Spiderline – serie

The eighth novel in the Ava Lee series finds Ava caught in a labyrinth of high-level political corruption. Ava is in Shanghai for the launch of the PÖ clothing line. She has invited Xu, and over the course of the glitzy event and a late-night dinner, she detects a certain hesitancy in him. He later confides that the Tsai family, headed by Tsai Lian, the governor of Jiangsu Province and a “princeling” — he is the son of a general who was on the Long March with Mao and a member of China’s power elite — is trying to force him and his triad organization back into the drug business. Xu is already paying millions of dollars a year to various Tsai businesses, but the family wants more and thinks the new venture can deliver it. Xu believes this move would lead to his eventual destruction and feels he has nowhere to turn. If he opposes them, they will crush him. If he goes along with them, he thinks that inevitably the police and military will hunt him down.Ava sets out to help Xu deter the Tsai family. As she digs into the breadth and depth of the family’s wealth and corruption, she gets caught up in a huge tangled web, extending all the way to the U.S. and the U.K., where it reaches the top echelons of political power.

Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2024A Literary Review of Canada Best Book Cover of 2024A taut and unsparing novel about a community plagued by violence, drugs, corruption, and prejudice—but where love and justice prevail.The unidentifiable remains of a body are discovered in a field in Shadow Heights, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Ley, the youngest detective at her precinct, is assigned the case and quickly begins her investigation. Soon after, Ley receives a phone call saying that Carl, a friend struggling with a meth addiction, has gone missing after being linked to the Drug King of Shadow Heights. Meanwhile, a local church group believe they are cleansing the area by burning sinners, starting with homosexuals.The search for Carl and the truth leads the reader through the vibrant lives of the residents of Shadow Heights. Violence, poverty, and shame plague the neighbourhood, but there is also love, acceptance, and hope to be found among friends and family in the shadows of everyday life.A pioneering work of fiction in which the dispossessed tell their own stories, Innie Shadows is the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently a spoken language only.

A CBC Best Book of 2025A groundbreaking anthology of haunting stories by Black Canadian writersEdited by esteemed poet Terese Mason Pierre, this bold and innovative anthology of speculative short fiction reveals and uplifts the spectacular imaginings, reveries, reflections, experiments, and hopes of Black writers in Canada. A masseuse attends her mother’s fourth funeral, only to encounter family she’s never met. A postdoc instructor navigates an almost-life in an Elsewhere realm of safety and comfort. After societal collapse, an immigrant leaves her precarious station, and her memories, behind. A woman isolating from a new virus starts hallucinating. A young nanny accepts a job with a peculiar employer in search of immortality. A medium is tasked with summoning a spirit that hits too close to home. And two teenagers test a friendship over magic carpet flying practice.These ten breathtaking stories explore natural and urban landscapes, living and dead relationships, economic catastrophe, love, and desire—all while celebrating the persistent and ever-changing self, and envisioning beautiful Black futures.Featuring stories by:Trynne Delaneyfrancesca ekwuyasiWhitney FrenchAline-Mwezi NiyonsengaChimedum OhaegbuSuyi Davies OkungbowaChinelo OnwualuLue PalmerTerese Mason PierreZalika Reid-Benta

Two lovers plot a daring heist in this atmospheric noir about fate and fortune on the fringes of the American dream.Post-war Riverton has little to offer Richard, a mild-mannered loner working a dead-end job at Eddy & Dowd Safe Deposit Company. When he meets Marlon, a smooth-talking confidence man, Richard finds his partner in crime. Passions ignite between the men, and together, they hatch a plan to rob the vault at Eddy & Dowd—a once-in-a-lifetime score that will fund their escape to the Big City, where they can live and love as they desire.Their plans are complicated by Gloria, a recent divorcée scheming her own route to wealth; Frank Todd, a disgraced ex-cop desperate to restore his reputation; and the paranoid Mr. Dowd, a tycoon scrambling to hold onto his crumbling empire. As Richard and Marlon race towards their destiny, reckless violence threatens both their plans and their devotion to each other.Inspired by the iconic lexicon and unsparing storytelling of Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith, The Longest Death weaves a twisted morality tale about what it means to love someone at any cost.

A provocative black comedy of mystery, hijinks, and absurdist despair set at the only theme park devoted to death, dying, and the afterlifeZita Chang’s job—marketing death for the twenty-first century—is just like everyone else’s entry-level position in a corporate machine. While she’s grinding away, she’s determined not to let her grief over the death of her father interfere with her work. But being a Nine Circles employee comes with perks: she can ask the Afterlife team to replace Siri with her dead dad’s voice so that he can give her the advice she never wanted when he was alive.Just when Zita feels the drudgery can’t get any worse, the Nine Circles calls an emergency meeting nine weeks before the park’s grand opening to drop a shocking bomb: not only has their executive director died under mysterious circumstances, but Zita and her coworkers are charged with programming his reanimated body to keep the launch on schedule. Can Zita pull this off? Why have a few other colleagues recently dropped dead too? And couldn’t this meeting have been an email?

From critically acclaimed author Russell Wangersky, comes a dark, psychological thriller about a man named Walt, a grocery store cleaner who collects the shopping lists people leave in the store and discard without thought. In his fifties, abandoned, he says, by his now-missing wife Mary, Walt is pursued by police detectives unsatisfied with the answers he’s given about her disappearance.Almost invisible to the people who pass him every day, the grocery lists he collects, written on everything from cancelled cheques to mortgage statements to office stationary, give him a personal hold over those who both ignore him and unwittingly disclose facets of their lives to him.When a new cold case squad is formed in St. John’s to look into Mary’s disappearance, the detectives begin to realize that Walt may be involved in more than just his wife’s disappearance.Set in modern-day Newfoundland, after reading Walt, you’ll be sure to never let your shopping list fall to the floor ever again.

In the tradition of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins, The Substitute is a deliciously creepy psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page.Warren Botts is a disillusioned Ph.D. taking a break from his lab to teach middle-school science. Gentle, soft-spoken, and introverted, Warren befriends thirteen-year-old Amanda, a lonely student looking for guidance.One morning, Warren returns from a jog to find Amanda dead, hanging from a tree in his backyard. A police investigation follows, but Warren is unable — or unwilling — to answer the questions that swirl around him. Suspicions mount, and Warren’s peaceful neighbours quickly become hostile.Meanwhile, an anonymous narrator who possesses a dangerous combination of extreme intelligence and emotional detachment offers insight into events past and present. As the tension builds, we gain an intimate understanding of the power of memories, secrets, and lies.