted novel THE SWEET GIRL
“This is not the polite England of Jane Austen or George
Eliot but the graveyards, hospitals and charnel houses of
East London . . . Ian Weir's characters are as engaging as the
Artful Dodger or Fagin or Martin Chuzzlewit.”
—Roberta Rich, author of bestselling novel THE MIDWIFE
OF VENICE
7
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
Shortlisted for the Am azon First Novel Award, GHOSTED is a gritty
literary thriller, a black com edy, a high-stakes poker caper, an urban
cowboy adventure, and a love story. Think Fight Club m eets Requim For A
Dream with a dash of Bonnie and Clyde .
THRILLER
GHOSTED
Books & PDF available
Publication: 2010
Publishers: Soft Skull Press, US; Random House, Canada; Actes Sud, France.
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s debut non-fiction book, DOW N TO THIS , a critically
acclaimed account of his year in an urban shantytown, was shortlisted for the Drainie-Taylor
Biography Prize, the Pearson Nonfiction Prize, the City of Toronto Book Award and the
Trillium Award. In 2004 he was awarded the Knowlton Nash Journalism Fellowship.
GH O STED is his first novel, he’s at work on his next book HUNGOVER (see page 22)
Synopsis
Mason, a struggling writer, comes in from the cold after five years of drifting. His childhood friend, Chaz, a small-time
gangster, loans him an apartment and finds him a job selling hotdogs. But instead of getting his act together, Mason
drinks too much, does too many drugs and loses too much money at poker, digging himself even more deeply in debt to
Chaz, who also happens to be his drug dealer. Then Mason has a bright idea. He’ll find the cash to pay Chaz back by
becoming a ghostwriter of suicide notes, a fitting use of his talents. The trouble is that Mason is hard-wired to rescue
people, and no one needs rescuing more than the suicidal. Except maybe the woman he is falling in love with—Willy, a
wheelchair-bound, heroin-smoking beauty.
What happens when someone already wrestling with his own demons immerses himself in the tragedies of other people’s
lives? In this case, a lot: a hotdog cart is totalled, a convict sprung, a funeral faked, a head scalped, a horse stolen. Terrible
secrets are brought to the light and suicide morphs into murder. Then, just when it looks like Mason is finally going down,
he faces the most terrifying test of all. He’ll either finally win, or be savagely deleted from his own life story.
Finalist, Amazon First Novel Award & National Post,
“Most Anticipated Books of 2010”
“Bukowski craggy and Hornby sweet, Shaughnessy
Bishop-Stall's GHOSTED is a smart book about
smart guys who can't stop from acting dumb. The
real pleasure, though, is in the lines: funny sad,
funny strange, and funny zing! A hell of a first
novel.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of international bestseller
THE DEMONOLOGIST
“GHOSTED is not for the faint of heart—in places
it's an unflinching exploration of depravity. But it is,
above all, an often funny, always optimistic parable
of victory over demons of despair, the ghosts of our
failed selves.” —Linden MacIntyre, author of the
2009 Giller Prize winner, THE BISHOP’S MAN
8
Holly Luhning
In the tradition of Interview with the Vampire , comes a deliciously dark and sensual Gothic thriller. QUIVER
darts back and forth in time from the 16 t h century diaries of the original female Dracula—Hungarian
Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who tortured and killed over 600 servant girls in order to bathe in their blood—
and her present-day cult in London, England who glamorize and re-enact her sadistic killings of young women.
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: 2012
Publishers: Pegasus, US; HarperCollins, Canada
THRILLER
QUIVER
Holly Luhning grew up in Saskatchewan and lives and teaches creative writing at University of Surrey in England. She holds a Ph.D.
in 18th century literature, madness, and theories of the body. She has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor’s Arts Award and
was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. QUIVER is her first novel and she is currently at work on her next thriller.
Synopsis
Danica, a lovely young Canadian forensic psychologist, following her boyfriend to London, finds herself caught in a dangerous but seductive friendship
with the beautiful and manipulative Maria and her world of the Blood Countess. As Danica’s career and relationship with Henry begin to break down,
Maria increasingly insinuates herself into Danica’s life and soon Danica is in too deep to notice that Maria’s motivations are far from selfless, in fact they
may just cost Danica her life.
“The malignant spirit of 16th-century sociopath Countess Elizabeth Báthory hovers over events in Canadian author
ACCUSATION
Catherine Bush
In the tradition of DOUBT: A Parable , by John Patrick Shanley, comes ACCUSATION—a sophisticated and
psychologically charged suspense exploring how charges of wrongdoing have a life of their own.
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: 2013
Publishers: Goose Lane Editions, Canada
SUSPENSE
Luhning's suspenseful first novel, a modern tale of obsession and seduction. The care with which Luhning (SWAY, a
poetry collection) orchestrates the tale's events makes Danica's discovery of the dark side of herself and others both
believable and chilling.”—Publishers’ Weekly
Catherine Bush is the author of three previous novels, most recently CLAIRE’S HEAD (2004), short-listed for Ontario’s Trillium
Award. Her second novel, THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (2000), a Canadian national bestseller, was published internationally,
shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award, and chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the LA
Times and The Globe and Mail. Her first novel, MINUS TIME (HarperCollins, 1993), was also published internationally and has
been optioned for film. She is at work on a new novel.
Synopsis
Sara Wheeler, a journalist, has been the victim of a false accusation in her past and was permanently damaged by it. So when she meets the charismatic
idealist Raymond Renaud, founder of a wildly successful children’s circus Cirkus Mirak from Ethiopia, who is doing such good things in a desperate part
of the world, she deeply wants to believe in his innocence when ugly allegations of physical and sexual abuse breaks. She travels to Addis and soon
stumbles upon what might be a much larger, darker and more widespread story of abuse. And so begins Sara’s suspenseful globe-trotting investigation,
spurred by her fateful decision to report on the evolving story for the newspaper back home, as she traces its path between Canada, Ethiopia, and
Australia, she discovers the most disturbing truth of all: that acting with the best of intentions can still lead to disaster.
“Catherine Bush .. is .. a high-risk author, intellectually unafraid....
“At the heart of ACCUSATION—and the source of its suspense—is the desire to see
She traverses war zones—psychological, sexual, real—with a cleareyed, cerebral sophistication ... exhilarating ...”—The New York
Times Book Review.
justice done in a situation where truth is elusive. The power of this novel is that it
brings a quiet dignity and compassion to precisely this state of moral helplessness. This
is a moving and ambitious book.”
—Anne Michaels, author of FUGITIVE PIECES
“Catherine Bush’s ACCUSATION is a novel of great global and
emotional scope.” —David Bezmozgis, author of THE FREE
WORLD
9
Michael Cho
In the tradition of Ghost W orld by Daniel Clowes, com es M ichael Cho’s
highly anticipated original graphic novel debut SHOPLIFTER, a riveting
portrait of a frustrated young wom an who shoplifts at night to ease the
pains of her shallow day job.
Debuted at #6 on The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller List
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: September 2014
Publishers: Pantheon, Random House, North America; Delcourt/Outsider Editions, France; Egmont/Ehapa, Germany.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
SHOPLIFTER
M ICHAEL CHO is a freelance cartoonist/illustrator based in Toronto. He's painted covers for
Penguin Classics and Random House, drawn numerous editorial illustratons for clients like the
New York Times Book Review and Billboard Magazine, as well as publishing an art book of his
drawings, BACK ALLEYS AND URBAN LANDSCAPES with Drawn & Quarterly. His
comic story “Trinity” was selected by editor Neil Gaiman for the Best American Comics
anthology in 2010. Cho’s comic story “Stars" won a 2008 Canadian National Magazine Award
Silver while another story, “Night Time”, was a finalist for a 2005 Canadian Magazine Awards. His webcomic
“Papercut” was a finalist for the 2008 Shuster awards in the webcomic category. Cho has also written and
illustrated other comics for publishers such as Marvel, DC, Image and Adhouse Books. SHOPLIFTER is his
first graphic novel. He is at work on his next.
Synopsis
Corrina works at a hip Ad agency downtown, filled with aspiring twenty-somethings who have no qualms marketing
perfume to little girls, or checking-out strip joints together at night. But Corrina used to dream of being a writer, doing
something meaningful with her life.
Single, albeit living with a rather bossy cat for company at night, Corinna needs to take the edge off her career angsts and
finds shoplifting really does the trick. She only steals magazines, inserted into her newspaper, which she pays for, but the
high helps keep her quarter-life crisis temporarily at bay. When her frenemy, the foxy receptionist, beds the only decent
guy she’s met in the last decade, Corinna spirals out, gets busted and makes a big change in her life to reclaim her worth
and her dreams.
“Michael Cho’s SHOPLIFTER, his first graphic novel, is a joy to
behold—so beautiful it will make all other cartoonists weep with
envy.” —Seth, author of PALOOKAVILLE.
“Cho’s illustrations are the real draw, with dense, rose-tinted
cityscapes that perfectly convey the loneliness of urban life. It’s a
notable debut.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Shoplifter exists as a ‘slice of life’ story….Where it stands above
other works is in its execution and especially in Cho’s terrific
and illustrative artwork….His first graphic novel effort knocks it
out of the park….with its humor, sense of style, and near flawless
execution of its simple narrative.”
—Examiner.com
“Where has Michael Cho been hiding himself?....His art is
lovely with an art deco, Darwyn Cooke-style approach to
the page, detailed with shaded images and dense
backgrounds that seem full of people and buildings that
nearly seem to jump off his page. There’s a tremendous
feeling of life and realism in Cho’s characters; in their
small sideways glances and bright eyes, Cho captures the
essence of humanity in even the most random of
background strangers….a memorable tale.”
—Comics Bulletin
10
DRAMA
THE BEST KIND OF
PEOPLE
Zoe Whittall
A com pelling story that explores the ideas of loyalty, em pathy and
the m eaning of truth in an upper m iddle-class Am erican fam ily after
the father is arrested for the attem pted rape of a teenage girl. Rem iniscent of Tom Perrotta
and Jonathan Franzen, Zoe W hittall's new novel exam ines what it m eans to be a victim , the
lim its of filial em pathy, and what exactly happens to the loved ones left behind when a
fam ily m em ber is incarcerated. Manuscript Available: January 2015
Publication Date: Fall 2016
Publisher: House of Anansi, Canada
Zoe W hittall ’s previous novel, HOLDING STILL FO R AS LO NG AS PO SSIBLE , won a 2011 Lambda
Literary Award and was an honour book for the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award. Her
debut novel, BO TTLE RO CKET H EARTS , was named a Globe and Mail Top 100 and made the CBC
Canada Reads Top Ten Essential Novels of the decade. She won the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Award in
2008. Whittall lives in Toronto.
Synopsis
George Woodbury, an affable teacher, beloved husband and father, is arrested for attempted rape at a prestigious prep
school in the States. The town is divided by those who throw eggs at the family’s front door and those who insist he’s
been framed. National men’s rights activist groups jump to his defense, and camera-ready gossip bloggers camp out on
their street. The Woodbury family is left to pick up the pieces while George awaits trial. George’s wife Joan, a trauma
nurse, is unable to triage her emotional reactions, vaulting between denial and rage. Daughter Liz, the consummate overachiever, finds herself paralyzed on her boyfriend’s couch with a bong. Son Andrew, a lawyer in New York, tries to both
assist in his father’s defense and wrestle with the possibility of his guilt. Spending time in his hometown brings back
memories of his first love with the closeted high school gym teacher. While George maintains his innocence, his family
spins out. Then, an author known to daughter Liz attempts to exploit their story and his relationship to Liz. All the while,
the Woodburys try to function through a year in their overlapping lives before the court decides George’s fate. THE
BEST KIND OF PEOPLE explores issues of loyalty, truth and the meaning of happiness through the lens of one very
unlucky American family.
Praise for BOTTLE ROCKET HEARTS
“Zoe Whittall might just be the cockiest, brashest, funniest,
toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred
writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai
Richler...BOTTLE ROCKET HEARTS is a major statement about
lessening unhappiness by overcoming the small dishonesties that
creep into everyday life.”
—The Globe and Mail
“A woeful and hilarious ode to the last days of a girl's
childhood. Whittall has created characters who combine
the lumimous joie-de-vivre of Oscar Wilde with the selfdestructive fury of Johnny Rotten. A portrait of Montreal
in the mid-nineties that successfully recreates its
hedonistic, Salvation Army band, gender-bending glory.”
—Heather O'Neill, author of the CBC Canada Readswinning, LULLABIES FOR LITTLE CRIMINALS
11
A NOVEL
DRAMA
HOLDING STILL FOR AS
LONG AS POSSIBLE
Zoe Whittall Girls m eets Grey’s Anatomy . Aim less young artists and traum atized param edics doing their
jobs, falling in love and dealing with anxiety, on and off “the road”.
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: 2011
Publisher: House of Anansi, Canada
Synopsis
What is it like to grow into adulthood with the “war on terror” as your defining political memory, with the aftermath of
SARS and Hurricane Katrina as your backdrop? In this robust, brash, elegantly plotted and ultimately life-affirming novel,
rising star Zoe Whittall presents a dazzling portrait of a generation we’ve rarely seen—the twenty-five year olds who
grew up on anti-anxiety meds, text-messaging each other truncated emotional reactions, unsure of what’s public and
what’s private.
Connected through social circles in their Toronto neighborhood, they struggle to accept the past while mapping out the
future: Josh, a female-to-male transgender works strenuous shifts as a paramedic and tries to erase from his mind the
atrocities he witnesses daily; Amy, his ex-girlfriend and an amateur filmmaker, lives off of her wealthy parents; and Billy, a
former child pop star, now endures extreme anxiety attacks. As the three become wrapped up in each others’ lives, the
emotional roller coaster dips and rises. Haunted by memories of the tragedy of 9/11 and of the rampant fear of a SARS
epidemic, which served as the scenery of their youth, this new generation’s members proclaim their true feelings through
text messages and drown their excess emotion in booze. A poignant climax seems almost like a dream as the characters
drift toward the shattering conclusion. An unforgettable depiction of growing up in the new millennium.
With this extraordinary novel Zoe Whittall fulfills the promise of her acclaimed first novel, BOTTLE ROCKET
HEARTS, and proves herself as one of our most talented younger writers.
“Zoe Whittall is an expert on being in your twenties: the era of
first big loves, getting over yourself and serial crappy
employment. HOLDING STILL FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE,
eschews categorizations, as well as—bless her—mid-youth
confessional navel-gazing. Her characters, memorable down to
the least cute bartender who makes a two-page appearance, are,
yes, urbanites in their mid-20s; they are naturally mono- and
multigamous, they are gender-amphibious; they are habitual and
mostly functional drunks at the age of only 25. Whittall is a
dexterous puppeteer, and the book is unputdownable. Whittall's
skill as a novelist is that her interest in her characters, and in
their stories, is genuine and generous. Whittall goes beyond
speaking for a generation.”
—The Globe & Mail
“But HOLDING STILL is not only a novel about place. It
is also a novel about a generation that came of age post9/11, when innocence went out with the baby’s bathwater
and growing up meant trading your My Little Ponies for
Prozac. Whittall’s characters are the children of the Me
Generation who, despite the legacy of divorce and moral
relativism that shaped them (or perhaps because of it),
are engaged in a search for love that is as urgent as it has
ever been. The three first-person narratives alternate in a
chorus of ramblings about life in the big city and the
agonies and ecstasies of falling in and out of love. This is
not easy to do, but Whittall pulls it off, writing in three
different and convincing voices. With HOLDING STILL,
Whittall has established herself as a writer of immense
vitality and courage; she stands as the voice of a lost, but
thanks to her not forgotten generation: the boys and girls
who will inherit the Earth.” – The National Post
12
Nina Berkhout
DRAMA
THE GALLERY OF LOST
SPECIES
For lovers of The Ice Storm , THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES is the
astonishing story of a fractured fam ily whose wounds unravel over tim e .
Once close sisters, Edith is forced into the role of witness as her childhood beauty queen
sister Viv spirals into alcholism and self-destruction. In love with the sam e m an, Edith sets
on path to save Viv and also break free of her dark shadow.
Manuscript Available: October 2014
Publication Date: Spring 2015
Publisher: House of Anansi, Canada
Nina Berkhout is an award winning poet. THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES is her
debut novel.
Synopsis
Edith Walker grows up in her big sister Vivienne’s shadow. While the beautiful Viv is forced by the girls’ overbearing
mother Constance to compete in child beauty pageants, a plain-looking Edith follows in her father Henry’s footsteps,
collecting oddities, studying coins and reading from moldy books which exacerbate her asthma.
A family trip to the Rocky Mountains and a chance encounter with a painfully handsome geology student named Joseph
Livingstone irrevocably changes the course of the sisters’ relationship. As Viv rebels against Constance and pageantry to
become a painter, so begins her downward spiral into addiction. As Viv begins to take Joseph Livingstone down with her,
Edith is torn between her desire for her sister to vanish and wanting to save her.
A failed artist himself, Henry’s hope is for Edith to work in a museum. Fulfilling her father’s wish, Edith takes a data entry
job at the National Gallery of Canada. Navigating her way through Vivienne’s dark landscape while trying to win Joseph’s
heart, Edith discovers through art that she is trying to retrieve something that may be impossible to bring back to life.
THE GALLERY OF LOST SPECIES is about finding solace in unexpected places—in works of art, in people and in
animals that the world has forgotten.
“Nina Berkhout brings a poet’s eye to her first novel. A fast
paced tour through landscape, art and literature…”
—Suzanne Desrochers, author of bestselling novel BRIDE OF
NEW FRANCE
“This artful, multi-layered novel describes a love
between two sisters that idealizes and mythologizes in an
attempt to stave off loss. Nina Berkhout is a master at
showing how we trick ourselves into believing that we
can hunt down and hold the elusive other.”
—Claire Holden Rothman, author of international
bestsller THE HEART SPECIALIST
13
Marissa Stapley
W ith over 50,000 copies in print in the United States and a consistent
national bestseller in Canada, M ATING FOR LIFE is rem iniscent of the
indie hit Your Sister's Sister , revealing the truth about m arriages and
relationships, while ultimately still em bracing the redem ptive power of
love in all its form s.
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: Summer 2014
Publishers: Atria, Simon & Schuster, US; S&S, Canada
US Film Co-Agent: Dana Spector, Paradigm
M arissa Stapley is a former magazine editor who now writes freelance for The Globe and
Mail, The National Post, Elle Canada and Today's Parent. She teaches creative writing at the
University of Toronto, and editing at Centennial College. She currently lives in Toronto
with her husband and two young children. M ATING FOR LIFE is her first novel. She is at
work on her next novel.
Synopsis
Helen Sear was a feminist wild child and an iconic folk singer who proudly disdained monogamy, raising three daughters
largely on her own. Now in her sixties, Helen has fallen in love with a traditional man who desperately wants to marry
her—and while she fears losing him, she’s equally afraid of abandoning the ideals that sustained her when she needed
them most.
As Helen begins to realize that leading a more conventional life may be the secret to her happiness, her three daughters
are questioning the lives they have established. Liane, the youngest, is in the heady early days of a relationship with her
soul mate, but worries about what will happen if the magic fades. Ilsa, an artist, is trying to settle down, and fears that
simply putting her bohemian past behind her won’t be enough to make her second marriage stick. It’s not until Fiona, the
eldest—who has worked tirelessly to make her world pristine—discovers that her husband has been harboring a huge
secret that the Sear women will come together as never before. In the process, they’ll realize that their pasts don’t have
to define their presents—and that above all else, their greatest loves have always been each other.
Interweaving the alternating perspectives of Helen, her girls, and the women surrounding them, MATING FOR LIFE is
a captivating, joyful celebration of mothers and daughters, sisters and spouses, and the kinds of love that last a lifetime.
“The women in MATING FOR LIFE are clever, honest, funny,
and forever analytical as they stumble through the search for
love. This is one of the most charming novels I’ve read in years,
and I loved every last page.”
—Jennifer Close, New York Times bestselling author of GIRLS
IN WHITE DRESSES
“An intriguing and heartbreaking debut novel… Told
from multiple points of view as the characters walk
tightropes of tragedy, the novel carefully illustrates the
power that each of us has to define who we are and who
we can become.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
14
DRAMA
MATING FOR LIFE
Krista Foss
SM OKE RIVER follows two fam ilies— one white and one aboriginal— on
different sides of a crisis with deep roots in history and territory through
one fateful sum m er. Grounded in the real events at Oka and Caledonia,
this story is ideal for fans of The Milagro Beanfield War and One Dead
Indian .
DRAMA
SMOKE RIVER
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: May 2014
Publisher: McClelland and Stewart, Canada
Krista Foss is a former journalist whose short fiction has twice been a finalist for the Journey
Prize and long-listed for CBC’s Canada Writes contest as well as published in several literary
journals. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and lives in
Hamilton, Ontario. SM OKE RIVER is her first novel and has received impressive critical acclaim
since it’s publication. Foss is at work on her next novel.
Synopsis
Ella Bain is a small town bureaucrat with big ambitions—she’s invested her life savings in a new suburban development
bordering the town’s neighboring Mohawk reserve. Shayna Watters is a Mohawk mother nursing old grief and an unsettling
passion for the white tobacco farmer whose land is across from the proposed subdivision. When Ella goes for a morning jog
and discovers Shayna and her aunt blocking the development’s construction crews, she sets off an angry confrontation that
reverberates through both women’s families and communities in ways no one can predict.
In the time it takes to plant and harvest a tobacco crop—itself a dividing line between the old and new, sacred and
profane—the land dispute escalates; a burnt injunction, botched police raid and the bungles of a folksy mayor increase the
tension and mutual misunderstanding. Overpaid government negotiators arrive as a successful local businessman, who has
ties to both communities, emerges as a key player—though where his loyalties lie, nobody knows.
When Shayna’s beautiful young niece Cherisse is found raped, everyone’s allegiances are shaken. In private, two very
different families—Shayna’s and Ella’s—struggle with suspicions and hard truths, exposing a pivotal choice: what they fight
to remember, or choose to forget.
“Krista Foss has written a morally complex,
magnificently vivid novel. This is a dazzling debut.”
—Lisa Moore, author of Giller Prize finalist CAUGHT
“SMOKE RIVER is contemporaryrealism torqued by
Ontario gothic, and it’s a welcome, skilled, involving
cocktail.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of THE DEMONOLOGIST
“SMOKE RIVER is a tightly woven, eloquent
exploration of uncomfortable realities in Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal relations. Given her impressive writing
skills, whatever story Foss next creates will be well
worth the wait.” —Toronto Star
“SMOKE RIVER is a stunning novel, epic in scope and tragic
in vision. Krista Foss shows how a blockade raised by First
Nations women against a development on Mohawk land can
be a metaphor for the barriers that separate us all—Native
from white, husband from wife, mother from son—on both
sides of the divide.”
—Wayne Grady, author of EMANCIPATION DAY
“The best books destroy you, overwhelm you with deep
feelings- despair, anger, love, defiance, frustration, yearning,
bitterness, pain. In her debut novel, former journalist and
two-time Journey Prize finalist Krista Foss elicits precisely
this reaction as she explores the ugly realities of aboriginal
land disputes.”
—Quill & Quire, Starred Review
15
Shauna Singh Baldwin
DRAMA
WHAT THE BODY
REMEMBERS
W HAT THE BODY REM EM BERS is at once poetic, political, feminist,
and sensual. It was awarded the Com m onwealth W riters Prize for Best
Book (Canada/Caribbean), and longlisted for the O range Prize in fiction. It has been
translated into fourteen languages.
Books & PDF available
Publishers: English Canada (Knopf, 1999); United States (Nan Talese/Doubleday/Anchor Books, 2000); UK
(Transworld); Greece (Psichogios); Germany (Bertelsmann, 2000); France (Editions du Seuil); Bulgaria (Prozoretz); India
(Rupa, reprinted 2011); Spain (Editorial Anagrama); Catalan (Enciclopedia Catalana); Israel (Keter); Holland (De Geus);
Italy (Mondadori); Poland (Proszynski I Ska); Turkey (Epsilon Yanyincilik); Audio edition (Goose Lane Editions, 2000)
Shauna Singh Baldwin was born in Montreal and grew up in India and lives in Milwaukee.
THE TIGER CLAW , her second novel, was a finalist for the Giller Prize in 2004 and has since
been optioned for film adaptation by Lisa Ray. Her most recent novel THE SELECTOR OF
SOULS was published by Knopf Canada and S&S in UK/India. She is presently working on a
book of nonfiction.
Synopsis
The year is 1937, and Roop, a sixteen-year-old Sikh girl from a small village in Northwestern India, has just been married to
Sardarji, a wealthy man in his forties. She is a second wife, married without a dowry in the hope that she will bear
children, because Sardarji’s first wife, Satya, a proud, beautiful, combative woman whom he deeply loves, is childless. The
wedding has been conducted in haste, and kept secret from Satya until after the fact. Angered and insulted, Satya does
little to disguise her hatred of Roop, and secretly plans to be rid of her after she has served her purpose and given Sardarji
a son.
“The characters shimmer with life, their predicaments grab the
reader by the throat, their fate has the reader on the edge of the
seat. An enthralling read [that] offers a glimpse of humanity that
is both intimate and universal.”
—The Times (UK)
“[We] are offered a sumptuous tour of that rich and
poor and calm and chaotic country ...”
—The New York Times
“Stunning...Intensely atmospheric, lyrical...An artistic
triumph...Remarkable.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
16
Martha Baillie
DRAMA
THE SEARCH FOR
HEINRICH SCHLOGEL
W ith the spirit of Into the W ild and brim m ing with the creativity behind
David M itchell's Cloud Atlas, THE SEARCH FOR HEINRICH SCHLOGEL
tells the story of a young Germ an m an desperate for adventure who ventures into the Great
North. W hen he em erges, thirty years have m ysteriously vanished.
Oprah Best Book of September 2014 & PW Pick of the Week
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: September 2014
Publisher: Tin House Books, US; Pedlar Press, Canada
M artha Baillie is the author of four novels, including THE INCIDENT REPORT, which
was nominated for the Giller Prize and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 title. Her previous novel,
TH E SHAPE I GAVE YOU , was also a national bestseller, and her work has been translated
into German and Hungarian. She herself is bilingual (French and English) and lives in Toronto.
Synopsis
Heinrich Schlogel, aged twenty, escapes the claustrophobia of small-town Germany by traveling to Canada where he sets
out on a long solo hike into the interior of Baffin Island. The year is 1980. His journey quickly becomes surreal, as shards
of displaced and disturbing history emerge from the shifting Arctic landscape. He experiences strange encounters and
inexplicable visions. Time plays tricks on him.
When Heinrich, at last, returns to the isolated town of Pangnirtung, where his hike began, he discovers that thirty years
have vanished. Though he has not aged the rest of the world has sped forward to 2010. His passport and money are out
of date, and he fears that if he attempts to explain his bizarre predicament, either he’ll be disbelieved or labeled crazy.
Heinrich must somehow find his way to Toronto, where he believes his sister could be living. Meantime, befriended by an
Inuit teenager, Vicky, and her grandmother, Sarah, he struggles to adapt to the sudden arrival of the 21st century, in the
contemporary Inuit community where he finds himself stranded.
Heinrich’s story, as it unfolds, in today’s disappearing North, asks us to consider our role in imagining the future into
existence while considering the consequences of our past choices.
“Baillie delivers a work of magical realism that captures the
experience of postcolonial guilt and gives voice to a silenced past.
The temporal shift works perfectly, producing an effect of
ghostly haunting alongside childlike wonder.”
—Starred Publisher’s Weekly Review
“Martha Baillie has written a timeless masterpiece. Every page is
full of haunting wonderment. Truly, I know of no novel quite
like it—it’s a blessing. I was completely transported.”
—Howard Norman, author of NEXT LIFE MIGHT BE KINDER
“Capacious, capricious, mischievous, THE SEARCH FOR
HEINRICH SCHOLOGEL moves like a quantum experiment,
defying boundaries of time, place, chronology. Fluid as light
itself, animated by startling imagery, vivid and peculiar
characters, THE SEARCH FOR HENRICH SCHLOGEL is a
hymn to brooding memory, the enduring need to inhabit story,
and a haunting insistence upon endless possibilities within
possibility. That is to say, hope.”
—Gina Ochsner, author of FLIGHT
17
A MOTHER'S JOURNEY TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING HER CHILD'S
DIFFERENCE
Emily Urquhart
DRAMA
BEYOND THE PALE
For fans of Simon Birch , BEYO ND TH E PALE will take you into dark and
unknown territory in the search for enlightenm ent. This im portant
m em oir has enorm ous potential to crossover into fiction and find the
realism and heart of War Witch .
Manuscript Available
Publication Date: April 2015
Publisher: HarperCollins, Canada, US, UK. *bought at auction
Em ily Urquhart is a folklorist and writer and BEYO ND TH E PALE is her first book.
Daughter of internationally bestselling novelist Jane Urquhart, she grew up in a small
town in southwestern Ontario and has since lived in Nice, Dublin, Edinburgh, Toronto,
Vancouver and Kyiv among other places. She spent six years in St. John’s, Newfoundland
while working on an MA and PhD in folklore, as well as teaching at Memorial University.
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Globe and Mail,
Chatelaine, The Walrus, as well as in anthologies. The first chapter from BEYOND THE PALE was published
in The Walrus magazine as ‘The Meaning of White’ in the April 2013 issue and was featured on
www.Longform.org, www.Longreads.com, www.TheMorningNews.org and on CBC Radio and won a Silver
Magazine Award. Urquhart lives Victoria, BC with her husband and daughter.
Synopsis
The story begins on St. Stephen’s Day, 2010, in St. John’s, Newfoundland when the author gives birth to a baby girl
named Sadie Jane who has a shock of snow white hair. The maternity floor janitor, however, feels something is amiss,
and, after three months of medical testing Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic condition where pigment fails
to form in the skin, hair and eyes. She faces a lifetime indoors and is visually impaired. She will always have the
otherworldly appearance that drew the awed hospital staff to her side.
While simultaneously navigating new territory as a first-time parent of a child with a disability, Emily embarks on a threeyear journey across North America and through parts of Eastern Africa to discover how we explain human differences,
not through scientific facts or statistics, but through a system of cultural beliefs. Part parenting memoir, part cultural
critique, and part travelogue, BEYOND THE PALE, as the title suggests, takes the reader into dark and unknown territory
in the search for enlightenment.
18
Claire Holden Rothman
Sim ilar to the subversive and engaging tone of Barney’s Version , this
powerful story is about a M ontreal fam ily coping with crisis and trying
to find unity in a country divided.
DRAMA
MY OCTOBER
Longlisted for The 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Books & PDF available
Publication Date: September 2014
Publisher: Penguin, Canada
Claire Holden Rothm an is the author of two story collections and a best-selling novel, TH E
HEART SPECIALIST , longlisted for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize and published in six
countries and optioned for film. Her translations have won the John Glassco Translation Prize.
Rothman lives in Montreal with playwright Arthur Holden and is at work on her next novel.
Synopsis
October 1970. FLQ terrorists kidnap a British diplomat in Montreal and hold him hostage for fifty-nine days. More than
thirty years later, the story continues to reverberate.
Luc Lévesque is a celebrated Quebec novelist and the anointed Voice of a Generation. In his home town of Montreal, he
is revered as much for his novels about the working-class neighbourhood of Saint-Henri as for his separatist views. But
this is 2001. The dreams of a new nation are dying and Luc himself is increasingly dissatisfied with his life.
Hannah is Luc’s wife. She is also the daughter of a man who served as a special prosecutor during the October Crisis. For
years, Hannah has worked faithfully as Luc’s English translator. She has also spent her adult life distancing herself from
her English-speaking family. But at what cost?
Hugo is their troubled fourteen-year-old son. Living in the shadow of a larger-than-life father, Hugo is struggling with his
own identity. In confusion and anger, he commits a reckless act that puts everyone around him on a collision course with
the past.
MY OCTOBER is a masterful tale of a modern family torn apart by the power of language and the weight of history.
“Rothman expertly weaves the intimate story of this family with
“Writing with clear-eyed honesty and authority, reframing
the political history of Quebec. This novel about power, language
histories that invoke nationalism and ethnic identity, MY
and acceptance should resonate with those who have felt torn
OCTOBER asks that we question stories we think we know. This
between languages and cultures, as well as those who have felt like nuanced and heartwarming work of political fiction deserves to
outsiders in their own city or country.” —Publisher’s Weekly
become a classic.” —Shauna Singh Baldwin, author of THE
SELECTOR OF SOULS
“Deftly rendering the inner voice of each of her protagonists –
Hugo, Hannah, and Luc – she presents a nuanced network of
perspectives, challenging the divisive dichotomy that generally
characterizes Quebec politics.”—Montreal Review of Books
19
A NOVEL
DRAMA
ANTHEM OF A
RELUCTANT PROPHET
Joanne Proulx
W hen 17-year old Luke Hunter discovers his dark superpower, life gets
com plicated. For lovers of Smallville and Arrow , this riveting com ing of age story is full of
supernatural com plications.
Books & PDF available (rough script by author also available)
Publishers: Soho Press ,US 2008; Picador Macmillan, UK 2008; Penguin, Canada, 2007; Arena, Holland 2008.
Joanne Proulx has had short stories published in literary journals on both sides of the
Atlantic, including Exile: The Literary Quarterly, and Upstairs at Duroc, a literary quarterly
out of Paris. She also received a scholarship to attend the Summer Literary Session in St.
Petersburg, Russia, awarded by Fence magazine for her story, “I Land with the Force of A
Million Men.” Proulx lives in Ottawa and is at work on her next novel.
Synopsis
When seventeen-year-old Luke Hunter foretells the death of his friend Stan with freakish accuracy, life gets complicated
fast.
Luke is stoned and thinks he's joking when he tells a good friend exactly when—8:37 the following morning—and how—
hit by a red van from out of town—he will die. But when events happen just as Luke foretold, he (and everyone else in his
hometown) realises there's nothing remotely funny about such premonitions. Friends, family, the local news crew, a
Christian fundamentalist preacher, a missing girl's frantic mother: everyone wants to keep their distance or get close
enough to get the inside story. Luke, on the other hand, wants none of it; he has enough problems being an ordinary,
everyday teenager, without the added burden of seeing into the future—not to mention the ever-after.
Written in clear, precise prose, ANTHEM OF A RELUCTANT PROPHET is a darkly comic coming-of-age novel with a
difference. Hormonal and humorous, exhilarating and wise, it’s a book about fear and truth, life and death, and the music
that plays inside us all.
Shortlisted for the Starburst Award
“Proulx is pitch-perfect in her portrayal of the potty-mouthed,
weed-smoking, angst-ridden adolescent narrator. A debut novel
that's sharp, edgy and slightly skewed—all qualities Luke
consummately embodies." —Kirkus Review
“Proulx channels ennui, insecurity and inner yearnings of a
teenage boy to produce a fast-moving tale of struggling youth."
—Publishers Weekly
“[Proulx] weaves a compelling narrative about seeking faith
and deftly channels the voice of a disaffected stoner.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“An assured first novel... The beauty of this story is its complete
and beguiling faithfulness to Luke's inner world. Unaware, you
watch Luke, recognize him, worry for him, until gradually you
feel his ache, and his aching entry to adulthood, in your bones.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Proulx has a sure hand that renders Luke’s experience
painfully, viscerally real. He’s funny, convincing and
sympathetic, his voice expressing the subtly shifting balance of
vulnerable child and diffident teenage boy ... the book combines
a dry humour with moments that are deeply and unexpectedly
affecting. Luke’s is a thoughtful coming of age that is, above all,
utterly engrossing.” —Observer
20
Daria Salamon
Rem iniscent of Nick Hornby's About a Boy , PUSH takes us on the
sarcastic and playful life journey of a fifty-three year old boy, Ken
Black, who unwittingly finds friendship and redem ption from the
m ost unlikely of part-tim e jobs: a driver for call girls. Just as Piper
in Orange is the New Black introduces us to the world of the
wom en’s prison system , Ken, in PUSH, navigates the trenches of the
escort industry— illum inating both the heart and the hilarity. Ken Black dances along the
sam e— som etim es heartwarm ing, other tim es inappropriate— line as Grandpa Hoover (Alan
Arkin) from Little Miss Sunshine .
COMEDY
PUSH
Manuscript available
Currently on submission to publishers
*Author co-wrote the screenplay adaptation for her debut novel THE PRAIRIE BRIDESMAID. Available to write the
script to PUSH as well.
Daria Salam on 's fabulous debut novel TH E PRAIRIE BRIDESM AID won the Eileen McTavish Sykes
Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer and was a finalist for the Carol Sheilds Winnipeg Book
Award and Salamon was a finalist for the John Hirsch Most Promising Manitoba Writer Award. Her humour
essays, articles and columns have appeared in The Winnipeg Free Press, Uptown Magazine, The Globe and
Mail and Prairie Fire Magazine. TH E PRAIRIE BRIDESM AID has been optioned for film by Eagle Vision
Productions. Daria is currently adapting her novel into a screenplay and teaches Creative Writing at Red
River College.
Synopsis
Ken Black is a retired math teacher who refuses to evolve as a person. Still borrowing money and refusing to eat his
vegetables long after his wife leaves him, it takes looking after call girls, moonlighting as their night-time driver, for him to
learn it's never too late to grow up! At once heartwarming, and just a little bit twisted, PUSH reminds us that hitting
rock bottom has its perks—even in retirement.
At 53, a misunderstanding and an inability to follow the rules force Ken into early retirement from his love-hate, but
mostly hate, teaching career in the public school system. A lifelong gambling problem has left him permanently broke, and
thanks to an outburst at a blackjack table he’s been banned from the only home he’s ever known—the casino. Ken
responds to a classified ad looking for drivers. He naively thinks he'll be working for a courier company, but when an
escort jumps into his passenger seat, Ken learns his new job has nothing to do with delivering packages and that his life
will never be the same.
Two months later, nothing about Ken’s life resembles retirement. He’s exhausted having moved up the ranks from
occasional driver, earning a bit of pocket cash, to becoming Nice & Easy’s most reliable man behind the wheel. He’s
housing condoms in his glove box, buying diapers, shopping for lingerie and trying to give advice to the girls about their
lousy boyfriends—all while being bullied and abused by the girls' moody madame, Linda. In helping the women through
some often hilarious and other times heartbreaking situations, Ken’s mantra to not get involved is shattered and he
discovers his own humanity. For the first time in his life, Ken supports others and this hopeless, dysfunctional guy
becomes an unlikely hero.
21
A HISTORY OF THE MORNING AFTER AND ONE M AN’S QUEST FOR THE
CURE
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
Part Sim on W inchester, part Joshua Foer, part A.J. Jacobs, and all
Bishop-Stall, H UNGO VER is both lam entation and celebration of a
very hum an experience.
Acclaimed journalist, novelist and witty raconteur Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall explores what happens to our
bodies when we over imbibe and all the ways, over time and through cultures, we’ve tried to fix it. Starting
with a field trip to Dr. Jason Burke of Hangover Heaven in Las Vegas, Bishop-Stall draws on his own
experiments and experiences and those of the greats of the past—from Biblical Noah to Churchill to pitcher
David Wells. Bishop-Stall will soon be taking trips as part of his international hangover quest to Scotland,
Germany, Croatia and London England.
DOCUMENTARY
HUNGOVER
Partial manuscript available. The complete first draft will be ready in Oct 2015.
Publication Date: Fall 2016
Publisher: Penguin Books, US; HarperCollins, Canada; DuMont, Germany
US Film Co-Agent: Dana Spector, Paradigm
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall ’s first book DOW N TO THIS: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City
Shantytown was nominated for the 2005 Pearson Writers’ Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the DrainieTaylor Biography Prize, the Trillium Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. The following year, he was
awarded the Knowlton Nash Journalism Fellowship at Massey College. He currently teaches writing at the
University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. GHOSTED his first novel (page 8) was published by
Random House Canada in 2010, in the US by Softskull Press and in France by Actes Sud and was a finalist for
the Amazon First Novel Award.
Synopsis
HUNGOVER is an irresistible blend of culture, history, science, philosophy, and mischievous humour. It will be, like its
author, a little bit bad, but in a good way. It will be unique, enlightening and entertaining, full of surprise anecdotes,
stories of epic struggle, little-known facts and questionable advice. As long as there have been hangovers, there have
been attempts to get rid of them. The ancient Romans ate owl eggs, the Mongolians sheep eyes, and the Syrians ground
up sparrow beaks. To this day, despite convenience shelves full of mass marketed elixirs, the true antidote still eludes us.
22