Colin McAdam – författare

Ottawa in the seventies is colourless, cold, and aching for character, ripe for the taking. Two men, from different ends of society, see the opportunities: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer-turned-builder, a simple, self-made man, and Simon Struthers, with inherited wealth and position, but nothing inside him but longing.As their careers and successes run in parallel - Jerry with his new wife, Kathleen, who likes a drink even more than she likes him, and Simon with his endless affairs and intrigues - we begin to see how a landscape can be shaped by desire. When both men realise that something is missing, and go in search of it, their lives start to intersect, and the story spirals to its astonishing conclusion.

A place of pressure and contradictions, St Ebury is an exclusive boarding school for the children of Canada's elite, where boys must act as men while navigating their adolescence.One of only a handful of girls at the school, Fall is the most beautiful. Noel, a clever, ghostly loner, watches her, certain that one day Fall will come to know him deeply. But like everyone else, she is drawn to Julius, the confident and magnetic son of the American ambassador to Canada. They fall in love and Noel keeps watching.In their final year, the boys room together and as Julius grows closer to Fall, Noel's enthusiasm for their relationship shades into something darker as he imagines himself as a confidante to Julius, sensing that the time has come for him to enter Fall's life forever.

“Stark and beautiful, horrifying and lyrical, Black Dove's pages thrum with flight, transformation, grief, revenge, transcendence, the remorseless power of stories and the very nature of creation. Ever since reading, Black Dove has drifted in and out of my dreams.” —Helen Macdonald, author H Is For HawkIn a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father’s impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief.Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor’s closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder.Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out.A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood’s end.

“Stark and beautiful, horrifying and lyrical, Black Dove's pages thrum with flight, transformation, grief, revenge, transcendence, the remorseless power of stories and the very nature of creation. Ever since reading, Black Dove has drifted in and out of my dreams.” —Helen Macdonald, author H Is For HawkIn a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father’s impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief.Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor’s closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder.Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out.A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood’s end.

Longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize • A 2026 CIBA Booksellers’ List Selection • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026A fable about love and innocence and beauty, and finding a light through the darkness.There’s a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe.And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wife’s hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.

Longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize A 2026 CIBA Booksellers List Selection One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026A fable about love and innocence and beauty, and finding a light through the darkness.Theres a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe.And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wifes hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.