From the award-winning author of If I Fall, If I Die comes a propulsive, multigenerational family story, in which the unexpected legacies of a remote island off the coast of British Columbia will link the fates of five people over a hundred years. Cloud Atlas meets The Overstory in this ingenious nested-ring epic set against the devastation of the natural world.In 2034, scientist Jake Greenwood is working as an overqualified tour guide to ultra-rich eco-tourists in one of the world's last remaining forests. As the rest of humanity chokes on the dust storms that follow the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering, Jake finds temporary refuge on Greenwood Island, a place whose connection to her own family name she had thought just a coincidence — until someone from her past reappears with a journal that might give Jake the family story she's long craved. As we move backward in time from the Great Withering to the Dust Bowl of the...

Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Critically lauded, The Beggar’ s Garden is a brilliantly surefooted, strikingly original collection of nine linked short stories that will delight as well as disturb. The stories follow a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters, from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief, as they drift through each other’ s lives in Vancouver’ s Downtown Eastside. These engrossing stories, free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life— for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness— and collectively they offer a generous and vivid portrait of humanity, not just in Vancouver but in any modern urban centre. The Beggar’ s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut. Its individual stories have been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and have been nominated for major awards, including a National Magazine Award for fiction. The collection has been longlisted for the Frank O’ Connor International Short Story Award.

A heartfelt and wondrous debut about family, fear, and skateboarding, that Karen Russell calls "A bruiser of a tale . . . a death-defying coming-of-age story." Will has never been outside, at least not since he can remember. And he has certainly never gotten to know anyone other than his mother, a fiercely loving yet wildly eccentric agoraphobe who drowns in panic at the thought of opening the front door. Their world is rich and loving, full of art, experiments, and music--but confined to their small house.But Will's thirst for adventure can't be contained. Clad in a protective helmet and unsure of how to talk to other kids, he finally ventures outside. With the help of an artistic loner who introduces Will to the high-flying freedom of skateboarding, Will is pulled far from the confines of his closed-off world and thrust headfirst into the throes of early adulthood and the dangers that everyday life offers. In buoyant, kinetic prose, Michael...