Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Automatic World

By Struan Sinclair

Winnipeg-based author Struan Sinclair’s daring and accomplished debut novel is that rare type of book that sets out to be deliberately difficult. Take the book’s puzzle-like structure, which comprises four disparate narratives nested inside one ... Read More »

July 2, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Incident Report

By Martha Baillie

As its title suggests, Martha Baillie’s fourth novel consists of a series of “incident reports” written by Miriam Gordon, a 35-year-old employee of the Toronto Public Library. Miriam is a “Public Service Assistant” at Allan ... Read More »

July 2, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Perfecting

By Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Toronto writer Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s second novel pivots on the character of Curtis Woolf, who flees his New Mexico home for Ontario, where he establishes up a religious commune known as the Family. Years later, Curtis’s ... Read More »

July 2, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Step Closer

By Tessa McWatt

Tessa McWatt’s fourth novel for adults is a powerful and suspenseful examination of relationships and the secrets that can both create and destroy them. McWatt creates suspense by flashing backward and forward in time. In ... Read More »

June 15, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Underground

By June Hutton

June Hutton’s Underground follows Canadian Al Fraser from his time as a 16-year-old boy soldier in the First World War, through labour jobs and work camps during the Great Depression, to a final combat stint ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Tainted

By Ross Pennie

The latest suspense novel written by a real-life Canadian doctor demonstrates that our country’s contribution to the medical thriller subgenre is not so much evolving as stabilizing. Tainted immediately admits Brantford-based physician-cum-university professor Ross Pennie ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Magpie’s Smile

By Eugene Meese

There is a good – possibly great – crime novel to be written about Calgary’s economic boom in the 1970s, when newcomers with dollar signs dancing in their eyes clashed with local residents resisting gentrification, ... Read More »

April 29, 2009 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels